Reflecting On Rahul Gandhi And Cow Belt – With Eyes Closed
Saeed Naqvi
I missed out
on the “tumult” these past weeks in circumstances which remind me of Shah
Sarmad, the great Sufi saint of Jewish extraction, who wrote:
“I slept
through the tumult on Judgement Day.
When I half
opened my eyes to see if it was over,
I saw that it
was still continuing.
I closed my
eyes again and slept.”
Strange, the
connections the mind makes. Sarmad’s experience came across to me as a
variation on the most serene aasana in yoga called Yoga Nidra. In this aasana,
as the body slips into the deepest sleep, consciousness is proportionately
sharpened, to a point where the mind can traverse the details of the body, the
immediate environment and the universe outside.
The blissful
combination of Sarmad and Yoga Nidra fell into my lot, paradoxically, in the
care of Dr. Cyrus Shroff, who brilliantly stitched together an injured retina
in a two and a half hour surgery and confined me to bed upside down, quite
literally, adding a new dimension to my yogic experience.
The new
Congress President, Rahul Gandhi in his new Hindu avatar, swam into my ken,
wearing an unconvincing janaeu over his jacket and temple hopping with frenetic
frequency.
Image
projection is much more cosmopolitan in his travels overseas. After his visits
to US campuses late last year (Berkeley and Princeton, for instance) escorted
by Sam Pitroda and, in segments, by Shashi Tharoor and Sunil Khilnani of the Idea
of India fame, Rahul Gandhi turned up for a high powered international meet in
Bahrain earlier this month. Similar jamborees are lined up in Singapore in March
and, later, in Malaysia, then the UK and so on. Foreign travel has been imaginatively
woven into the promotion plans possibly to forestall chances of his taking off
on his own to unknown destinations, given his compulsive yen for foreign
travel.
No one can
grudge him his international itinerary. What has to be watched with some
concern, however, is his new Hindu projection. It can be argued that it worked
to some extent during the recent Gujarat elections where he diligently steered
clear of Muslim groups, localities and even Congress leaders who happened to be
Muslim. Indeed even a person of Ahmed Patel’s seniority was advised not to be
seen in Rahul Gandhi’s vicinity. Electoral results were not altogether bad. Who
knows, the trick of treating Muslims as pariahs might work to some extent in
the Hindi belt. Beyond this belt, however, a new makeup will have to be applied
to his visage. Will that not raise issues of credibility?
Influential
segments of the chatterati are already beginning to place their bets on the new
soft saffron. For this lot “secularism” is a political burden because it opens
the Congress to the charge of being “Muslim friendly”. This image must be
discarded at all costs because it gives Hindutva a handle for communal
polarization. The unstated theory is: if the Congress embraces soft Hindutva,
the BJP will be left with nothing to oppose?
A pity the
residual Congress leadership does not see the dangers of competitive
communalism. If this is the way the game is to be played, the polity will
continue to shift dangerously towards the far right – in the cow belt
most certainly.
In this belt,
we Urduwallas had placed all our bets on the durability of the Ganga-Jamuni or
composite culture which we had forged over centuries of cultural commerce and
an overriding love for this land and its soft pastoral tones. I never tire
dwelling on Urdu poets having written adoringly on Rama, Krishna, Gokul,
Varanasi, Triveni, Koel on a mango perch. Indeed even the Prophet’s birthday
was celebrated by Mohsin Kakorvi by describing the clouds floating ecstatically
from Kashi to Mathura to catch a glimpse of Krishna.
All of this
would have had a chance of surviving had Partition not taken place. I dwell in
some detail on this theme in my book “Being The Other: The Muslim in India”.
If Partition
could not be avoided, the next best option for all would have been an honest to
goodness Hindu Raj: the obvious name for the country would then be “Hindustan”
as opposed to “Pakistan”. After the Congress’s unseemly rush to accept Pakistan,
(thereby defacto accepting the two nation theory) this should have been the
logical next step.
Quite
seamlessly we glided from British Raj to Hindu Raj. The problem Congress generated
was precisely this: having helped create a Hindu Raj, it proceeded to deny its
existence, inciting politics which provoked Hindutva to complete the unfinished
business.
Accepting the
label, Hindu Raj, it is suggested was against Nehru’s self image. Such a label
would also have smacked of the “mofussil” to the thin layer of Macaulay’s elite,
clustered around him. Above all, there was that minor matter of Kashmir which
could only have been kept in a “secular” state.
An honest
bargain could have been struck in a “Hindustan”. I am almost embarrassed to
cite Britain as an example. The country is anchored to the Anglican Church, and
yet has a Muslim Mayor of London. All religious denominations are in the
cabinet (and shadow cabinet). Indeed, at one stage there were four Muslims in
the English cricket team. It is a tolerant society where the rule of law
applies. Just imagine what a bargain 180 million Muslims would have been able
to strike in a “Hindustan”. Conditions for a plural society would have been inherent
in an honest arrangement, free of a bogus secularism which today rings like a
hollow cliché.
Let me, in my
Yoga Nidra state, pull back my consciousness from issues of what
“might-have-been”. The current situation is frightening and yet the gloom and
doom about fascism having arrived is pre mature. Lift your eyes from the Hindi
belt and the perspective changes. The strength for a pluralistic society will
come from a multi ethnic, multi linguistic, multi religious federal India, the
one pulsating outside the cow belt.
As the only
North Indian (and Muslim to boot), who edited a major newspaper covering all
the South Indian states with my headquarters in Chennai for full five years,
some credit must attach to what I am saying.
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