Author: Priyadarsi Dutta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 22, 2003
Can Ram undergo the Rameses-synthesis?
This question chased me like a breeze from the Nile valley to the Ganges.
I am afraid the answer is not blowing in the wind. The question assumed
renewed significance when Lady Nadira, Sir VS Naipaul's wife, stood up
after Deputy Prime Minister's LK Advani's speech during the Pravasi Bharatiya
Divas to ask if India's Muslims and Christians needed to prove their patriotic
credentials by ripping open their chests a la Lord Hanuman to reveal images
of Ram and Sita. This unwarrantedly pushed Mr Advani on the defensive.
He said the Indian tradition did not make allowances for theocracy.
Mr Advani should rather have pointed
out theocracy is the prerogative of Islam and Islam alone. To Lady Nadira,
Hindu-'cleansing' in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir in the name of Allah
does not seem to have happened. Without a word of criticism for Godhra,
she extracted from Mr Advani a promise Gujarat would not recur. Her concern
for this country can be traced to her Nobel Laureate husband (I have a
profound reverence for Sir Vidia); otherwise, journalists like her are
not out of the ordinary. It seems we are giving undue importance to critics
like Prof Amartya Sen and Lady Nadira. Western nations produce countless
Nobel Laureates, but nobody has time to pamper them by lending an ear to
their far-removed sermons.
In his prologue to Beyond Belief,
Sir Vidia said wrote: "Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone
not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter
of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert's
worldview alters. His Holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language
is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes ...
a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything
that is his."
I do not know why Sir Vidia categorises
only non-Arab Muslims as converts. In fact, most Arabs-Egyptians, Lebanese
(Phoenician), Syrian (Assyrian), Tunisian (Carthaginian), and Iraqi (Mesopotamian/Babylonian)
are converts. Even if all of them are not Muslims (a religion stereotypically
synonymous with Arabs), they are linguistically Arab now. Genealogical
Arabs are those who lived in Hijjaj (Saudi Arabia's name till 1921). Most
Arabs are descendants of West Asia's glorious civilisations which were
overrun by the Arab-Islamic army in the seventh century. There might have
mixing of blood in an insignificant proportion, but this conquest was a
linguistic and civilisational catastrophe.
Yet Egypt is an example of the harmonising
of many identities-Pharaonic, Greek and Roman (Christian) and Arabic (mostly
Islamic)- down its 5,000-year stretch. The grand old man of Egyptian history,
Zaki Naguib Mehmoud (1905-1992), once asked if Egyptian Muslims were uncomfortable
with the polytheistic past of their Pharaonic forefathers. The answer he
deduced was that, instead of erasing a past that did not disturb the practice
of Islam, one could harmonise its various legacies. The temple at Abu Simbel
built by Rameses is a matter of pride for Egyptians. Though the Pharonic
language is dead, they glory in their pre-Islamic past. But since the Revolution
of 1953, Coptic Christians have seen a marginalisation of their influence.
Would Egyptian Muslims be tolerant
if the Pharaonic Egyptian came back to life? No, they will not tolerate
a kafir in their midst. Similarly, Indian Muslims who call themselves Muslim
Indians will never revere Ram, who they sense threatens their fabricated
identity.