Ratan Tata, the esteemed Indian industrialist and philanthropist, passed away on October 9, 2024, at the age of 86. He was a visionary leader who transformed the Tata Group into a global conglomerate, acquiring iconic brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley. His contributions to business and philanthropy have left an indelible mark on India and the world. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Tata as a “visionary business leader, a compassionate soul, and an extraordinary human being”. His funeral, held in Mumbai, saw a large turnout of dignitaries, business leaders, and well-wishers, and he was cremated with full state honours.
It needs to be spelled out that he belonged to the Parsi community a minority in India. The Parsis trace their origins to Persian Zoroastrians who fled religious persecution following the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century. Seeking refuge, they initially settled in Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. However, continued persecution led them to set sail for India, arriving between the 8th and 10th centuries. According to the 16th-century epic, Qissa-i Sanjan, they were granted refuge by Jadi Rana, the king of Sanjan in present-day Gujarat. Upon their arrival, the Parsis settled in Gujarat, where they lived as a small agricultural community for about 800 years.
They maintained their distinct cultural and religious identity while integrating into the local society. The Parsis were known for their honesty, industriousness, and ability to adapt, which helped them thrive in their new homeland. The establishment of British trading posts in the early 17th century marked a turning point for the Parsi community. They moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) and other parts of India, where they became prominent in commerce and industry. The Parsis were more receptive to European influence compared to other communities, which facilitated their rise as successful merchants and industrialists.
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The Parsis have made significant contributions to India’s development. They played a pivotal role in the industrial revolution in India, with figures like Jamshedji Tata founding the Tata Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates. The community also contributed to education, healthcare, and social reforms. Dadabhai Naoroji, a prominent Parsi, was a key figure in India’s independence movement and the first Asian to be elected to the British Parliament. The Parsi community of India is the kind of minority that the Indian Muslim minority can emulate and learn from. K. Rehman Khan in his book, ‘Indian Muslims: The Way Forward – Why Muslims Remain Backward in All Spheres and What Should Be Done About It’ talks about selfless service and how other minority communities always serve the people without asking for anything in return.
He cites the example of the Parsi community and the Sikh community with their langar culture, serving people irrespective of caste, creed or religion. I am witness to how gurudwaras opened their doors to people in the 2014 September floods in Kashmir along with the various mosques. But the dominant narrative of Muslims has always been of victimhood and the blame game for their backwardness. It is either the extremist Hindus they blame for their plight, demonising political Hinduism or the Yehudi (Jew) in other countries or evil Satan America. Of course, Western imperialism and colonialism were responsible for the mess in the Middle East today and in the Indian subcontinent, too the British’ divide-and-rule policies brought about the Partition of India and a bloody permanent faultline between the majority Hindu community and the minority Muslims.
But the descendants of the Punjabi Sikhs, Hindus, Parsis, and Anglo-Indians who survived the Partition rebuilt their lives and have a clear sense of how to contribute to nation-building. In comparison, the Indian Muslims stuck to their utopian past glory of Mughal rule, never holding their ulema accountable for not reconciling Islam with modernity. they do not even take the Muslim politicians to task for keeping them backwards in the vote bank politics of appeasement and not ushering them into the 21st century, wasting time in the Shah Bano case, resisting the Triple Talaq abrogation, the Babri Masjid and the CAA agitation.
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The Indian Muslims don’t even hold the Muslim intelligentsia, the civil society and elite Muslims accountable for occupying their negotiating space with agenda activists and left-leaning liberals of both Hindu and Muslim heritage. Across the Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and North Africa, reams and reams of books, articles, documentaries, and media content are being created to discuss, analyse, and explore why the Islamic Civilisation is in such doldrums and under the mercy of groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hizbul Mujahideen, the Muslim Brotherhood and Boko Haram. Muslims are on the frontline of counter-terror operations and think tanks dealing with the problem of extremism and radicalisation.
But Indian subcontinent Muslims have forgotten the humanistic message of the Prophet’s last sermon and the core message of Islam about selfless service to humanity. Granted they were under the colonialism of the West but seven plus decades is a long time to throw away the yoke of victimhood, debilitating orthodoxy and regressive politicians, build a people’s movement, like the Pasmanda Movement and force the elite Muslims to make place for the Muslim subalterns to tell their stories and demand their rights as well as make their political choices. 70-plus years is a long time to chart the way forward, like K Rahman Khan says, to cut the divisive rhetoric of non-Muslims and infidels, to make bridges for communal harmony and not resort to one-way secularism.
We have great examples from the inventors and researchers of the Western civilisation of selfless service when they gifted humanity with vaccination, technology and everything that makes life easier today. It is easy to revive our scientific temperament of the 9th to 12th centuries in the Abbasid era which took inspiration from the Greeks, Chinese, Sanskrit texts and the Persians and forged a way forward towards a Muslim Renaissance and the Islamic Age of Reason. We can bring it back, emulating the gem of our nation – Ratan Tata’s life.