The West Bengal Urdu Academy has postponed, perhaps cancelled, a literary event that was to be attended by the Urdu writer and poet Javed Akhtar. Newspapers reported that the event was shelved after pressure from a section of Muslims who objected to Akhtar’s past remarks. This mindless cancellation is particularly disheartening since it comes from Kolkata, a city with a long, proud tradition of argument and art.
Akhtar’s personal views on religion are well known, but they have nothing to do with Urdu as a language. To link them to Islam or Muslims is a continuing folly promoted by right-wing interests that believe that Urdu’s promotion in some way is promoting Islamic culture and is a continuation of the policy of Muslim appeasement that such groups believe successive governments of India have followed since independence. Therefore, the signal from a publicly funded body is chilling for curators, artists, poets, writers, public men and women. It is a tacit reminder of such groups protesting the writer Taslima Nasreen, participating in events in India, or, far worse, Hindu right-wing groups forcing M F Husain into exile. In this case, however, the loss is greater for Muslims who need greater civic and intellectual presence in the mainstream, not less. The community or those who stand by it cannot be left to constantly fight rear-guard actions against self-inflicted errors.
The Kolkata episode comes against the backdrop of some individuals, Muslim clerics, reaching out to the Hindu community, and the RSS Chief coming forward to meet these groups. The latter’s speeches at a three-day conclave in New Delhi recently dealt significantly with moving forward on Hindu-Muslim relations. However, his answer to one of the questions in the Q&A that followed — that RSS members were free to follow their own wish when it came to act on the two disputed mosques at Kashi and Mathura disappointed many, in fact, causing much consternation among Muslims. Nonetheless, his initiative to improve the much-disturbed relations is laudatory and significantly different from the philosophy propagated by Sangh ideologues over the past 10 decades.
The time is nigh for Muslims to correct established opinions on the community. They must fight the impression that the community is conservative, parochial and lacks education, political and moral leadership. Today, there is no single voice from the community in India that Muslims will listen to. Therefore, the onus is on a collective group to keep speaking, keep writing. The way forward is to keep its own contrarian writers, to keep the doors open to fight the so-called “leaders” who assume that role in view of the paucity of sane voices. The community is not a monolith — it includes the devout, the doubting reformists and the traditionalists; the Urdu wallahs and tech professionals and women’s rights activists; left-oriented historians and intellectuals. They are all part of a magnificent collage that is struggling today because of its own contradictions. They face an unassailable government that seems committed to majoritarian dominance. Therefore, when an academy funded by a secular state acts as if only one theological reading confers the right to share a stage, it reduces Urdu’s cosmopolitan soul and makes the tent smaller for the community.
Protecting free speech can feel uncomfortable when such speech offends. But even then, there is a pragmatic case for hosting contentious voices. Javed Akhtar’s presence at the Kolkata festival would give people an opportunity to question him with vigour. A firm ground would have been set for fair, uninterrupted, tough questions, and he would have an opportunity to reply to critics and theologians point by point. Instead, now we have an unnecessary controversy and misgivings about the Muslim community, painting it with the same tainted brush as before. It bears repeating here that most of the powerful defences of Muslims’ constitutional rights have come from a large liberal Hindu community, which is also embarrassed at such pointless and reckless actions. If moderate Hindus are to keep speaking up against discrimination, then Muslims must furnish them with adequate ballast to robustly defend their community.
The immediate fallout of this incident is an embarrassment for Muslims in India, Muslims in West Bengal and for the government of West Bengal that let this happen. This was a time when there was space – however contested — for national cultural power centres. Bhagwat’s interactions with clerics and scholars may or may not bear fruit, and scepticism is reasonable. But engaging with those spaces, armed with data, case studies, and the moral authority of a community that permits debates within and without, gives reformers leverage. Stepping away from such engagement while simultaneously narrowing cultural participation within is a double mistake.
Here I am reminded of a couplet from Javed Akhtar’s father, the late Jan Nisar Akhtar: “Apne tareek makaano se to baahar jhanko/ zindagi shama liye dar pe khadi hai yaaro” (Peep out of your dark homes/ life stands with a lamp at your door).
The choice before Muslims is stark. Oppose obscurantism, resist nonsensical diktats and walk the path of modernity. Or, as George Santayana said: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The writer is former vice chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia, former Lt Governor, Delhi, and currently chairman, Advanced Study Institute of Asia
