Tags:
Journalism of Courage
I went to Delhi’s Walled City on Independence Eve to celebrate with some Muslim friends. I came away feeling furious. When Delhi’s traditional Muslim families travel, it is their custom to eat only at ‘Vaishnav’ dhabas, what the South would call ‘Shaiva saapaadu’ or pure vegetarian food. This is because Muslims have restrictions about eating only halal meat. While Islam permits rule-breaking on ‘safar’ (travel), the plentiful presence of Hindu vegetarian dhabas gives Muslims a fresh, clean and tasty alternative. Now, however, Mohammed Iqbal is too upset to stop at such places. Last month in Jaipur (a former rajwara in which no Muslims were harmed during Partition), he patted a matka at a dhaba and asked for a drink of water. Instead, the dhaba-owner dashed the pot to pieces.
Ask the artistes who came from Kashmir to participate in Republic Day what their journey back on the Shalimar Express was like. They were reportedly harassed and insulted by the TT. Ask my friend S what happened to him on the Jammu Mail last month. The TT prodded him with his shod foot and roused him awake with these pleasant words: ‘‘Hey, terrorist, what do you mean by sleeping so peacefully?’’ My friend, who wears a cap, beard and kurta-pyjama, was naturally livid and yelled the train down. Wouldn’t you have, if somebody misbehaved with you like that, in your own country?
Over dinner, across a dastarkhwan on the carpet, S fussed that I wasn’t eating enough and put some ‘lal roti’, an Old City delicacy, on my plate. Suddenly, he made a face and said, ‘‘Sorry, I’ve gone and touched your food!’’ We’d been talking for a couple of hours on Sufism, for God’s sake —where had this bizarre point come from? I acquit my friend of trying to manipulate my emotions. If such things had happened to you and me, what would we feel like?
After dinner, S proudly showed off the culture of his community—burqa-clad women buying tricolour bangles and sending tricolour dupattas to their daughters-in-law, children flying tricolour kites, the poor being fed special meals at Muslim dhabas. In the Walled City, ‘Pandrah Agast’ is a proper festival like Diwali or Eid, with its own rituals. If we consider ourselves Hindus, it’s clearly our time to fight for our faith. Our great ancestral religion cannot shine without the context of culture. And what is culture? Not secondary products like music, dance and temples. ‘Culture’, surely, is polite speech, pleasant manners and trying to behave affectionately and justly with those around us. So often, one hears Hindus say how ‘We’ are ‘so nice’ compared to ‘Them’. Really? Then let us, as the huge majority community, lead in fulfilling this basic requirement of civilisation: culture.
