India Today journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was left red-faced on Saturday after Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan gave a befitting response to his question on the binary of Hindu majority and Muslim minority. Khan expressed his disapproval over the question of majority-minority and stated that when it comes to India, all its citizens regardless of their religion enjoy “equal rights”.
When Sardesai asked Khan how he saw his identity as an Indian Muslim, the Kerala governor appeared thoroughly exasperated by the question asked of him by the India Today journalist. Nevertheless, he responded by saying, “We are celebrating the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. Our independence did not come for free. It was accompanied by the partition of the country, a bloody partition of the country. There was a lot of bad blood and violence between the communities then…I think the partition happened because of this imaginary Muslim question, because of this question over majority and minority.”
Expressing his anguish over the media’s persistent efforts to divide the society on the basis of religion, Khan said that after 75 years of India’s independence, it is pitiful that the media was still drumming up the divisive discourse instead of discussing Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas Sabka Vishwas.
“The British never considered India as a nation. They always considered it as a conglomeration of communities. But this constitution considered citizens as the constituent unit of India. Where is the question of communities now? Come to my village and ask a Muslim about what is this Muslim question. He will be perplexed. Because he is facing the same problems as those faced by peasants belonging to other communities. Just because someone in Hyderabad said there exists a Muslim question, we have taken it seriously,” Arif Mohammad Khan said.
Speaking on the segment ‘Majority, Minority: The Battle of Belonging’ during the India Today conclave in Delhi, Khan said the Indian civilisation and “our cultural heritage” has no concept of discrimination on the grounds of one’s religion.
“Indian civilisation has never been defined by religion, all other civilisations were defined either by religion, mostly by religion, and also before that by race and language,” he said while citing a few shlokas to back his claim.
When asked whether Indian politics has moved from resorting to minority appeasement to majoritarianism in the last few decades, Khan said it is just India’s constitution but its millennia-old traditions that have never subscribed to the ideology of division and segregation.
“It is not only our Constitution that gives equal rights to people, but more than that our cultural heritage, the Indian civilisation, has no concept of discrimination on the basis of the religion, therefore to link the two, I find it preposterous,” he said.
