‘A prestigious Indian university asked me for a ‘No Terrorist’ certifcate’

Suhail Akram. Is based in Srinagar and has a Masters degree in Mass Communication and Journalism

Growing up in conflict-ridden Kashmir, I never saw anyone being stopped from worshipping in mosques and I never felt awkward wearing my religion on my sleeve or calling myself a Muslim. But I remember the consternation on my mother’s face when she saw me with those first adolescent strands of hair on my face. She was scared that I might be caught in a ‘crack-down’ by the Army, who believes that everyone with a beard is a terrorist.

As a child, when military boots marched across the street nearby or when militants hurled a grenade, I would tremble in fear. Hiding within the four walls of my room, I would blindfold myself and with clenched fists, I would bow down and prostrate myself. Out of fright, I could not recall the Quranic verses and would instead whisper my school’s assembly prayers: “Lab pay aati hay duwa ban kay tamanna meri. Zindagi shama ki surat ho khudaya meri.” God was my only refuge at this time.

But religion wasn’t all serious. It has also occupied a place of fun and frolic for me. I remember my friends and me being told by our elders to silently offer the congregational prayers with them. Pray we did, but not in the way they demanded. As the Imam read the Quranic chapters aloud and the men listened in silent obedience, we kids often sniggered and fidgeted and then we would run off to a hill nearby — it was called Takht-e-sulaiman by some and Shankaracharya Hill by others — to escape the consequences of our rebellion.

By that time, the Pandits — the Kashmiri Hindu community — had already migrated to Jammu because of the growing insecurity in the valley and the most of the temples in Srinagar were desolate and I never heard the bhajans that my parents’ generation heard. But my father always encouraged me to be as hard-working and studious as the Pandit children and he felt that with that community gone, there was no one left to look up to, with regard to learning and education. In the days of my boyhood, Kashmir had already lost this religious, erudite community.

I grew up knowing I was not just a “Muslim boy” but rather a “Kashmiri Muslim boy”. But though it was a completely Muslim ethos, I had no inhibitions about entering any place of worship in Srinagar, be it temple, church or mosque. In those early years, I was taught to understand that to be Muslim meant to be one who helped others and respected other faiths. Little did I expect the hard questions that lay in wait for me.

Many years later, when I began the admissions process to pursue my Masters, I was shocked when a prestigious Indian university asked me for a “No Terrorist Certificate” after they learnt that I was a Kashmiri Muslim. Already, my childhood notions of Islam were under attack and somewhere between my dashing off to Takht-esulaiman- Shankaracharya Hill and getting ready for college, things had changed even more drastically.

Soon, with events like 9/11 and the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament, the very order of the world had shifted. My regional and religious identities began to define me. Being Kashmiri was enough to brand me as a terrorist in the eyes of the Indian masses, and being a Muslim left no doubt in the minds of the rest of the world, particularly the West, that that was exactly what I was. Kashmiri-Muslim — a mix that I should have been glowingly proud of — became instead a nauseating concoction that was forced down my throat.

By time I was a young man, how the world saw Muslims had changed and, ultimately, this changed the way I saw myself. I was asked questions like: ‘Are you a conservative Muslim or Moderate one?” and “Are you a Sufi or a Muslim who believes in Bin Laden’s version of Islam?” They may as well have been asking: “Are you my Friend or are you my Enemy?” There seemed to be no grey areas. Only black and white. Pro-Bush or Anti-Bush? Pro-Kashmir or Anti-Kashmir? Pro-jehad or Anti-jehad? Pro this or Anti that? An Army soldier once asked me for some mark of identification in my own homeland. I was confused about which one of the many I should fish out for him from my troubled waters. If religion means placing God at the centre of life, I am a deeply religious man. But as all my “labels” clash in the eyes of the world, I have had to delve deep to know ‘who’ I really am. And I seem only to get stuck deeper in the quagmire.