Opportunities for Everyone
in the Modern Age

I witnessed something of the same sort during this trip to Switzerland when I met an Arab Muslim there. He was an educated person, but he seemed to be a victim of a sense of despair. He presented a dark picture of the present-day Muslim world. For example, he said that he had come across a book in English that said that the Muslims of India were a deprived lot and that they had been rendered ineffective in the country’s democracy. The name of the book, he said, was Passive Voices.

I replied to this man, saying that I had seen the book but that it did not present an accurate picture of the Indian Muslims. If he had an interest in the subject, I suggested, he could go to India and survey the Muslims there. For example, he could ask the Muslims he met how their economic conditions were in 1947 and how they are now. He would be surprised to find that almost every person would reply that compared to 1947, their economic conditions were much better now. Similarly, if he were to survey mosques, madrasas, and Muslim institutions in India and compare their present economic conditions with what they were like in 1947, he would be surprised to see that they had witnessed remarkable progress.

I explained that the ancient age was, in economic terms, an age of agriculture and, in political terms, an age of monarchy. As a result, in the old age, power was the monopoly of only a handful of people—in the economic sphere, those who exercised control over agricultural land, and those who controlled the monarch’s throne in the political sphere. However, these monopolies had been shattered in the new age. The modern industrial revolution had removed economic means from the control of landlords and made them available to the general public. The modern age was an age of de-monopolisation. In the same way, the modern ideological revolution based on democracy and freedom had removed political power from the narrow circle of erstwhile royal families and transferred it into the hands of the public at large. In the age of democracy, political power had been reduced to an administration, giving all opportunities and freedom to individuals and non-governmental organisations.

 The modern age is an age of opportunities explosion in which opportunities are for everyone. In the wake of the modern economic revolution, it is not possible that any community can be a victim of deprivation. Cases of deprivation were a result of the age of agriculture. However, this deprivation is simply impossible in the modern economic era. For this reason, after 1947, the Muslims of India made significant economic progress. However, our Muslim leaders think in the framework of the structure of the pre-1947 age of agriculture. They have been unable to think in line with modern economic realities.