But You Don't Look Like a Muslim Read online

  In the end, while it is clear why those who went did so, it is not always entirely evident why those who didn’t go chose to stay back. Was it gross sentiment or astute foresight that kept them? Was the choice between Nehru over Jinnah made from the head or the heart? The generation that could have fully and satisfactorily answered these questions is either dead and gone or too frail to be disturbed by ghosts from a troubled past. Hoping to find some clues, I find myself turning the pages of my grandfather’s autobiography, Khwab Baqui Hain (Dreams Still Remain); his words bring me solace and hold out hope for my own future and that of my children:

  I am a Musalman and, in the words of Maulana Azad, a ‘caretaker of the thirteen hundred years of the wealth that is Islam.’ My deciphering of Islam is the key to the interpretation of my spirit. I am also an Indian and this Indianness is as much a part of my being. Islam does not deter me from believing in my Indian identity. Again, to quote Maulana Azad, if anything, ‘it shows the way.’ While it is true that I imbibed religion from my family and the environment in which I grew up, my own experiences and understanding made its foundations stronger. In Badayun, religion was the name for blind faith in traditionalism and age-old orthodoxies, miracles and marvels, faith healing by pirs and fakirs. I believe Belief in One God leads the way to equality among all mankind. Allah is not simply Rabbu’l-Muslimeen [‘the Lord of Muslims’]; He is also Rabbu’l Aalameen [‘the Lord of the World’]. The all-encompassing compactness of the personality of the Prophet of Islam has always drawn me. Islam doesn’t teach renunciation from the affairs of the world; it teaches us how to fulfil our duties in this world while at the same time instructing us to regard this mortal world as the field in which we sow the seeds for the Other World. There is no obduracy in Islam. I have seldom found obdurate people to be good human beings. The Islam that I know gives more importance to Huqooq-ul ibad [‘rights of the people’] rather than Huqooq-al Allah [‘rights of God’].

  I am hopeful that Islam will ‘show the way’, as indeed it did for my grandfather - a much-feted Urdu writer, critic, poet and teacher - and will in no way deter me from believing in my Indian identity as much as in my religious one.

  As I clock in a half century and a bit more, I find I have done my share of soul searching and raking over the ashes. I am done, too, with defensive or aggressive posturing, or the equally ridiculous sitting-on-the-fence. Life has come full circle. My daughters went to the same school I did and then the same university. The clamorous unruly Jana Sangh of my childhood has been replaced by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a stronger, more vociferous, yet no less militant face of the Hindu right wing. My daughters meet their share of Muslim baiters. I have told them what my father told me. As I watch them grow into confident young people, I know that they shall cope, as I did. That they shall enjoy the dual yet in no way conflicting identities – of being Muslim and being Indian in no particular order. Despite Ayodhya and Gujarat, despite the politicians who come and go spouting venom and spreading biases, despite the many bad jokes about katuas, despite the discrimination that is sometimes overt and often covert, I do feel it is a good thing that families like mine chose not to hitch their star to the wagon of the Muslim League.

  2

  LIVING IN JAMIA, COPING WITH GHETTOIZATION

  LIVING IN THE JAMIA NEIGHBOURHOOD has always been tough. The police ‘encounter’ of September 2008, dubbed the ‘Battle of Batla House’ by the press, only made it tougher in the terrible days of its immediate aftermath. Biases got sharper; discrimination more overt; and the gloves were well and truly off. While the sharp edge of public perception about this neighbourhood may have blunted somewhat as Batla House receded into the shadows of its everyday existence, far from the glare of the media, living in the Jamia area continues to be an exercise in fortitude. For coping with a ghettoization that is not entirely of one’s own choice is no easy matter.

  Some years ago, when I had moved from Gulmohar Park, a tony locality in South Delhi, to the Jamia neighbourhood, little was I to know that I would be changing not merely a postal address and a landline telephone number but virtually exchanging one way of life for another.

  The first rude shock came when I arranged my daughter’s birthday party at our home. I sent detailed directions along with handmade cards. My daughter, then nine, came home in tears because most of her friends had declined the invitation. Perplexed by this sudden about-turn, I called all the mommies only to be told by most that they wouldn’t be able to come ‘there’. ‘Gulmohar Park ki baat alag thi; Jamia side ka hame koi idea nahi hai.’ (It was different in Gulmohar Park; we have no idea about the Jamia side.) I persevered by offering to draw maps, even volunteering to pick the kids from the nearest big landmark, the Holy Family Hospital. Yet, attendance slumped hugely from previous years and the number of no-shows far outnumbered the few hardy souls who agreed to come so far into this neck of the woods. Thereafter, I learnt my lesson by organizing all such events at a conveniently located McDonalds. Needless to say, a fair number of little boys and girls showed up without much ado.

  That Delhi is ridiculously snobbish about addresses is a well-known fact. In social interactions of the more superficial kind, where you live defines, if not dictates, who you are. But I have seen another colour creep into run-of-the-mill, idiosyncratic snobbery when I disclose where I live. There is an imperceptible change. Some wonder aloud, ‘Oh, isn’t it far?’ as though anything in Delhi is not far from somewhere or the other! Others look blank, ‘Jamia? Okhla? As in Industrial Area?’ Still others walk away, wanting to have very little to do with someone who lives ‘out there’. And out there where I live, several basic amenities are missing, that people in other parts of the city take for granted. Delivery boys from restaurants in the nearby New Friends Colony (NFC) do not venture out there. You can go blue in the face arguing that Jamia Nagar is closer to NFC as the crow flies than the most far-flung pocket of Sukhdev Vihar, but they stick to their ‘rule’! Nor will dry-cleaners who promise free home delivery to the furthest block in Maharani Bagh come to your doorstep. The same applies to an assortment of chemists, florists and grocers. Believe me, I have argued, pleaded and threatened. Nothing works. They won’t go ‘out there’!

  When I decided to spend less time commuting and move closer to my then place of work, the Jamia Millia Islamia, I spent ten tortuous months looking for a house in nearby New Friends Colony, Sukhdev Vihar and Sarita Vihar. Perfectly decent people in their perfectly middle-class drawing rooms froze us off when they saw our business cards or heard our names. Others reneged on deals worked out through property dealers saying they wanted ‘vegetarian tenants’! So, while a great many Muslims no doubt prefer to live in the Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods of Shaheen Bagh, Ghaffar Manzil, Noor Nagar, Zakir Nagar, Batla House, Abul Fazal Enclave, et al for reasons of ‘security’, many, I suspect, do so because they are left with no choice. They come in droves to live in some of these over-congested, ill-equipped localities that are no better than urban slums because landlords in mixed neighbourhoods look upon them with suspicion and mistrust.

  And what do the civic authorities do to tackle the chaos that unspools from these densely-packed warrens? They turn a blind eye. They drop an invisible cordon sanitaire between ‘here’ and ‘out there’, thus, for all practical purposes demarcating civil administration into two clearly-defined spaces: one neatly labelled ‘organized’, the other falling under the clamorous category of ‘unorganized’. Other epithets can be used for these two categories: authorized/unauthorized, clean/filthy, orderly/chaotic, spacious/cramped, cared for/uncared for, and so on. In the case of the outer fringes of Zakir Nagar that skirt the A-Block of New Friends Colony, this contrast is especially stark: pockets of abysmal neglect exist cheek-by-jowl with oases of privilege. Yet this ugly disparity seldom causes so much as a raised eyebrow let alone any real degree of concern or introspection, either among the duly elected people’s representatives or on the part of the bureaucrats who head our civic bodies.
r />   While all of Delhi has a population of 11.72 per cent Muslims, the Jamia Nagar neighbourhood is almost 98 per cent Muslim; the Okhla ward alone has a population of 1,25,935. For this large body of people, there are branches of only three nationalized banks; the area having been declared a ‘Red Area’, i.e. populated by ‘defaulters’, few private banks even dream of venturing out here. The eight-kilometre radius bogey for school admissions (mandated by the Delhi High Court) applies far more rigorously here than elsewhere, the mere address being enough to invoke the rulebook. There is no functioning MCD dispensary; local doctors refer all emergency cases to the nearby Holy Family Hospital (the nearest government hospital is several kilometres away). What is more, there are no Mother Dairy or Safal outlets (franchised by the Delhi government and ubiquitous all over the city and even in distant Gurgaon for their moderately priced fruits, vegetables and assorted perishables) for this sprawling area; a small booth vending milk products was installed on the Jamia campus in 2008 on the then vice chancellor’s personal initiative but that can barely cater to the students from nearby hostels. Repeated requests to the manager of Mother Dairy has resulted in empty promises and earnest hand-wringing and little more. There are no Fair Price Shops, no government-funded training institutes to provide vocational training or any sort of facility to absorb the huge mass of school dropouts. In certain colonies such as Shaheen Bagh and Abul Fazal there is no drinking water either; people buy water just as they would buy vegetables or groceries. Every morning you can see rickshaw pullers do brisk business selling water of dubious vintage by the can-full.

  What is happening in the Jamia neighbourhood can provide several useful lessons in urban morphology: (a) no community can take everything upon itself; it cannot be the provider and user of civic amenities, be it schools, universities, hospitals, ration shops, roads, electricity, water, group housing, sewage disposal or what-have-you; (b) while one cannot reverse the process of ghettoization, one can certainly do much to integrate those who live in communally-charged ghettoes; and (c) if one fails or is seen to fail at all attempts at integration, one is creating conditions of urban unrest that have the potential to spill over.

  While terrorism in any form – urban or rural, right wing or left wing, jihadist or Hindutva brand – has no place in civil society and must be unequivocally condemned, the fact remains that it finds fertile ground wherever there is large-scale discontent. Equally, while the great majority of those who live in the Jamia neighbourhood belong to the aspirational middle-class, that is, those who have the same aspirations as the middle-class the world over, namely all the tools that equip them for upward mobility and an affluent lifestyle, there may well be a minuscule minority that chafes at the ghettoization and seclusion. And while the residents of Batla House displayed commendable restraint in the immediate aftermath of the police encounter, who is to say whether they will continue to display such stoicism as the gulf between them and others continues to grow, and the ‘terror’ tag is added to the many others they are forced to endure: unauthorized, marginalized and ghettoized.

  The arrival of the Delhi Metro – in Phase III of its expansion – may well go a long way in mitigating the sense of exclusion. Better connectivity might mean better access to jobs and sources of livelihood in other parts of the city. The Metro might also introduce the residents of the Jamia neighbourhood to the ‘other’ Delhi, to the Delhi of parks and well-lit streets and open spaces. Possibly, the Metro might even penetrate the cordon sanitaire that separates this part of Delhi from its affluent neighbours.

  Postscript: Since writing this article, I have crossed the invisible cordon sanitaire yet again and moved back into ‘NDMC’ Delhi. I do believe I am more qualified than ever to talk about the ‘two Delhis’: the Delhi of privilege and the one of paucity.

  3

  SEPARATE BUT EQUAL :

  THE STRUGGLE FOR A ‘NORMAL’ SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

  SHAIKH MOHAMMAD ABDULLAH, THE FOUNDER of the Women’s College in Aligarh and a lifelong admirer of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of the M.A.O. College, wrote the following in his memoir Mushhahidaat wa Taasuraat (Observations and Experiences):

  There was no trace of modern education for women at that time, so much so that even a benefactor of the community such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan opposed modern education for women and remained a steadfast opponent … On the one hand, he was working towards English-medium education for boys but you could not even mention the same kind of education for women in front of him. At every instance when I heard the subject raised in front of him, I only ever heard his opposition to the very idea. In much the same way as our maulvis consider education for boys to be kufr Sir Syed considered English education for girls to be harmful for girls especially for their moral condition.

  These are harsh words but there is some merit in them. In the Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, better known as the Hunter Commission Report, Sir Syed had stated quite categorically:

  The Government cannot adopt any scheme whereby the Muslims of sharif families can be induced to send their daughters to government-run schools. Those persons who are of the opinion that women should be educated before men, are wrong. The reality is that the complete education of Muslim women cannot take place until the majority of men of this qaum are educated … the present state of education among Muslim females is, in my opinion, enough for domestic happiness, taking into account the social and economic conditions of the Muslims of India. If the Government makes any attempt to introduce education among the sharif Muslim families, it will only meet with failure in the present circumstances and in my humble opinion it can have bad consequences.

  Six years later, in the Lahore session of the Mohamaddan Educational Conference of 1888, when a resolution was moved for establishing zenana maktab (not madarsa), Sir Syed expressed his displeasure that too much time was being wasted on the debate and categorically stated that he was not in favour of any arrangement for educating Muslim women, be it by the government or a Muslim organization: ‘To establish schools for women, or emulate the women’s schools of Europe, is not at all appropriate in the present circumstances in Hindustan and I am strictly opposed to it.’ It would take Hindustan ‘saikdon baras’(hundreds of years) to reach the high standards of the zenana madarsa he had seen in England, Sir Syed says and instead goes on to give the example of what he had witnessed in his own home where education for women was of three types: (1) some women like his mother could read Farsi which they, in turn, taught their children; (2) some like his sisters and cousins went to learn from a buzurg (elderly) lady in a home that had been identified as sufficiently muazziz (respectable) and asooda (peaceful/comfortable); and (3) the younger girls such as his nieces who similarly went to these neighbourhood ladies but were taught to read and write both Farsi and Urdu from morning until lunch; after lunch until the zuhr prayer they were taught sewing, embroidery, cooking and some housekeeping until it was time for them to leave in their dolis (covered palanquins) by the asr namaz in the late afternoon. On Fridays, the girls would play hundkuliya, a game involving miniature pots and pans with the girls taking turns to play the hostess … That such a plan might be a form of benign patriarchy was evidently beyond the venerable Sir Syed!

  In the same Lahore Conference of December 1888, Sir Syed also told his audience that he is not in favour of the new-fangled notions of what women should be taught: ‘… there is no need for women to be taught the geography of Africa or America, or the rules of algebra or trigonometry, or about Ahmad Shah or Muhammad Shah, or about the battles with the Marathas and Rohillas.’ In the 1891 Conference in Aligarh when the subject was raised once again by Munshi Sirajuddin with a specific reference to Sir Syed being against taalim-e niswan or female education, Sir Syed said:

  Nowhere in the world, the men in the families have been educated, where the akhlaq (morals) of men have been improved, men have gained knowledge and benefits and women have remained deprived of education … An excellent example lies in the f
act that God’s blessings (khuda ki barkat) come not from the ground up but down from the skies; the light of the sun too does not come from down below but from up above. In much the same way men’s education leads to women’s education … When men become competent or able, women also become competent. Until men become competent women cannot become competent … men will be the means of women getting educated.