Our own setu

Listening horrified to Toggy-talk on TV is one thing. Having a real-life Togadia-type baying next to your ear in person is unbelievably traumatic, as happened with me last week on Barkha Dutt’s programme, ‘We, The People’, on the hideous subject of Ayodhya. The weird thing was how the guy from the Muslim Personal Law Board and the VHP man were like blood brothers lost in the mela as kids, meeting filmi-style in the NDTV studio. Meanwhile a gender divide was apparent: The women (both M and H) pleaded to “let go”, to “give it away for the sake of national peace”. Face it, Ayodhya has so poisoned our daily lives that families are split down the middle. You can’t seem to go anywhere without people getting angry and shouting.

At a small party last month to celebrate the publication of a bunch of Faithlines by Penguin, I chose to start the evening with recitations from the Koran Sharief because I think of India’s religious diversity as a vast candy box into which I can freely dip. But I found many Hindus were not pleased. One lady told me she “felt scared” listening to the Koran. “In 2003? Did you see Guzzly or Gory at the door?” I asked. “These mullahs teach children to hate non-Muslims, especially Hindus,” she argued. “That’s unfair to the good guys and the patriots!” I protested. ‘‘Keep thinking of God as a box of mixed mithai!” she scoffed. “The MPLB has squeezed God into a packet of dates, stamped ‘Made in Mecca’”.

Remembering that conversation, a wild idea occurred to me in that studio full of angry, dejected people. Let the Election Commission declare Ayodhya-Kashi-Mathura a banned topic in the next chunaoti. Not a leaflet should be allowed, nor even a silent mimed allusion. Any reference in poster, song, dance, speech, whatever, should have the severest penalties attached, since it disturbs the peace. Forbid mandir-majid as an election issue with every mite of constitutional authority at your command. Then see what these politicians have to offer us. Meanwhile, there is an urgent need to bond again as “a community of communities”. Every Muslim and Christian should have Hindu friends with whom they are so much at home that they know where the tulsi is kept and help light diyas for Diwali. Every Hindu should consciously make friends with people of other communities and recognise the Throne Verse on the wall or know why special candles are burned. Every Residents’ Welfare Association should welcome non-Hindu families, initiate a flow of aana-jaana. Our children should study, play and eat together. Let’s invite Muslim ladies to join the kitty, to put up stalls in our Diwali melas. Forget scoring cultural points. All we need is love.