How to undo our distrust of Muslim brethren

On reading my article in The Tribune last week, a close relative living in Goa wrote: “We too have experienced the change in the thinking of colleagues we so far trusted as broad-minded.” My immediate family members in Mumbai spoke of the same experience. My own Hindu friends voice their fears of the ‘other’ very openly, sometimes, even vehemently! This set me thinking. What then can our Muslim brethren do to gain the confidence of people who have started thinking in this manner?

In this context, let me recount a personal experience I had within 15 days of the Gujarat riots of 2002. I had gone to Ahmedabad to find out primarily why the police failed to avert so many killings. I did receive the reply confidentially. The serving senior officers of Gujarat had worked under me in 1985. As part of my inquiries in the city, I contacted a prominent Hindu doctor who I had met earlier during my four-month stint in Gujarat. He immediately arranged a dinner where 50-60 educated and economically comfortable upper-class Hindus were present. I was taken aback when they vociferously asserted that the pogrom carried out at the instance of Hindu fanatics was justified!

They talked about four wives, a dozen children, historical wrongs, the sacking of the Somnath temple by Mahmud of Ghazni not once but twice, and other insults heaped on hapless Hindus by the Muslim invaders. I understood immediately that following the massacre, Mr Modi had gained immense popularity in Gujarat and that was to help him in his eventual rise to the Prime Minister’s gaddi in 2014.

One of the reactions that my article elicited was as follows: “If tomorrow a UPA government is formed, then will India be regaining its lost glory as a tolerant mother of all civilisation? Or was it one till six years back when Modi and Shah came and destroyed it? I believe Hindus would love to remain the way they have always been. You insist on pitting any imbecile against Modi and when Modi wins, you blame Hindus and not imbecility. Kejriwal won massively because of Hindu votes. Don’t tell me injecting imbecility is tantamount to Hindu communalism!” This gentleman I learnt was a respected member of the junior bureaucracy in one of our Intelligence services. He perhaps felt that I was supporting the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi, which I incidentally was not. I do not think, in fact I know that Rahul Gandhi is not an imbecile. He is an intelligent and knowledgeable man but lacks political instincts and would make a very poor politician. Though I like him personally, I would not like to have him as my PM. I sympathise with him because he would like to keep up the family tradition but knows he is not cut out for it.

I would never think of condemning Hindus or calling them communal because my own ancestors were Goan Hindus. I have numerous Hindu friends, more numerous than friends in my own community. The interlocutor obviously wants to say that Hindus have always been tolerant and welcoming and they have only now realised that they have been taken for a ride by those they had welcomed.

What I personally feel is that Islam’s fixation on religion is what makes them different and objects of suspicion by followers of other religions. When anybody says that their God is the only true one, a door opens for strife and rancour.

I also personally disapprove of some of the practices followed as religious duties by Muslims. The hijab and the niqab are both anathema to any person who like me is a believer in gender equality and the dignity of women. You don’t have to be provocative in your dress but surely people don’t lust for women by merely seeing their faces or glance at their hairstyles.

The greatest insult to liberal values was Rajiv Gandhi’s introduction of a law to reverse the court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case. Here was an old woman who was divorced at an advanced age and left to fend for herself! The court rightly held that she was entitled to maintenance from her ex-husband, however meagre the amount. Which liberal thinking person would call that unfair? But the mullahs had their way and forced Rajiv to neutralise the court decision, to the astonishment of even some of his own friends. To my mind, that was the beginning of the Congress’ downturn.

The traditional Muslim’s insistence on obscurantist laws does frighten not only Hindus, but even followers of other Abrahamic religions like Christianity. The Bombay High Court had asked me to opine on a demand by some orthodox Muslims of Mumbai to sacrifice even bullocks in their residential localities on three days of Bakri Eid. On going through the records, I learnt that the British colonial rulers had themselves recorded that the health of citizens would be decidedly affected if this was allowed. The government of the day had shifted the abattoir from Crawford Market to Bandra, then to Kurla and finally to Deonar in the suburbs in the interest of people’s health as well as their religious sentiments.

When I gave my opinion, the Muslim gentleman approached the Congress Chief Minister, who called a meeting of all stakeholders and invited me also to address the gathering. When I reiterated what I had opined to the HC, the Muslim gentry roared their disapproval in unison. There are many such practices which my Muslim friends should think of abandoning, but that cannot be dictated by others. Just like other religions had reforms to make their thinking more modern, Islam should also follow.

But that does not mean an ordinary Muslim, who is just like any of us — Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Christian or Parsi (all religions mentioned and listed in the CAA) — should be discriminated against for practices that have come down from their own clergy. Like all of us, they have their share of joys and sorrows and it is incumbent upon each of us, particularly those belonging to the majority community, to make them feel they are one of us. This is the unwritten rule in all civilised societies.