Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 4, 2007
Every time I visit Kerala, which I have been
doing quite frequently these past two-and-a-half-years, I am struck by the
rapid Islamisation of 'God's Own Country'. The rain-gorged verdant plains
and hills along the lush Malabar coast are fast turning into the billious
green of radical Islam. Roadside brick-and-mortar glass-fronted shrines dedicated
to Virgin Mary with flickering candles lit by the devout and ancient temples
with amazing hand-crafted brassware and bell metal utensils that once celebrated
the Hinduness of Kerala are overshadowed by spanking new mosques that seem
to be mushrooming all over the place. Not only are they built with Arab money
-- donations by Muslim Malayalees working in Gulf countries, especially Saudi
Arabia, add up to only a fraction of the cost -- but they also symbolise the
increasing influence of Arab 'culture', which is largely about visible manifestations
of Islam and Islamism, that threatens to stamp out Kerala's rich indigenous
culture rooted in India's civilisational past.
Huge billboards, advertising 'Arab Pardha'
in English and Arabic, now jostle for space along with those advertising jewellery,
new apartment blocks and investment schemes. The 'Arab Pardha' billboards
are illustrated with larger than life images of women clad in head-to-toe
burqas: They look shapeless and formless, their identity smothered by black
fabric and their eyes barely visible through slits. "Arab Pardha",
declares one billboard, "All pious women should wear it". The copywriter
has it all wrong; it should have read, "All pious women should disappear
behind it." For, that's what the burqa is meant for -- to make women
disappear, make them invisible, deny them the right to exist as individuals.
Any argument to the contrary is spurious and any religious edict cited in
support of this grotesque suppression of individual liberty is specious. But
there is a larger purpose behind propagating the 'Arab Pardha', or purdah,
which is insidious and frightening for those who value freedom. This is one
of the many instruments adopted by Islamists to push their agenda of radicalising
Muslims and imposing their worldview on others without so much as even a token
resistance by either civil society or the state. The darkness of the world
in which they live is now being forced on us. Decades ago Nirad C Chaudhuri
was to record in his memorable essay, The Continent of Circe, "Whenever
in the streets of Delhi I see a Muslim woman in a burqa, the Islamic veil,
I apostrophise her mentally: 'Sister! you are the symbol of your community
in India.' The entire body of Muslims are under a black veil." The Continent
of Circe was first published in 1966; forty-one years later, the community
wants the black veil, the 'Arab Pardha', to envelope 'secular' India.
Kerala's 'Arab Pardha' billboards are a taunting
reminder that in 'secular' India we must remain mute witness to the communalisation
of culture, politics and society by peddlers of Islamism and its offensive
agenda that is rooted in the most obnoxious interpretation of what Mohammed
preached millennia ago. Even the economy has not been spared: Islamic banking,
Islamic investments and Islamic financial instruments have surreptitiously
entered this country under the benign gaze of an indulgent UPA Government
whose Prime Minister spends sleepless nights agonising over the plight of
Islamic terrorists and demands that all Government initiatives must be anchored
in his perverse 'Muslims first' policy. The Prime Minister's admirers claim
he is a "sensitive person" who is easily moved by the "plight
of the helpless". Had he been moved by the pathetic sight of a Muslim
woman, as much an Indian as all of us, forced to wear an 'Arab Pardha', his
claimed sensitivities would have carried conviction. But such expression of
sympathy, if not resolve to combat the insidious gameplan of Islamists inspired
by hate-mongers and preachers of intolerance who draw their sustenance from
the fruit of the poison tree of Wahaabism that flourishes in the sterile sands
of Arabia, would demand a great degree of intellectual integrity and moral
courage. The Prime Minister may be an "accidental politician", but
he is a practitioner of politics of cynicism. For that, you neither need intellectual
integrity nor moral courage.
Every time there is criticism of the Islamic
veil, which comes in various forms of indignity -- the hijab, the niqab, the
burqa, the chador -- whether from within or outside the Muslim community,
we hear the frayed argument: It's a matter of personal choice; it's an expression
of religiosity; it's culture-specific; it's a minority community's right,
ad infinitum, ad nauseam. All that and more is balderdash, not least because
there is no Quranic injunction that mandates a Muslim woman to wear an 'Islamic'
veil. Just as there is nothing Quranic about the cruel and mind-numbing practice
of female circumcision which is carried out in the name of Islam and to force
women to be pious and faithful! Given the nature of the community's social
hierarchy and the grip of the mullahs, rarely does a woman protest, leave
alone rebel. Those who do, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian activist whose
book The Caged Virgin provides a revealing insight into Islamism's warped
religio-political ideology, are hounded and live in perpetual fear of losing
their lives. Blasphemy is not tolerated by those who live in a world darker
than the darkest burqa, a world in which even Barbie wears the Islamic veil
lest her plastic modesty be compromised.
But this is not only about the denial of an
individual's liberty, nor is it about the suppression of human rights in the
name of faith. It is about the in-your-face declaration of Islamists that
they can have their way without so much as lifting their little finger. It
is a laughable sight to watch Malayalees trying to navigate crowded streets
in Kochi wearing white Arab gelabayas, the loose kaftan like dress that along
with the kafeyah has become a symbol of trans-national radical Islam, their
'Arab Pardha' clad wives and daughters in tow. But it is not a laughable matter.
Increasingly, we are witnessing a shifting
of loyalties from Malabar to Manipur. Faith in India is being transplanted
by belief in Arabia. This is not good news for those who believe in the Indian
nation.
