Does it matter where they pray?

MUSE OF INDIA
A.R. Rahman, musician
In another age, A.R. Rahman could have been a sufi mystic; there is that ethereal quality to his music. He is immortal as the man who sang Maa tujhe salaam on free India’s 50th birthday, August 15, 1997. He sees no contradiction between being a good Indian and a good Muslim. Rahman, a convert from Hinduism, recites the namaaz five times a day, has travelled to Mecca to perform the Haj. Says artist Owais Husain, whose father M.F. Husain used Rahman Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, ‘‘He is not ashamed of his Muslim identity. At the same time, he doesn’t push his belief on others.’’ No wonder some call him a ‘‘fakir’’. No wonder journalist-filmmaker Khalid Mohammed praises his ‘‘gentle nature’’. No wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber (Bombay Dreams) dotes on him.

— Mohammed Wajihuddin

Rahman sees no contradiction between being a good Muslim and a good Indian, between singing Maa tujhe salaam and performing the Haj.

PERFECT PRINCESS
Sania Mirza, tennis player
On July 5, 2003, Sania Mirza, all of 16, won the Wimbledon junior girls doubles title, the first Indian woman to win a tennis Grand Slam event. Back home father Imran Mirza had a lump in his throat, ‘‘The whole of Hyderabad and not just our family was elated … I hope the country too is proud of her.’’ Imran’s statement came straight from the heart, with the package of hope, apprehension and ambiguity that just so many Indian Muslims experience. ‘‘That’s the past now,’’ he says today, ‘‘Sania has given the community an ‘identity’ and the country an ‘achiever’.’’ As a Muslim, travelling abroad after 9/11 hasn’t been easy, yet Imran has no doubts about the mutual symbiosis of India and its Muslims, ‘‘In India, we feel safer. We have been absorbed … Being a Muslim never came up in Sania’s career.’’ Sania’s standing became apparent when the Ministry of Health made her brand ambassador for its Save the Girl Child campaign. In effect, the government was now pointing to her as the daughter everybody should wish for.

— Micky Aigner

GANDHIAN CAPITALIST
Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro

He’s worth $ 6.7 million, the richest countryman we have. Till the 1970s, Azim Premji’s Wipro was a vegetable oils maker, today it’s an IT behemoth. Yet religion doesn’t matter to this man. ‘‘The focus,’’ says former Wipro employee K. Singh, ‘‘is more on values.’’ Wipro is listed on Wall Street, has an annual turnover of Rs 4,100 crore (2002-03). Yet Premji, an almost Gandhian capitalist, flies economy class, shuns five-star hotels as ‘‘too expensive’’ and takes up civic issues every fellow Bangalorean loves him for.
But even this most gentle of gentleman, complained of racial profiling in America after 9/11. Indeed, he held out India as a model to his hosts. ‘‘I consider myself an Indian,’’ he said, ‘‘and religion does not enter my mind … I would not be chairman of a software company if I had been discriminated against.’’ As for the US, he told a gathering in New York shortly after the WTC attacks, ‘‘Ever since I have come to the United States, I have gone to airports four times to catch flights and each time I have been profiled because my name show I am Muslim.’’ Then he chuckled … ‘‘Maybe I should change my name to A. Premji.’’ Touche.

— Dev Chatterjee

‘I consider myself an Indian and religion does not enter my mind … I would not be chairman of a software company if I had been discriminated against.’

MEDICINE MAN
Yusuf Hamied, chairman, Cipla

Just opposite the Mumbai Central bus station and close to a Muslim ghetto is the HQ of Cipla, an Indian pharma miracle. Its chairman is Yusuf Hamied, born to a Muslim freedom fighter father and a Jewish mother, Cambridge PhD at 23. Hamied is famous for selling the AIDS drug cocktail to poor African countries for under $ 200 per year per patient. MNC rivals were charging $ 12,000. Somewhere the 1992-93 riots still hurt. ‘‘There were rioters right in from of Cipla’s gates killing and maiming Muslims,’’ this grandson of Holocaust victims recalls. Today he spends his time pushing health issues, ‘‘As an Indian, my first priority is to my country.’’

— Dev Chatterjee

FIRST CITIZEN
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, president

THE President would rather not be identified by his religion, his associates tell us anxiously. The statement deserves to be expanded. Ever since A P J Abdul Kalam entered Rashtrapati Bhavan, he has been known to say more than once, ‘‘Every religion is a beautiful island. It’s beautiful, but it’s still an island. We need to provide connectivity between various faiths and that can be done only through love and compassion.’’
Those who know Kalam best believe that he sees in his job the opportunity to provide that link. That belief has taken him to religious centres across the country in these one-and-a-half years: from the Buddhist monasteries to churches to temples and mosques.
Simultaneously, the First Citizen considers religion to be an intensely private affair. ‘‘Kalam does his namaz in private. He went on Haj in February, but he didn’t make a show of it,’’ says Syed Muhammad Zafar Ali, owner of Aakif Book Depot, which brought out the Urdu translation of R Ramanathan’s book Who is Kalam?
Now that’s called setting an example.                       

— Anna M M Vetticad

‘Every religion is a beautiful island. We need connectivity.’

21st CENTURY THESPIAN
Aamir Khan, actor

Hindi moviedom’s greatest moment was Lagaan’s nomination for an Oscar. The clipping that was showcased at the Kodak Theatre in LA that day in 2002 featured the song, Radha kaise na jale — a tribute to Hindu divinity, with Aamir Khan enacting Krishna, swaying to Javed Akthar’s lyrics, to A.R. Rahman’s tunes. If this was a statement, Aamir will never let on. For in Bollywood circles, there are few with his reputation for privacy. As an old director friend puts it, ‘‘Somehow the topic of his religion has never cropped up. He hardly talks, just concerned with the work at hand.’’ A case of karma as dharma.

— Harneet Singh

PACE LIKE FIRE
Zaheer Khan, cricketer

Zaheer Khan made a sensational debut at the ICC Champions Trophy in 2000, yorking Steve Waugh first ball. It was a parent’s dream come true, for Zaheer’s owes his cricket to his father, Bakthiyar Khan Afzal Khan, humble resident of humble Shrirampur, Ahmednagar district. Skill was always the issue, religion never so. ‘‘There has never been a single day,’’ says the father, ‘‘when being a Muslim came in his way. He had the talent and it has taken him where he belongs.’’
Life in Shrirampur was no ghettoised existence. Locals says the Khans’ bonding with their Hindu friends was always remarkable, even jolting some in their own community. No wonder when a Pakistani journalist asked Zaheer recently if being a Muslim was a problem in Shiv Sena country, the incredulous reply was, ‘‘How can you even think on those lines? That is the place, those are the people … Where I have achieved everything.’’                                    — K. Shriniwas Rao

‘This (Maharashtra) is the place … where I have achieved everything.’

ELECTRIC HEELS
Mohammad Kaif, cricketer

THE television ad sums it up best: The blue-blooded and the blue-shirted, rubbing shoulders and selling chips. Cricket, of course, is what Kaif and Saif had in common; everything else was incidental. The same goes for Mohammad Kaif’s entire life. There were no spankings for the budding cricketer when cricket balls lost their way and crashed window panes into smithereens. Father Mohammad Tarif had already identified his son’s ticket to a better life.
His religion, his family would have it, had little role to play in his meteoric rise. His career graph corroborates that. With two junior world cup victor caps in his teens, Kaif was simply too talented.                                 — Sandeep Dwivedi