Day #15: Being a Indian Muslim in time of a Pandemic...

3rd April 2020: I have been wanting to write on this subject since several days now. The stress faced by different sections of India during the pandemic is different and it is reasonable to expect everyone to be understanding and deal with empathy the challenges of other sections of society they are not part of.  I firmly believe that every religion in India is very local in its essence. Just like there is no centralized Hinduism and there are several diverse ways in which it is practiced from one end of the land to another, other large religions such as Islam and Christianity too have diverse local variations. So, I cringe a bit when I use the term 'Indian Muslims' because I know in practice the Muslims of northern Tamilnadu and that of Ramnad are widely different from the ones in Uttar Pradesh or in West Bengal. So, I write this note with that reservation. 

India is the second largest Islamic country in the world and the Muslims in India  are more in population than Pakistan.  Indian Muslims are perhaps one of the largest chunks of population that is forever doomed to live in the shadow of Partition 73 years later.  Purpose of History in our times has stopped being knowledge generating and has more become a traded piece of information for vindictiveness, violence and victimization. Statistics say that every third Muslim in this country is very poor and the education levels are poor as well.  They form a large section of the Indian poor community by all means. 

Just  like every religious political group in the world that wants to universalize and standardize people of their faith as en mass political group of global standing, Indian Muslims too are also subjected to the pressure from global powers. Several practices that were alien to the local situation and culture have been forced through the  rich Islamic countries and their capacity to influence the local community. This is being done with the portrayal of the community as victims in an 'alien' India. But this is no different from Hindus everywhere suddenly being asked to own upto an injustice committed to them in history centuries earlier and invoke the 'kshatriya'ness in them. The same global forces driven by corporate profits, sellers of arms and conflicts and beneficiaries of global wars, promote all such standardization of people because standardization of thought and life, ultimately benefits controlled global markets. Just like many people who are termed Hindus have rejected such overtures, Muslims in several parts of this country have rejected the same as well. 

And then May 2019 happened, while the reelection of the BJP was a foregone conclusion nationally, it created an unease among the poor Muslim community. I felt it within a day after the election when a poor Muslim neighbour asked me with a smirk, "you must have voted for the BJP!". Many Muslims believed that all Hindus voted for the BJP. The several fringe obscure Hindu groups that were dormant during the previous 5 years had been very visible during the election campaign and everyone  felt that there will no longer be any pretense of oppressing Muslims, the frequent statement of 'go to Pakistan' didn't help. Muslims had to now prove that they were patriotic while Hindus were automatically assumed to be so!  So, when the CAA came to be, it stoked the worst fears of being victimized. Technically trained Indian minds,  argued that there is nothing to victimize the Indian Muslims. But it was not the legislation that the poor Indian Muslim was fighting against, it was the political intent that they were worried about and the question was the need for the legislation in the first place. And the political leadership did very little to assuage their feelings and instead the fringe had a field day that finally they were 'getting their way'.  There is a reactionary Muslim fringe that spews similar hatred in response and the fringe feed each other and have grown in recent years creating a stress in society like never before. 

What we have seen in the last few months is the response of this community under severe stress, the community has responded by holding on Gandhi, Ambedhkar and the Constitution of India.  Shaheen bagh became a symbol to reassert the real India that is proud of its diversity and inherent Democratic ethos. It was not merely stepping out of the current stress, it was a platform for a dialogue on several issues of stress. Class and Caste conscious Indian society  least understands Democratic dialogues of the poor, because it assumes that knowledge and informed dialogue is the preoccupation of the elite and upper strata of society. The poor Hindus and Muslims of India understand the  ethics of Democracy often much better than the elite because that was what provides the basic minimum. Several examples of  this is witnessed during every communal conflict, including the recent Delhi one.

But, the vernacular media, particularly the Hindi media that seems to be perpetuating an idea of a Hindu centric politics. Then there are the people who have become either apologists and staunch defenders of everything that the government does or opposed to everything that the government does. While the former perpetrate a point of view at the cost of the other, the later feed the daily ''fights'' and ''debate'' needs of the inane 24x7 visual news media. Between them they have started to polarize the society in India on religious lines like never before. 

The arrival of the pandemic  has been very fast and our own preparedness has been tested as a nation like never before. But, we are not alone, every country in the world is being tested. The organization of a Islamic religious event violating rules is a matter of concern and that it has ended up spreading the virus means that everyone who was responsible for this needs to be brought to account and legal action needs to taken against them and anyone else who is indulging in such irresponsible acts anywhere today.  But the media narrative that has surrounded this instance has been habitually divisive and repulsive to say the least. 

Much circulated video in the past couple of days had a Singaporean minister state that at this time in every country, "the heath care system, quality of governance and social capital" are being tested. Social capital in a Democracy stems from the trust that people have towards the intentions of the government. Trust that is compromised through irresponsible media pronouncements, through callousness towards a section of society, through jhumla promises to satisfy the fringe voters, the uncontrolled rage created for short term political gains, the polarization of the citizenry, and the biased re-narration of history to stoke victimhood in one community. 

We are in a situation as never before in history, all pretensions and posturing mean very little if the death toll raises and the numbers of those infected goes beyond the level that the health care system in the country can handle. Everyone needs to be working together for this mission to succeed, religion is least of our challenges in these times. But, habits die hard, that is what we see in the irresponsible venturing out and not practicing social distancing by many. That is what we see in the divisive media narratives in the past few days. 

Over a telephone conversation couple of days ago, a Muslim friend mentioned that after the recent media portrayal of the community, they are discussing how quickly their children can be educated in foreign language so that they can migrate at the next available opportunity out of India. But, for every one of those who  can afford to get away, there are million of poor ones that are stuck in this country and can't go anywhere. Unless the divisive narrative stops and inclusive ways emerge as part of our public discourse and we stop invoking religion as a way of insinuating sections of our own people, we will fail collectively again and again as a nation. Like the old man of India once wrote in a different context, ''I see no way of achieving anything in this country without a lasting heart unity between Hindus and Mussalmans''. Whether it is a pandemic or achieving multi-trillion economic goals, the Hindus and Muslims of this country need to work towards this 'heart unity' for us to succeed.