He was an icon of the progressive in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi introduced him into his ministry. Then he resigned on the issue of Rajiv’s stand overturning Supreme Court judgement on the divorce compensation to be provided to Mrs Shah Bano. Though, he was a never a darling of the conservatives who felt he always attempted to embarrass the Muslim religious as well as political leadership yet many felt silently that at least some one was there who was taking them head on. People like us, who were growing to adulthood when the knowledge to us was just flowing from Arun Shourie’s big front page articles in the Indian Express or the morning and evening radio programmes of BBC Hindi service, Arif Mohammad Khan was a change maker, a revolutionary in Making.
His resignation from Rajiv government was welcomed as well as criticised. The loser ultimately was Congress party who without doing any work for the uplift of the Muslim community got continuous ‘award’ of Muslim ‘appeasement’ the Hindutva groups. Shahbano was the biggest gift of Congress or the hardline Muslims to Hindutva leaders who flourished on it. I may or may not agree with the thing but when we stop all avenues for a peaceful resolution and become rigid, things turn worst.
Arif became an important leader of Jan Morcha formed by late V P Singh and when the National Front formed the government with the outside support of both the Left Front and BJP, Arif was the Minister. His image till those years was clean though he was never clear on the issue of Mandal Commission and never came out strongly in its support.
After the fall of V P Singh government by the BJP, Arif Mohammad Khan was in hibernation. He flirted with BJP, BSP and yet did not succeed. He was comfortable in challenging the dominance of Mullahs but never bothered to raise the issue of Pasmanda Muslims and the caste question with in Islam. He could have done it well if he had wanted as he is very articulate and can be thought provoking as well. That is an art and Arif is quite expert in it.
There is nothing wrong in critiquing religion, challenging the dominance of religious leaders and to bring them to the national mainstream, though it is debatable as what is ‘mainstream’ in India today, the brahmanical mainstream or Constitutional mainstream. Arif Mohammad Khan could have done many more thing to bring hope among Muslims in India. He could have taken their issues of isolation, despondency, frustration but instead of that he demonised the Muslims. I was shocked to hear his recent fulminations in various ‘interviews’ that he gave to many of the journalists. I do not watch TV so I only access these interviews when they come to me through my twitter handle. The shameless manner he justified things in Kashmir, on triple talaq and lauded the brahmanical culture were indication which direction the wind was flowing. Arif’s story is like many others among Muslims who are seculars and dont like their religious leaders but end up in supporting similar leaders from other communities.
What Arif did was not ‘ideological’ but purely opportunism or in politics they call it ‘pragmatism’, but not beyond that. You can say he is either opportunist or pragmatist but what can be the other word to describe his current flirtations with Hindutva. I think, each political leader after a period become ‘pragmatist’ if there are more failure in his political life. Arif was never the darling of large Muslim community and hence he lose nothing in this. His political career is already over and will depend on BJP who will use him for spreading their ideology and suggesting the ‘tolerance’ towards Muslims and will only debunk him once his USP is expired.
Finally, Arif Saheb has been duly acknowledged by the ‘mighty’ and he will soon take over as Governor of Kerala. Let us see how he function there, as the agent of Centre or as a person dedicated to uphold the Constitution of India. Only time will tell how Arif Mohammad Khan handle his new office but one thing is clear whatever happens, like all ‘smart’ leaders he too has all the arguments along with ‘documents’ to justify his position.
