Author: Vinu Abraham
Publication: The Week
Date: September 24,
2000
It has been eight months
since poetess Kamala Das became Kamala Suraiya renouncing Hinduism in favour
of Islam. In those heady days immediately after her conversion, she was
not only the toast of Kerala's Muslim world, but flush with the excitement
other impending wedding to a middle-aged Indian Union Muslim League leader.
The wedding remained
a pipe dream. And, despite the initial euphoria with which Muslim social,
cultural and political organisations greeted Suraiya, it was soon apparent
to them that for Suraiya donning the burkha didn't imply the surrender
of her high spirited nature to be remoulded according to Islam's moral
tenets.
Her views on love between
the sexes remained unaltered, and at 60 she wasn't going to turn coy about
airing them in public. "They thought I had become old," says Suraiya, her
brow uncreased and her face aglow. "They expected that as befitting an
old Muslim woman, I would while away my time in constant prayer with a
scowling sullen face and never talk about love and beauty. But I say 'my
foot' to all this. I am not old and grumpy as you can see.
Suraiya's poems in which
she revels in her passion for her lover-going to the extent of placing
him a notch above God-also left the orthodox Islamic establishment fuming.
"Her statements are a procession of distorting perversions. Is this woman
in so much a delirium to shout utter inanities?" asked Keralanadu, a Muslim
publication in its July-August issue.
The hostility became
such that she began receiving death threats, the callers reminding her
about the fate of Chekannur Moulavi, a reformist Malayali Muslim scholar,
suspected to have been killed by Muslim extremists eight years ago. The
founding president of the Lok Seva political party, shrugs it off. "I am
not going to make a complaint to the police. I am not at all afraid of
dying."
Today, although Suraiya
stands practically excommunicated from Kerala's Islamic fraternity, she
is unperturbed. "If they formally excommunicate me, the most serious problem
they can create for me is barring my entry into mosques," she says. It
would make no difference to her for, she has yet to make a habit of visiting
mosques regularly, preferring to keep her communication with God a "solemn
and private act".
As a devout Muslim, Suraiya
performs namaaz five times a day with a special prayer at 3 a.m. "My communication
with Allah is so intense that at times I almost hear him talking to me."
Her faith has given her strength, mental peace and "for the first time
in my life" joy and utter contentment. Secure in her faith, she doesn't
need "an organised religious establishment with me".
And yet, for a while
the same establishment couldn't seem to stop gushing about her. Clerics
and scholars flocked to her apartment in Kochi. The Women's League, IUML's
women's wing, adopted her as their patron. It was a gratifying experience
for the poetess, too. "They accepted me as a valuable person," she says.
But soon the invitations
stopped pouring in, and admirers turned critics. "Kamala Suraiya has only
a changed name," says Prof. -Hameed Chennamangaloor, a prominent progressive
Muslim intellectual in Kozhikkode. "She cannot change her real self which
is still Kamala Das, and the fellow travellers of her new religion cannot
accept her real self."
C. Mohammad Faizi, Kerala
State Wakf Board member, feels Suraiya hasn't understood the Islamic concept
of a woman, whose primary place is in the family. "The advice of Islamic
scholars and leaders for Suraiya is that she should realise that Islam
has a social identity and consequent social, moral responsibilities," he
says. "She should not be under the delusion that a relationship with God
is only a private act." Faizi, however, clarifies that there is officially
no move to excommunicate Suraiya. "In fact, there is no accepted provision
in Islam for such a move. Also it is certain that no one is thinking on
those lines."
Suraiya is all too aware
of the criticism. "The Islamic establishment cannot accept this kind of
a spirituality which makes a woman so liberated, not in the militant Western
feminist style," she says. But she has no dearth of friends and admirers,
as she realised on a recent trip to Canada.
The trip saw Suraiya
go on a writing binge, penning 12 love verses on the trot. Suffused with
the joy that stems from the passionate love of a woman for a man, the verses,
Suraiya fears, might offend the sentiments of the Islamic community. The
reason why she has decided not to get them published in India.
Interestingly, she doesn't
consider the poems-the least passionate of which she presented to The Week-
on par with those she wrote earlier. "True literature can originate only
from tragedies and sorrows of life," she philosophises, recalling her "bitter
experiences in marriage" and her struggle to maintain a family life. "These
experiences woke up the muse in me. Now I have only joy and hence the poems
of the earlier kind do not seem to spring from my pen."
Nevertheless her books
are doing brisk business, scotching rumours that sales had dipped after
her conversion. Her two new novels Kavadam, in collaboration with her sister
Sulochana and Amavasi, with novelist K.L. Mohanavarma, have been sold out
in many bookshops.
Her semi-autobiographical
book My Story is being filmed by a Canadian film company, with Suraiya
putting in a brief appearance. She declined the offer of a Canadian film
director, who wanted to cast her as his heroine in his new film. "He was
literally begging me to take it," she says, but Suraiya felt it would go
against her Islamic consciousness.
Meanwhile, there are
hints that she might have found a new love. "How fortunate it is to be
in love!" she comments, adding, "I have never considered falling in love
as a sin. On the contrary not being in love is the real sin for me."
