That such a flagrant violation of the egalitarianism, that is the bedrock of Islam, has continued so far is no reason why it must continue forever. When there are no ‘Shahi’ mosques, how then can there be ‘Shahi’ imams? What is more, the practice of hereditary imamat, which has no basis in either religion or tradition, must be stopped at the earliest. It is time that the rightful custodian of the Jama Masjid, the Delhi Wakf Board that has employed the imam on a monthly salary of 500 rupees since 1962, must exert its legal right over the administration of the mosque. Established under the Wakf Act of 1954, the Delhi Wakf Board accords no special status to the Jama Masjid which, despite its historical character, is not a protected monument and therefore not under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India. The Delhi Wakf Board must seize its courage in both hands and put an end to this outrageous practice of an employee picking his own successor with flagrant disregard for all religious and legal procedures. It must reassert its authority as the rightful custodian of the mosque and play a more pro-active role in the appointment of an imam who need not be from the Bukhari family. And the Bukhari family themselves needs to remember that the only example of father-to-son succession in Islamic history is the infamous one of the Ummayid caliphs, Muawiyah and Yazid.
6
CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE FALLACY OF THE EXCLUDED MIDDLE
WHILE THE KILLING OF THE French cartoonists in a despicable act of violence in January 2015 in Paris is inexcusable and must be condemned in unequivocal terms, I found myself hard-pressed to hold a placard and declare ‘Je suis Charlie’. As the pressure mounted, among friends and colleagues and inexorably and palpably on social media, to claim ownership of Charlie Hebdo, and by extension, all forms of radical expressions of dissent, freedom of speech and the right to offend, I felt the need to say in equally clear terms: ‘I am not Charlie Hebdo and I am not a terrorist’. I cannot have a choice forced upon me. I cannot be deliberately offensive. And I refuse to revel in puerile ways of ridiculing the ‘other’.
In the din of clamorous cries of outrage and condemnation that the killings had evoked, moderation seemed to have become the first casualty. What is more, for one – and especially a Muslim – to withhold one’s solidarity for what Charlie Hebdo was and what it consistently stood for is tantamount to being the ‘other’, and by extension humourless, rigid and untrustworthy, in a deeply polarized world. The irony that the right to dissent works both ways seems lost on the champions of free speech. This, to my mind, seems akin to the American president George W. Bush’s famous assertion while launching his ‘war on terror’: ‘If you are not with us, you are against us.’ The frightening right-wingism of the defenders of subversion and satire is matched by the ignorance of what Charlie Hebdo has published – not occasionally but consistently and over a period of time.
The killing of twelve persons is not the first extreme reaction evoked by the satirical newspaper since its inception in 1970; in its previous avatar, called Hara-Kiri, it was shut down by the French government for making fun of Charles de Gaulle. After a lull of nearly ten years of inactivity, it resumed publication in 1992 and adopted a deliberately offensive stance towards all forms of authority and religion. Its offices were firebombed in November 2011 after the October 2011 edition – a special issue ‘guest-edited’ by the Prophet Muhammad – caused widespread outrage and condemnation among both Muslims and non-Muslims. Many among the French establishment found the cartoons not merely in poor taste and totally lacking in humour – wit and humour being essential ingredients of any form of satire – but also ‘excessive’ in every which way. Politicians and opinion writers went so far as to find the drawings in this special issue ‘irresponsible, inopportune and imbecilic’. The drawings from this special issue are widely available on the internet; discerning readers may do well to see and judge for themselves. The cover proclaims a punishment of ‘100 lashes if you don’t die laughing’; I frankly didn’t. While it is true that humour is subjective and my inability to find wit and humour in those drawings may be due to my personal shortcoming, but surely satire must have an element of intelligence. I was unable to find any sharp, penetrating insights, any flashes of brilliance, even a smidgeon of genuine understanding behind the banality and nastiness.
Joe Sacco, an acclaimed graphic artist, writes in The Guardian of 9 January 2015, ‘Along with grief came thoughts about the nature of some of Charlie Hebdo’s satire. Though tweaking the noses of Muslims might be as permissible as it is now dangerous, it has never struck me as anything other than a vapid way to use the pen.’ Pointing out the ‘limits’ of satire, Sacco goes on to note, ‘… when we draw a line, we are often crossing one too.’ Charlie Hebdo was crossing that line repeatedly and doing so with impunity. Of course, its cartoonists did not deserve to die for it. Of course, those who killed them were as misguided as the cartoonists themselves. Of course, the sane sensible reaction to any form of offense is to ignore and disregard. Of course, the right thing to do is to not buy Charlie Hebdo if you don’t like what it prints.
Refuting charges of Islamophobia and racism, Charlie Hebdo has claimed the right to offend and offend with impunity and with equal opportunities to all. While it is true that the newspaper has taken pot-shots at all religions, including Christianity and Judaism, it is also true that its staff dip their pens in an especial vitriol when it comes to Islam. It has always derived a perverse pleasure in displaying a gleeful irreverence for Islam and its Prophet. Given that Muslims constitute the single largest – and most visibly distinct - minority in France, its darts have found a perfect target among the immigrant populations crowded in the urban ghettos that skirt Paris. Given also that the Muslim immigrants are the poorest and most disenfranchised of French citizens, the consistent attacks in print acquired a sinister xenophobic tinge in a country that is becoming alarmingly rightist despite its avowed secular credentials.
It must also be remembered that one of Charlie Hebdo’s staff members, Maurice Sinet, was sacked in 2009 for being anti-Semitic. Sinet had mocked the then President Sarkozy’s son for marrying a Jewish heiress for her money; he was lambasted by the French intelligentsia and pressure was brought upon the newspaper’s editor to fire him since he refused to apologize. The newspaper showed no such sensitivity towards Islam and all Muslims, including the Prophet Muhammad, are routinely depicted as savages and barbarians. Also, the stereotyping is wilful and motivated, with a strong political subtext: all cartoons show Muslims as bearded, turban- or hijab-wearing, jellabiya-clad, thus reinforcing the link between Islam and West Asia. All Muslim caricatures have popping eyes and lurid smirks as though all Muslims are gun-wielding fanatics, such as the two misguided youth who eventually killed ten of Charlie Hebdo’s staff members. It becomes difficult, therefore, to see Charlie Hebdo as a bastion of left-wing anti-clericalism, and a champion of free speech and an equal-opportunity offender. And, hence, my refusal to extend solidarity for a gratuitous provocateur.
7
KABUL FIZA
THE AIR INDIA FLIGHT TO Kabul is half empty; it has only a smattering of aid workers, motley service providers, and a handful of ‘medical tourists’ returning home after treatment in Delhi hospitals. The Kabul International Airport is small and empty too; it has more helicopters than aircraft and more UN planes than international airliners. The horror and devastation visited upon poor benighted Afghanistan is very much in evidence in its shattered capital. Shelled out buildings, large bald patches on the surrounding hills where trees have been indiscriminately felled and every bit of twig and bark used up as fuel and fodder, machine-gun toting security personnel and the ubiquitous sand-bagged barricades greet us.
Being hindi, we are dostum at large, and wearing a sari I am constantly being quizzed about Tulsi (the long-suffering daughter-in-law of one of the longest-running saas-bahu serials on Indian television) who seems to have a near-manic fan following among Afghan women. India clearly is top of the pops and not merely due to the popularity of its Hindi films and televis
ion soaps. Indian aid is helping build roads, set up hospitals, draft the Constitution, even build the Parliament.
At the seminar on Badshah Khan I have come to attend, speaker after speaker urges the nation to heed the words of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, ‘the hero of non-violence’, known to us in India as Frontier Gandhi, and revered by Pakhtuns as Bachcha Khan (aka Badshah Khan). This gentle giant stands tall among his countrymen for creating a sense of Pakhtun identity that had dignity and confidence, and yet was inclusive of a larger worldview. The irony here is unmistakable: that a country ravaged by internecine warfare for over four decades, where the army is the single largest employer, should so adore the man and uphold his teachings as the only way to bring about lasting peace. While it is heartening to see that the forces of sectarianism have not mowed down this tall poppy of the Indian freedom movement, it is disconcerting to be told that the Congress, never one for referendums, showed indecent haste in taking a referendum in the North West Frontier Province and thus abandoned the Khudai Khitmatgars to their fate!
Outside the University’s oasis of relative calm, Kabul is a shattered city; slowly picking up its broken pieces it seems to be limping towards normalcy but the pace is slow, even laboured. While there is ample evidence of rebuilding and construction activity everywhere, the city is still under siege. The enemy lies within. The fear of abductions hangs heavy and the newest terror tactic is walking human bombs – young and impoverished men from rural areas induced to wear jackets laden with explosives, made to walk into crowded areas where they can wreak havoc and do maximum damage while someone somewhere sets them off with a hand-held remote. This casual talk of human bombs brings home the sobering truth: we in India have somehow stayed safe from this macabre form of terrorism. God willing that our young people, no matter how misguided, remain free of this most pernicious of all forms of extremism!
Sitting in a sun-dappled patio under a grapevine festooned trellis, the sense of the surreal is very strong. The surrounding tables are filled with foreign aid workers chattering in a Babel of tongues. The table is groaning under the weight of an over-priced but very authentic Lebanese meal. The tinkling of the fountains is muted by the Arab music wafting from discreet speakers. We have reached this sanctuary of privilege and tranquility after crossing three metal gates, each manned by private militia in full military gear. The restaurant itself, located in the tony Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, looks like an army barracks from the outside; it has high compound walls topped by barbed wire and no windows, nothing, in fact, to give any clue as to what lies behind its faceless walls. The price for culinary adventures is clearly high in Kabul, and affordable for a minuscule minority of the privileged few.
The Bagh-e-Babur, however, is just the opposite. Accessible to everyone, it is every Kabuli’s pride and joy. With its awe-inspiring vista and clear-cut symmetrical grounds and flowing water channels, this sixteenth-century garden is a precursor of the Mughal style gardens found in Lahore and Srinagar built by the later Mughals and imitated by the colonial horticulturalists for Lutyens’ Vice-Regal Lodge that is the present-day Rashtrapati Bhawan. Though first buried in Agra, Babur’s body was taken, according to his instructions, to his favourite spot on a mountainside overlooking the city of Kabul sometime in 1540. In 1607, his grandson, the emperor Jahangir, paid a visit to Kabul and ordered a handsome marble tombstone and an elegant pavilion to be built south of the grave enclosure. His son, and Babur’s great grandson, Shahjahan, visited Kabul in 1639 and added a marble mosque to the now-handsome complex. Years of neglect had made it woefully run down. Painstakingly restored by the Agha Khan Trust for Culture, under the supervision of a bright young conservation architect from India – Ratish Nanda – the restored garden is now a delightful haven of serenity. Green young saplings have been planted to replace the mighty chinar trees that were chopped down for firewood during the terrible years of war and mayhem. Grass grows again in the gardens that had been taken over by civilians displaced during the wars. And the fountains and water channels gush once again with clear water. Babur’s grave lies open to the sky behind delicately carved marble screens. Birdsong wafts from the trees and mingles with the happy sounds of children playing and families picnicking on the grass.
The Kabuli men and women we meet are a far cry from the Kabuliwallah of popular Indian imagination. While each has a story of personal sorrow or loss to narrate, and a great many speak fluent Hindustani picked up during their years in Pakistan (in most cases in refugee camps), their spirit is undaunted and unharmed. Many have come to India or are hopeful of coming here: to travel, study, or obtain medical treatment. Speaking to them, I am reminded of the signs in Pushto I have seen posted in Apollo Hospital in Delhi, the ‘Afghan platter’ being served in the hospital’s cafeteria as well as the ‘little Kabul’ I have seen in the bustling middle-class neighbourhood of Lajpat Nagar in South Delhi. Open-air tandoors bake the famous Kabuli bread and little kiosks sell the fragrant, mildly-spiced pulao. Fashionably-dressed Afghan girls, though with their head draped with a scarf, shop, eat, talk in busy marketplaces. Those cameos of the Afghan presence in Delhi flash before my eyes surprising me by how little heed we in Delhi, blithe and blasé as we are, have paid to the trauma of these friendly strangers in our midst.
In Kabul, I am struck by the difference in the Afghan response to India and Pakistan. Striking an unmistakable blow to the proponents of pan-Islamism and Islamic brotherhood that over-arches nations and ethnicities, the Afghans consider India by far to be the lesser of the two evils. And it isn’t only because India is helping build its broken-down roads, hospitals, parliament, et al; nor is it because of a long tradition of friendly bilateral relations. Possibly, it is because, as the Afghans realize, India poses no threat to their internal security. Pakistan, on the other hand, does. Lutfullah Mastkhil, a sharp, savvy and cynical young journalist, is trenchant in his criticism of Pakistan. He recounts the Afghan dream of reclaiming ‘their’ lands all the way from the Amu Darya to the Indus and how Pakistan will never let peace prevail because a ‘strong Afghanistan means no Pakistan.’ Also, ‘Af-Pak’, the pejorative term coined by American strategists for this geo-political hotspot, is seen by many as a deeply offensive yoking.
Keen to rebuild their broken country, the Afghan people are nevertheless wary of indiscriminate outside help. An editorial in Afghanistan Times goes so far as to proclaim that the only way to deal with the abduction menace is to stop giving top jobs to foreign nationals and to employ only Afghans! A substantial section of young, educated, upwardly mobile Kabulis are voluble in their listing of woes: the Karzai government has not done enough, the process of nation-building is too slow, the corruption is way too rampant, the Taliban are forever regrouping and rearming themselves. ‘The sharp difference between Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan needs to be lessened, or it will destroy Kabul,’ Mastkhil warns. Kabul, we are told repeatedly, is not Afghanistan. It is another country out there. It is the sort of country where poor young men can be persuaded to commit unimaginable acts of terror in the name of religion and at the cost of a sack of wheat flour.
Postscript: Overheard a wireless conversation somewhere in a field awash with pink and white opium poppies, a military man is asking a Taliban soldier: ‘What is the difference between who is killed and who is martyred?’ The answer: ‘Those whom we kill are martyred; all others who die go straight to hell.’
8
ON RETURNING FROM DHAKA
A SURPRISE EMAIL FROM AN acquaintance inviting me to join a regional study group to Dhaka makes me catch my breath and register only one word: imam. Why on earth would anyone think of me as part of a group that is supposed to interact with imams? And that too, in Bangladesh since I know very little about imams in general and virtually nothing about Bangladeshi ones! I write back to say that while I would love to visit Bangladesh, I don’t think I can last out in the company of imams and maulvis for four entire days. In answer, I am told rather sternly that imams and maulvis are a fact of
life and one must learn to live with them. I am also told, without further ado, that I am being counted in. So, there I was: counted in and accounted for, winging my way to Dhaka.
My visit * coincided with the Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s four-day state visit to New Delhi, and the drubbing received by the Indian cricket team at the hands of the Sri Lankans in Dhaka. Always the Big Brother in this part of South Asia, India, and all things Indian, hold centrestage during the few days I spend travelling through Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina’s visit, her meetings with her Indian counterparts, the vexing issue of water sharing and porous borders – hog the front pages of all the local dailies. The government and its supporters declare the state visit a runaway success, lauding everything from Sheikh Hasina’s wardrobe to her statesmanship and firm control over the talks. The Opposition, led by the voluble Begum Zia, pan each one of the above, declaring the visit nothing short of a disaster.
But You Don't Look Like a Muslim Page 4
