The spirit of Sauda and Mir

Sauda’s contemporary, Mir Taqi Mir, approaches the theme thus: Mat ranja kar kisi ko ki apne to eteqaad; Ji dhaaye ke jo kaaba banaya to kya kiya! (If you hurt people in the process of building even the holy kaaba, the structure is unacceptable to me!)

The remarkable fact is that secularists, who swear by the poets I have quoted, find it difficult to discuss Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura on that plane. Their argument would be that these issues have been raised today not in the spirit in which Sauda and Mir would have discussed them.

And they are right. The themes were raised by political parties to win votes. Rajiv Gandhi thought: Give the Shah Bano Bill to the Muslims, open the locks at Ayodhya to please the Hindus! Get votes from both sides.

Rajiv Gandhi was naive enough to have embarked on the risky expedition but the thinking on which his steps were based had simmered in the Congress since 1967 when the party lost eight assemblies to a combination of socialists and earlier incarnations of the sangh parivar. The Hindu vote was drifting away — this was the fear afflicting the party.

So, if the Congress was willing to play the communal card, why would the BJP not? Indeed, by the time Advani’s rath yatra began, V.P. Singh, by introducing the Mandal Commission Report, had so stirred up the caste cauldron, that an anti-Muslim plank became an automatic response to keep the Hindu House in order and affect something resembling Hindu consolidation. Notions of liberal democracy, social justice, upward mobility, egalitarianism had rocked the foundations of a 5,000 year old social structure. Of course, this blanket statement obscures details regarding the real advent of the contemporary varna system, but the fact remains that tectonic shifts took place within the Hindu social order.

You would arrive at imperfect conclusions if you begin to examine social trends in Assam or Kerala to understand current uncertainties. The important fact is that Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura, Hardwar, Rishikesh, Triveni are all in Uttar Pradesh, the heart of Aryavarta. The state which produced several prime ministers and Brahmin chief ministers is today being ruled by a lady who, by caste, was until the other day considered outside the pale — Mayawati. There can be no greater tribute to Indian democracy than Mayawati’s rise to chief ministership of the country’s largest state. But the transition for the entire Hindu social order has been traumatic. Caste interests are defending their corners, every square inch of the space. A Kurukshetra is on in which the Muslim is on the margins. He has been on the margins these ten years of Congress and BJP rule at the Centre.

It is against this backdrop that political interests have raised Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura and cow slaughter. Pitch your tents on these issues, raise the communal temperature and use the minorities as a foil to manage social and political upheaval. The intention is clearly malafide. But it cannot be denied that continued amplification of the issue has had the effect of alerting the ordinary Hindu to what he, with ample simplicity, registers as a historical wrong. He does not know details. The question has been drilled into his mind: “Is there some obstruction in building a Ram temple?” Or are there contentions/questions attached to the holiest of temples at Kashi and Mathura? Simple questions, but ones that raise doubts about the Muslims.

As for cow slaughter, you must taste the “langar” or “prasad” cooked at Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti’s shrine in Ajmer. Not only is it totally vegetarian but use of garlic and onions is also banned because these ingredients offend some Hindu palates.

This is the spirit in which Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura, cow slaughter must be addressed by Muslims. Not cowering under some threat but by being magnanimous in the tradition of some of the greatest Muslims — Moinuddin Chishti, Sauda, Mir. It is just incidental that that will also be brilliant politics, one that will bring 150 million Muslims into the mainstream.