IOS 37th Annual Meeting of General Assembly; and Lecture on “Challenges to National Integration in Contemporary India”

IOS 37th Annual Meeting of General Assembly; and Lecture on “Challenges to National Integration in Contemporary India”

The 37th annual meeting of the general assembly of the Institute of Objective Studies took place at the auditorium of the Institute on August 27, 2023. Drawn from several parts of the country, the members took part in the meeting and reviewed the progress of the decisions taken at the last meeting. In the absence of the chairman of the Institute, Dr. M. Manzoor Alam, who was convalescing at the hospital, the meeting was presided over by the Vice-Chairman, Prof. M. Afzal Wani. The General Assembly approved the action-taken on the proceedings of the last year as well as the Annual Report for the year 2022-23, and unanimously passed the budget for the next financial year. A decision was also taken to give the eleventh IOS lifetime achievement award to the former judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Aftab Alam. It was decided to hold a two-day national seminar on the ex-president of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, the late Maulana Rabey Hasani Nadwi. this year itself. In the category of seminar on international personalities, the consensus emerged on the name of the noted Islamic scholar, Dr. Abdul Hamid A. Abu Sulayman.

The meeting also approved the memoranda of understanding signed between the IOS and the universities in the past one year. The Mahatma Gandhi Award won by the Institute also came up for the discussion. It was decided to fast-track the translation work and take up some new projects. The progress of the Institute’s data bank, website and its presence on social media platforms was also reviewed. Further, the Institute’s publication titled “Towards Creating a Just and Equitable Future in India”, edited by Prof. Mirza Asmer Beg, was released on this occasion.

The meeting also marked the election of members of the new governing council for the next five-year term. The current chairman of the IOS was re-elected as the Chairman. Besides Dr. M. Manzoor Alam, those who were elected as members of the council included Prof. M. Afzal Wani, Prof. Z.M. Khan, Mohammad Alam, Prof. Haseena Hashia, Prof. M. Ishtiyaque, Dr. Major Zahid Husain, Prof. Mohsin Usmani, Prof. Imteyaz Hassan, Prof. Arshi Khan, Prof. Shamim A. Ansari, Abdul Basit Ismail, Prof. M. Fahim Akhtar Nadwi, Ibrahim Alam, and Dr. Kaleem Alam.

A lecture on “Challenges to National Integration in Contemporary India” was also organised on August 27 to coincide with the annual meeting of the General Assembly. Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Prof. Mirza Asmer Beg delivered the lecture.

Speaking on the subject, Prof. Asmer Beg said that the political parties raised emotive issues to garner votes. Talk of Dharmik Asmita (Religious pride) and Gaurav (Glory), sounded ultra-active. Political discourse had shifted from real issues to communalism. There was a discourse of silence and the people were attracted to emotive issues. They devised the combination of caste and identity. That was why they gave tickets to those who belonged to the predominant caste. He held that the identity which was being privatised, might lead to disintegration as the citizens were identified with their religion. Instead of having national identity, Indians had communal identity based on gender, religion, caste; etc. Primary identity of a citizen could not be called national identity as national identity was rationalised. Elaborating on the communal identity, he said that when one met his co-regionist, he would open to him and refer to him as his own man. He noted that when one felt that he was doing something for the country it meant that he had national identity. But, when one had national identity, then he had rational identity. Tracing the history of communalism, he said that it did not happen overnight. Earlier also there was communalism. Thus India did not turn to fascism-like sedation all of a sudden, he insisted.

Prof. Beg observed that media and other factors were instrumental in vitiating the atmosphere. Political power created dangerous things. He maintained that political actors were the biggest beneficiaries of the communal divide. Today’s politics was made more attractive by the speeches that were laced with rhetoric and communal narrative. In the United State of America too, the situation was more or less the same. By these tactics, it became easy to hunt people. In order to justify their actions, superficial measures were taken by the powers-that-be. The problem of communal perception was much deeper than it looked from outside. They would not let it change because they benefited from it. It was an ugly situation because no real issues were raised in public domain. He asked to understand the gravity of the current situation and reclaim one’s citizenship. It was high time for every citizen to think of his responsibility to the republic. In a democracy, he said, citizens played a major role and they should exercise their duty as responsible citizens. Change was imperative and it should come from grassroots level. He said that it is the people who had to decide what to do.

Referring to the scarcity of resources, Prof. Beg pointed out that the new liberal policy was very dangerous. The problem arose due to improper distribution of resources. The US was the richest country of the world but the problem there was also the same. In 1966, the ex-U.S. president Barak Obama’s father was kicked out from there. He wanted to know when the countrymen would grow mature to understand things. There was some problem somewhere which led about 14 lakh Indians to leave the country. So far, more than 40 lakh Indians had left the country. He said that the emotive politics by discourse creation was bad and had a limited life span. A teacher could not be blamed because he had been brainwashed with a particular discourse. A community had been ghettoised and that could be understood by the survey conducted in Aligarh recently which revealed that only one percent Muslims visited homes of their Hindu neighbours. So was the case with the Hindus who also did not visit homes of their Muslim neighbours. That was due to the mindset of the people, he concluded.

Presiding over the lecture, the Secretary General of the IOS, Prof. Z.M. Khan, observed that life had three aspects – economic, political and social. He said that the economy and sociology were strong even today. No single group could perform a job on its own. It required integration. This equally applied to the social life of India which was impossible without the integration of Hindus and Muslims. Doubts deepened when there was no interaction and communication between the two communities. He opined that the problem of communication gap and suspicion would end when citizens became conscious of the real issue. The idea of inter-community integration should receive proper attention, he stressed.

The program ended with a vote of thanks extended by Assistant Secretary General, Prof. Haseena Hashia.

A view of GA members and audience