In Solitude Of Lockdown, Resolving Ravi Shankar-Vilayat Khan Dilemma

In Solitude Of Lockdown, Resolving Ravi Shankar-Vilayat Khan Dilemma

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

Mut sahel hamein jaano

Phirta a falak barson

Tub khaak ke parde se

Insaan nikalte hain.

(Don’t take me easy;

For years this cosmos turns on its axis;

Only then does a human being appear

From behind the curtain spread across this earthly creation)

In the classic couplet by Mir Taqi Mir I would replace “human being” with “Ravi Shankar” for my immediate purposes. In fact Mir is to Urdu poetry what Pandit Ravi Shankar is to Hindustani music. This begs a question: if Ravi Shankar or Robu as his Guru and father-in-law, Ustad Alauddin Khan addressed him, was the “Mir” of our sangeet, who then is Ghalib, to sustain the metaphor? Anyone exposed to the universe of classical sangeet, has been tormented by the bipolarity in the world of Sitar: who is greater, Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) or Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928-2004)? To continue the equation, Vilayat Khan would end up as Ghalib – beyond this, the metaphor would get mouldy.

Put it down to my perverse priorities, I found it difficult to ignore Ravi Shankar’s centenary earlier this week (April 7): it would have been a sacrilege – Corona lockdown or no Corona lockdown.

This despite the fact that our earliest musical loyalties were with Vilayat Khan, a fact which I can trace to the first concert we attended at Sapru House, the only concert hall in New Delhi in the early 60s. He played Tilak Kamod, its melodic lines, pure poetry, every stretch of the “meend” embraced all the notes of Tilak Kamod. The “drut” or fast passages measured upto poet Momin’s description: “Shola sa lapak jaaye hai, awaz to dekho”. (every passage leaps up, like a flame)

Aruna, my wife was then learning the sitar and we were hooked on Vilayat Khan’s Desh, Behag, Bageshwari, Piloo, Kedara, Jaijaiwanti – all the ragas of thumri my ears were familiar with since childhood. As I grew in the world of music, limitations in the romance with Vilayat Khan surfaced. What was touted as “gayaki” ang or “vocal” style were actually the emotional, sentimental melodic lines of thumri, Dadra and Kajri.

I am not for a moment suggesting that Vilayat Khan’s repertoire was limited: he could play with authority, ragas like, Darbari, Shahana, Shankara, Bhairav. He did, and brilliantly too. But when he broke into song, quite spontaneously, was exactly when the sitar began to look a plaything in his hands. That was when he was in his “gayaki” ang mode.

It is one of the best kept secrets in the world of Hindustani music that in her deep enunciation of alaap, Ravi Shankar’s wife, Alauddin Khan’s daughter, the reclusive Annapurna was in a different zone of music altogether. Ravi was hemmed in by geniuses – Ali Akbar, Annapurna and Vilayat Khan.

I am not in on the reasons for the breakdown of the marriage, but professional incompatibilities may well have been a cause – Annapurna’s musical Puritanism versus Ravi’s flashy innovations.

This flashiness, he once told me, was a function of his exposure to life in Paris as part of his brother Uday Shankar’s famed dance troupe which was at the heart of the 1948 film Kalpana, when Ravi was 28 “I loved wearing my three piece suits and lighting a cigarette in a holder.” At this time, Z.A. Bukhari of All India Radio, who baptized many musicians into AIR, had given “Inayat Khan’s son” (Vilayat) a garage behind the AIR office at Alipur Road with strict instructions to “practice, practice, practice.” Vilayat followed these instructions to the last syllable. “At the end of a month the garage looked like a site where a hundred chickens had been slaughtered – the walls had blood marks.” The blood was from the fingers of his left hand as it glided up and down the strings and the frets with “lightening speed.”

Ravi had the advantage of living for decades in virtually a one-man music academy – Baba Alauddin Khan. What is more he had challenging peers, Ali Akbar and Annapurna.

Vilayat, on the other hand, had to fend for himself from the age of 10 when his father died. He was far too talented for uncles and his father’s colleagues to ignore, but vis-a-vis Ravi, he developed a “poor cousin” complex. The better he played, the more Ravi’s growing international reputation bothered him.

The epic contest between Ravi and Vilayat at the Constitution Club in 1952 remains one of the greatest events in musical history. It was billed as a Ravi-Ali Akbar duet but the sudden, dramatic appearance of Vilayat changed the complexion. Baba Alauddin protested but the audience prevailed. In the faster passages of Manj Khammaj, Vilayat had the audience standing on their feet. Ravi’s strings snapped. It was a fiasco for Baba’s Maihar gharana.

Even so, nursing a false sense of victimhood, Vilayat remained his worst enemy. He would play for AIR only if he was paid a rupee more than Ravi. He refused the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padma Vibhushan for similar reasons. After stellar performances at the Edinburgh music festival, Ravi continued to accumulate successes. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin became his “chela”. He became a guide to the Beatle, George Harrison. Then, lo and behold, he turned up at Woodstock music festival in 1968. A helicopter had to ferry him over 4,00,000 strong crowd. Once on the stage his tabla accompanist, Allah Rakha closed his eyes: youngsters below the stage were making copious love.

Vilayat Khan heard these stories with amusement and envy. I remember his last performance at Siri Fort Auditorium. He played Bageshwari quite brilliantly. Just when the hall resonated with his jhala, he paused and picked up the microphone. “You have to emerge not from a helicopter but from your mother’s womb to play like this.” This was his swipe at Ravi’s Woodstock fiasco.

To resolve the comparison let us leave the verdict to Satyajit Ray: he invited Ravi Shankar to be the music director for Pather Panchali but for Jalsaghar, the musical score was Vilayat Khan’s.

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Tablighi Jamaat Markaz, One Of World’s Biggest Puritanical Movements

Tablighi Jamaat Markaz, One Of World’s Biggest Puritanical Movements

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

In the early 70s, Indian missions in West Asia received a curt directive from South Block: do not issue visas to applicants travelling to attend the international conference (Ijtema) of the Tablighi Jamaat, Missionaries for purification of Muslims, at their Markaz (centre) in New Delhi. There were Arab applicants, ofcourse, but also some from the West, including the US.

There are missions and missions: some follow instructions others are more precocious and make inquiries. The subject came up for discussion over drink and discreet, diplomatic dinners. Some of the western diplomats did not hide their anxiety. The exponential growth of a little known religious, but totally apolitical organization across 150 countries, with a membership of 150 to 250 million caused raised eyebrows. The TJ was different from any other Islamic group: it did not seek to convert non Muslims. It was not the Islamic version of the Salvation Army. It only sought to bring its flock more in the line with the teaching of Prophet Mohammad.

This dour, dark, vision of Puritanism would have seemed a distant, dream. But the hundreds of millions of dedicated foot soldiers across the globe keeping the flock on the straight and narrow, a sort of double distillation of faith, made them out to be an enormously successful organization with extraordinary reach.

The 70s were a period of great contestation between the West and the Muslim world. In Egypt, Nasser had made way for Anwar Sadat in 1970, who eventually turned up in Israel in 1977; Black September; war between Jordanians and Palestinians in 1970-71; Yom Kippur war of 1973 leading to Arab quadrupling of oil prices.

In the midst of so much conflict, the ant-like precise movements of Tablighi Jamaat attracted western notice and for a good reason. At a time when the West was trying to pull the Muslim world out of narrow Islamism, laying out North Tehran under the Shah as worthy of emulation the TJ was weaning Muslims away from modernism into deadly, pious practices. And they were doing it successfully.

Pressure must have been brought to bear on South Block. Which explains the instructions to the Indian missions in the Muslim world to deny visas to luminaries headed for the Markaz at New Delhi’s Nizamuddin.

The address of the Markaz leads to an unhappy mix up. One of the great Indians of all time, the 13^th century Sufi Saint of the Chisti Silsila, or lineage, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, had his khanqah or abode in the area. Nearby was his favorite disciple, the multitalented genius, Amir Khusro, poet, musicologist, jurist, statesman and soldier. Their shrines, around which the colony evolved bearing the great guru’s name, became the centre of what is celebrated as India’s syncretic culture.

That the Nizamuddin shrine should be overshadowed by the Markaz, a six story structure with a capacity to house 10,000 Tablighi volunteers is an aesthetic affront. It also misleads the world which sees the address, “Markaz, Nizamuddin” as same or similar entities. Now that the Markaz has been cleared for fumigation for the mess the TJ have foolishly left behind, there is a case for the centre to be moved to a suitable location.

The Jamaat was founded in 1927 just when there were reverberations across North India after the British moved from Kolkata to New Delhi in 1911. In 1930, Lutyen’s Delhi was inaugurated. The British, who had taken power from Muslims, were now in close proximity to Maulana Mohammad Ilyas of Khandal, near Meerut. The Maulana started his mission to secure his flock against blandishments of modernism. The target area for Maulana Ilyas’ mission were the Meos of Mewat, spread over Haryana, Rajasthan and a portion of Western UP.

Even though the Meos were converted to Islam in the 16^th century, they obstinately held onto their Hindu culture. Not too long ago, night long recitations of their exclusive Mahabharat called Pandun ka kada were common. Meos claimed descent from characters in the Mahabharat. All Hindu festivals – Holi, Diwali, Dussehra were mandatory. My friend, Ramzan Chaudhary, a lawyer and chairman of the All India Mewat Association, remembers his father as a professional singer of Holi and Mewati Mahabharat. His grandmother wore a “Ghaghra” and performed Govardhan puja – all taboo in Maulana Ilyas’ book.

The Maulana must have been an organizational genius. Today, in each one of the 1,500 or so villages in Mewat is a Tablighi Jamaat Markaz. The number of volunteers is simply staggering.

Two things can therefore be said about the Jamaat. No violence or “Jehadi” activity can be traced to them. Also, they are simply not interested in proselytizing non Muslims.

They are saving the saved. Indeed, they are the Muslims variant of humourless, Calvinism, exactly the sort of self appointed religious constabulary whom Urdu poet describes as Sheikh, Zahid, Mohtasib, Waiz – in brief, an interfering bore.

A puritan, said H.L. Mencken, is someone who is always worried that someone, somewhere may be having fun. In the TJ book the way Bangladesh celebrates Poila Baisakh on April 14 is all “shirk” fit for damnation. Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, Bangladesh, in brief, people of Bengali heritage celebrate Poila (which means pehla or first) in the same way quite irrespective of religious belief. In fact, in my experience, celebrations in Bangladesh are by far the most spectacular. Women in the celebrated Dhaka sarees apply a bindi on the forehead of any woman guest who enters the house. Parks are filled with men and women singing Rabindra Sangeet and Nazrul geeti. While Tagore’s songs are secular, Qazi Nazrul Islam’s geets are charged with Tandav, Shakti, Kali, Durga. At this Maulana’s group would through a fit.

The present leader of the group, Maulana Saad Khandawi’s stupidities during the corona crisis, compounded by police and administrative negligence call for an independent inquiry. Baying for Muslim blood as some channels seem to suggest is rank bad taste.

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Two Catalysts Which Have Changed India And US For Good

Two Catalysts Which Have Changed India And US For Good

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

What will the world look like after the coronavirus induced shut down? I am not in possession of a crystal for global survey but I can activate my intuition on the basis of two stories I have covered. I was in the US for the 2016 Presidential elections and I have followed the 2020 drama within the Democratic Party. In both the campaigns Democrats have been in convulsions not to select a nominee but to keep out the one they do not want – Bernie Sanders. And now they are all mimicking the Sanders platform. The coronavirus has brought out in bold relief, the idea of Bernie Sanders as the panacea for the general distress. The platform the senator from Vermont stood on was total anathema to the great American establishment, its soul torn between Mammon and Joe McCarthy. The pandemic has brought the powerful establishment to its knees. People now matter and democracy begins to look like one. Neither the democrats nor the republicans will ever mention Sanders by name. That would be like eating crow. But they are all furtively lifting the Sanders manifesto. The idea of Sanders in today’s context is larger than the possible nomination of Joe Biden.

In the Indian context, the idea of Shaheen Bagh, has likewise acquired a post pandemic, durability. The statement issued by “Shaheen Bagh protests” speaks for itself. “As we continue our struggle to be heard by our government, we wish to reiterate that we have merely suspended public gatherings, our movement is on. We will use other means to continue to resist CAA, NPR, NRC. For our detractors, it would be a sobering exercise to compare our protests with any in recent history.”

“Shaheen Bagh all over the country now soars with our strong resolve and blooms in our hearts. Each one of us is now a Shaheen Bagh.”

The authors of the statement, from protest sites across the country, sign off with “Inquilab”, which means “revolution”, a term Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been using to describe their challenge. And in the American context, revolutionary his platform is: Medicare for all, $15 an hour as minimum wages, expanding social security, no tuition fees, housing for everyone who needs it.” Does this list sound all that outlandish in the time of coronavirus? What explains the eruption of hashtags, and twitters:  “We deserve Sanders.”

This chant by the voters in total defiance of the Democratic establishment is not surprising. I shall never forget the banners in Philadelphia explaining why Trump won. “If you make Bernie Sanders impossible, you make Trump inevitable.”

It was a prescient statement. During the 2016 campaign as in 2020 when Sanders was on a roll, he had sensed the electorate’s mood. It was totally against the Washington centered establishment. While Sanders was hammering away at the Establishment from the Left, Donald Trump was doing exactly the same from the Right. When even Jeb Bush failed the nomination bid, the Trump candidacy seemed inevitable. At this stage, Laura Bush, the former first lady, let the cat out of the bag. “Let’s support Hillary Clinton then”, she squealed. In other words, the Bush family, the central column of the Republicans, sees Hillary Clinton as a member of the same club which goes under the label “Washington Establishment”. The same discredited Establishment that electorates everywhere are disgusted by. They find themselves hemmed in by two party systems serving the same corporate interests.

Even though it was universally accepted that Hillary Clinton was untrustworthy, indeed a liar, the Democratic party hierarchy chose to keep its corporate interests in humour even if it meant electoral defeat.

Three months before the 2016 election, film maker Michael Moore was prescient. “This election is only about who gets out to vote, who gets the most rabid supporters – the kind of candidate who inspires people to get out of bed at 5.00am on election day because a wall needs to be built. Muslims are killing us! Women are taking over! First in line with the polls.”

Moore was emphatic: “Those who vote for Clinton are those who would do so only to keep Trump out. They are not running towards someone they love; they are running away from someone they dislike.” Therefore personal persuasion on a large level was required and it wasn’t available to Clinton. “Those depressed at Bernie having been grounded would need extraordinary persuasion to walk to the polling booths to vote for Hillary.”

Had the Democratic Establishment learnt a lesson from their 2016 reversal, they would have seen the popular surge for Sanders as an asset. But they have once again produced a candidate (most likely) whom Laura Bush from the other side of the aisle would reach out to in preference to Trump. It is a compelling speculation: would Laura Bush and the Democratic establishment have acquiesced in Trump rather than risk American capitalism in the hands of a Democratic Socialist?

And now look at the alchemy of coronavirus: even Trump is dusting up measures which Prof. Jean Cohen, a political theory expert at Colombia University, describes with great emphasis, “that’s not free market capitalism.” She offers descriptive choices: “regulated capitalism; interventionist state or Democratic Socialism.” Private profit making is making way for policies which serve the public good.”

Ed Murrow, the great CBS reporter, had single handedly, and successfully taken on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt against Americans who deviated from raw capitalism. Has Bernie Sanders altered the terms of the socialism-capitalism debate in the very citadel of capitalism?

In the same way, an apolitical movement spontaneously evolving at Shaheen Bagh, has the potential to tone down the shrill tenor of Indian politics. Coronavirus has cast a pall on all our lives but, as Shakespeare said, “There is a soul of goodness in all things evil, would men observingly distil it out.”

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Evolution From A Good Muslim To A Bad One: Really?

Evolution From A Good Muslim To A Bad One: Really?

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

In Nandita Das’ film, Manto, the great story writer, who loved Bombay beyond distraction, finds himself under pressure from family, in the midst of the post Partition carnage, to leave for Lahore. Shyam, film star and friend remarks “you are not such a Muslim that you have to leave for Pakistan.”

“Enough of a Muslim to be killed, in a riot”, retorts Manto. The irony is that Manto was an atheist. Circumstances had imposed on his name an identity he was otherwise not comfortable with.

Haven’t some of us experienced this identity superimposition on the basis of our names? A few days ago a former Foreign Secretary took my breath away: he addressed me in tones that would have flattered the Sheikh of a Muslim seminary. In such extreme circumstances would you blame me if I am tempted to reintroduce myself. “Look that is not me at all.” In fact, what I wrote after the Moradabad riots of 1982, is what I am, give or take an inflection or two. Prior to that date, no journalist had ever taken that approach to the theme. Pardon me for repeating what I wrote 38 years ago. It may help to beat the current amnesia.

“Whenever events like Moradabad take place some of my friends turn to me with sympathy which generally leaves me cold because I guess I am a minority in my own community for reasons more than one.

My credentials as a good Muslim are quite as suspect as Ghalib’s were. “I am half a Muslim”, he said when, in the course of a litigation, a magistrate asked him to declare his religion. “I drink but I do not eat pork”.

However, my children generally describe themselves as Muslims while filling up school admission forms, although I wonder why such questions should ever be asked. Before you hastily trace my attitude to my anglicized education let me dispel the notion straightaway. Yes, I did have my schooling in an Anglo-Indian institution of sorts in Lucknow, but the home in which I grew up was a  deeply religious one even though the likes of the Imam currently in the news would not have been allowed within miles of it.

My grandfather, like Dryden, always maintained that “Priests of all religious are the same”, but some he respected, even befriended for their scholarship and conversation. I remember sitting through many a theological discourse, with Maulana Nasir-ul-Millat holding court; among the participants was one Mr Gurtu, a Kashmiri Pandit.

A moulvi of little distinction was hired ostensibly to brush up my arithmetic but actually to put me through my first paces in ‘namaz’. His efforts at proselytization were supplemented by my mother’s; she augmented our meager library with biographies of the prophets and the great Imams.

There was a quaint little mosque in the compound of our house in the village, Mustafabad, near Rae Bareli. Since we visited the village only during school holidays, marriages, deaths and births, it was not difficult to maintain a certain discipline and be seen in the mosque, at reasonable frequency, often only to please grandfather.

We were groomed into believing that Islam was the most dynamic of religions but we found it equally easy to accept that it was Islam’s interaction with a greater civilization that resulted in Dara Shikoh, Rahim, Kabir, Amir Khusro, Raskhan, Nazir Akbarabadi, Ghalib, and Anis. Nowhere in the Muslim world is there a monument, like the Taj or Fatehpur Sikri.

Folks these days are ignorant of the 18^th century poet Nazir Akbarabadi’s poem “kya kya likhoon main Krishna Kanhaiya Ka baal pan” (How should I write about the beautiful childhood of Lord Krishna) or Mohsin Kakorvi’s “Samte Kashi se chala janibe Mathura badal” “jab talak Brij mein Kanhaiya hai yeh Khulne ka nahin” (The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with the beautiful clouds as long as there is Krishna in Braj). These lines were written by the Muslim poet to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad?

In the region I was raised in, ‘Sohar’ was a song sung during a woman’s confinement. My mother’s favourite sohar was “Allah Mian, hamre bhaiya ka diyo Nandlal” (Oh my Allah, give my brother a son like Lord Krishna).

What does all this nostalgia has to do with “contemporary realities”, a friend asks.

Well, I guess I am no pandit but I do know a bit about “contemporary realities”. I know how Partition ruptured the fabric, bits of which I still keep with me. I also know about the status reversal experienced by the Muslims in independent India, particularly with the decline of the feudal order. It was the self-confident Muslim elite which found it easy to extend patronage to the beautiful aspects of Hindu culture: after all, Krishna Leela was preserved in its entirely in the Kathak style evolved in the Muslim courts.

With the decay of the feudal order, the lower middle class, always given to religiosity gained upward mobility. It is upon this class that the clergy dominated parties feed and which forms the central nervous system of the sort of fundamentalism on show. I also know of a certain pan-Islamic sentiment among the Muslims and I guess that the RSS does not like it. All this and more I have been aware of for quite some time.

It must, therefore, be a considerable intellectual failure on my part that in spite of all this I am unable to disengage myself from the folks who moulded me in my formative years. The credo they lived by is no longer part of the contemporary ethos.

Call it private grief, call it indifference, or both, but I find it, increasingly difficult to have a readymade response to Moradabad, Jamshedpur or Aligarh. And when friends turn to me with sympathy when such madness erupts, I feel a sort of numbness and have a strange feeling that they are addressing the wrong person.”

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Idea of India: Two Former Ambassadors Skirmish On Shaheen Bagh

                                                                             Saeed Naqvi

The Idea of India is being fiercely contested within Hindu society. Rampaging communalism is an offshoot. The latest to pick up the glove are two senior members of the Indian Foreign Service.

Deb Mukharji, 1964 batch, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, in an article in Kolkata’s The Telegraph, applied the image of the falcon, which is what Shaheen means, to the Shaheen Bagh movement. The bird that soared, is his preferred simile. This invited a scowl from Kanwal Sibal, 1966 batch, and former Foreign Secretary. “Incidentally, falcons are predators.” Sibal’s riposte appeared on the IFS blog. So unabashed was he on the secularism-nationalism debate that Mukharji felt constrained to challenge him, rapier in hand, on the very same blog.

What should a discerning non-Hindu’s stance be towards conversations of this nature which are taking place at numerous levels with a frequency gathering in momentum? First, consider evidence.

Justice S. Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court is transferred within hours of his slamming the Delhi police over continuous violence for three days, its failure to register FIRs against hate speeches by BJP’s Kapil Mishra and others. Arbitrarily transferred he might have been, but the farewell to him by Delhi lawyers showed record attendance, with men and women in black gowns leaning over the railings. The optics proved who won.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s government plasters city walls in Lucknow with poster size photographs of activists in the anti CAA protests. The Yogi is determined to “Name and Shame” the protesters. The entire operation is on the basis of allegations – no proofs.

Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court Govind Mathur takes suo moto notice of the outrage and raps the UP government on the knuckles. The intra Hindu tussle is at its fiercest in U.P. Little Wonder, retired High Court Judge, Rakesh Sharma brings out his arsenal. He takes aim at the sitting Chief Justice. Justice Sharma apparently nurses a grouse against Lucknow’s “cultured tehzibyafta” citizens who indulged in what he swears was violence which caused damage to property and, according to him, deserve punishment. He comes to the Chief Minister’s assistance with his “tehzibyafta” prose. “The competent Revenue authority collector DM Lucknow has several powers, including coercive action of attachment sale of property through Dug Dugee.” Here you have an Honourable former Judge, retired much before the Yogi dreamt of Chief Ministership, anticipating a Bharat free of jihadists and tukde-tukde gangs. “Aage, aage dekhiye hota hai kya” Mir Taqi Mir had warned.

As I have always maintained, in this orchestra the first violin was played in 1947. That musical score is now approaching the loud clashing of cymbals reminiscent of Wagner who, incidentally, was Hitler’s favourite composer. But the crescendo and the de crescendo in this musical score continue to fluctuate. Justice Muralidhar and Justice Mathur are standing firmly behind the Republic. Those opposed to them are out to alter the nature of the Republic.

The Mukharji-Sibal exchange is a summing up of the epic debate which has the nation in thrall. Since both are eloquent on their respective positions, let them speak. Mukharji sees three distinct takeaways from Shaheen Bagh.

“First, the Muslims as a community have emerged from a state of withdrawal and firmly demanded their rights as citizens of India, without seeking any crutches of political support.

Second, Muslim women have liberated themselves from the taboos that kept them confined to their homes in large parts of India. Veiled women have been able to look their interlocutor in the eye and firmly claim that neither “mard” nor “maulvi” would stand in the way of their demanding a just future.

Whatever the eventual political outcome of their demands, the liberation of the spirit of the community, and its women in particular, is here to stay.

Third, the women of Shaheen Bagh have reclaimed what others had ceded to an aggressive nationalism of violence, hatred and divisiveness — our flag and our national anthem. And the nation has been reminded that the ultimate guarantor of our freedom is the Constitution of India.”

Enter Sibal, frothing with anger. He furnishes what to some might sound like a non-sequitur.

“You have completely overlooked the hatred and poison injected into the people by the so-called tukde tukde gang, the adulation of terrorists, Owaisi's rants, those of the leader of the Bhim Sena, recent statements about emulating Shaheen Bagh and cutting off our northeast by Muslims who form a majority in the Chicken Neck area, the attempt to block the Jafrabad metro area in the light of the seeming success of the Shaheen Bagh that you extol, and, of course, Mamta Bannerjee's ravings.” 

Mukharji is determined not to let this go unchallenged. “I am disturbed by your comment about cutting off our North East by Muslims who form a majority in Chicken Neck area.” Having been posted to Bangladesh, Mukharji knows the vulnerability of Chicken’s Neck. He therefore asks with authority “But what is the Muslim connection?”

On Sibal’s tukde-tukde swipe, he is hard hitting. “When approached under RTI, the Home Ministry said they had no knowledge of any such entity.” He agrees with Sibal that India is not yet a fascist state, “but I think we are showing disturbing signs of a pre fascist one.”

This war within has had its share of martyrs too: rationalists like M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and Gauri Lankesh, to name a few.

Participation in this epic Kurukshetra by Muslims like the Personal Boards have in the past helped exactly the forces which menace the nation today. Keep an equal distance from the Hindu who by himself is better situated to let hundred flowers bloom. Even more important is to keep the venerable Maulanas away, busy with matters of faith. Emulate the women of Shaheen Bagh who, guided by an intuitive and robust common sense, have been extraordinarily focused on the Constitution, national anthem and the flag. The larger society is sorting itself out.

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The Greatest Movement Since Independence But What’s Shaheen Bagh’s Future?

The Greatest Movement Since Independence But What’s Shaheen Bagh’s Future?

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

It would be unfair to compare the Shaheen Bagh anti CAA, NPR, NRC movement with mass mobilization efforts leading to independence. The movement has no Gandhi leading it. Its spontaneous expansion across the length and breadth of the country and locations across the seas is unprecedented.

As the movement completes its third month in the next few days, a degree of restlessness is discernable among those who have hovered on the margins and who are asking, sometimes in whispers, “What next?” The quest for the “next” on the part of a limited group, admittedly, gives a clue to their expectations. In their minds they had probably set targets which have either been achieved or are unachievable.

Surely the target was not to enable AAP to win in Delhi. Yes, the movement’s popularity across communities may well have helped blunt the saffron in the air. In other words, the atmosphere the movement generated helped the only party poised to defeat Hindutva.

By steering clear of all political parties, the movement has placed itself unassailably on a pedestal. It is clearing untraversed terrain. It may well have paved the way for a secularism of common aspirations which the British found necessary to snuff out after Hindus and Muslims had, in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, found a “common interest and a common cause” during the 1857 uprising. In his address to the House of Commons, Disraeli rebuked the administration in India. “Our Empire in India was, indeed, founded upon the old principle of divide et Empira (divide and rule)”. This “principle” had been lost sight of by the British in India making it possible for the “rebels” to very nearly defeat the British. If Disraeli were to be interpreted, the rebellion by Hindus and Muslims was the secularism of common aspirations. The confused vision of secularism India’s founding fathers accepted was profaned in electoral practice.

Shaheen Bagh and its affiliates, over a hundred of them across the country, some of these bearing the name Shaheen Bagh, has been a unique evolution. For the first time, Muslim women have defied all the stereotypes which portrayed them as timid, homebound and subjugated. They form the core of the protests everywhere, holding the national flag and reciting the preamble to the constitution with expert ease and speaking to the media with clarity and poise. University campuses are wholeheartedly in it.

The breakdown of a system of uninstitutionalized apartheid or separate development of communities has been a singular achievement of the movement. Communities which thought the worst of each other in the absence of any interaction are now sharing the same shamiana, chanting slogans for the protection of the constitution. No single event in recent history has revved up a secularism of common purpose on this scale. When I visited Shaheen Bagh earlier this week a regular langar, started by a group of Sikhs from Punjab, had become permanent at the protest site. Goodness, generosity, charity are infectious impulses. Muslim youth sweeping the site in the shadow of Guru Nanak poster is the kind of “kar sewa” which is mandatory for Sikhs at Gurudwaras. The media may not be deliriously ecstatic at the composition but I found it symbolically transformational. That every Gurudwara in Delhi opened its doors, including in the riot hit north east, harmonized with the mood that Shaheen Bagh has set.

The core of the protest movement, the women, have demonstrated extraordinary reserves of stamina. But equally on show is the lack of commitment on the part of exactly the left-of-centre groups who had initially boosted Shaheen Bagh by enthusiastic participation. Does it occur to these groups that their dwindling presence will at some point begin to dishearten the protesters?

Shaheen Bagh shunned political parties from pitching their banners on the podium. The parties in response were mean in their calculation: they saw no profit in strengthening a movement which guaranteed them no returns. The quest for “returns” was a little puzzling on the part of the parliamentary left. They have negligible presence in Delhi. The cussedness on show is the mirror image of the CPM’s stance in West Bengal: “to revive in the state we must target Mamata not the BJP.” Does not the BJP, in its Amit Shah avatar, pose an existential threat to the nation? Or is that, according to the politburo, dwarfed by the party’s desire to revive.

Left and progressive groups addressed a rally at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar last week against violence in North East Delhi. It went largely unnoticed. Supposing each one of the star speakers had taken time off on separate days to address the protesters at Shaheen Bagh, they would have given heart to the women who have begun to look over their shoulders, searching for the OB vans and the TV cameras which have left for other assignments elsewhere.

Even with a movement of such benign intent, AAP maintained a strict neutrality throughout the election campaign, just in case the BJP amplified even notional sympathy for Shaheen Bagh as an anti national association with “the little Pakistan”. “Tukre-tukre” or Pakistan may not be considerations keeping progressive Hindus from participating in the movement in states like UP, but it must be admitted that the protests are increasingly Muslim driven, particularly in UP. It would be unreasonable to expect T.N. Krishnan make en core appearances repeatedly on a movement which will soon enter its fourth month. How long, one wonders, will the BJP wait before resorting to brute police action. Will police action in Delhi and UP snuff out the idea which has taken root everywhere?

An unexpected menace the protest faces is Coronavirus which militates against groups huddled in one place. Protesters have to ponder that one.

In reasonable times one could have imagined Shaheen Bagh institutionalized as a permanent speaker’s corner, focused on Constitutional practice, a variation on the corner in London’s Hyde Park (and numerous locations across the globe) where even Karl Marx and George Orwell once spoke.

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Communal Riots In Delhi: “Bhaiyya, Are All Of You Safe?”

Communal Riots In Delhi: “Bhaiyya, Are All Of You Safe?”

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

It is heart breaking to receive messages of concern from friends and relatives overseas whenever Hindu-Muslim riots break out. Most painful by far is the query from relatives in Pakistan:

“Bhaiyya, are all of you safe?”

The very transparent sincerity somehow comes across to me like Bergman’s reconstruction of a nightmare: faces of relatives, in a collage, jeering at me.

No deep Freudian interpretation is needed to decode this one. Until the 80s, cousins from Pakistan were regular visitors because they found the “colour” in our lives a relief from their lives, rich in other ways, but set against the monotone of faith. Once, after visiting relatives across the border, my brother Shanney, summed up his impressions succinctly: “nice place, but too full of Muslims.” This apt description found great traction with plagiarists who claimed it as their innovation.

In an age of inelegance, Shanney’s subtlety requires elaboration. In our Qasbah of Mustafabad near Rae Bareli, we grew up in a home where religion was important enough to warrant a mosque in the courtyard, but it did not come in the way of Pandit Brij Mohan Nath Kachar’s annual visits to deliver lectures, to a packed house of Mustafabadis on the battle of Karbala. In Lucknow, likewise, our Eid began with a fixed ritual: Babu Mahavir Prasad Srivastava (Babuji, we called him) placing a one rupee coin in each one of our hands by way of “Eidi”. As much of a fixture was the guest appearance of the Mahant of the nearby Mandir at my father’s celebration of Hazrat Ali’s birthday.

A story comes to mind which clarifies Shanney a little more. Poet Ali Sardar Jafri and I attended a most tasteful Holi organized by the late Nandita Judge at the Times of India bungalow on New Delhi’s Tilak Marg. The versatile Birju Maharaj sat on an elevated platform with a “dholak”. This greatest of Kathak dancers could, on his day, play an incredible range of musical instruments and sing all the “bandishes”, compositions centred around “Braj”, the terrain of Krishan’s dalliance with Radha and the gopis – the cultural core of the spectacle of Holi. It was precisely this which had inspired Raskhan and, in more recent times, Maulana Hasrat Mohani who wrote of his adoration for Krishna in Brajbhasha, Awadhi and Uudu. His Haj was incomplete without a visit to Barsana, the abode of Radha. These are only a few of the traditions which shaped our sensibilities, exactly the ones which found Jafari ‘Saab’ and me, riveted on Birju Maharaj’s “abhinay”, or mime of Krishna’s playfulness, Radha’s controlled spontaneity, rejecting and submitting at the same time. It was an alluring wonderland, its magic enhanced with the light sprinkling of colour and organic gulal.

“Let us organize Eid like this”, I blurted out. Jafri Saab glared at me. Suddenly I realized I had said something very stupid. Eid is a celebration of Abraham’s sacrifice – but it does not have a romantic, spectacular evolution over thousands of years of Holi, Deepawali or Dussehra. Shanney was fortunate to enjoy both traditions: the ones his cousins enjoy across the border and the other which leaves him joyous and free as a lark. These multicultural hues were alluring for our cousins.

Ofcourse, Kashmir came up in discussions to which, pat, came our formulation which we had, over time, come to believe in: “Indian secularism protects, among a billion others, the world’s third largest Muslim population. Every issue, particularly Kashmir, should be touched sensitively, keeping the overall edifice in mind.” How naïve we were.

“The overall edifice” had to crumble because of its faulty foundation but, over a considerable period, it was crumbling imperceptibly.

Even so our multicultural edifice was credible enough to hurry Gen. Zia ul Haq into promoting Nizam e Mustafa as a prophylactic against Indian secularism. His enthusiastic participation in the Afghan Mujahideen project had this important dimension: to wrench Pakistan away from South Asian multiculturalism. Under his auspices, Pakistan would seek salvation in a West Asian Islamic identity.

Just then Prime Minister V.P. Singh pushed a huge boulder into the pond. By dusting up the Mandal commission report reserving government jobs for a large number of Other Backward castes, he drastically reduced the size of the pie to be distributed among the upper castes. V.P. Singh was playing vote bank politics from a social justice platform.

This invited a sharp double fisted response from the upper caste party, the BJP. That is when the then BJP President, L.K. Advani set up the Ram Janmbhoomi and Babari Masjid conflict, custom made for Hindu-Muslim polarization – exactly the polarization which brought Atal Behari Vajpayee’s coalition government to power in 1996 and Narendra Modi in 2014. Modi’s hard anti Muslim plank has synchronized with the western world riding a rampaging Islamophobia. Even the February 2002 Gujarat pogrom was to some extent drowned out by the US air strikes in Afghanistan. The same hard line which brought Modi to power in 2014 earned him greater electoral dividends in 2019. But there remains an almighty fly in the ointment. Modi’s historic win is still based only on 38% of the vote. Remember, communalism whipped up by the Ayodhya movement neutralized casteism aggravated by V.P. Singh – but nowhere near saturation point from where an honest bid can be made for a Hindu Rashtra. Towards that end communalism has to be stepped up to a higher plane, possibly so high as to make the riots in North East Delhi look a trial run.

The descending darkness is disturbing but each one of us has to carry our cross in our own way, from our homes, our neighbourhoods, indeed our country. Is nostalgia misplaced in such circumstances? As a ten year old, I sang Kaifi Azmi’s “Naye Hindostaan mein hum nayi jannat banayenge.” (In new India we shall create a new paradise) at my uncle’s college in Rae Bareli on India’s first Republic Day.

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