Recently one of my friends who understands Islam and has gained the credentials of a sensible Indian voice from the community, wrote an article eloquently describing his experience as an Indian Muslim. He repeatedly pointed out through cute real life vignettes that he has never (almost) faced any discrimination in his career and social life due to his religion. And guess what, its timing August 15th was impeccable.
I was really happy to read the post, because knowing the author personally I can vouch for its veracity. The post also spread a lot of positive energy and instantaneously brought a smile to my face. Something that a Shiv Khera and a Rhonda Byrne managed to do to me while reading their work. Like a superhero of the mind it promised niceness, suggested all’s fine if you look at the world with rose tinted positivity. Good things will happen if you believe and everyone wishes you well in their weird own way.
But a strange feeling occurred when I was about to share and up vote it - a feeling of guilt and a premonition of things that were about to happen worried me.
I repeatedly quizzed myself on some basic hard hitting questions. And by ‘I’, here I believe I represent the educated members of the majority faith who have comfortably upvoted and shared it across.
Do I deserve to share it? Was it my neutral view on religion, my great asset of tolerance and fraternal love beyond barriers, beyond culinary differences, beyond geopolitical and ideological differences that made sure he lead a life of almost zero discrimination till now?
Is my country that good?
Or was it just plain luck, classic case of serendipity, being at the right place at the right time, making the right noises -the one that people like, having the right size of the beard that helped him achieve the idyllic experiences he describes?
The more I think about it, the more I believe the latter to be relevant.
I have always believed in this mantra that the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one, and to make this phrase India friendly I think I should add one more clause - a step zero to this parable – we should strip the delusion surrounding us and allow our critical faculties to actually hone the ability to recognize problems.
It mostly so happens that our desire to look good in front of a global audience blinds our critical faculties, let alone the ability to hone our skills to unearth scathing realities. To be part of a national narrative that would sound great to the world by slowly sweeping all the nation’s dust below the red carpet that welcomes international dignitaries has been touted to be a symbol of real patriot. Any one hinting otherwise, comfortably gets classified as a pseudo secularist or anarchist.
We all know that eloquent words, charming analogies and sprightly examples have this allure which captivates the audience and transports them to a state governed by a suspension of disbelief.
Painting rosy pictures through broad strokes of legendary urdu rhetorical devices and ‘phrases’ describing real events though true for an individual, hides the sorry state of affairs for the greater public. The self-congratulatory claims that we make about ourselves - world’s largest democracy, plurality and tolerance — are not particularly reflected outside of the Constitution.
Once again I am not talking about big political issues like the Dadri incident, Godhra and stuff. Those are horrific incidents and every sane person condemns it. I don’t have a problem with the reaction to these big ticket incidents because everyone understands the magnitude of their damage.
What I described as dust previously is this,
For every friend who manages your work during Ramzan, there is a friend asking someone like you ‘Would you have wanted to be in Pakistan if it was not as troubled as it is now?’
For every friend who gorges on the delicacies prepared at your home, there are a few who can’t convince their parents to bring you home to show their mom’s culinary skills.
For every friend who cheers with you for the Indian cricket team, there are a few that believe you still support its tainted match fixers just because they belong to your religion.
And lastly there are many educated people who think “why aren’t they grateful, aren’t they not happy with what we gave them — these Muslims”
The reason most Indians like you is not the fact that you bring in the much needed diversity to the country, not because of the rich cultural heritage and other beautiful aspects of your religion and the holy book, they like you because you are slowly losing your identity and becoming one among the majority. It is the lack of your identity that has attracted us to you.
We like the folks who do not wear their religion on their sleeve, we like those who never challenged the system nor highlighted injustice; we like those who write beautiful posts about harmony in Quora but talk about their liking towards Asaduddin Owaisi in private. We like SRK but the insha allah he seems to be using in recent times, makes us think a bit, but we reassure ourselves that he is our very own ‘Rahul’ and ‘Raaj’
Yes my friend, I enjoyed reading your piece. The article was nice though it gave a simplistic perspective. But do we deserve to share it and make self-congratulatory claims about it. I am not sure. If everyone holds a hand to their chest and genuinely think about it, even they shouldn’t be sure. Because there is a huge group that is ready to add a lot of spice to your write up and sell off India and its immaculately clean image.
And till there is surety that we as individuals and as a society are totally prejudice free and respect you because of who you are and not because of the fact that you have become like us
The likes, shares and upvotes can wait.
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