RSS chief said Hindu rashtra can't be conceived without Muslims: Quraishi

"Insecurity is a major concern for the Muslims. And those who worry: What will happen in Hindutva, well, nobody need have any fears, because in Sanatan Dharma there are millions of Gods," he said

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat met five leaders of the Muslim community recently. Former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, who was among them, tells Aditi Phadnis about the meeting. Edited excerpts:

What prompted you to have this meeting?
 

The five of us [ex-Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung; former Aligarh Muslim University vice-chancellor Lt Gen (retd) Zameer Uddin Shah; Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Shahid Siddiqui; and businessman S Shervani] are friends and we keep meeting each other. For the past one year or so we’ve been worried about the rising insecurity among the Muslims. Something keeps happening every day and we were concerned. So we thought we should reach out to the government and the RSS. We thought we should seek a meeting with the RSS chief. To start with we wrote an email to Shri Bhagwat, seeking an appointment on his visit to Delhi. We met him on August 22. The time allotted to us was 30 minutes. We had an excellent meeting, which went on for over an hour.

What were your impressions?

The first thing that struck us was the simplicity: Such a powerful man, about whom in 2014-15, there were rumours that he would become president of India … But he met us in a small sparsely furnished room, and we could see that he lives in great austerity. We found him a very patient listener. All five of us said what we felt.

What was the discussion about?

He said: “I agree that insecurity is a major concern for the Muslims. And those who worry: What will happen in Hindutva to the Muslims and the Christians, well, nobody need have any fears, because in Sanatan Dharma there are millions of Gods. Everyone worships according to their own belief. You do namaz, roza, haj — we have no problem with any of that. The problem arises only when you call Hindus ‘kafirs’.” We agreed that if it hurts anybody, giving up its use is very easy. In any case, we hardly ever use it.

Then he flagged the issue of Hindu sensitivity about cow slaughter. We said in any case it had been banned in most of the country and violators should be punished in accordance with the law.

He repeatedly asserted that we had to work within the constitution. For us, this was very heartening to hear because the general rumour is that the constitution itself would be changed. He said everything was in the constitution and that is sacrosanct. And Hindu rashtra cannot be conceived without the presence of the Muslims.

But he added: “It is not as if people accept everything we say. People raise fingers at us also. And at that moment, we get no support from your community”. For instance, he recalled that he had told Hindus to stop looking for a shiva ling under every masjid. He asked us why no Muslim had backed that statement. We agreed that it was an omission on our part.

At the end, we said: This should not be a one-off dialogue. You are a busy person, so are there others we can talk to in the organisation? He named four people. We felt that was a very positive gesture.

I gave him a copy of my book The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning and Politics in India. I explained that fears about Muslims increasing their population to overtake the majority Hindu population someday via capturing political power were entirely misplaced. Not only are Muslims adopting family planning faster than Hindus (according to government data), but also I referred to the mathematical model evolved by Dinesh Singh, who was vice-chancellor of Delhi University. The model clarifies that Muslims will not be able to become a majority in India even in 1,000 years.

As regards the propaganda of Muslims having four wives and 24 children … polygamy in India is simply not possible because of the gender ratio. In the last census there were 940 women for every 1,000 men. So actually, there is shortage of women -- so 60 men don’t even have one wife, what to speak of four wives! He laughed at this, which shows he registered the point.

Minorities in India have fears about the creeping acquisition of real estate that belongs to them, especially religious real estate; they also worry about interference in personal law and a uniform civil code; and vigilante attacks…

Vigilante attacks was the starting-point of the discussion. But we did not raise the other issues in detail because this was just a preliminary dialogue. There was a passing reference to the common civil code. We pointed out that there was a government of India report showing that polygamy was the lowest among Muslims. What we’d like is to see a draft of a common code: Let’s see what it has and discuss it across the table.

Disputes about waqf land are very old. Encroachments are widespread. I once was administrator of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and Chandigarh waqf boards for six years. 

Let us do a survey and figure out who has encroached on waqf land and restore it to its rightful owners. If a waqf board has grabbed land, that should also be restored to rightful owners. 

After all, this country runs on rule of law, not on dadagiri.