Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reading Hannah Arendt on Violence, Democracy, Fundamentalism and Party Politics What explains the farce that has been politics wedded to violence – from dozens of recent conflicts/wars to Muslim revivalist politics and its brutal suppression by secularist/neo-colonialist forces of which the latest illustration is shocking treatment met to Muhammad Mursi? Lack of thinking or uncritical mindset that believes in violence as power or force to effect one’s desired outcome. Belief in violence as a means springs basically from weakness, argued Hannah Arendt who also summed up what we need to keep in mind to help ourselves in a world that construes politics in terms of power calculus: “…every human being is a thinking being and can reflect as well as I do and can therefore judge for himself, if he wants to.” “And to think always means to think critically. And to think critically is always to be hostile. Every thought actually undermines whatever there is of rigid rules, general convictions...

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...

Reading Eric Voegelin on Sacred Oriented Politics. We live in a world where Syed Maududi remains a presence to contend with. One is either for him or against him – there is no option of ignoring him. There remains certain ambivalence with regard to his central ideas amongst mainstream Ulema, and some intellectuals. Ambivalence may be underlined by noting sharply divided estimates of him by Hasan Askari, and his student Saleem Ahmed, two great traditionalist critics of Pakistan. Askari was quite critical of Syed Maududi and a fan of Bhutto, while for Saleem Ahmed converse was true. (Muslim religious/intellectual communities similarly remain divided in their views of revivalist theology and politics). It appears that Maududi would be better understood in relation to the thoughts of the best of his contemporaries in political philosophy and religion. One such illustrious contemporary was Eric Voegelin who shared Maududi’s commitment to the Sacred infused life and public sphere, distrust...

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...

Our underperforming and ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of our political ills. Kashmir has failed to integrate with India and it has not failed to long for Pakistan or independence. It has ridiculously bad performance in human development and other important indices. Its underperforming or ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of its political ills. It has been weakness for rice that has been, both in symbolic and literal senses, at the centre stage of fight for Kashmir’s political future. Now Kashmir is a disaster in terms of management of natural resources (a huge fraction of them were never even considered for tapping and have been locked for reasons not difficult to fathom), unprecedented employment crisis (too many casual jobs implying casual attitude to future, most of important sectors like agriculture and livestock unorganized, mostly alienation in jobs  and we have mostly jobs that drain us further in the long run imply...

An open letter to the Chief Minister of J & K on Wild Management Plan for Vandalization of Historical Heritage Farm at Dachigam. Dedicated to the dumb sheep and their reportedly deaf shepherds, and the oppressed Hangul. Hon’ble Madam, “As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent” sheep farm suffering for a crime it did not commit.  “I defy decent men to read it without a stir of indignation in their hearts and a cry of revulsion, at the thought of the undeserved punishment being meted out.” Compelled by my professional obligations wedded to Hippocratic oath and thanks to my long standing interest in environmental movements and thinking, I, based on close reading of much of communication between sheep husbandry and wild...

Reading Nayeema Mehjoor’s Lost in Terror It is undeniable that Kashmiri resistance movement has been weakened by its (mis)association with puritanical Islamist ideology, unbearable – and some inadequately documented – human costs, violence against minorities, women and imagined/projected other. It needs rare courage to report from ground zero, to direct gaze to the problematic within, to avoid mincing words and call spade a spade. To attempt to write without imposed or imagined blinkers and threats, to write back to the Empire of oppression and violence, to speak on taboo issues and take strong positions outside the comfort  zone of hypocrisy or neutrality is what a writer-journalist can aim at and to succeed to a significant extent in this endeavour is indeed an achievement.This success story deserves our attention this week.       A Kashmiri woman stranding between tradition and modernity, Kashmir and London, and caught up in transition...