NULLWho is Atal Bihari Vajpayee to say that Muslims cause strife everywhere? Who is he to say that he allows Muslims to hold prayers? After all, it is our country too. We don’t need permissions.
I have often felt the need to write about what’s happening around me. But I have always resisted identifying myself as a Muslim-Indian. It has always been enough to be an Indian. Till Saturday last.
On that day, I read the newspapers and I was so appalled that I had been left with no choice, finally. My prime minister was telling me something that marked me out as someone different from the rest of the country.
He convinced me of something I always suspected. That it is the BJP which is responsible for the Christian-Hindu/Muslim-Hindu divide. Before the party came into prominence, I as an individual never felt the divide. I was in school then, Class VI perhaps, when I had my first experience with communalism. I was told by my classmates that their parents told them that all Muslims would be killed by 1992 — the year Babri Masjid was demolished. There were ‘jokes’ — as only children with an innocent cruelty can crack — on when I would be going to Pakistan. Sometimes the not-so-innocent teachers joined in as well.
Segregationist politics turned an aspiring defence analyst into a photographer. I was told that job openings in RAW and Intelligence Bureau were closed to someone who was a Sikh or a Muslim. In journalism, devoid of government intervention, we don’t have that divide.
I didn’t know what to believe then. Now, Vajpayee has spoken and broken the myth. He has proved that while I was always threatened by an L.K. Advani, he was the real face of the Hindutva brigade. Vajpayee has always been lauded as an excellent orator. So, I even heard everything that he didn’t say. I heard him tell me that I am the root cause of all the ‘‘strife in the world’’ because I am a Muslim. It also told me that Vajpayee believes that it is possible to be secular without exercising tolerance towards minorities. He said, India was secular even when there were no Christians and Muslims. He probably wants to go back to that ideal secular state by getting rid of all minorities. Now every Muslim’s identity is defined through terrorist acts in this country. Can I no longer be a Muslim if I am not a terrorist?
Former Congress MP, Ehsan Jaffery, was killed begging for security while VHP leaders like Ashok Singhal and Giriraj Kishore are given Z-plus security. There is no moral equivalence among those who need security, they are separated by a barrier of religion now.
When Vajpayee talks of the Godhra incident and questions those who started the fire, thus defending the Gujarat riots as a mere reaction, he must recall the Babri Masjid demolition and the subsequent riots. Mr Vajpayee, Muslims didn’t start the fire then.
Today, I can stand up and fight back — with words not guns as Vajpayee and Advani would want to believe — because we in the media have a voice. And we are not afraid to raise it. Unlike those in Gujarat.
As for you Mr Vajpayee, you cannot abuse and terrorise people and then expect them to vote for you. Maybe, you will win the elections in Gujarat by muzzling the minority but India will defeat you. Because I will not leave for Pakistan or anywhere else. I will stay and live and pray as an Indian in a mosque despite what you say about who I am. Before you, the British tried to divide and rule and Mr Vajpayee, you would do well to remember that it is they who had to leave. Maybe it’s time you left, with my permission.