The Need for Better Political and Emotional Spaces
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Quarterly Magazine Volume 2, Issue 3 - June 2020 / Dhul Qa'dah 1441 ISSN 2632-3168 £5 where sold The Nation and the New World: The Need for Better Political and Emotional Spaces AMRIT WILSON ROSHAN SALIH SADEK HAMID JOÃO SILVA JORDÃO From Nagpur to Muslims need to Is a Better World The Underlying Myths Nairobi to Neasden – create their own Possible? Muslims, that Fuel Divisions in tracing global Social Media Leadership and the Islam …and how we Hindutva Platforms Coronavirus Crisis can Demolish them In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful ndia’s pr oblem with fascism is well docu - also proved to be a useful tool in propagating mented. While many point to the 1992 de - anti-Muslim views. Among the more prepos - molition of the historic Babri Masjid as a terous anti-Muslim campaigns being waged by seminal point in the rise of Hindutva India’s ruling BJP is the Corona-jihad, the idea Contents: Isupremacist politics, the seeds of today’s domi - that Muslims are deliberately infecting Hindus nation of the national political landscape were with the Covid-19 virus in pursuit of a religious planted several decades before India’s first war. As the pandemic rages across India, the prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the ubiquity of social media has simply provided 3 Amrit Wilson: national flag above the Lahori Gate of the Red another opportunity to demonise Muslims in From Nagpur to Fort in Delhi in 1947. Far less has been written India, leading amongst other things to the about the spread of these ideas - inspired by scapegoating of the country’s Tabligh-Jamaat Nairobi to Neasden – Mussolini and Hitler - in the Indian diaspora. movement. tracing global Hindutva Our lead article by Amrit Wilson , an ex - As we put this issue to bed the deadly virus pert on the Indian diaspora, locates the rise of shows few signs of relaxing its grip on the the Hindutva movement in the UK in the planet. The microscopic parasite that has paral - Roshan Salih: racialised political systems of British colonial ysed the world is forcing us to rethink many of 7 systems in east Africa and the subsequent so - the things we take for granted. Across history, Muslims need to create cio-economic disruptions occasioned after their as Dr Sadek Hamid reminds us in the third their own Social Media independence. Hindutva found a captive con - article, pandemics have often led to huge social Platforms stituency in once successful economic migrants and economic upheavals. But as old orthodoxies turned political refugees who now found them - start to be questioned, he laments the response selves at the bottom of the class system in the of Muslims which he claims has been largely Sadek Hamid: UK. confined to navel gazing about religious par - 9 Is a Better World Possible? Instead of directing their ire towards their ticulars. Instead of contributing to wider de - oppressors, many Hindus found solace in the bates about the environment and public health Muslims, Leadership and message that whatever their predicament, they many in the community’s leadership have just the Coronavirus Crisis still ranked above Muslims in the pecking order. been fixated on what it means for collective rit - From very early on, the Rashtrita Swayamsevak ual worship. Sangh (RSS) directed its efforts at controlling For the author, this exceptionalising of the João Silva Jordão: Hindu social and political organisations which pandemic highlights the glaring “divide be - 13 sought to perpetuate caste-ist and anti-Muslim tween those whose worldview clings to an imag - The Underlying Myths ideas both in the UK and back in the home - ined literalist past that denies the validity of that Fuel Divisions in land. knowledge outside scriptural sources and those Islam …and how we The mainstreaming of Hindutva has made that want to contextualise their religious her - can Demolish them it more difficult for opponents to argue that it itage authentically to apply it to the challenges is a hate ideology not deserving of any kind of of the modern world.” The pandemic has cre - public platform. Social media in particular, with ated a climate in which everything is once again its notoriously loose restrictions on hate content, up for debate and it behoves us as the heirs of a has been a fertile campaigning grounds for this history-changing intellectual tradition to make far-right. But the increasing influence in social more meaningful contributions to the bigger media companies of Zionists, anti-Muslim bed - universal challenges facing us as human be - fellows of Hindutva, has made the prospect of ings. curtailing Hindutva even harder. In spite of the deathly plague sweeping the The In our second article, the founder of the world, the Sunni/Shia schism in Islam is one ong View Muslim news website 5Pillars Roshan of those festering wounds that continues to play L Quarterly Magazine Muhammed Salih , shares his experiences of out in bloody violence. Few Muslim countries the discrimination he and other Muslim-led have been spared the conflicts that are often organisations face to simply share content via political in nature but are nevertheless expressed the main social media platforms. Whether it’s and justified in doctrinal terms. Our final article over articles highlighting Israel’s continuing op - is a personal plea from a Muslim to end this pression of Palestinians, or criticism of the west - crippling impasse. João Silva Jordão proposes Editors: ern liberal drive to normalise homosexuality, that we break with the personality-oriented his - Faisal Bodi and Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all been tories which characterise discussion of leaders Arzu Merali very eager to censor them and sanction the orig - after the first four of the Prophet’s successors inators, often with serious financial repercus - and “spiritualise” the concept of leadership to sions. focus on the message that they each conveyed. The Long View is a project The social media behemoths have proved For Jordão political legitimacy should not rest and publication of Islamic vulnerable to state influence even if it means in the material fact of leading the community Human Rights Commission compromising their much-lauded commitment but in how faithfully the candidate conveyed (a limited company no 04716690). to freedom of expression. Salih has seen his ini - the Prophetic message. tial excitement at the space offered by digital In focusing on message, Jordão offers a way media to challenge the anti-Muslim main - of reimagining our world outside the ever con - Web www.ihrc.org.uk stream media give way to cynicism and a ques - straining narratives that currently affect so E info@ihrc,org tioning of whether the US social media giants much of the oppression experienced today. It Tel +44 20 8904 4222 can provide Muslims a genuine platform to is a sliver of much needed hope. We should speak for themselves. heed it. All views are the authors' own and do If the expansion of the internet has failed not reflect IHRC's views or beliefs. to break the dominance of corporations and states in controlling information content, it has Faisal Bodi and Arzu Merali Editors Cover photo: United Against Fascism in India national demonstration in London on 25th January 2020, (c) Join the conversation by emailing us on [email protected] , tweeting @ihrc or find us on South Asia Solidarity Group. Facebook. You can even send us an old fashioned letter to IHRC, PO Box 598, Wembley, HA9 7XH, UK. Or pop by to the IHRC Bookshop for one of our events (or watch online www.ihrc.tv) at 202 Preston Road, Wembley, HA9 8PA. Find out what events are coming up at www.ihrc.org.uk/events . 2 The Long View - Quarterly Magazine June 2020 / Dhul Qa'dah 1441 Global Hindutva From Nagpur to Nairobi to Neasden – tracing global Hindutva The disturbing rise of Hindutva supremacism in India has been mirrored by a corresponding growth of extremism in the Indian diaspora, particularly in the UK where the efforts of such groups are now feeding into public policy decisions, says Amrit Wilson . n the six weeks or so before UK’s 2019 emulate in its treatment of minorities. Its the end of the 60s Shakhas had sprung up general election, WhatsApp messages views on religion also do not originate in in cities like Leicester, Birmingham , Brad - started circulating urging UK’s Hindus India’s ancient history but are drawn from ford and in Harrow and Brent in London to vote Tory , claiming the Labour Party the ‘scriptural’ and elite-based interpreta - where the refugees had settled. was anti-Indian for criticising Modi’s poli - tions of Hinduism encoded by British colo - cies in Kashmir. Soon after, in the Gujarati nialism, and their deliberate policies of di - IHindu heartlands of Leicester, Harrow and vide-and-rule in response to the first war East African Asian Brent leaflets dropped through people’s of independence of 1857. It has also communities and their doors emphasising this message. Then, adopted the strategic British rewriting of changing identities with just over two weeks left till election Indian history as an age-old struggle be - day, a spokesperson for the Hindu Council tween Hindus and Muslim ‘invaders’. These The new communities had brought made a statement in support of Rabbi distorted ideas of religion and history to - with them their view of the world and the Mirvis’ claim that Labour Party is anti- gether with some basic tenets of European intense racism against people of African Semitic, adding that it is ‘anti-Hindu’ too. fascism have helped shape the Islamopho - origin, which came from their intermediate It was a very public flexing of muscles bic and misogynistic notion of Hindutva position in the rigid racial hierarchy of and declaration of position by Hindu far- which, though sometimes mistaken to be a Britain’s East African colonies (they had right groups who, as their interventions religious philosophy, is in fact the political been located below white people but above, indicated, are directly linked to the Modi ideology of Hindu supremacy.