Professor Iqbal Ahmad Ansari, a researcher and a
theoretician as well as a fieldworker of the human rights movement in
India, died an activist discussing violations of minority rights on Gandhi
Jayanti (October 2) and holding consultations with PUCL activists in the
national capital on the evening before his death in Aligarh on October 13,
2009. In December 2007 he was honoured by the Jawaharlal Nehru
University’s Centre for Promotion of Human Rights Teaching and Research
for his largely unheralded contributions in the area.
He was a unique Muslim intellectual who spoke with reason
and in a language understandable to non-Muslim jurists, secular
intellectuals and rights activists, Muslim clerics and even international
jihadis. He was a self-confident Muslim writer of substance who was immune
to denial and conspiracy theories. He also saw justification in the media
hyping of "Islamic terrorism", as, of all the violent groups fighting
against oppression worldwide, it was only the Muslims whose war cry was
religious, paying no heed to the theology, and axiology, of the use of
force in Islam.
"Muslim passivity and the urge to blame the media," he
wrote, "should be replaced by an objective assessment of the rise of the
cult of violence in the name of armed Islamic jihad in Jammu and Kashmir,
Pakistan and lately in Bangladesh." He discounted Islamic terrorism, which
he preferred to call anti-Islamic, on both counts: its legitimacy as well
as its strategic viability. While speaking of Islamic terrorism in the
wake of 9/11, he counselled Muslims worldwide, "wherever they find
themselves oppressed, to explore new techniques of effective peaceful
struggle, of passive resistance, which was evolved by, among others,
Gandhi."
Ansari was most eloquent in his enunciation of the
principles of legitimate violence, a term that he carefully avoided,
favouring instead the phrase "use of force", even in the context of
non-state actors. Unlike most Muslim writers who emphasised the spiritual
jihad, he spoke directly, and most often solely, on armed jihad, which
was, as he put it, the legitimate use of force for a specified just cause.
He was not one of the many Gandhians who disallowed the use of force for
all causes even if just, and even in self-defence. "The pacifists
preaching the religious doctrine of absolute non-violence," he maintained,
"could not generally remain consistent for any length of time, as was the
case with Gandhi on Kashmir in 1947."
He was a Gandhian with a difference. He believed that it
was more important, while pursuing the noble quest for a state of
everlasting peace in the world, to seek universal observance of
humanitarian laws of armed conflict whenever force was used so that all
non-combatants, especially women, children, the old and the disabled,
enjoyed protection of life and dignity during hostilities. This realistic
Koranic position on the legitimacy of force is not only similar to that of
Gandhi’s Gita but has also been endorsed by the world community in modern
times under the United Nations Charter (1945) and the humanitarian laws of
war codified under the four Geneva Conventions (1949).
Whenever he spoke on the issue of legitimate use of force,
he invariably addressed the militant groups alongside the governments and
"all the militarily powerful nations of the world, led by the United
States of America". In fact, Ansari’s discourse of the legitimate use of
force has the potential to engage even the Maoist Naxals in a dialogue of
reason. "In Islam, peace is accorded a fairly high ranking in the
hierarchy of values but so is justice. A kind of militancy defined as a
vigorous struggle directed towards establishing a just order was inherent
in the ideological orientation of Islam. Internal insurgency and rebellion
can enjoy legitimacy if any section or group feels persistently oppressed
and other peaceful methods of redressal have been exhausted."
However, the use of force by any such group would be
governed by the same principles as a declared war under a unified
political command and could seek Islamic legitimacy only under strict
conditions both while defining ends as well as means. During any declared
hostilities and armed conflict led by a political command, if the
destruction of military power and potential of the enemy required any
operation wherein death of the attacking soldiers was certain, suicide
bombing of purely military targets may be considered permissible but not
in situations where civilians could be victims. He also rejected the
validity of the contention that civilians were legitimate targets because
they were taxpayers and supporters of a tyrannical government.
In this context, he further emphasised the shades within
each category of ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ (or ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’)
requiring discrimination, that is, tolerable inequality reconciled to
larger freedom and tolerable injustice reconciled to pervasive peace and
vice versa. "On occasion it will make us choose peace under an order which
is not perfectly just while continuing to struggle peacefully for a more
just order." That is where intercommunity peace initiatives and
intercommunity/state conciliation are to be most relevant.
In his perennial pursuit of conciliation and human rights,
he appears to have arrived at his own definition or interpretation of
"Islamism" (or what is alternatively called "political Islam") as being a
struggle for justice and he urged Islamists worldwide "to engage in
research and activism in the area of prevention and peaceful resolution of
conflicts and in developing effective techniques for peaceful struggles
for the right of self-determination and for fighting political and
economic injustices that they are faced with". To the question: Will it
succeed, his answer was: Has terrorism succeeded?
He noted with satisfaction the fact that in spite of being
subjected to recurrent organised violence with state collusion, Indian
Muslims were not associated with any international terrorist organisation.
On occasion stray Muslim individuals have taken recourse to terrorist acts
because, as explained by Justice Srikrishna and others, they despair of
ever receiving justice from the system. Ansari however did not think that
periodic post-event condemnation of such acts was an adequate response
from Indian Muslim leaders, as he was alarmed by the rise of what he
called "anti-Islamic terrorism" in India’s neighbourhood.
"Targeting lawyers and judges for administering secular
laws instead of Shariah in Bangladesh is the latest example of jihadi acts
committed by self-proclaimed Islamic groups," he said, and urged Muslim
religious leaders and intellectuals to engage their counterparts in Jammu
and Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh in a community dialogue on the
legitimacy of force in Islam (as well as its efficacy) and the ethical and
legal code governing armed hostilities.
Born activist that he was, he addressed a ‘Memorandum To
PM HM CMs’ (2005), ‘An Open Letter to Muslim Ulema and Intellectuals’
(February 2006) and, in a meeting at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New
Delhi (February 2007), launched a campaign entitled ‘Shanti Pahal’ for the
advocacy of intercommunity peace initiatives. He visited Jammu and Kashmir
on several occasions, alone and along with others. During his last visit,
in September 2006, he sought the consent of Kashmiri leaders to a
‘Citizens’ Declaration on Protection of Uninvolved Persons During all
Situations of Use of Force’. He also visited Islamabad and Karachi in 2008
and, with the help of old Aligarians there, managed to get endorsements
from Pakistani ulema and intellectuals for the declaration: ‘Towards a
Riot and Terror-Free Indo-Pak Region’.
Ansari was a rare intellectual and a great negotiator of
theologico-political issues, combining the best traditions of Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Iqbal and Mahatma Gandhi. He held that durable peace
in "traditional societies like those in the subcontinent" required basic
reform of the police and justice system for the state to uphold the rule
of law and also called for intercommunity/interstate conciliation through
dialogue, especially on emotive ethno-religious issues like cow slaughter,
conversion, Ayodhya and Kashmir. He bracketed Kashmir with the range of
Hindu-Muslim issues because, seen from a broader historical perspective,
it was part of the history of unresolved Hindu-Muslim conflict leading to
partition. "Any overall religio-cultural conciliation between Hindus and
Muslims in India may be expected to lead to a qualitative change in the
attitude of Kashmiris."
Pursuing a Gandhian insight on cow slaughter and
conversion, he urged Muslims to declare a voluntary ban on cow slaughter
and hoped that such a voluntary declaration would go a long way in earning
the goodwill of the Hindu community, especially its elite. "Banning cow
slaughter by a central legislation may come into conflict with the demands
of secularism," he argued, "but its coming into effect through a compact
will not pose any problem so long as other animals are available for
sacrifice and for food. Several Muslim monarchs, ulema and leaders,
including Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, adopted such a conciliatory attitude in the
past."
He felt that the major source of opposition from the Hindu
elite to Muslim-specific affirmative action was their fear of mass
religious conversion and emphasised the need to accommodate these concerns
about national disintegration through the proposed mechanism of an
independent, statutorily empowered Community Relations Commission. He also
urged Muslims to voluntarily declare that there was no political design to
induce the conversion of weak and vulnerable groups of Hindus.
Interestingly, he followed Gandhian wisdom even on the issue of
Muslim-specific reservation in the sense that he supported special action
in favour of the weakest while, and as a way of, maintaining the unity of
the community.
Given the right perspective, he argued, it should not lie
beyond the realm of the possible to amicably resolve the Ayodhya issue, if
Muslims could be reasonably assured that compromise would yield permanent
peace dividends guaranteeing the rule of law, securing their due share in
the socio-economic and political life of the nation and ensuring that they
fully enjoyed their right to a distinct identity as a religious minority.
However, it is a pity that though his intercommunity peace
initiative enjoyed the moral support of large sections of intellectuals
from all communities as well as of leading ulema, his effort to prevent
Ayodhya II, for which he observed a one-day token fast at Rajghat, New
Delhi, in 2001, did not have the desired effect. For this the primary
blame, in his own view, attaches to "non-Sangh Hindus who did not come
forward with any fair compromise solution and thus allowed the sangh
parivar to be the sole spokesmen of the Hindu community".
