Hop, skip and jump

PLAIN POLITICS

These days, two sections in Arif Mohammad Khan's vast library in his Mayfair Gardens home are the most visited. One comprises writings on the life and times of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and the other, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

These two most progressive Muslim leader of India "" but most misunderstood by their own community "" have become Arif Mohammad Khan's role models to explain the predicament of the liberal Muslim politician.

Consider the dilemma. A modern Muslim in the Congress runs the risk of becoming a symbol of tokenism (because the Congress's affiliation to the regressive Muslim League continues to be deep and abiding).

In the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) he stands reduced to being a mindless deliverer of a vote bank subject to the caprice of two (one, actually) leaders of the party. And in the Bharatiya Janata Party, he is viewed, at best with incomprehension, at worst with visceral suspicion, even hate. What does a Muslim in politics do? Where does he go?

You could, like Arif, join the BJP and recount the similar crises faced by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Maulana Azad. Sir Syed, who espoused a modern western education for the Muslims was viewed with suspicion by sections in the Congress for his 'loyalty' to the British and detestation by the orthodoxy in his own community for selling out on his commitment to Islam.

Maulana Azad represented another irony of Indian history "" while possessing a thorough Islamic training, he ended up espousing a secular vision of nationalism informed by personal religious sensibilities.

On the other hand, his opponent Jinnah, a modernist with a minimal religious upbringing, ended up vying for a separate Muslim state informed by purely political considerations.

Azad had to resign from the presidentship of the Congress to allow that party to try to bridge the breach between it and the Muslim League and limit the damage from the imminent danger of Partition. But even that couldn't save the day.

So Maulana Azad paid the price for his liberal political beliefs as the Congress tried to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Arif Khan believes he is in a similar position.

But in realpolitik, ideological breast-beating has little place. The uncharitable say deep down, Khan is shallow. Today, there is no party he hasn't tried in order to make his political fortune.

He was minister for energy in Rajiv Gandhi's government when the Shah Bano debate (1986) was on and he became known as a crusader for the rights of Muslim women by asking his party to define Islamic law in the light of modern-day reality and accept the Supreme Court verdict instead of going by the interpretation of the orthodoxy. When the Congress equivocated on the issue, Khan resigned. Briefly, he became more famous than Rajiv Gandhi.

When V P Singh's Jan Morcha was formed in 1989, Khan was in the forefront, becoming cabinet minister for energy when V P Singh became Prime Minister.

He also testified in the St Kitts forgery case that it was an old friend and associate, Chandraswami, who, in 1989, had shown him some papers purporting to have been signed by V P Singh, relating to the alleged foreign bank account of his son, Ajeya Singh.

His statement had the effect of tightening the noose around Chandraswami's neck, charged by the CBI with forging papers about the account to tarnish V P Singh's image.

When the V P Singh government fell, he waited before joining the Bahujan Samaj Party. He lost little time in testifying against V P Singh at the Jain Commission by attesting that the V P Singh government had never discussed in cabinet meetings, the question of Rajiv Gandhi's security (implying Gandhi's assassination was the result of a security lapse). V P Singh attributed his testimony to a 'failure of Mr Arif Mohammad Khan's memory".

But these endeavours did not get him reentry into the Congress. Today Khan's logic for joining the BJP is that the Congress's record on communalism leaves a lot to be desired.

After the Gujarat riots, he, along with colleague Ramvilas Paswan, asked the party for a few seats, any seats, even the weakest, to fight communal elements in Gujarat.

The Congress refused to give him a single seat. When Ehsan Jaffrey, lifelong Congress worker and former Muslim MLA, was burnt alive in the riots, Sonia Gandhi did not call on the family "" a conscious decision because she did not want to alienate the Hindus. This, he believes, makes the Congress more communal than the BJP.

What about the BSP? Couldn't that have been a route to Muslim politics? Khan tried that as well. But he resigned from the BSP when it decided to share power with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. At that time his logic was that he did not want to be treated as a tradeable commodity.

By joining BJP, Khan says he has rejected the Congress's 'soft Hindutva' and offered himself as a part of a small but growing core within the BJP that will sensitise the party to Muslims and radicalise it into becoming genuinely secular.

Eventually, the political Brahmins of the Congress will be replaced by the political Brahmins of the BJP. The hardcore Hindutva elements in the BJP will find themselves isolated, leaving behind the true representatives of the Hindus and Muslims "" conscious of religion but unwilling to interfere in each others' communities for reasons of political self interest.

As Arif Mohammad Khan, the practising politician, this logic works brilliantly. After all, if he becomes a minister in a BJP-led government, won't he have a say in preventing pogroms in Gujarat, if they were to recur?

The problem is, other Muslims in the BJP "" like Shahnawaz Husain and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi "" could do little but wring their hands as the Gujarat riots went on and on and on. And now, as mass graves of Muslims are discovered, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's exhortation to the Muslims that they should abandon fear and vote for the BJP, sounds more like a threat than an assurance.

However, for Arif Mohammad Khan, ministership is a hop, skip and jump away now. Ultimately, isn't that what it's all about?