Fidayeens are Few

The marvelous side-effect of the #ChineseWuhanCoronavirus is the redrawing of definitions, priorities and boundaries of multiple living entities. From dolphins swimming in Venice to Elephants roaming in Dehradun, to deers frolicking on urban roads to birds chirping more sweetly than ever either on trees or while riding the travelators! In all this, humans have a chance to bond with their families, invest time in introspection/spirituality, ponder on 'what is peace' and more! Amongst all these jolly good opportunities of revisiting or redefining, lies an opportunity to revisit & redefine another misunderstood definition - it has been a bane to Indian politics and society for too long but nature has ensured that barricaded-at-home Indian populous gives it a thought, i.e. secularism. Now I'll leave that to each fellow Bhaaratiya to ponder as I move towards the focal point of my blog today which is the conundrum of 'a few'. Let me state outright that I consciously with a sound mind completely support and subscribe to the assertion "Not ALL Muslims are bad/evil! A 'few' of them are".  The point of divergence lies in a single word, 'few'. What do you mean by 'a few' ?

Joint Secretary (Health) Luv Agarawal recently stated in a press conference that the doubling rate of cases in India stood at 4.1 days as against the probable 7.4 days it would have been without the Tablighi Jamaat Nizamuddin Markaz episode. To get an idea, out of total cases in Uttar Pradesh, ~54% are directly linked to the Tablighi Jamaat; the corresponding number stands at ~57% for Delhi, ~77% for Andhra Pradesh, ~92% for Tamil Nadu and 100% for Himachal. The pan-India number stands somewhere around 40%. Thousands of Tablighi Jamaatis are quarantined across the nation and as per reports, they have by now, spat on doctors, misbehaved with nurses, defecated in quarantine centre corridors and continued to violate all norms of social distancing with a careless how-do-you-do! Now this is only for Tablighis in quarantine centres; our teams have been tracking those hiding from authorities in Muhallas and Masjids. One such team was assaulted in Indore for trying to reach to escapees. Then came instances of non-Tablighis like a man in Nashik district wiping his nose & face with currency notes proclaiming proudly how Coronavirus is Allah's assault on Kafirs. Another video cropped up where a vegetable vendor chacha was seen licking fruits he intended to sell to customers and numerous other cases where social distancing was violated by Islamic gatherings in Mosques. As if all this was not enough, we have Maulvis praying for Coronavirus deaths on 50cr Indians and Maulana Saad, the leader of the Tablighi Jamaat himself, commanding followers to violate protocols against the Coronavirus; we still have hundreds gathering for slain terrorists as seen many times in the past and we also have these chaps getting cross-border help with reports cropping up suggesting that Pakistan is employing a suicidal technique by refusing to treat soldiers/terrorist infected by the Coronavirus but rather pushing them into the Indian territory. Possibly, a common man's reaction would be to express angst/disgust and call all these entities as mentally challenged. The common man either forgets or does not know that a mentally challenged individual has great immunity under the Indian Penal Code; the label of 'being mentally challenged' is a blessing to a criminal's ill intent.

To understand intent, one needs to quickly know what is the Tablighi Jammat first and then ponder upon the common link. According to wikipedia, Tablighi Jamaat, is an Islamic missionary movement that focuses on urging Muslims to return to practising their religion as it was practised during the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and particularly in matters of ritual, dress and personal behaviour. To gain deeper understanding on who are being urged to return to what, one can go through the following sample verses of the Quran - 4:34, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:3, 9:5, 9:29, 9:111 and 47:4. There are many more to quote, but these should be enough for now. If the book is not enough, translation of a single verse that blares from loudspeakers should put forth the point - la ilaha illa allah, i.e. there is no god but Allah. In all this that is happening, across my exposure to various websites, blogs, forums (even those who don't represent my ideological leaning), I can see hardly 1 or 2% Muslims critiquing the Tablighis, the Maulvis and the Mullahs! Where are the rest? Where is the 'majority'? (Note: There is a fantastic 5 minute video on Youtube where Brigitte Gabriel, Founder of  ACT! for America  has interesting insights to offer on the few, the majority and the irrelevant!)

Defending Tablighis and all those actively aiding the spread of Coronavirus in India has become akin to Sanjay Jha attempting to explain Rahul Gandhi's words/actions on every TV debate or forum! The impossible task assigned to Jha, his feeble attempts and the cackling reactions have been worth a watch; can the left-liberal trials of 'defending the indefensible' Tablighis be left aside purely as entertainment? There is one certain, glaring and powerful undercurrent that has gathered momentum in all these events of the past few weeks - even die-hard seculars have become nervous; some have reached out to me & my ilk, while some others have gone on MMS mode trying to figure out an approach that does not make them fall flat on their faces; and then there is a set that is switching camps - awakened to the threat Maa Bhaarti faces.

Tablighi Jamaat will be remembered by history as a tipping point or as an inflection node of the sentimental graph representing this great cultural war! Of course, a ray of hope! While we are at this inflection node, I specifically address those Indian Muslims who don't consider themselves as a part of 'the few'; I'll address them as my brothers and sisters and appeal, "Break the shackles that Jihadists, Islamists and Mullahs/Maulvis have ensnared your community in! Let go of the outdated medieval and murderous teachings that these entities represent and reclaim your identities; mandatorily so, by calling a spade, a spade! Every Indian Muslim is nothing but a descendant of  a converted or assaulted Indic. We share the core, the choice is yours on whether we share our destiny!"

Finally, I ask the reader, "what do you mean by a few?". It might mean 1% for one set of people, 5% for another, 10% for yet another while a different group will peg 'few' at 25%. There might be another bunch which defines 'few' at 40% or 50% and so on so forth till a point that even 99.99% is only 'a few'. Since 'the few' continues to be highly subjective, there is an urgent need to focus our efforts on something that is objective - what is objective is that it is immaterial how much % constitutes 'the few'; all that matters is whether 'the few' are 'enough'! The Tablighi Jamaat episode and its aftermath (including the various viral forms of support the Jamaatis have received from a well-entrenched ecosystem) has proven beyond a doubt, once again, that 'the few' are 'enough' and 'the others' are irrelevant! What is more alarming is that 'the few' seem to be growing and if 'a few' can cause this level of damage (which we are yet to even ascertain at this point of time), then the question to the brilliant imaginative powers of every man, woman or child, who calls this piece of land from the Sindhu river in the north to the Sindhu-saagara in the south as Punyabhumi and Pitrubhumi, is - what happens when 'the few'  become 'not that few'?

Jai Hind!