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| Markandey Katju (Source: Nikhil Kanekal) |
"Ninety percent of Indians are idiots. You people don’t have brains in your heads. It is so easy to take you for a ride. A communal riot could be incited in Delhi for a small amount of Rs 2,000. All somebody has to do is make a mischievous gesture of disrespect to a place of worship and people start fighting each other. There was a propaganda that Hindi was the language of Hindus and Urdu of Muslims. Our ancestors also studied Urdu, but it is so easy to fool you. You are idiots so how difficult is it to make an idiot of you. Why am I saying such harsh things, I don't want to demoralise Indian people, I love Indian people, I love you all. I want you to prosper, I don't want you to remain fools. I want you to understand the whole game. Even the educated people in India voted in elections on caste or sectarian lines which showed how backward people are."Though he said this back in December, he stuck with it in March, stating that Indians vote like "livestock", giving reason to the number of criminals in Parliament elected along communal lines.
I was particularly struck as I was receiving "Happy Eid" greetings and images from friends on Facebook. One particular was from Varanasi, which I had forwarded, putting the comment " Varanasi: Mecca for many Hindus. HOME for many Muslims." It reminded me again of the communal struggles in India both at national and personal levels.
The issue is particularly blatant in places like Varanasi, where the majority can be staunch and people fear change of their traditions. I remember first visiting Vishwanath Temple. Men with rifles guarded the part-temple-part-mosque structure in numbers as if protecting the Gaza Strip. Why would the source of "ahimsa" need an army and guns?
When you reach a strip of road between Lanka and Godwolia in the city, you enter a Muslim majority neighborhood. Slowly the saris meld into punjabis and burkas, the white lungi cloths of men turn plaid and their hair and beards suddenly become cropped and trimmed, donned with boxy hats. And conspicuously, homes and shops are pushed behind cages. Yes, cages. A friend told me that the cages are for when riots occur. They'll get behind their cages and get their guns out.
And that's mild talk compared to what I hear from some people that I've met. A lot of the social backwardness of India is blamed on Muslims, particularly over-population. Muslim civil law allows them to keep multiple wives, which I don't see as much of a benefit as having a single spouse is stress enough.
It also doesn't help that much of the quite regular terrorist activity in India is visibly Muslim. Though, to be fair, there are also Christian terrorists (separatists?), and Hindus killed Gandhi for being too pro-Muslim.
The majority of the minority (about 20% of India), Muslims are the most visible and powerful of the non-Hindu groups. Of course, like with any grouping in India, "Muslims" are not really one group. Like "Hindus" they are a collection of languages, creeds and traditions, but politically they are treated as one voting block.
Currently, Narendra Modi is a political conundrum both in the national and international scene. It would seem like a no-brainer for Muslims to give the Prime Minister hopeful an easy thumbs down. Modi was on guard while Hindus conducted systematic arson and attacks against Muslims in his state, Gujarat. With his party, the BJP, keeping the center, he stayed in power, but the USA continues to deny him a visa. All of this would make you think no Muslim would touch Modi or the BJP with a twenty-meter pole, but it's more complicated than that, of course. I can't get into it now, but to make a long, convoluted story short, the political scenario has reached such lows for everyone that now some Muslims are cheering for Modi to make it to the top.
Justice Katju said that before 1857 there was no communalism in the country but the situation is different now. "Today 80 percent Hindus are communal and 80 percent Muslims are communal. This is the harsh truth, bitter truth that I am telling you."
Though there was a recent mall incident in Modi's state where Muslims were charged an entry fee on Eid while non-Muslims were not, there is a sense that Muslims in Gujarat are doing better economically than other Muslims in India. In fact, Gujarat in general has a strong economy, many attributing it all to Modi.
And money is everyone's religion.
In a convoluted way, maybe Modi could make India less communal, if he's able to fork up the economic goods, which is what almost everyone believes he can do. Money pacifies simmering communities as long as it seems to be thrown around equally... enough. (Update: Do I have enough evidence to support that? Not sure.)
One person commented that the idiotic 90% applies to the whole world. Maybe he's right. America is far from perfect. People contribute America's change mostly to the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. But was there something more to it? Still "change" is relative and it took America until now to elect its first black president. It has yet to have a female lead the nation, which India has done and almost did again recently. (Yeah, arguably she IS the leader.)
So on this passing Independence Day, between Eid and Rakhi, we remember those who fought so hard for freedom. But, why did people want freedom so badly? It seems like a silly question. But the answer is not so that we would be enslaved again to our own idiocy. And it's not that Indians should lose their sense of community.
I guess MLK Jr. had it right when he started it with a dream. The dream of Hindutva is an India erased of a the Muslim identity, where Muslims take on Hindu names and their woman wear Hindu symbols of marriage.
But what about the dream of integration? That was more like Gandhi's dream, and they shot him. They shot MLK Jr. as well, and his dream is still alive today. Dreams don't die unless we let them. Who's keeping the hope of peace between Hindus and Muslims alive today?
Anyone?
