 THE DEBATE on the “contentious” statement made by the Darul Uloom Deoband’s newly appointed rector, Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, it seems, is dying down after his offer to step down. However, the manner in which this episode has been interpreted and analysed, especially by the media and political elite, raises a few fundamental questions about our awareness of the complex religious identities of Muslim communities and their practices of secularism. Let me begin with the actual incident. In a news report based on an interview, Vastanvi was quoted as saying that all communities “are prospering in Gujarat” and there was “no discrimination against the minorities in the state as far as development was concerned”. Although Vastanvi did not give a clean chit to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in this interview on the 2002 pogrom, he stressed that it was now time to move on. -- Hilal Ahmed
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