I was 21 when I saw the fervour and madness of Advani and his Rath Yatra to build the Ram Temple on the Babri Masjid site. Post this unmitigated disaster, I was stuck in Kala Chowkie (near Lalbaug) for 3 days during the subsequent Mumbai riots. There was a curfew in Mumbai. My cousin sister was puking out of fear and we did not manage to eat or sleep under the fear that we will be attacked by Muslims from Mohammad Ali road. I saw a Muslim family's house ransacked and all things thrown out from their 4th floor apartment, on to the ground. The family walked out of their house, holding each other's hands, with nothing in their pockets.
Many months later, I was at Marico in their Masjid Bunder office when the bomb blasts happened in Mumbai. I went up on the terrace only to see a bomb go off in front of our street and people with broken hands and feet running scared. I have silently witnessed the futility of Advani and BJP's religious misadventure to get votes at the cost of innocent lives, while they were comfortably living off in their high security residences. My senior colleague carelessly said that this is called collateral damage. I realised very early in life that religious extremism is a useless pursuit that solves nothing and achieves nothing - except collateral damage.
With maturity, I also realised that there is no real religion left in this world. Every religion has been transformed itself into an organised cult - which means it is not what the religious books state but what the religious leaders interpret and preach that is considered the truth. The wrong is right, because the devil wearing the facade of god, says so. And all of us are brainwashed suckers who are taught to visualise the world not as it is, but as it could be. The problem between Hindus and Muslims in India is that we have a history which we cannot change and we have to live with it. However systematic indoctrination, from politicians and religious heads on either side, makes us treat this history not as our past, but as our destiny - all which is merely a figment of our collective xenophobia.
I am supposed to be a Hindu by birth and I was a part of the RSS Shakha for 2 years. My dad never believed in them and their ideology because he felt RSS Shakhas were changing from character development to religious brainwashing. But I must admit that never once they spoke about Hinduism nor did they speak ill about any other religion. Though I enjoyed the atmosphere, I discontinued it because my friends use to tease me for wearing the khaki chaddis which looked really uncool in the times of bell-bottoms. But RSS is different today. It openly aligns with the BJP and talks about a Hindu awakening (through political might). This was never their agenda but they have changed it for reasons best known to them. While RSS is still covert in their approach, organisations like Bajrang Dal, VHP and Sri Ram Sene have been vocal about their hate against Islam and Muslims.
The Muslim leadership is not far behind. Their myopic and mostly uncouth leaders have fundamentalist views about generally everything around them - women, children, education, violence, terrorism, etc. They brainwash common muslims into believing that they are being victimised in India and that revenge is the only option. The reckless behaviour coming out of this frustration, especially amongst the youth and local politicians, only complicates the matters for their community. The image of a Muslim youth furiously kicking the Jai Jawan memorial in Mumbai will forever stay in my mind. I wondered as to what kind of a generation their leadership is wanting to create in India? For the fault of a few indoctrinated idiots, it is the common Muslim who bears the brunt of all sarcasm, prejudices and criticism from the Hindu community.
One of the issues is the lack of a strong representation of Muslim leadership in politics. The current leadership does not have any long term vision for their community that is beyond religion. Also there are no leaders in Muslim community who can galvanise common Muslims to unite for larger causes like economic development, education, modernisation, and so on. These leaders only tend to polarise their people against religious issues, that really don't matter. Since Muslims are a divided vote across regions and constituencies, they never get to send the right candidates from their community into the Parliament and Assembly. Like BJP or Shiv Sena for Hindus, there is not a single strong Muslim party who they can look up to. Every elections, the Muslim leadership across States is seen haggling with leading political parties and trying to manage some favours and promises out of them so that they can win brownie points in their voter community. Change takes a backseat in all this horse trading. In the process, the common Muslim suffers.
The Muslim leadership itself is a curious mix of politicians and religious heads. Infact most Muslim politicians with mass support talk like religious heads, and vice versa. You can never differentiate one from the other. This is a dangerous combination for politics. Hindu leadership like BJP and Shiv Sena, while espousing the cause of Hindus, studiously keep the religious leaders away from meddling in their political decision making process. While a Shahi Imam sends a clear message to his community to vote against certain parties, rarely do Hindu religious leaders say so openly to their people. This is an important differentiator between the politics of the two communities. If development has to happen, religion has to take a backseat.
The problem is that leaders from either side do not want to talk. Since Congress is "secular" they do not want to have such discussions at all. With regards BJP, they are under constant pressure from RSS, etc. to not have anything to do with Muslims. Both these parties want the problem to continue so that they can position themselves as saviours. Politicians like Amit Shah, Iqbal Masood, Akbaruddin Owaisi, and their ilk, spread lies, hate, half truths and make people believe that their religion and their lives are under threat. They are the B2C heads of their political parties. The B2B heads are the senior party leaders who spread fear of religious extremism amongst the rich and wealthy and get them to fund their election campaigns. People fund and vote for them due to this fear psychosis, carefully constructed around false perceptions.
But in real life I have had exactly opposite experiences. When I meet common Muslims - like auto and taxi drivers, my own office team members and friends, I don't find anything wrong with their behaviour. I don't feel my life is under threat. Even when I am in a predominantly Muslim locality like Muhammad Ali Road, I feel different, but I don't feel scared. The same is the case, I am sure, amongst Muslims, when they deal with Hindus. So I am not sure where is the threat to each other? Is the threat from common Muslims and Hindus, or anti-social elements in these communities like our politicians, religious leaders and their followers? If it is the anti-social elements, then why can't we demand that the law deal with them rather than hating the entire community?
Here is another example of such prejudices and fears - My driver lives in Dharavi. Dharavi is divided on language and religious lines. So Hindus and Muslims live separately. Between Hindus - Marathis, Tamilians and North Indians live in separate ghettos. My driver is ok with that, but criticises Muslims for their ghetto culture. In his own building people keep buying and selling their apartments, But my driver is bothered when a Muslim buys an apartment. He thinks its a conspiracy to usurp their locality. When I ask him why he does not chide the Hindu family who sold the apartment to a Muslim, he has no answer. So he does not want to solve the problem, he wants to continue with his rants. That's what he loves - the story of an invisible enemy lurking around somewhere and how he is trying to battle it out. This is what most of us do.
If we dig deeply, collect data and study our behaviours and thought processes, we will realise that these are mere perceptions, not reality. Since I am a Hindu, I am listing down a few of these perceptions, half-truths and lies against Muslims which I have heard over the years -
1. India is a Hindu country and Muslims and Christians came as outsiders due to Mughal and British rule. We need to become a Hindu country again by changing our Constitution.
2. Muslims are multiplying in India since they do not believe in birth control and soon they will be a majority and drive Hindus out of India
3. Muslims are involved in terror activities and want to destabilise India and its sovereignty. Those not involved, silently support these activities.
4. Muslims live in ghettos, they wear weird clothes, they follow different customs, they build illegal mosques and use them to undertake anti-national activities.
India is a secular country, not a Hindu country by Constitution. Being a Hindu myself, I know that had here been no Muslims, we would have been fighting amongst themselves on issues of castes and reservations. There are more Brahmins, Thakurs and other self-proclaimed higher castes in India who look down upon the rest of the Hindus than there are Muslims who hate Hindus in this country. We have 300+ castes, who more or less don't like each other. Hindus don't really need Muslims to make them insecure. More people die due to the carelessness of Railways in Mumbai every year than in Hindu Muslims riots across India. But we are not worried about that as much as we are worried about this. This is a fact. Moreover, barring a select few, all Muslims in India have a Hindu origin. If Hindus were so concerned about being a Hindu country, they should not have been a divided lot and allowed the Mughals to undertake religious conversions. That aspect is conveniently ignored in the hate campaign.
For those who are concerned about unchecked Muslim growth, statistics show that it has fallen in the past 2 decades. It is lesser than the Hindu growth rate. Over 2 million Muslims are actively using family planning techniques as per Sachar Committee Report. Moreover, Muslims have low representation in the key decision making areas like politics, administrative services, police, judiciary, etc. So logically, the fear that Muslims will multiply and drive Hindus out is unwarranted and irrational. Hinduism cannot be wiped out by Islam and vice versa. There are close to 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and 1 billion Hindus. It is realistically impossible that either of us can be wiped out from the face of this earth. But we continue to harbour such fear against each other.
Regards terror activities, I believe the law should take its course not only in terms of arresting the perpetrators but also the people and organisations behind them. I don't care if they are Muslims or any other religion. They should be banned, hanged and whatever else that can be done with them. There should be no "religious discounts" given for the sake of votes, as has been the system followed for many decades.
As for ghettoes, the entire India lives is ghettos, not just Muslims. Look at a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai - Dadar and Lalbag is Marathi, Bandra is Christians, Khar to Andheri is Punjabis, Vile Parle is Marathi and Gujaratis, And similarly, Byculla to Masjid Bunder is Muslims. But we say that only Muslims live in ghettos. Regards, clothes and customs, these are individual choices and as long as they don't impact me, I am absolutely ok. I have seen 3 Arab women swimming in a hijab in our club's swimming pool. That was the only time I was awestruck about their insistence of dresscode, especially for women. If Masjid or Temple activities are disturbing my sleep or safety, I would call the police. For every illegal mosque, there could be atleast 10 illegal religious structures in India belonging to other faiths. But we ignore these as aberrations. If a mosque or any religious structure is used for unlawful activities, the law should take care of it, why religion? The fact is that our politicians appease religion so much that it has made certain anti social elements in our country lackadaisical and fearless about law.
I really don't think this Hindu v/s Muslims is a clash of religions or cultures as it has been made out to be. It is a clash of egos of the Hindus who think they are a majority in India and Muslims who think they are a majority worldwide. But we are humans and we need to build the human connect, not religious disconnect in our society. The world has changed but organised religion promises nothing in this changed world - neither development, nor jobs, nor prosperity. It is a vocation, tool, weapon in the hands of our morally bankrupt politicians. If we can firm up our laws and policies, many of these problems can be resolved without any hitch, and in no time. TN banned religious conversions, but none of the other States have. So there is no political will.
There are a lot of areas that could improve the perception of Muslims in India. It begins with a strong and non-religious leadership. Educated Muslims are all over the place - in movies, cricket, corporate world, journalism, art, etc. but there are not even a handful in leadership areas like politics, administrative services, etc. I am not sure why this disconnect. If someone like MJ Akbar thinks of aligning with BJP rather than starting his own political party, its shows the lack of vision and confidence in Muslim leadership.
I also believe speaking up against ills of their own religion is something Hindus do routinely in India. They sue politicians and go after their own religious leaders. There were more Hindus, inside and outside Gujarat, who legally fought against Modi for 2002 riots, than Muslims. This is the sad truth and needs deeper introspection amongst Muslims.
Education is the weapon that will reform religious outlooks in this country. So focus on education, whether Hindu or Muslim is a must. In one of my visits in a poor school in Hyderabad city, the founder told me that across Hyderabad, there are more Muslims who want their children to get good education than Hindus. They never haggle about fees or any other expense. They just expect their children to be educated well, that's their only demand. So things are changing, but we need to accelerate this.
I believe that for all of us who speak the language of Us v/s Them about each other's religions need to sit with each other to share and clarify our perceptions. We will soon realise that all the perceived threats do not exist in reality. It is a carefully cultivated hype. Mochi and Ansari, the two icons of Gujarat riots met 10 years later in Kerala last year and publicly accepted the futility of their hate against each other's religion. Zaheera Sheikh, the Gujarat riot victim whose entire family was wiped out in front of her own eyes by rampaging Hindus and who was threatened by Hindu politicians to turn hostile, said this after the court's verdict against her - "I don't believe Hindus everywhere are like this."
I agree with her. We all do. Not all Hindus and not Muslims "are like this". I know that. I know we all know that. But for that we need to face our fears through openness and dialogue, not by the weight of history on our shoulders and distrust in our minds. We need not be swayed by what our leaders tell us. Let us go and check the facts for ourselves. Go to a Hindu house or eat biryani at a Muslim house and see it for yourself. We are all the same. Nobody wants to kill each other, even the staunchest Hindus and Muslims. We just hate because we just want to feel victimised, not because there is any real threat. For things to change, people from both communities need to leave their prejudices aside and start talking openly to each other. If the reality matches our perceptions, we can go ahead and continue our tirades and discrimination; but if it doesn't, let's refuse to associate with the lies and hate propaganda of our political parties. There surely are more beautiful things to do in life than hating each other in the name of religion.
It is our inaction to disprove our perception which is the cause of the problem, not the perception itself. For all of you who are still unconvinced which my arguments here's a simplistic version of what I am saying. Its naive, simple, yet very very powerful.
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