Author: Saeed Naqvi
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 21, 2002
A salam to Kalam for demolishing
the stereotype
Heaven knows a lot could have been
said about Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's elevation to the Rashtrapati Bhavan,
but considering that he is almost our president, deference to the
office dictates that we set aside such observations that he may be
some sort of an Islamic hippie.
Even reservations on his hairstyle
can be held back. In fact, the great bonus one can extract from his
elevation is this: his persona will go a considerable distance in
demolishing stereotypes about Muslims on the subcontinent. In popular
perception, the Muslim is an Urdu-speaking qasai or a butcher - as
opposed to a Punjabi-speaking jhatka meat seller - dangerously prone
to misusing the weapons of his trade; marries several times; multiplies
like a rabbit and bathes only on Fridays because he is unclean in
direct proportion to his distance from Brahminism.
The other image is of an Urdu-spewing,
paan-chewing, hubble-bubble smoking, decadent nawab, leaning against
a brocade sausage cushion, listening to B-grade Urdu poetry with
a mujra dancer in attendance.
In recent years a third stereotype
has swum into our ken. He is bearded, wears a skull cap, his pyjamas
is pulled above the ankles and his outsized shirt almost touching
them. He breeds in madrassas where he plots against the state.
These indigenous stereotypes have
been reinforced globally by the much more powerful paraphernalia
at the disposal of the international media obsessed with the Muslim
image ever since the Palestinian- Israeli issue dominated western consciousness
- a trend that has been aided greatly by the events of September
11.
There are those frightful clips,
inserted repeatedly, ad nauseam, of armed Muslim militants doing
the drill in obscure forests, or Muslims bowing down in prayer in
perfect unison, like some Stalinist drill, in huge intimidating numbers.
This stereotype of the global Muslim umma on the march, as projected
by the media, brings into the blazing spotlight the third Indian
category mentioned above, the so-called madrassa variety.
In this maze of exaggerations, caricatures,
stereotypes, where is the real Indian Muslim? Well, this question
is flawed once again because it presupposes a monolithic Muslim presence
lurking somewhere behind the stereotypes.
It is in this context that the A.J.P
Abdul Kalam phenomenon, and its potential to demolish some some universal
as well as Indian distortions, must be viewed.
An Indian Muslim from Rameswaram
at the southern tip of the country, is as different ethnically, culturally,
linguistically, and civilisationally from his Kashmiri brethren as,
say, Indonesian Muslims are distinct from Iranians.
The Iranian civilisation, its Shia
content refined during the Sefavid period, nevertheless retained
some of its pre-Islamic Zoroastrian traditions like Nau-roz. In Indonesia,
the entire Islamic practice is an overlay on very durable Hindu motifs.
While we know that the Mousetrap
has been playing at London's Westend for 40 years, we are lamentably
short on knowledge about the Ramayana ballet, performance by 150
namaz-saying Muslims under the shadow of Yog Jakarta's magnificent
temples for the past 27 years without a break.
Have you ever perceived this exquisite
elasticity in Islamic practice in the current projection of Islam
worldwide?
We have grown so accustomed to the
cliche, the broad-brush generalisation, that the sudden emergence
of a veena-playing, Bhagawat Gita-reciting, Rameswaram-born A.P.J
Abdul Kalam strikes us as an unreal happening, something at total
variance with the images we have been bombarded with, ranging from
Osama bin Laden to Ahmad Bukhari.
The Indian Muslim, like any other
Indian, is a creature of his village, district, state, in very possible
way - language, lifestyle, dress, food, above all, the indigenous
culture of comedy, joke-making and satire.
The late Mohammad Koya of the Muslim
League in Kerala, invited me once for dinner when he became chief
minister for a few weeks. He knew no Urdu or English and I was totally
ignorant of Malayalam of which he was the best speaker in the Assembly
- in fact, he was so funny, he would keep his audiences in stitches.
At the end of the meal, Koya produced
seven different varieties of bananas by way of dessert, even as I
looked on, agape. Here was a civilisational clash between two Indian
Muslims that Huntington would have to work hard to decipher.
In fact, within districts there
are Muslims and Muslims. For instance, the Labbais or the Tamil-speaking
Muslims who settled in Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Ramanathanpuram,
are today among the more prosperous in the state, controlling the
leather industry, hotel chains and the dubious blackmarket in Southeast
Asia.
In days of dollar control in the
past, it was a Kilakrai Muslim who facilitated hawala transactions
in the south. Every southern politician knows this.
Abdul Kalam, being from Rameshwaram,
clearly came more under the spell of Saraswati unlike the other Labbais,
who remained primarily in the domain of Lakshmi. Too much should
not be made of his Rameswarm connection. After all, you do know the
most prominent citizen of the holy city of Varanasi, don't you? Ustad
Bismillah Khan, of course.
As for Kalam's familiarity with
Hindu scriptures, was not Justice Ismail in Chennai the country's
leading authority on the Kambar Ramayanam? And Kalam, for all his
devotion to Rama, still has to catch up with Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana's
verses in Sanskrit dedicated to Dasrath's son.
Yes, Kalam knows no Urdu. But then
Muslims in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka have written literature
in the local languages just as Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote powerful revolutionary
poetry, replete with images of Kali, in incomparable Bengali.
Salbeg did likewise in Oriya, and
so on. The list of non-Urdu giants in literature from among the Muslims
is unfortunately not part of the popular perception in the Hindi-Urdu
belt.
Abdul Kalam is part of a continuing
tradition which exists but about which we have developed an amnesia
because of the obsession of the global media - and that of our own
- with painting the Muslim in a monochromatic shade.
