The creation of a title to an written article is an art. The writer is forced to summarize what he has written in a few words to convey the overall theme but also interest the audience to bite. In a pure metaphorical sense it is the bait to reel in the fish (something this writer strugges with). The Chindu does a reasonably good picking its titles, mostly safe and bland but gives the reader a reasonable sense of what is contained within.
However a recent article had an interesting title,
War for the soul of Islam in India by Praveen Swami. The summary beneath the title detailed that Islamic leaders have rejected terrorism and the terrorist remain outside the fringe.
Deoband’s rejection of the jihad will do nothing to persuade violent Islamists to end their campaign. It has made clear, though, that jihadists enjoy no support except at the polar fringes of Islam in India.
While this seems a logical extension to Khare's earlier rant, this article meanders into historical anecdotes of how the Deoband was created to the history of mushrooming of madrassas in Pakistan and finally
meanders into a discussion on Islam and modernity. The article does not present any cogent arguments or evidence on how the jihadists remain on the fringes but rather delves into irrelevant history.
The disturbing information presented in this article is the repeat of a statement by Maulana Khalid Rasheed on the challenges to Indian muslims,
India’s Muslims have faced three critical challenges. The first was Partition itself, which communalists leveraged to coerce those Muslims who chose to live in India. Second came the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which represented a full-blown assault on the economic and political future of our community.” “Now,” says Mr. Rasheed, “terrorism poses a third make-or-break threat”.
This makes little sense.
After the partition if the communalists were so powerful how come the Congress ran the Central and most of the state governments for about 40+ years?
Why is that Babri Masjid destruction blamed for every issue?
Why does Chindu take everything said by these so called Islamic leaders at face value, but question any word said by people of certain other sections of society? The poor summarization by Chindu coupled with such illogical articles often does not help put forward any useful thoughts towards the resolution. Praveen Swami has proved that he's the political irrelevant equal of Judge Iyer.
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