Born in a Muslim family of Bihar in North India, Syed Shahabuddin occupies an important position in the national political life of today’s secularism, democracy, and for the constitutional rights of Muslims, and all other religious, linguistic, and ethnic minorities,

Shahabuddin was a career diplomat, a member of the Indian Foreign Service, and served as India’s Ambassador to several countries in the middle east and Africa. But he left the foreign service to become actively involved in India’s internal affairs. A member of the Janata Party, he today represents the Kishanganj constituency of his native Bihar in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of India’s Parliament.

For the last five years, Shahabuddin has been editing and publishing MUSLIM INDIA, a monthly journal of research, documentation and reference.

Two issues in the recent Indian history became major rallying points for an antiMuslim, antiminority, Hinduchauvinistic frenzy, as well as testing grounds for democratic and secular values. One was the Shah Bano case and the other the Babri Masjid controversy. Shahabuddin’s stand on both not only brought him into the limelight, but also subjected him to large-scale vilification and controversy. The Shah Bano case concerned a 73 year old Muslim woman, a divorcee, fighting for maintenance rights against her former husband. Such matters have come before the courts earlier; judgments in favor of women, Muslim women, have been made. But when the Supreme Court of India wrote a judgment on Shah Bano it did not simply treat it as a case of a woman fighting for her rights, it condemned the whole Muslim community and its way of life. It was not a pro women judgment, it was antiMuslim. This is how the leading feminist journal of India, Manushi, characterized it. Predictably, it led to a most blatant antiMuslim hysteria in the country. Babri Masjid is a mosque built more than 450 years ago in Ayodhya, U.P. Some Hindu organizations began to claim, several decades ago, that the site belonged to them, it being the exact birthplace of one of Hindu god incarnations, Lord Rama. Unable to settle the historical facts, a court order closed down both the mosque and the temple thirty-eight years ago.

It remained so all these years, but last year the District court was moved again which swiftly made a judgment in favor of the Hindus’ claim. Large-scale antiMuslim frenzy spread again.

Both cases involved the Indian State; its institutions playing a catalyst role. Alongwith other democratic personalities of India, Shahabuddin saw in these events an erosion of secular values, and a disturbing growth of antiminority Hinduchauvinistic tendencies. He wrote against them. He campaigned against them. “I do not weep for the Babri Masjid nor for my community. I only cry for my beloved country, for my motherland, for my nation, for secularism, for democracy, for the rule of law. I weep because the dark night of fascism is slowly descending upon the land, turning neighbor against neighbor, making enemies of brothers,” so wrote Shahabuddin in March, 1986.

Critical of fundamentalism and isolationism within the Muslim community, Shahabuddin says that the problems the Muslims face cannot be solved in isolation, or by Muslim Indians alone; they must be treated as national problems. and solved by the nation as a whole. A new leadership among the Muslims must emerge because the traditional leaders are unable to take up the challenge of the new perspective.

“Our task is very difficult. We are trying to create a secular State in a multi religious society. We have indeed to draw a clear line between Religion and State but then the State has scrupulously to avoid any identification with the majority religion and using its power and authority in a partisan manner”.

Joining hands with several  other democrats and patrols, on July 6, 1987, Shahabuddin released an Appeal to the people of India for communal harmony. The appeal implored the nation to rise above the passions generated by recent communal conflagration (in Meerut, Gujarat and Dehli) and to make a concerted effort to create conditions for peace and harmony between various communities. “Let us not listen to irresponsible demagogues who incite people to violence and who do not realize the damage they do to their own community and to the country”.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 9, 1987