Free to question India’s imperfections: Laila Tyabji
“You will I am sure not be surprised to hear that I have
elected to remain in India (Hindustan) & not to go over to Pakistan. I am
absolutely opposed to the Muslim League ideology & mentality & it would
have been a gross betrayal of all my ideals & hopes if I threw them over
for the tempting posts that they are offering to Muslim officers who propose to
get themselves transferred there.”
Never in my 68 years have I thought for even a milli-second
of living anywhere else except India. Not even when, in the wake of the Ayodhya
agitation, I received a stream of poisonous hate mails and a packet of turds
(in a mithai box!!) I love the multilayered multiplicity of India, its
synergies & paradoxes, its many diverging & converging cultural
streams, its colour & chaos, the hit-and-miss judaad of past and present,
malls and mandirs, East and West; its unexpected but inherent certainties…. In
any case, good or bad, it is MY country.
So it feels strange to be told, when I critically question
any aspect, that I should go live somewhere else – Pakistan for instance. I am
utterly amazed that Aamir Khan’s confession of momentary vulnerability should
be termed a “moral offence” by no less a person than MJ Akbar! I used to so
admire the reasoned clarity of his writing.
I have always over-used adjectives. My English teacher would
red-pencil an acerbic commentary. A rebuke I secretly courted was “oxymoron”. I
loved its sound as well as its meaning – two adjectives contradicting each
other.
These days I am being turned into an oxymoron myself!
“Indian Muslim” is an identity increasingly open to suspicion by
self-proclaimed ‘patriots’; one’s own patriotism needing constant justification
plus a certificate that one doesn’t eat beef or critique the nation. That a
well-known Sadhvi can dub Shahrukh Khan a Pakistani agent and not be arrested
for libel, instead accruing a trail of approving social media comments, or the
Culture Minister awards A P J Abdul Kalam the accolade of being a good man
“despite being a Muslim” is not exactly a comfortable feeling. That someone can
be lynched to death for having meat in his fridge is even more eery.
I love India and intend to live and die here, but I also
want to be able to freely question its imperfections. Just as I have the
freedom to say that Islam has been hijacked by a gang of demonic and utterly
vile hoodlums and that the rest of us Muslims seem helpless to combat this
evil. One’s religion should have absolutely nothing to do with freedom of
speech. Nor should ‘tolerance’ play a part in this equation.
‘Intolerance’ is a horrible word, even more horrible in
practice. But ‘tolerance’ is only marginally better. I don’t want to be
‘tolerated’ in condescending, rather grudging acceptance – as if I (and other
minorities) were something not very nice that won’t go away! I want my being
here to be taken for granted. I feel an integral part of this nation, and I
want everyone else to think so too. ‘Tolerance’ implies you can just about
exist as long as you don’t step out of line. An attitude typified by the
Haryana Chief Minister’s comment that Muslims can stay in India as long as they
don’t eat beef! I think we need to do better for our minorities, be they
Muslims, Christians, Dalits, transsexuals, tribals, women in mini skirts,
people with same-sex partners, artists flying fanciful styrofoam cows in the
sky….
None of us want to be ‘tolerated’. We want to be ourselves. It’s not a
favour – its our constitutional right.
It’s not that prejudice didn’t exist before. Even in the
sanitised bastions where Chetan Bhagat claims we phoney liberals are bred –
boarding school, an English-speaking upper middle-class home, life as a design
professional in Delhi, my work with craftspeople and DASTKAR, there was the
occasional blip – landlords reluctant to rent one a barsati, overheard jokes
about the violence, randiness, and breeding capacity of Muslims, the aforesaid
box of turds…. These occasional infelicities were counterbalanced by great
warmth and acceptance by most. These days, such crude generalisations,
generally born of ignorance, seem to have hardened into a dividing of lines. An
‘us’ and ‘them’, escalating into violence as well as words – and given full
licence. A tacit assumption that being a minority means being acquiescent and
silent. There are new social media fatwas – youngschool kids sending chain WhatsApp
messages urging their friends to boycott Shahrukh Khan films because he’s a
“Bad Man”; a lakh offered to slap Aamir Khan. Urdu writers being whitewashed
from the curriculum.
In 1947, my father, then a serving member of the ICS, wrote
in a letter to my grandfather:
“You will I am sure not be surprised to hear that I have
elected to remain in India (Hindustan) & not to go over to Pakistan. I am
absolutely opposed to the Muslim League ideology & mentality & it would
have been a gross betrayal of all my ideals & hopes if I threw them over
for the tempting posts that they are offering to Muslim officers who propose to
get themselves transferred there.”
My father later told me that one of his abiding sadnesses
was how few of his Hindu colleagues understood why he didn’t opt for Pakistan –
a country supposedly made for Muslims. For him, and the rest of our extended
family, it was inconceivable they exchange the eclectic vibrance of India for
the claustrophobia of an Islamic state.
68 years later, it still seems difficult for many to
understand that, Christian or Muslim. Aamir Khan or Aam Admi, most of us are
just thoroughly ordinary Indians, seeking happiness, sanity and security like
everyone else. And wanting our own voice. Why can’t we all simply ‘adjust’ to
each other and the cultural baggage we each carry – just as we do in our
over-crowded trains and buses; amicably negotiating awkward tin trunks, crying
babies, and strangely wrapped parcels; miraculously bonding over our tiffins.
And please trolls, stop twittering every time we try to
course-correct India – it’s ours as well.
Laila Tyabji is founder of Dastkar and received a Padma
Shri in 2012
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