Farzana Versey September 27, 2004

Tags: communal , hindu-muslim

How the ‘Gudiyas’ among Indian Muslims are forced into the mainstream

href="/tag/fate">fate in front of a television audience.

Gudiya had to go through this humiliation. Everyone knows about the case of this young woman in a UP village whose husband, Mohammed Arif, was called a deserter when he went missing during the Kargil War. When it was recently discovered that he was in a Pakistani jail, he was brought back. Meanwhile, when he had disappeared, Gudiya’s and Arif’s families decided to get her remarried. She seemed happy enough with Taufiq and is now eight months pregnant with his child. Muslim clerics deemed that since she was not divorced from Arif she should return to him; he has refused to accept the child. So Gudiya will have to keep the child with her parents 10 days after her delivery. That is all the time Arif will give her.

Zee TV virtually dragged these people to the studios and conducted an on-camera panchayat where these decisions were taken. Gudiya remained a mute doll, forced to accept words of the Shariat being mouthed by those present. It is being said that a fair public judgment was passed. Gudiya had been quoted as saying earlier that she would not give up her child and was happy with Taufiq. But she has been given no choice.

The world was made to see how easy it is to make a spectacle of the Indian Muslim. Put them on TV, discuss their strange laws and two men fighting over the ‘property’. Arif who was called an absconder by the Indian Army was hailed as a hero on his return, not for what he did on the front, but merely for returning as a PoW. The subtle message being that he is a nationalist and therefore acceptable by the majority community. He has a right to reclaim what he wants.

If you place this problem before Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, he will still spout the famous words of his book title, ‘Indian Muslims: Where have they gone wrong?’ He will see the problem of the laws, not of the exploitation by the media. The book is making the right noises so I am going to use it here.

The worst aspect is that the pressure to conform is so great that many who are not cosmopolitan are co-opted. This is neo-colonialism of the worst kind. There is a Star Hunt being conducted on television. One of the finalists is a Muslim girl, who was wearing the most revealing clothes – expanse of bared midriff, backless, cleavage showing and hands and legs visible. During the interview with her parents her father said, “Hamare khaandan mein auratein naakhoon tak nahin dikhati hai.” Sitting right beside him was his wife in a sleeveless kameez. What he was doing was playing to the gallery, showing that his family had ‘progressed’ from hiding even their nails to expose much more.

Zakaria is now going around almost mimicking Naipaul’s caricature of an Englishman. Sir Vidia says Arabs are “not fine people”…Zakaria asks Indian Muslims to “look beyond the camel”. Funny thing is the only camel I met was called Michael Jackson owned by a young Muslim lad in Jaisalmer.

The Muslim mainstream vs. Hindu mainstream

I wake up not to the sound of the azaan but the dhin-chik, dhin-chik from some Hindu pandal or the other. I drink tea made with the milk of gau-mata, delivered at the door by Kishore. My medicines come from Harshadbhai’s pharmacy and household provisions from Deepak; the watchman in my building insists on being called Bahadur but he is a bhaiyya from UP; my banker is a Kashmiri pandit (and no, he does not think I want to kill him); I walk into the lanes nearby and sometimes I see sinewy bodies forming a pyramid trying to break a matki and pocket the moolah to celebrate Lord Krishna’s birthday or I have to plan in advance not to go anywhere on the day of the Ganapathy visarjan because the elephant god is being taken for immersion to pollute the rivers and the sea and the police force has to be put in the service of their majesties while they get drunk or I have to tread carefully during Holi because someone will throw a water balloon days ahead of the festival, sometimes with sharp things in it that could turn me blind.

If this is not being mainstream enough, then let me ask you that even regarding the big issues have you heard about Muslims wanting a solution other than that given by the courts? Whether it was the Bombay riots or the bomb blasts, whether it is Gujarat or Godhra, and even the demolition at Ayodhya, they have never said it is a matter that should be decided by religious heads, unlike the attitude of the shankaracharyas.

Dr. Zakaria’s problem is that he comes up with the same old clichés and his solutions sound more like homilies than workable answers. On the Muslim youth, he says, “They have become rudderless; they have lost hope about any prospect in this country.” Why does he not count them as a part of a potential brain-drain? Why are they held up as examples of wasted youth when they probably suffer from the same problems as anyone else? What does he mean by lost hope of any prospect in India when there are many more Hindus moving overseas to better their lot? If some Muslim youth go to the Gulf countries, then they are doing so for the same reasons.

The parents come in for censure as well: “(they) must give up their traditional outlook of sticking to the worn-out methods and norms and not keep their children away from all forms of modern education.” If 70 per cent of the people live in the rural areas, what modern education will they have access to? And would he have the courage to talk to Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi who has been crying aloud for adding astrology and Vedic studies to the curriculum? If those are scientific scriptures, then every community has a right to theirs.

However, this madrassa education is such a gross exaggeration that it is not funny. Muslim institutions have regular classes and teach regular things. Besides, let us not forget that those of us who have been to convent schools did sing catholic hymns. Was this a part of our modern education?

Why is joining the RSS a patriotic gesture that will instil discipline and joining a Muslim organisation a regressive move?

The whole ‘belong to the mainstream’ idea is dangerous. Guru Golwalkar unequivocally declared in his book ‘We Or Our Nationhood Defined’: “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ungratefulness towards this land and its age-old traditions but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion, in short, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privilege, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizens’ rights.” He told Muslims and Christians categorically that they have no “place in our national life unless they abandon their differences, adopt the religion, culture and language of the (Hindu) nation and completely merge themselves in the national race. So long, however, as they maintain their racial, religious and cultural differences (with Hindus), they cannot but be only foreigners.”

This is repeated by Naipaul. According to him, since Indian Muslims are converted people, they become part of the Arab story and reject their own histories and “develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can easily be set on the boil.”

How little he knows about our fantasies. If anything, it is Indian Muslims who have steered clear of major controversies; they are difficult to understand because Islamic societies cannot quite pin them down. Naipaul’s problem is that by attributing the Indian Muslim holy land as Arabia he is living out his own fantasy of his holy land being India. His is an attempt of trying to belong to a place by playing their game. He goes to the extent of saying that for promoting fundamentalism Saudi Arabia “should be destroyed actually”.

Islamic terrorism vs. Hindu fundamentalism

Everyone has heard about Islamic terrorism. And everyone and his uncle Sam has said the same thing, so it is not surprising when Dr. Zakaria states, “These terrorists not only bring shame and disgrace to Islam but cause the greatest harm to Indian Muslims, who are suspected by a number of Hindus being aligned with these terrorists or being sympathetic to their acts of terror...”

Sure. Now may I ask on what basis do a number of Hindus have any business to suspect this? If I am supposed to feel ashamed for what someone does in another part of the world, whose language I cannot understand, whose food habits and clothes are different from mine, who even looks different, then I have every right to find terrorists in my backyard from the majority community.

Why can Indian Muslims not be suspicious of the acts of Hindus because of the doings of L.K. Advani, Uma Bharti, Praveen Togadia, Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray? Why can we not suspect that the majority are aligned with these people who I consider terrorists?

If Islamic money is supposed to be pouring in for the jihad in Kashmir, then where is it coming from in the North East? What about the dollars collected for the VHP in Silicon Valley by so-called professionals?

How devious society has become is evident from Ronald Kessler’s book, ‘The CIA at War’. He writes, “…the CIA created fake mullahs -- recruited agents who would proclaim themselves clerics and take a more moderate position about nonbelievers. ‘We are taking over radio stations and supporting clerics,’ a CIA source was quoted as saying. ‘It’s back to propaganda. We are creating moderate Muslims’.” Kessler said the CIA also paid for mullahs to issue fatwas, or urging Iraqis not to resist American forces.

Terrorism anyone?

Muslim mirror vs. Hindu mirror

I live what may be called a mainstream existence and I do not actively practise any religion. But will I get to define how the mainstream should work? Can I tell the Hindus who are a part of the same mainstream what they must do? Can I ask them pertinent questions like…
* Why can they not have good leaders to guide them?
* Why has their population growth slowed down by 2.9 per cent while the Muslims’ has gone down by 3.5 per cent?
* Why do they have panel discussions discussing ‘Hindu bashing’ and why do they fear being overtaken by the Muslims and yet accuse the Mussalmans of whining and suffering from an inferiority complex?
* Why do they grumble when it comes to reservations for Muslims when there are whole sections of tribal and backward castes that get it and indeed deserve it due to the flaws of history?
* How can they dare to point fingers at Muslim regressiveness when they have not been able to improve the lot of their own people that has given rise to the Dalit movement?
* How can they make a noise about the sad plight of Muslim girls when statistically there are more instances of female infanticide, child marriages among Hindus than cases of Hyderabad girls being forced to marry Arabs?
* Why do they harp on Muslim men marrying four times when bigamy is more common among Hindus?
* How can they talk disparagingly about Muslim ghettos when India is divided along regional, culinary, caste, status lines?
* Why is it that whenever there is a discussion on the problem with Islam, the ‘secular’ faces are Hindus?
* Why are there no discussions on the problem with Hinduism?
* Why is a Hindu saying that the Gujarat genocide was bad considered a liberal and a Muslim saying so a communalist?

Why are these questions not asked in a loud voice by Muslims who are part of the mainstream? Because most of them want to toe the line of the ‘siyasatdars’.

I am glad that we do not have a great Muslim leadership that gets respectability by default. Instead of mourning for the lack of people to give direction to the community, I would like to know just what kind of leaders the Hindu community can be proud of. Come on, out with the names. Are they proud when they watch a foul-mouthed man sitting on a throne saying, “If you have the guts, then deprive the Muslims of their voting rights, all these ’communalists’ will become Hinduvaadis in no time”?

Can I ask these questions? No, because Indian Muslims, according to Dr. Zakaria, “should work for cooperation and not confrontation. I have, therefore, continued to insist that they must pursue the path of reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims; after the genocide in Gujarat it has become most difficult. But whatever the odds, placed as Muslims are in India, it is the only way to ensure their security and even prosperity.”

Co-operation here means going along with the majority tide; reconciliation means reconciling yourself to whatever is in store because that is the only way to save your butt and, if you are lucky, then drown yourself in the prosperity of a fraud.

Beatrice Lamb, the well-known British author, has rightly observed, “Indeed, one characteristic that all Hindus claim for Hinduism is its all-embracing tolerance, its ability to encompass every path, finding a niche for each in the vast scheme of things. From the point of view of certain of the minority religions, this is precisely the difficulty. Any religion that does not want to be encompassed, embraced and indeed absorbed and perhaps ultimately transformed by Hinduism finds Hindu tolerance somewhat too demanding since it is conditioned upon a basic acceptance of a Hindu view of life and Hinduism’s peculiar genius for absorption.”

I am amazed that today we have educated people talking about the dangers of ‘secular fundamentalists’. This is like saying peaceniks are a threat to war. Of course, we do have the peculiar case of a fashion designer who has been elevated in the BJP hierarchy and who has the gumption to call the party secular without providing any clues about the secularism it represents. Her mother being a Muslim, father a Rajput and husband a Marwari surely cannot be seen as the party’s political position.

While she will be dignified and given the high society treatment in the glossy pages, a Gudiya has to go through mental torture and be made a tamasha of. One can elevate a communal party because of the power of her position amongst the elite; the other has to accept a fate that someone else decides for her. One lives in a fancy place, the other in a glass house. Ideally, Gudiya should be suing the BJP and the Indian Army for not giving her the right information. But she cannot cast that stone for she is expected to walk on the shards to welcome a man who is hailed as a hero only because he spent some time in an enemy jail.

Who is the real prisoner? Who are the real prisoners?