The Quintessential Outsider

I have been wanting to write on this topic for a long time, but I was aware that I’ll end up writing an extremely long post, which I felt too lazy to do. Finally, I have got a stimulus that is strong enough. I just saw ‘Khuda Ke Liye’, which is being touted as the first Pakistani film to be released in India, but there’s much more to talk about that movie than just that trivial fact. And there’s much more in this post than just a discussion on the movie. By the way, I might mention certain scenes from it which might act as spoilers. So those who haven’t seen it, better beware of the spoilers.

The movie is basically about two brothers, who are famous singers living in Lahore. The younger brother (Sarmad) slowly gravitates towards orthodox Islam, and ends up becoming a hardliner who blindly follows what a certain Maulvi tells him. The elder one (Mansoor) goes to the Chicago School of Music for some advanced training, and is caught in the post-9/11 paranoia and brutally tortured by the American authorities. Another angle is of their cousin Mary, a British-born girl who loves a white boy, but is tricked into coming to Pakistan, and then married off in the tribal areas of the Pak-Afghan border. On the face of it, the movie is about these three characters, with a lot of discussion on what is ‘haram’ in Islam and what is not. However, a lot more can be drawn from the movie, depending on how one looks at it.

The story of this movie clearly shows how it is the ego and the arrogance of individuals which gets translated as the ‘word of God’. The orthodox Maulvi initially tries to reason with Sarmad to tell him more about Islam, but when faced with uncomfortable questions, asks him to ‘listen to his heart’ instead of his head, saying that too much thinking takes one on the ‘path of sin’. This has been a common refrain, for thousands of years, of clergy and politicians and anyone wanting blind followers. And they have not just said it, but actively persecuted those who have chosen to listen to reason and logic instead of some stupid narrow-minded gibberish. Once Sarmad surrenders his logic and reasoning, the Maulvi needs to say only a few lines to convince him of anything. Initially firm but soft-spoken, the Maulvi transforms into an arrogant demagogue when Sarmad and others like him are fully under his control.

Then there is the ego of Mary’s father, who inspite of not being a devout follower of Islam, and inspite of giving his daughter a ‘Christian name’, is still not able to stand the taunts of his fellow Muslims and turns against his own daughter simply because she loves a white boy. He tries to use his paternalistic arrogance to get his way, but when he doesn’t succeed, he tricks his daughter into believing that he has accepted her will, and that she can get married to that boy after they make a trip to Pakistan to meet Mary’s grandmother. He takes her to Pakistan and seeks help from his brother (Mansoor and Sarmad’s father), but when rebuked, embarks on his evil plan alone, and to satisfy his own ego, throws his daughter into the hands of tribal fundamentalists. He brazenly justifies his own ‘living with white women’ (without even marrying them) and his entire westernized lifestyle, saying that he can do that as he is a man, while his daughter should not do it as that will lead to his future generations going away from Islam. In his own life, he does whatever is convenient for him, ignoring the ‘word of God’, but uses that ‘word’ to justify his own ego. His ego and twisted sense of religion is more important to him than any love for his daughter or concern for her safety.

And in my opinion, the biggest crime that he commits is breach of trust. When his daughter agrees to go along with him to Waziristan and cheerfully changes into the tribal dress (which is very colourful, by the way, unlike what the Taliban seek to impose on all women in their realm), she does so because she innocently believes that she and her father are tourists out there. The ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ that all religious leaders talk about is, I think, synonymous with ‘trust’, and if anyone breaks this trust, especially the trust of one’s child, parent, sibling, spouse or friend, that is a bigger crime than any heresy or blasphemy preached in any religion.

Then there is Mansoor, who, even though he claims to be a liberal Muslim, needs to fall back on the ‘glorious history of Muslims’ and says that ‘WE built the Taj Mahal while we ruled India for a thousand years’ and ‘Spain for eight hundred years’. He says this when confronted with a situation where an American girl he wants to initiate a conversation with pretends not even to know where Pakistan is. To my individualistic mind, any use of ‘WE’ to refer to stuff one has not actually been a part of is pretentious, as in ‘we invented the zero’ and so on. However, using the ‘glorious history’ of power-crazy invaders to satisfy your own need for self-worth is even more pretentious. However, what is appreciable about him is that he sticks to his principles even when confronted with a threat to his life. By the way, the music he plays to break the ice with that girl and his fellow classmates at Chicago also shows the similarity of Indian and Pakistani music.

The two most important characters in the movie are Sarmad and Mary. As I have mentioned earlier, Sarmad transforms from an ordinary young singer into a bearded hardliner, but the futility of all the fighting and the ‘Jihadi’ rhetoric finally dawns on him when he kills an Afghan (Northern Alliance) soldier in the post-9/11 war and hears that soldier recite the ‘Qalma’ while dying. Even before that, his character is plain confused and indecisive, who goes along with what is taught to him without reasoning it out on his own. Mary’s character is more straightforward, that of a wronged girl who struggles throughout to return to the life she knows. During that struggle, she also realises that the tribal women she is living with can share her likes and dislikes and understand her anger and desire to run away.

Then there are a few disturbing points that emerge from the behaviour of other minor characters in the movie. The paranoia and arrogance of the American authorities, especially after 9/11, is something about which a lot has been said. However, I would like to mention here the faulty ‘liberalism’ of Sarmad’s parents, because of which they do not stop him when he goes on in the wrong direction. They are right in saying that everyone has a right to read, hear, see and do what one feels like, but if it can be harmful to that person or to others, it is the responsibility of those close to him to show him the right path. Obviously, any restrictions on his movements would only make him more resentful, and even ordinary reason wouldn’t work when faced with cunning preachers of the type shown in the movie, so the best way would be to counter their arguments in their own language. Sadly, the person who can do this arrives very late in the movie, only after a lot of harm has been done.

Which brings me to the main motive for this blog post. Is it possible to refute all the faulty arguments of Islamic fundamentalists only by drawing from the same sources as they do, without resorting to ‘modern reason and logic’ which they can easily wave off as some ‘Satanic work’? The movie shows it is possible, that alternative interpretations are possible for almost all the verses in the Quran, and that the version that gets most publicized is just the interpretation by some fundamentalists who seek to perpetuate their own tribal feudal system using the Quran as an excuse to justify their actions.

Before getting down to writing this blog post, I was searching for some opinions about this movie on Orkut communities, and I came across someone who had quoted the following verse from the Quran to justify that music is ‘haram’ in Islam:

“Most certainly, people from my Ummah will consume liquor which they will describe with some other name. Over their heads will be playing musical instruments and singing girls. Allah will cause the earth to swallow them, and from among them He will transform into apes and pigs.”

This can very simply be interpreted to mean that ‘musical instruments’ should be banned in Islam. However, a deeper and more convincing interpretation of this verse is that those who do not believe in God and instead waste their time in alcohol, singing and dancing would be punished for their vulgar lifestyle. It does not mean that singing and dancing cannot be used to praise God or for any other noble purpose. I am not aware of the verses that precede or follow this one, but I would assume that when placed in context, these verses state that one should be hard-working and devout with an ascetic lifestyle. Hardly the same thing as banning musical instruments or anything else. And it is this stress on values that is missed or deliberately ignored by those who seek to use any religious text to perpetuate any rituals or ban or declare as blasphemous any innocent practices. The only value that these fundamentalists preach is blind obedience, so that they can build an army of followers to achieve their ulterior motives.

And this fundamentalism, with all its accompanying dangers, exists in all religions. It’s just that in today’s world, the economic and political conditions in most of the Islamic countries and the geopolitics of the Middle East have given enough reasons to Islamic fundamentalism to thrive and pose a threat to the entire world. The sad thing is, that those fighting against this fundamentalism are, in most cases, as narrow-minded as the forces they are fighting against.

A few weeks back, I received an email from someone, who said that he had read my blog post on Mughalstan and wanted to know more about my opinion on this issue. I replied, and initially didn’t think much of it, so I deleted his first few emails after replying to them. However, the discussion became more intense as we moved on, so I saved all the emails and decided that I’ll blog about it sometime.

After a couple of pleasant emails asking some pointed questions, he asked me what I thought of the ’secularism’ of Indian political parties like the Congress, etc. Now, I believe that these parties have confused true secularism with minority appeasement, and their faulty liberalism and political desperation has allowed Islamic fundamentalists a free hand in cases like that of Shah Bano, Imrana and Taslima Nasreen. However, I do not agree that resenting this minority appeasement is justification enough for following the Hindu fundamentalists, or that you can support Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie but oppose M F Husain. If there should be any opposition at all to any of these people, it should be based purely on the quality of their work, and any claims of violating religious sentiments should be settled in court, and not by some high-handed goons. And the point is not that Taslima or Rushdie are cursing their own religion, so that should be allowed, while M F Husain should be stopped because he insults some other religion. They are all expressing what they think, and they should be allowed to do that. And I am quite sure that these Hindu fundamentalist parties would be as angry if any Hindu wrote something ‘blasphemous’ about his own religion.

Anyway, here’s what I had written in reply to that person’s question on secularism.

I think it is not secularism because they often end up appeasing some narrow-minded leaders of the minorities than looking at the good of the entire minority community. For example, if some reforms will be good for Muslims, these parties should have the guts to say that much, and get the opinion of the general Muslim populace, and not go by what a few oldies in the AIMPLB say. And also, when it comes to issues between different religions, especially a majority vs minority religion, a secular state should take a neutral viewpoint and do what is legally or morally right, and not favour any one community because of vote-bank politics. Right now, the Congress, Left, BJP, SP, BSP and other parties have all carved out their own vote-banks, whether they be upper-caste Hindus, lower-caste Hindus, any other castes or regional communities, Muslims or any other religions. We should all look at ourselves as Indians, and our leaders should naturally take a lead in instilling that feeling, which they are not doing. And I think Muslims or any other religious community can co-exist, live in peace and thrive with everyone else in a secular and democratic India.

And this was his reply:

Very interesting.
I agree with you about the vote bank thing. Do you think the “Muslim masses” have a opinion different from their so called “selfish leadership”. Also, I was wondering if one can find a case study where any Islam following population (whenever those that follow the Quran are more than 20% of the general population), has ever achieved a stable equilibrium with any non-Quranic majority.
Past 1200 years, any such example?

Note how he uses quotation marks to refer to “selfish leadership”. I realized later that my point (that it is the hunger for power that causes violence, not any particular religion) was completely lost on him. Anyway, I replied to this with the following:

Well, I do believe that the Muslim masses have a different opinion. I have had many Muslim friends, and indeed, of other religions, who are as critical of their religious leaders and politicians as I am. If I criticize all these leaders like I did in the emails to you, they will agree and chip in with their own criticism of the orthodox Muslim clergy. However, if anyone tries to criticize their leaders while defending the ‘Hindu parties’, or tries to remind them that their forefathers were Hindus converted to Islam, or any such thing which is usually said by these so-called ‘Hindu’ parties, then they will oppose that viewpoint, and I think that is fair enough.
As for the stability thing, you should go and read on Edward Said, what he has written about how Muslims, Jews and Christians lived peacefully in Palestine until the Zionist movement backed by Britain took over and spoilt everything. You should also broaden your knowledge of Hinduism and India by reading Amartya Sen’s “The Argumentative Indian”. There are enough examples to offer us hope, if only we bother to look and stop blaming each other, or any particular community.

And then he retorted with this:

Appreciate your response. I will certainly read Mr Sen.
Since you brought the oft repeated Edward Said argument, I would urge you to read about Nabi Musa riots. The co-existence that the Jews had under Islam was as complete Dhimmis.

To which I replied with a long one:

I am sorry, but I think the Nabi Musa riots illustrate my point even more strongly. All the three religions (or the ordinary people following them) in that region have coexisted peacefully, but rulers have always ruined it because of their hunger for power. In the Middle Ages, it was the Saracen and Turk rulers versus the European crusaders, and in 1920 when these riots occurred, it was the British seeking a foothold in the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Lord Balfour’s declaration gave legitimacy to the Zionists’ insane claim, and that led to insecurity and riots. The British (and later, the Americans) were not concerned about the rights of Jews or Arabs. They were only concerned with safeguarding their power (the British for keeping the sea-route to India safe, and the Americans now for keeping their oil-fields safe). The hunger for power is the reason for all violence, not the teachings of any religion.

To illustrate my point further, I shall give you more examples. In Sri Lanka, a Buddhist government suppressed a Hindu Tamil minority for years, which gave birth to the LTTE. In Fiji, natives have often resisted Hindus of Indian origin coming to power through democratic elections. For a long time in the ancient and middle Ages, Hindu and Buddhist rulers were involved in power struggles not only in India, but also in South-East Asia. Japan’s militarism before and during WW II drew a lot from ‘respect for authority’ as preached in their Shinto culture. So, is something wrong with the Oriental religions? No.

Moreover, Jews, Muslims and Christians came to India’s western coast as traders and lived peacefully long before invaders of these religions. Parsis, the most peaceful people in India today, also share their religion with the ancient Persian rulers who invaded Greece and tried to establish a world empire long before Alexander.

The point in all these examples is the same. It is not the religion which is to blame, but the hunger for power of the rulers. And the youth who follow them are usually those who have nothing better to do and are brainwashed into it. And this happens with all the religions.

And the Middle East has been the hotbed of conflict because it lies bang in the middle of East and West, and to top it, oil has been found there in the last 100 years. Geography and economics can answer a lot of your questions, instead of religious identity or the teachings of political parties.

After a string of short emails containing lots of questions, he now replied with a long one himself:

What actually motivated the Turks?
You so rightly call the Europeans crusaders, yet so coveniently fail to see the connection between the Turkish agression and Islam (you also miss the previous Islamic attack on Europe by Arabs (Andalusia et all.. eh?)

How exactly is the Nabi Musa riots proving your point? The British were in control of the Middle East way before Zionism became a viable movement. Jews living under Islam as Dhimmis is “peaceful co-existance” to you. Yet Hindus recalling the converted past of our fellow humans of the subcontinent is ojectionable to you.

While mentioning Parsis, you conveniently forget their genocide by Islam in Iran …..the very reason for their flight for refuge to India, not once or twice but atleast 6 times over a millenium.

Let me clarify, the Sinhala/Tamil conflict has much less to do with religion and much more to do with ethnicity. Neither side doesnt commit crimes for the “sake of religion”. Hardly in line with a certain virgin promising, kafir blowing system. I have known people personally who have worked at a social level with both the sides in the conflict in and around Jaffna. If at all, the LTTE can be considered a hardline Marxist group heavily funded by Christian missionaries.

Problems, problems, problems! I replied to most of these issues in the following email, but just to stress a few points more:
The very fact that Parsis were the victims of genocide by Muslim invaders, and ruthless invaders themselves in the previous millenium, proves my point that there was nothing wrong with their religion when they were invaders, but with their rulers’ hunger for power. The same goes for the Jews, who were Hitler’s victims in Nazi Germany and are the persecutors themselves in present-day Palestine. Religious and ethnic groups have switched from persecutor to persecuted and vice versa all throughout history, and the blame can always be laid on certain people in every case, not on any religion.
Anyway, I am not sure whether he failed to understand all this, or he chose not to. And his calling the LTTE a hardline Marxist group while linking them to Christian missionaries leaves me with two options – if what he says is true, it convinces me that the atheism of these ‘Marxists’ as well as the evangelism of those missionaries is a sham. If what he says is false, then it shows how he names together in one sentence two groups that he hates. I am sorry, but I am not aware enough to discern the truth in this case. However, it leaves me unconvinced either way.
Here’s what I wrote to him in reply:

OK, I am sorry for not calling the Saracen and Turkish rulers Jihadis. They were as much Jihadis as the Europeans were Crusaders, both when the Europeans came to claim the so-called Holy Land and when the Saracen and Moorish Jihadis invaded Europe.

I’ll tell you the connection between these wars and religion. When a ruler wants to invade another people, or kill some of his own people, he conveniently uses the cloak of religion or ethnicity. If he does not, then his subjects will not rally behind him simply because their ruler is greedy. Rulers always need to hide their greed behind the ‘word of some god’ and so on. In the above examples, obviously, religion was used. But the Europeans also fought amongst themselves, and the Saracens were defeated by the Turks. Within the Turks, the Seljuks were defeated by the Ottomans. In these cases, the religion is the same, so they found some other excuse like ethnicity or language. If nothing else works, use tyranny, or as a last resort, money. Get mercenaries to do the job for you, or let your soldiers loot the conquered people. Once again, let me remind you that this looting has been done not just by Muslim invaders in India, but also in other parts of the world by Mongols, Huns, and other ‘barbarians’ who followed some obscure religion. They looted because they were greedy or came from a much poorer civilization, not because they were of a particular religion.

Coming to Palestine, the British were not exactly “in control” of the Middle East all the time. From 1453 till the end of WW I, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Turks. Sure, their influence had decreased by the 19th century, and the British managed to build the Suez Canal and generally influence the rulers of Egypt, but they had to wait till after WW I to control Palestine and other regions. It was then that they came up with this charade of supporting the Zionists (which until then was a fringe movement) and the riots happened. And when such riots happen, even close friends and neighbours turn against each other, as happened in India too during Partition.

Jews or Christians living under Islamic rule was as much peaceful coexistence as Muslims living under the rule of other religious groups. I do not claim that no problems occurred then, or do not occur now. Whenever some stupid ruler tries to take away the religious freedom of some of his subjects, problems occur. But the problem is with the person, with that ruler, not with his religion. So, I have as much of a problem with ‘Hindu leaders’ reminding Indian Muslims of their forefathers’ conversion as I have with these stupid Mughalstan preachers claiming that Sikhs are Sufi Muslims. In both cases, conversions to a newer religion happened, but the present followers need not be reminded of that.

Yes, the LTTE, and even the Dravidian parties in India, are influenced by Marxism. But my point was only that there is nothing wrong with Buddhism or Hinduism if Sinhala Buddhists are fighting Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka. As for the Parsis, my only point was that their rulers also acted like greedy invaders when they had the power. The problem was with those rulers, not with the Parsi religion. Yes, the genocide of Parsis in their own homeland happened, and that is as much a problem as any other genocide in world history. But, will you go to an average German today and blame him for Hitler’s genocide of the Jews? Not until he claims to be a neo-Nazi, right?
So, why point a finger at an average Muslim until you have some proof of him being an extremist?

I believe that this whole idea of pan-Islamism is a problem. All this stuff about promising virgins in heaven and therefore blowing oneself up is bullshit. Mughalstan is an insane idea, which should never come anywhere near being realised. There are too many countries today in the Arab world that are ruled by Sharia law. But instead of looking at these states, instead of looking at, for example, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, their treatment of women, their lack of religious freedom, their sponsorship of global terrorism, the USA goes and invades Iraq. They claim it is because of the Al-Qaeda, but we all know it is for the OIL.

I also disagree with these Christian missionaries preaching that their path is the ‘only’ path to God. They should be stopped, but not by the violence of the Bajrang Dal or any such group. And by the way, I have studied in a Catholic school, so I know the difference between Christian evangelists and normal teachers and priests.

I have no problems creating awareness for a nice idea or against a stupid idea. But I do not agree with the way you look at the problem. Yes, there are people trying to disintegrate India, and they are funded by foreign governments, have insane ideas driven into their head in the name of religion, and they have supporters hidden amongst the common masses, and our government may not be doing enough to counter the problem, but that does not mean that you start blaming the ordinary Muslim near you trying to lead a normal life. If you talk to him as a friend, try to understand his point of view, respect his religious beliefs, he might tell you about his way of life and his thoughts. If he hears some insane preacher in his Friday mosque visits, he might also tell you about that.
But, accuse him of covertly supporting terrorists, or ask him to prove his loyalty to India by acknowledging that his forefathers were Hindus or by reciting some Hindu prayers, and you can be sure he will never tell you anything.

Do read Amartya Sen’s book that I mentioned earlier.
And do try to open your mind up a little.

After this, we both gave up on each other, but not before exchanging a few more emails. Here’s his reply:

In fact, neither do I blame the “common Muslim” nor the “radical Muslims”. I have always felt that humans are what we think, and in this case, the whole blame is that of the ideology of Islam and what is propounded by the Koran. The people who believe in it are mere instruments of its application.

Anyway, the urge to “open minds” is rather mutual.

And then my reply:

I cannot fault an inanimate object, a book or whatever, for anything bad that happens in this world. I know what kind of stuff you are referring to, and I know it may be there in the Quran, but you can also find similar stuff in other religions if you just want to use them to justify your violence.

The problem is with people using such stuff to brainwash others, for their own selfish motives. Those people should be resisted, not any book or object.
If the ‘open minds’ request means we won’t be exchanging emails further, I am really glad.

And then his last email:

Obviously, you dont know anything about “belief”.
But billions in this world do and have always done….and that my friend is the problem….when what one believes in, is the problem itself. Lets end it at that.

And then the last one, from me:

Yes, now that you are resorting to baseless assumptions without knowing me, let’s end it.
But before that, I would like to repeat, we should fight the people spreading those beliefs and hatred, and not some inanimate object. Even if that object is an ‘instrument’ of hatred as you see it, it is because of those people who are using it that way (in this case those Jihadi leaders), and not a fault with the object itself.

If somewhere in our discussion, you had also said that some things in the Quran or in Islam need to be changed, I would definitely agree, and those changes are required in all religions, and in other belief systems too. And those changes should be brought about by the followers of that religion themselves. We can help them, request them, convince them, strengthen the few voices in their community who talk about all this.

But you choose to attack their entire belief system itself. That only gives their Jihadi leaders more reason to ’show that their religion is under attack’ and brainwash ordinary people.

I am saying all this because I presume you are already working in the direction you believe in, and you have managed to get your voice heard amongst influential people as well. To such a person, I would request that you fight hatred without spreading more hatred. I am not asking you to follow Gandhi’s path, or to be ’soft’ or ‘weak’ as you might see it, but there is a way to do these things without being prejudiced.

All the best in your efforts, although your words and thoughts disappoint me.

I had actually searched for his name online, and found that he was actively pursuing what he had been talking about. In fact, he clearly mentioned it in one of the emails:

Nevertheless, I get your point of view. The reason why I wanted to get in touch with you was to seek your help in creating awareness about the “Mughalsthan movement”. The primary concern is that this stretch of land is of utmost importance to the pan-Islamic movement, and a sure silent demographic coup is in process. Awareness would have included sensitizing the general masses in India and educating the geopolitical think-tank community.

After our previous conversation, I can safely assume that this may not be of much interest to you.

Now for a few points that I would like to reiterate, even if they have appeared before in this string of emails.

1. I am very well aware that there are terrorist groups who dream of a ‘Mughalstan’. In fact, I had mentioned it two years back itself. And yes, they have covert support from people within India (either Indian Muslims who have converted to their cause or their own agents who have infiltrated India). And maybe the government is not doing enough to counter this threat (I say ‘maybe’ because none of us knows what exactly our intelligence agencies know and do). But this problem is strictly a security issue, and should be treated as such. In that treatment, if the government has to keep an eye on certain madrasas or impose restrictions on them, it should do so without thinking of any vote-bank.

2. Illegal Bangladeshi migrants are another problem, and there should be a clear policy on any illegal immigration and a consequent way of dealing with them, again without any effort to convert them into a vote-bank.

3. I also agree that the Muslim population in India is growing faster than that of other religions, but it is also more illiterate and economically backward than other religions. And there is a clear correlation between this illiteracy and poverty and population growth, across all religions and even across countries. So if that illiteracy and poverty is dealt with, the population growth will automatically fall in line, and so will the propensity of ordinary Muslims to listen to insane preachers rather than sane voices.

4. Then there are law-and-order issues, like small groups of Muslim goons beating up Hindus in different parts of the country. These people should be treated as ordinary goons, and such goons can be found in every religion and ethnic group.

5. And yes, something should be done about the chaos that goes on in the name of festivals in our country. I live in an area which is close to a Muslim-majority neighbourhood, so I see a lot of Muslim processions (three Eids, a Muharram and some other excuses in any given year). The truckloads of noisy revellers are still bearable, but the insane bikers (and they drive insanely because the police are too busy controlling the procession) who are supposed to move along with the procession but rush around on roads otherwise blocked for general traffic are a downright nuisance. However, this nuisance is created on many occasions by Hindus as well, when it either becomes unsafe to walk on the roads or it takes hours more than usual to commute in a city like Mumbai.
However, none will stop while the other continues, and the government will give everyone a free rein lest it hurts some religious sentiments. I am not saying that there should be no celebrations or processions during festivals, but that there should be reasonable restrictions imposed on them so that those who want to go on with their normal life can do so peacefully.

6. And as for Hindu girls marrying Muslim boys, or Hindu boys marrying Muslim girls… for God’s sake, please leave them alone. Let our youth decide how they want to live and whom they want to marry. Do not colour their choices with your orthodoxy and narrow-mindedness.

The problem is, that all these issues (1 to 5 above) are mixed up to prove that Muslims are somehow overtaking our country. I believe that each of these issues can be dealt with, but I know that as long as there are fundamentalist idiots on one side, there will be enough of them on the other side as well. And ordinary folks like us will continue to suffer.

By the way, that person who sent me all those emails always had a signature line at the end, a quote:

“we may forgive you for what you did to our people… but we will never forgive you for forcing us to do worse to yours – Golda Meir”

In my last email to him, I wrote below it:

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”

I finally finished reading ‘Freedom at Midnight’ two days back. I know it’s been a long time since I started reading it; I was able to read it only 10-20 pages at a time, as something or the other always kept cropping up. Anyway, now for some thoughts on the book.

Many of those who have read it before told me they found it a bit biased (pro-Mountbatten maybe), a charge the authors themselves accept. This is primarily because Mountbatten was the only member of the quintet (including Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Jinnah) that was majorly responsible for the events of that time who was alive when this book was written, so the authors depended a lot on their interviews with him. However, one cannot deny that the book is extremely interesting, and even thought-provoking.

Why is it thought-provoking? Well, it ends with Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and the public response to it. One of those responses was seen on the editorial page of Hindustan Standard: “Gandhiji has been killed by his own people for whose redemption he lived. This second crucifixion in the history of the world has been enacted on a Friday – the same day Jesus was done to death one thousand nine hundred and fifteen years ago. Father, forgive us.”

Another similar thought came from Mountbatten himself (and I am sure you must have heard/read this before): “Mahatma Gandhi will go down in history on a par with Buddha and Jesus Christ.”

There are a lot of similarities between these three ‘Gurus of Peace’, not least among them the fact that certain events in their respective birthplaces today are completely antithetical to what they preached. However, there is an important difference too. For a few hundred years after his crucifixion, the followers of Christ struggled to keep his message alive in the face of overwhelming persecution, until a Roman Emperor dreamt that his soldiers’ shields should carry the symbol of the Holy Cross. Since then, a lot of violence has been, and continues to be, perpetrated in the name of Christ. I shall not comment much on that here; those interested can check out this post on the importance of separating religious beliefs from religious fundamentalism – I shall just say that I agree with Yohan on this. As for Buddha, we all know of the Emperor who renounced war and became a Buddhist. However, there have also been a lot of warriors and conquerors who have been devout Buddhists, going all the way back to Kanishka.

People can argue that it is just not possible for anyone to associate Gandhi’s name with a violent cause, but we never know what will happen two or three centuries from now (if at all this planet survives until then). Anyway, I’ll end this discussion here and move to a more important point.

In a recent post, I mentioned that Gandhiji was able to accomplish with his death what he could not achieve in his lifetime – an end to the post-Partition violence. In fact, even when alive, he did manage to stem the tide of violence in Noakhali, Calcutta, Delhi, etc., but these miracles were temporary and localized. All this is well-known because it actually happened; what is not so well-known is that after working these small miracles, he had an even more grandiose plan.

He actually wanted to begin, in February 1948, a journey to Pakistan on foot, going from Delhi to Karachi via the Punjab. The goodwill for him in Pakistan was then at a peak, as he had convinced the Indian Government to give Pakistan the money that was due as a part of the Partition Agreement. He dreamt of a column of thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees following him to the lands from which they had been displaced, and a similar column of Muslims on the way back to India. All this might seem, especially to those who do not admire him, like an old man’s crazy dream, but it is nevertheless interesting to imagine what would have happened if Gandhi had outlived Jinnah by a few years. Even though the two new-born nations had already begun fighting over Kashmir, it is highly doubtful whether any of Jinnah’s successors would have been able to counter the reconciliatory moves of ‘the wily old Gandhi’.

Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu. He had maintained for a long time that Partition would only take place over his dead body. He dreamt of an ‘Akhand Bharat’ as much as his assassin did. In fact, Nathuram Godse had also sworn celibacy and lived an unusually austere life. However, their similarities ended there. The most important difference was Gandhi’s refusal to believe in the Machiavellian tenet that ‘the end justifies the means’. For him, violence (even if it was in self-defence) was in no way justifiable.

I shall not go on to a general discussion on Gandhiism, but before I leave, here are a few things to ponder upon:

An Italian telecom ad featuring Gandhi

Nathuram Godse’s defence speech (However impressive his arguments might seem, there is an answer to each and every one of them – one only needs to think)