The token Muslim delivers

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, DEC. 14. Focus and limelight, of course, belonged to the Prime Minister, a four-decade gladiator in the parliamentary arena but the honours belonged to the young Minister, Syed Shawnawaz Hussain, the BJP's only Muslim MP.

The Syed also happens to be the BJP's youngest MP. He was fielded as the first speaker from the BJP on the second day of the great Ayodhya debate. He was asked to buttress the party's ``secular credentials''. And he discharged his brief admirably. He pointedly noted that while the debate was all about the minorities, he was the first speaker from the minority community.

To catcalls from the RJD corner, he responded that he got elected from a constituency, Bihar's Kishenganj, where the Muslims constituted 70 per cent of the electorate. He would not concede to anyone else's superior claim to speak in the name of the Muslim community.

Satisfaction was writ large on the faces of veteran NDA parliamentarians - Mr. George Fernandes, Ms. Uma Bharti, Ms. Susma Swaraj, Mr. Madan Lal Khuranna - as the young Minister ripped into the orthodox history of communal tensions. A much impressed Ms. Bharti was even seen coaching him on how to handle the hecklers. It was indeed an unusual sight of the BJP benches lustily cheering a Muslim speaker.

The young Minister commanded the House's attention as he cited the landmarks in the communal history since Independence and, then, rather cleverly, posited a responsibility - of omission and commission - with the successive Congress governments, a track record that history has somehow tended to overlook since that black day of December 6, 1992.

He wanted to know who was the Prime Minister and who was the Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh when the temple was declared to have been discovered in Ayodhya in 1948? And he asserted that the Muslims who had opted to stay back in this country after the Partition and had accepted India as their motherland were too bewildered and too afraid to voice their protest at the ``discovery'' of a Mandir inside the Babri Masjid.

Yet, the Minister was not too wanton in his interpretation of history. He lauded Jawaharlal Nehru for steering the country towards a firm secular order. He told the House that whenever he travelled out of the country he always asserted to his external interlocutors that the Muslims in India enjoyed greater freedom than the minorities did in Pakistan.

Having entered this caveat of cheerful loyalty to India, Mr. Hussain raised uncomfortable questions which had been forgotten since 1992. He wanted to know who was in power in Delhi and in Lucknow when the ``locks'' were removed on the Babri Mosque in 1986.

He raked up more of the unvarnished and troublesome history - how the 1984 vote was essentially an anti-minority vote, that Rajiv Gandhi had indirectly justified the carnage against the Sikhs, and how an official affidavit was given that there would be no law and order problem if the ``locks'' on the disputed structure were removed.

As the Congress benches heard in stunned silence the Minister's brutal recitation of milestones, he waded into Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao. Syed Hussain sarcastically noted that Rajiv Gandhi had appointed Mr. Rao to head virtually every committee that was asked to sort out the Masjid/Mandir imbroglio, and added - deadpan - ``Mr. Rao sorted out the problem on December 6, 1992.''

Mr. Hussain admitted he was just a lad when Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister. Like every young man, he declared, he too was enamoured of the young, modern mind. It was this modern man who began his 1989 re-election campaign from Ayodhya and performed the shilanyas.

Then, he delivered his coup de grace. He charged that if anybody had a ``hidden agenda'' it was the Congress, which wanted to keep the communal tensions alive by raking up ``the December 6''. The Minister ended his nearly hour-long performance with the salutation, `Jai Hind' to loud thumping of desks by the NDA benches.

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