While ignoring the ground realities, the rulers devise ways to add to the communally tense atmosphere, such as the latest sarkari order to display names of the owners of eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route by Humra Quraishi
What is frustrating and more than disappointing is the fact the rulers of the day do not dwell on the ground realities. They do not wish to talk or dwell or focus on the current problems facing the citizens. Nah, they don’t talk of the flooded cities and suburbs and the havoc hitting those sitting in the water-logged areas with basic infrastructures giving way. They don’t dwell on the rising prices of everyday commodities …rising to such an extent that it’s getting difficult to run the kitchen. They don’t talk of the unemployed. They do not even acknowledge the fact that corruption has corrupted the education sphere, affecting the future of hundreds and thousands of students. They don’t talk of the rising crime graph. They don’t seem bothered if hate crime and lynch killings are happening more than often, in the midst of the communal pollution spreading out all around as never before. They don’t seem bothered if hundreds amongst us are rendered homeless after bulldozers destroyed home after home.
It gets obvious that new ways are being put forth by the right-wing to add to the communally tense atmosphere. The latest, of course, was the sarkari order to display names of the owners and workers and sellers of the food eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route. That order was thankfully cancelled after the Court’s intervention and ruling.
Today there could be hundreds and thousands of food bloggers and foodies and food enthusiasts yet no one stood up and voiced their disgust at those name-display tactics to food sellers!
Can food and fruit sellers be spread from this Hindu-Muslim thing! I’m reminded of what Sufi Hazrat Nizamuddin had said – words along the strain: when our Creator didn’t discriminate between countries and communities and castes and creeds whilst spreading out His bounty – sunshine and trees and fruits and rivers and the air we breathe – then who are we, the fragile human beings, to interfere and throw about don’ts!
This right-wing’s latest strategy of compelling food-sellers to display their names and surnames could be termed absolutely dangerous in every possible way… The list of Muslim haters and abusers in the Modi sarkar is long and unending. Not to overlook the comments churned by several politicians, who find time to sit through television programmes to come up with nothing better than go about commenting along the typical slanted and biased strain.
Neither a watch-dog group nor a gutsy independent commission head that could order them to shut up just there and then, so that they can’t get further …so blatantly communal. Today, it’s frightful how television debates take place; shrieks and counter screams, never really focusing on actual issues and genuine concerns of the citizens.
Those subtle and harmless taunts
Today, distractions are on, along the Hindu-Muslim strain. Any crisis, big or small, then dragged along are those typical communal ploys to distract and hoodwink the masses. It’s an utterly sad and painful situation. After all, Hindus and Muslims have lived together in this country for centuries. Mind you, they co-existed with a certain level of respect and love for each other.
Togetherness between communities was intact till about the 70s; where each community realized the differences and yet lived on par. Though several of my parents and grandparents’ friends would not eat at our place but they would decline rather too subtly, “aaj hamara vrat hai/ today we are fasting.” In all probability, the non-vegetarian fare cooked in our homes came in the way but it was so gently put through that there was nothing hurtful about it. Refinement was still intact, to a great extent.
Looking back I wasn’t particularly confident about my knowledge of my beliefs and though my parents had engaged a Maulvi Sahib, but there were few free-flowing meaningful discussions at home. In fact, I started saying, ‘As – Salaam – Alaikum’ with a certain degree of confidence, only after Khushwant Singh insisted he would greet me with that greeting, after prefixing “Tum kaise Musalmaan ho … As Salaam Alai Kum nahin kahtee ho!… This greeting carries such a beautiful meaning – May peace on you….Now onwards just say As Salaam Alai Kum.”
Let me also rather too sheepishly add that though Avadh cuisine was famous and food was centre stage in our home (my parents had always employed a khansamah/cook and the dining table laden with at least three if not four dishes at every meal) but here again, I was somewhat apologetic about the non-vegetarian fare tucked in my tiffin. I recall an incident from my early school days which relays how children react to off beats. It was during my father’s posting in Jhansi, with younger my sister Habiba and I enrolled in the St. Francis convent, where lunch had to be ferried from home and to be eaten in a common dining hall. When Habiba would excitedly open the huge tiffin (got from home) and take out those hugely rounded rumaali rotis and kababs, I used to sit all too embarrassed, more so as I’d looked around and saw that tiffins of the other kids stuffed with the usual daal and sabzis and smaller rounded rotis /phulkas… I recall even pinching my sister’s arms for over displaying the rumaali rotis and inviting comments from the school kids, “Never seen these types of big, huge rotis … you are different … eating different stuff! Why not our type of rotis… our phulkaas and daal. ”
All those subtle harmless taunts that one heard during the schooling and college years, seem all too harmless and subtle as compared to the dangerous ongoing communal unleashes after the Babri Masjid demolition and the killings of Muslims in the Gujarat pogrom… Never before the biased role of the administration was so blatant. Those at the helm sat as spectators or as else as supporters, as though ‘okaying’ all those grave human tragedies.
