Idea and Strategic Planning

Ideas have always mattered in human life. There are ordinary people, always in great majority, who try to belittle and undermine the importance of ideas in human life and development when they say that actions, rather than intellectual discourses, should matter the most. No one can deny the critical importance of actions which need to follow an intellectual planning to enable an idea to achieve success. But it is also equally true that actions delinked from thoughts and strategic plannings often result in failure, even lead to disaster. The fact is that both ideas and actions have their own importance and a fine coordination between the two brings about success in human life.

The misery of a deprived and marginalized group increases many-fold when not only its ordinary folks but also its intellectual leaders ignore the importance of idea and strategic planning and put all the emphasis on actions only. The Indian Muslims have already paid a heavy price for neglecting the crucial roles of ideas and strategic planning and can avoid the use of mind only to further marginalize themselves.

It ought to be borne in mind that all ideas are not important, nor all of them are necessarily correct. In fact, sometimes ideas may even be dangerous both for individuals as well as the society. The possibility is also that an idea might be utopian which would either be difficult or even impossible to realize or implement. But the million dollar important fact is that we must make use of our mind, think a lot as well as deeply, in order to achieve success in life. Sure, some of our ideas may appear like day dreaming, but it should not deter us from dreaming and thinking. In fact, today “day dreaming with open eyes” is required, for it enables us to clearly see our goals and targets.

The problems of Indian Muslims are multiple and to suggest one simple solution is well nigh impossible. Their condition is like that of a caravan which has lost its way in a moonless night. No one can say that in such a grave situation only one candle would be enough to provide light for the entire caravan. In fact, not only a candle, but light from any other source would be welcome in such situations. In plain words what we want to say is that several ideas and strategies may be adopted at the same time to solve the multiple problems of a gravely marginalized community such as Indian Muslims. The only condition is that the burning and light providing candles do not fight among themselves as it might turn them into a dangerous fire.

All debates on the problems of Muslims in India mainly focus on their educational and economic backwardness as well as their political marginalization. We keep aside the matter of political marginalization for the convenience of our present discourse and present before you an idea for discussion. This idea is being conceived with a view to solving the educational and economic problems of the Indian Muslims. The idea may appear like a wild dream but, methinks, even fools need to be heard, for their foolishness will make you wiser, at least.

The idea is simple. Indian Muslims face, among other things, acute housing problems. In cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata they are living in semi urbanized colonies/areas with few or no modern facilities. Over the years many Muslims have made reasonable fortunes and can afford humble accommodations in developed areas. In fact, some have already started living in such places. And many more are in a position to join them but desist from doing it because of various reasons such as schooling of their children at affordable prices and the absence of mosques and graveyards etc. Is it possible for Muslims to develop or participate in the development of townships with one or two mosques, one or two decent schools, a modern college and a graveyard.

In rural areas there are hundreds of Muslim majority villages, both big and small. These villages with narrow lanes were not planned and built by modern architects and engineers. But one is amazed at the great wisdom of those poorly educated villagers who built them. In most such villages we find mosques with Maktabs (religious schools) and graveyards. The graveyards are normally at a distance from the main village, and in good number of villages there exist Maktabs or primary schools away from the mosque. In modern paradigm we may say that the poor villagers were wise enough to feel their immediate and long-term needs and make arrangements accordingly.

My idea is if we can learn a lesson from our forefathers who had planned and built their villages keeping in mind their immediate and long-term needs. Can today we acquire enough lands in a fully legal manner wherein we may built a township with mosques, schools, a college and a graveyard to fulfil our immediate and otherwise needs. Such townships are not necessarily to be all Muslims only; these may have mixed population also.

The idea presented above may be ambitious or unrealistic, even an utopia but a keen mind can see in it a strategy for educational renaissance of Indian Muslims and their economic regeneration. This idea might be converted into an opportunity by enterprising individuals or it might be grabbed by our socio-religious organizations to refashion their relevance in a more meaningful way. By so doing they would secure and ensure a bright future for Indian Muslims.

[August, 2007]