Just Another BLOW-UP?

It used to be my window from where I saw the sea. Today, as I watch pictures of the Gateway of India panning to the Tajmahal Hotel and I see the cracked glass, I imagine me sitting there sipping iced tea at the ‘Sea Lounge’. Can I hear the word “elitist” being flung at me? But it could have been my driver at the parking lot; it could have been my friend’s driver. It could have been anyone.

I hate my mind. I knew Monday would happen. Something would happen. It was an eerie feeling the moment I saw the tin box with its padlock being carried into a safe haven to be opened on Monday. It carried over 500 pages of ‘evidence’ collected over a period of five months to ascertain whether the ground beneath the Babri Masjid had housed a temple. The verdict has been changed from what it was mid-way through. They dug deeper, far too deep. They have discovered items that belong to periods between the 10th and 15th centuries.

Six centuries later, the ghosts walk.

There used to be gold dust on the floors. People used brooms to collect it and re-sell it to the jewellers. Zaveri Bazaar is a lot of glitter…after the blasts, shards of glass shine embellished with blood stains. There is a Mumbadevi Temple. I know that temple well. There is a NGO close to it where I would go often. The people inside would talk raucously, the women in crimson shades of lipstick, the men self-important saviours of the ‘randees’. Yes, they called themselves that. No one was self-conscious here.

There was self-consciousness on the faces of the devotees, as they carried marigold flowers, coconut and kumkum and went forth to appease their goddess. Because they did not know what they wanted. The whores did.

Bomb blasts are whores. They don’t need a time, they don’t need a place. And within seconds it is over. Money exchanged for a few little deaths. But death too has a memory. March 1993 haunts.

At that time we were too fresh from real riots, a term Bombay was not used to. So the blasts were seen as revenge by Dawood and gang. That was the time when amazingly the don’s right-hand man Chhota Rajan left him to start his own gang and was lauded as an upright soul who stood up for his community. His Ganesh Pandals became immensely popular; his brother produced a film glorifying the underworld.

What caused the blasts of August 25, 2003? The Home Minister has said it could be the Lashkar-e-Taiba together with SIMI. The same modus operandi was used as in 1993. Busy public areas. Afternoon. Parked vehicles carrying the explosives.

But there was nothing of this kind after the Gujarat riots. Therefore, is it ‘preparing for elections’ time? Is this an answer to the no-confidence motion passed in Parliament? Is it some silly peeve against the proposed visit of The Israeli prime minister? Is it a dead man’s urn? Or is it the Archeological Survey of India’s report? It is difficult to define a backlash – sometimes it is an impulsive act, sometimes a well-planned move, sometimes political expediency.

The moment I saw that shiny steel box, I knew it spelled trouble. I had no idea of what it contained, but my gut feeling was that it would not be a fair report. Because the prime minister of India had declared at the funeral of Ramchandra Paramhans that his wish to have a temple built at Ayodhya would be fulfilled even as he spoke about going by the court verdict. Because the Shankaracharya of Kanchi changed his tune. Because, as I have begun to believe, Ayodhya is now Kashmir. We need it to fight the enemies, Pakistan and what an increasing number of Indians have come to believe Indian Muslims to be – closet Pakistanis, or at least made-for-Pakistan.

Therefore, when Hindus are killed in specific parts of the country, Muslims have to bear the brunt of the ire; when Muslims are killed, again Muslims must take the blame. They are accused of either playing the victim card or being Pak-bred predators. But, is this true? This is a falsehood that the middle-class has been rationalising. And when they don’t do that, they really try to out-do one another in the liberal stakes. Forced bonhomie does not get anyone anywhere.

To digress a bit, there was a report in ‘The Asian Age’ of August 21, with the headline screaming, “Hindu convict offers to adopt Muslim inmate’s child”. It was a sexist and communally insensitive report. Although the district magistrate of Sasaram jail in Bihar confirmed that Najma Khatoon’s was a case of rape in judicial custody, the report mentions an “illegitimate child conceived after she was allegedly raped by a jail official”. The newspaper does not go along with the confirmation of the DM. It sensationalises the issue, forgetting that the Samaritan is on death row on charges of murder. He has said that not only will he give the child his name but also make him a successor to his land. The NGOs that had jumped in to urge people to adopt the child have not bothered to find out whether the man is married, has other children, and whether by giving his name he will convert the child to his religion. I raise this point because Najma Khatoon is a married woman; her husband has disowned the child because he has not cohabited with his wife for over a year. Interestingly, all of them are serving sentences in the same prison. I don’t see why there is such a hurry to have the child adopted. If there ought to be any rush, it is to get the culprit to book (what Najma wants, in fact), and make him pay for his crime and the child’s upkeep. The child ought to be handed over to an institution, not to a criminal. All these are terribly cloying sentiments that get media mileage only because they are supposedly secular views. Had a Muslim inmate of the prison made a similar offer no one would have bothered to comment on it, or it would be seen as an Islamic terrorist huddle.

Unless we get rid of these attitudes, we cannot do much to save ourselves, much less others. I have often been asked what ails the Muslim community and I have never had adequate answers. There aren’t any.

Do we have bad leaders? But then who has good ones? Why can the sadhus sit in on political discussions, but the moment a maulana enters the fray, there is bombast about bearded mullahs holding sway over the Muslim mind? Why can liberal speakers sit on the dais chewing gum (as one did in Toronto on a panel discussion about South Asia), but a paan-chomping maulvi is immediately looked on as possessing a cave-age mentality?

Do the Muslims want to hold on to a Personal Law for their own gains? I will go along with the poet Hassan Kamal that the Muslims should agree to a blueprint regarding a uniform civil code; as he said, the other minorities too have grouses against it but conveniently let the Muslims do the shouting, and the Hindus will suffer as well. This is the time for Muslims to stop being ostriches, and they might just find that others are burying their heads in the sand.

Do Muslims feel alienated or are they alienating themselves? I would say there is a concerted move to alienate them. The media carries reports of how Muslims in various parts of the country feel. If you ask someone what they feel about a wart they have, then they will talk at length about the wart because you have pointed it out.

Are Muslims making too much of Ayodhya? Yes. As much as the Hindus are. People have talked about building a non-communal or an all-community kind of structure. These are all pipe dreams of ordinary people. We have an impotent remote control in hand; the show is being played elsewhere.

Advaniji is telling me something important on TV, but Saifuddinbhai has arrived with the dekchis of biryani and kebabs and is keeping them in the kitchen. We have a daawat at home. Just a family get-together. It is too late to change anything, the browned meat pieces lie desultorily on a bed of saffron-tinged rice. Everyone arrives. There is laughter. Too much of it. The Topic is avoided, eyes averted. The kids play. I am getting restless. I switch on the TV. There is more news, about death, dying and life going on.

Maamu asks me to please switch it off…the singing begins. “Hus’n wallon mein mohabbat ki kamee hoti hai, chaahney wallon ki taqdeer buree hotee hai….” Trust me to see a political message in it. And then there is a crash. My mosaic glass frame has been shattered. I refuse to help clear it. It was almost always in front of my eyes, opposite the sofa where I sit, where I make phone calls from. It is gone now, its frosty icicle bits merging with the blues, greens, reds, yellows. No one knows about the colours of tomorrow.