Author: Taimur Bandey
Publication: Friday Times, Pakistan.
Date: March 16, 2001
Whenever India talks about its Muslims,
Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan or Mohammad Azharduddin are mentioned. This despite
the fact that they do not represent a typical Indian Muslim. Still, the
few success stories that there are of Muslim bureaucrats, politicians,
cricketers and film stars, are projected to the world as Indian secularism
in practise. I was able to see things for myself on a recent trip to India.
My interest in exploring the subject
of how Muslims fare in India was fuelled by my friends from the fashion
industry who visit India on regular basis. And who hold that Muslims don't
have a bad deal. If that is true, I thought, why have Pakistan? Why did
we fight for a separate country? And why don't we become one again? These
were the questions nagging my mind when I set off to celebrate Eid in India.
I spent my first few days meeting well-to-do Muslims. From film stars to
politicians, most sounded like thoroughly patriotic Indians, once they
discovered my origin. I could see why these people were the envy of my
friends back home. They were exactly like us, they had the freedom to practise
their religion as they saw fit, with the proviso that they had much more
freedom and much more fun than we have here in Pakistan. But, I asked myself,
are up-market Indian Muslims representative of the majority of Muslims
in India? No, they are not, just as we are not representative of our majority
here in Pakistan.
Clearly, my friends so enamoured
of the liberties Indian Muslims enjoy had never gone past the nightclubs
and private parties to meet the dirt poor Muslims of the stinking streets
around Delhi's Jama Masjid. I was determined that for me it would be it
a true voyage of discovery. First, I went to Jaipur where my rickshaw driver
took me to a Muslim locality where my co-religionists had poured in from
adjoining areas looking for work. It was here that I heard tale after tale
of how Indian Muslims love and cheer Pakistan's cricket team or how Imran
Khan and Wasim Akram are bigger heroes for them than Kapil Dev and Tendulkar.
I was also told some gory details of how Muslims suffered during and after
the Babri Mosque crisis. A few statements were unforgettable. As soon as
someone found out that I was from Pakistan, I was told that I had come
from the home country: "Aap tau hamaray mulk say aye hain". An old woman
whose two daughters and a grandson had married into Hindu families told
me, "You (Pakistanis) don't value freedom. You don't know what a blessing
it is to live in Muslim societies. At least when your daughter runs away
with a boy you are assured that he would be a Muslim. Here we live in constant
fear that Muslim girls and boys will marry outside the faith". Having regaled
me with her tale of woe, she proceeded to condemn Hrithik Roshan's marriage
to a Muslim girl, Suzanne Khan, and was violently opposed to Salman Khan
dating Ashwariya Rai. Here was the first difference between the Muslim
elites of India and ordinary folk.
My next stop was Lucknow, where
my host and I went to participate in a cultural event. In the middle of
that event I was whisked away to see the famous sites of Lucknow. Amongst
them were the famous Jamia Masjid, A beautiful Imambara next to it and
the palace of Wajid Ali Shah. It was on one of these excursions that I
met a local Muslim family who were "frightened" of the "hatred" they felt
which was building up in India's underbelly against Muslims. "Why is it
that every Indian movie or a music video will always feature a Muslim girl
and a Hindu boy? Why can't Muslim men be shown dating Hindu girls?" In
the past, one of my interlocuters said, Muslim actors had had to change
their names to Hindu ones in order to be successful -- Yusuf Khan became
Dilip Kumar, Nasim became Madhubala -- and now he said a director could
not risk making a film with a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl as hero and heroine
respectively. He gave examples of the films that had worked at the box
office: "Bombay", "Fizza" and "Zubaida" -- all with Muslim heroines and
Hindu heroes.
I was in Delhi for Eid and went
to the famous Jamia Masjid for my prayers. It was so like Karachi, it was
uncanny. The men were in their tight fitted pajamas, churidars, whereas
the women hid colourful finery beneath black burqas. There were open sales
of meat and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's qawwalis were being played at a deafening
pitch. This was the Chandni Chowk area with a strong Muslim population.
My non-Muslim hosts called it "mini-Pakistan". Most Muslim families I met
there had relatives in Pakistan and a few of them even had the Pakistani
flag inside their houses. I wonder if any of Pakistan's minorities could
fly the flag of a foreign country, especially India, within their homes?
In Chandni Chowk, I was eagerly
met and regaled with the things they liked about my country: Omar Sharif's
stage plays and Shahid Afridi thrashing the Indian bowling attack. The
serious talk began when I was told about police brutalities upon Muslims
during search operations. I was shown scars of wounds on a few young men
arrested they said, "for betting on the Pakistan cricket team". Next I
visited some Muslim homes which had been burnt down during the Ayodhya
crisis. The police had stood by when mobs attacked, they said.
On my last night in India, I decided
that I would not go out but sit back and think about all that I had seen.
The Muslim elite is protected and pampered as are elites here in Pakistan.
They live mostly in the big cities, I could not see that there were any
significant number of Muslim landed elites. This, I suppose, is because
India implemented a thorough land reform, unlike Pakistan. So those Muslims
that have made it good in India have done so my dint of their own hard
work. They have been able to rise through the ranks and credit for that
must go to the system of education that was available to them.
The Muslims that stayed aloof from
the mainstream have become steadily more disenfranchised, steadily more
powerless, and poorer. Are they themselves to be blamed for their pitiable
state? Or is the Indian state to blame? It is a bit of both. A feeling
of discrimination exists amongst a majority of Indian Muslims and the state
has not been able to foster confidence in its policies. Equally, Indian
Muslims hanker after a glorious past but are not prepared to change their
ways to alter their abysmal present. Muslim icons Shabana Azmi and Dilip
Kumar advocate that all Muslims educate their children, and plan their
families. But their voices don't go far and the underprivileged Muslims
of India continue to wallow in poverty, much like the Muslims of Pakistan.
You have to go to India to see why
partition happened. But this does not mean that we all have to live in
the past. The task for the Muslims of the subcontinent on both sides of
the divide remains the same: have fewer children and educate them. And
the states of both India and Pakistan have to be impartial arbiters between
all their citizens.
