| Published on 24-06-2007 In General | | Viewed 2312 times | | Thank God for small mercies |
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| Written by
T. S. V. Hari | 
Has India become the Hindu Bharat that is intolerant of other religions?
Have all Muslims acquired the ghetto mentality and are happy aiding terrorists?
These are two questions that have seated themselves on the subconscious mind of every Indian.
A walk through the totally "Islamised" Kasaiwada (the butcher's colony) in Kurla (a suburb of north Mumbai) where I had played carrom in the by-lanes as a kid provided some answers to the second question the other week.
It was a Friday and the afternoon prayer had just ended. I sported a Kurta longer than usual without any pre-meditated design that day.
I was greeted by a number of Muslims in their traditional method mistaking me for being one of them. I greeted them back appropriately by force of habit.
Strolling past the mosque in Pipe Road, I noticed that all the small Hindu owned grocers' outlets, eateries and teashops had been taken over by Muslims. Though the huge slum behind the mosque had morphed into a multi-storied complex, there were some remnants of the old Chawls (tenements) in the neighbourhood.
Before long, I realised that a small crowd had gathered and began murmuring with menacing intent. A young man with a skull-cap shouted in Urdu that as I did not have the all important black scar on the forehead (something prominent in devout Muslims these days because they repeatedly pray) I was obviously an infidel.
In a jiffy, I saw lads pouring out of the nearby abattoir with swords and cleavers.
Suddenly I heard a familiar voice.
"This is Hari Bhai, my friend from childhood!"
I turned and found Mahmud, (name changed) my childhood mate who always used to beat me at carrom. He was dressed in an Achkan – something usually donned by the atheist Nehru.
Mahmud also sported a long, greying beard.
"Uncle, don't you remember that one of our boys…"
Mahmud quickly silenced the young whippersnapper.
"Shut up! Do I have to remind you that I lead the prayers here everyday? And by the way, what harm can a single unharmed Hindu do to us anyway? Even if we did succeed in doing so, what would be our gain other than police raids, cases and more grief? Go away!"
Mahmud always had a booming voice. But I had never heard him shout before. His gaze was fierce. The younger man looked away. The crowd thinned.
"Come in Hari Bhai!"
Mahmud's wife brought us tea as we settled down on a settee. I noticed she wasn't wearing a veil.
As I had migrated to Chennai (then Madras) in 1976, I had not attended his marriage. In fact, I had never bothered to visit that quarter since then despite my periodic trips to our financial capital.
Mahmud showed me pictures of his children – four boys and three girls. Three of them were doctors, two were professors and two were engineers. All of them were married and lived in various places in Mumbai.
"I could have shifted to a better house, but didn't. Somehow, I want to be surrounded by the smells and sounds of this quarter," Mahmud said.
We briefly talked about some acquaintances I didn't find in the neighbourhood.
Two of them had relocated to Thane district, one was in the Gulf, a third was in prison (a bully in the old days who had now become a felon), and a few others were in the Middle-East except one who had died after a lifelong drug abuse, Mahmud offered casually during the small talk.
The nearby slum had been taken over by someone from the underworld outside who seemed to have an endless supply of money and turned into a complex making several crores of rupees, Mahmud continued.
"Later we came to know that he was connected with the terrorists. He is now in prison. All of us hated him anyway," Mahmud added flatly.
The topic shifted to the general metamorphosis of the Muslims – from a docile lot I knew in the Bombay of old into an aggressive group.
"In the medieval ages we were the lords of a better part of the earth stretching from Spain in the west to Indonesia in the east spanning three continents. Our emperors – be it my namesake – the marauding Mahmud of Ghazni, his predecessor Chengez Khan the Mongol or the benevolent emperor Akbar of Hindustan, the first secular monarch much later, we were feared and respected.
Slowly, Christianity, crusades, colonialism, capitalism and communism ate away our real estate.
Now, the same is being done in the name of democracy – a system of governance in which Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) had excelled by uniting several thousand tribes of nomadic shepherds who did not know anything about the wide world. The cunning capitalists took away everything one by one including Palestine.
Before long, our people began living as refugees in the very lands they owned – only to be reviled, taunted and slaughtered and forced to live in conditions worse than sties. In spite of having won a war against the better-armed, godless communists in Afghanistan we have been subjugated and finally called terrorists of the globe after the west used, abused and discarded us like useless, wasted, chattel.
We are fighting against ourselves in Iraq, betraying our cause in Turkey by currying favour with Europeans and have forgotten the lost world of Kurdistan even as our oil is short changed to fulfil the needs of a hungry set of self seeking shysters. Now, our youth – left with no possible vocational future based on their culturally rich mother tongue – have decided that they will call the bluff of the world with some belligerence. Some here have decided to control the underworld, others have turned guerrilla fighters in the Middle East and our brothers in Iran are working on the Islamic nuclear weapon and so on.
The manifestations of the pent up anger may be different, but the underlying current is the same. We simply want our respectful haven in geopolitics because the long era of slavery has shamed us. The same realisation will dawn on Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and all similarly betrayed identities with a heritage to cherish." Mahmud said emotionally. His tone was full of bitterness that has perhaps changed him from a peace-loving, carrom player into a man who has found a new calling.
Though I could have argued for days against this strange piece of logic, I decided against it because it would be fruitless. Mahmud may have a newly acquired persecution complex but he still was sane enough to acknowledge an old Hindu friend.
I bade him goodbye.
I decided to find the answers to the first question from Shirdi – a village in central Maharashtra I had visited long ago. Its only claim to fame was a secular saint who simply called himself "Sai Baba" and spent a lifetime in the early part of the 20 th century preaching universal brotherhood. He had lived in a mosque and begged for alms, yet was loved by the rich and poor – Hindus and Muslims.
A six-hour drive took me there.
The small shrine had morphed into a huge complex – almost another Tirupati – complete with winding sets of staircases leading to the sanctum sanctorum housing the Baba's grave, his huge marble icon draped in ochre silk robes and several priests milling around harrying the worshippers.
The village's once sleepy lanes had become noisy rows of shops selling bric-a-brac and mementoes. Several restaurants serving various kinds of ethnic food at fancy prices, huge guesthouses, inns and a couple of three star hotels had sprung up into the rapidly developing township.
Instead of the dubious "special darshan" arrangements in return for higher denomination currency notes a la Tirupati, there were ad hoc passes that helped the occasional, rare, exception and bane of all faiths – the VIP jumping the queues
The state government had taken over the trust that oversaw the administration of what had become a big temple, but mercifully, had ensured that other icons hadn't been erected to pander to the taste of the Hindu majority, which visits the place. There indeed are a few, rare Muslims, the occasional Sikh and sizeable number of foreigners to be found at Shirdi.
And yes, signboards prohibiting the entry of "non-Hindus" were conspicuous by their absence.
At least, the new management had desired to honour the Baba's important yardstick for belief in the Ultimate – everybody is ruled by a single God. He didn't specify such an entity's identity. Baba considered himself equally close to all epithets of universal supernatural powers – be it Bhagwan, God or Allah.
The growing numbers of worshippers at Shirdi revealed that faith needn't be monotheistic.
Thank God, the Hindu Bharat is yet to adopt a completely blinkers on attitude – at least for the time being. |
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