Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Revisiting Islamism, Hindutva and the Contradictions of Politics of Majoritarian Religious. Nationalism We are encountering  a sharp rise of the right in political or public sphere. The RSS has shown that it can’t be discounted in understanding new India. Islamists have compelled others to recognize them. Islam enters electoral politics in many ways. The Congress with its secularist dismissal of religion has been proved wrong in its estimate of the role of religion in public sphere and constructing a history that othered/marginalized religion.  We are witnessing bitter conflict between Salafis and the Ikhwan in Egypt, Zionists and Hamas, Shi’ite and Sunni political forces, Taliban and its adversaries. Jamaat-e Islami has been in bitter opposition to its internal critics such as Ghamidi, and endorsing secularism as an idea in India and criticizing it in Pakistan.  How do we understand such a bewildering range of responses?       Regardless of r...

Kashmir Problem is, Primarily, a Failure of Statesmanship Badri Raina’s Kashmir : A Noble Tryst in Tatters is a first book of its kind presenting a Kashmiri Neo-Marxist account of what is wrong with Indian engagement with Kashmir. Awaited eagerly by Kashmiri readership of Indian left, it, true to the Kashmiri poetic genius, combines the poet’s view of the issue with an incisive analysis of what can only be termed as an absence of statesmanship or failure of politics. The author pleads for his essential thesis that Kashmir isn’t to be framed/can’t be understood in identitarian or communal terms or as an unfinished legacy of partition. It is simply failure of a relationship that had nothing inherently problematic about it to begin with, but turned sour due to mishandling or lack of vision and trust. India’s moral claim over Kashmir has largely been lost even though Azadi is not a solution. Vetoing against any kind of proposal of divorce between India and Kashmir, even though noting f...

Mainstream leaders are in a strange predicament; they have stakes with both the sides and they clap for both of them. Philosophy, art and religion all have taught us the importance of the metaphor and reality of play or game and all second Shakespearean view of life as a stage and our role as actors. Art is in fact premised on seeing life as play. The world is God’s play ( lila ) and the best answer given by traditions to the question why God created the world is that it is free activity (play) of  the Divine. All things have to be done artistically, with an eye on beauty or perfection ( ihsan ) and that is all we are called for Sports have been our prized activity, akin to artistic and religious activity and its ultimate rationale/end is spiritual or celebrating the glory and freedom of Spirit which has been likened to a child. Worship involving rituals also plays on the elements of repetition, self forgetfulness through rapt attention on activity and attuning wi...

Let us note that he matured as a writer-statesman at a time when Pakistan was split and indigenous political movement had lost hope. The most important question Kashmiris face today, it would appear, is to choose between autonomy and azadi. Mainstream leadership and India could settle for autonomy (or its other versions) but Kashmiri resistance leadership and masses demand azadi . So there appears a deadlock. The solution, it might be argued, is to re-conceive autonomy (or self rule) in a manner that it would be a concrete content of what appears to many an abstraction called azadi . So far mainstream leadership (or “pro-Indian” mind) has failed to do so. So the choice is straightforward: azadi. But the idea of azadi is resisted  by force. Despite all the moral, political and other arguments against India for denying self determinism, the first and the last response is force, brute force. And in this world our arguments amount to little more than a consolation for our suffer...

I am aware that everything against democracy sounds a species of heresy. I am also aware of Amryta Sen and some other thinkers who claim that every fight for rights or justice can be fought in the name of democracy and thus the democracy remains an Absolute. But let us not forget that any form of democracy would warrant an analysis or possible critique if we are true to the spirit behind democracy which is collective welfare based on justice. Many religious thinkers, especially modernists, Muslim modernists have invoked democracy but let us call it theodemocracy and that makes a huge difference. We know the Left has always been critical of so-called democracy serving the class interests. One can invoke Hebermasian idea of Ideal Speech Community so brilliantly illustrated in a film  Twelve Angry Men  to emphasize the need for more informed and articulate public for better success of democracy in delivering public goods. One must also consider the argument that the best of anc...