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<\/p>\nfrom kafila on line Guest Post by SABIHA FARHAT<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n These are tough times for muslims in India.\u00a0 But now that I look back and shed my \u2018liberal\u2019 prejudices \u2013 muslims were never acceptable as \u2018who they were\u2019 in Indian society.\u00a0 I had always blamed my mother for not giving me proper lunch box to carry to school.\u00a0 But the truth is that even in class 5, no student ate from my tiffin and gradually I started going to the play field in recess rather than enjoying a meal under the big Peepal tree.\u00a0 After that I took tiffin only when I prepared it myself, that was class 11 & 12.\u00a0 But even then the girls would hardly eat from my lunch box.\u00a0 We did sit together but no one touched my food.\u00a0 Was I the Untouchable?<\/p>\n The deeper I dig into my childhood the more I find such instances.\u00a0 Our neighbours often commended my mother on keeping the house \u2018so clean despite being a Muslim\u2019. Now I remember how much effort went into scrubbing the floors.\u00a0 My mother scrubbed them in the morning and she made me, her eldest child, scrub them in the evening. None of my girlfriends nor their mothers cleaned their floors in evening, cleaning was a morning chore except in our house.\u00a0 Now I know why \u2013 it was all an effort to prove that we were just as clean as any of the Hindu families around us.\u00a0 We were always trying to please our Hindu neighbours but they kept on demanding more and more.\u00a0 The entire effort went to waste when our neighbours visited but refused to recognize a \u2018clean muslim home\u2019.\u00a0 All they would say was, \u201cbut you are not like Muslims\u201d.\u00a0 Imagine, they were \u2018seeing\u2019 our house every day but they refused to accept it as \u2018reality\u2019, they continued to believe in the stereotype of a \u2018dirty muslim household\u2019.\u00a0 The reality, the truth that they \u201csaw\u201d would just not register over their belief! Why? Because they wanted to believe in their \u201cnarrative\u201d of supremacy.<\/p>\n When I was in class 6 or 7, that famous India-Pakistan cricket match happened, in which Javed Miandad hit a six on the last ball.\u00a0 There we were, glued to the television waiting to applaud for India and in my heart, for my secret crush \u2013 Ravi Shastri too.\u00a0 But Javed Miandad spoiled it all for us, I remember my brother cried when we lost that match.\u00a0 The next day in school when everyone was discussing cricket, I was shut up by simply being told \u2013 \u201coh, you must have celebrated yesterday, after all, your side won.\u201d\u00a0 I was stunned into silence. Everyone had presumed that \u2018my\u2019 side was the \u2018Pakistani side\u2019.\u00a0 Where did all this come from?\u00a0 From my class mates who were my age, 12 or 13, with similar middle class backgrounds or were they mouthing their parents\u2019 presumptions?\u00a0 I had forgotten these incidents and moved on but now, the aggressive Hindu has forced me to look back \u2013 I realise how desperately I had wanted to \u2018belong\u2019 to my friends but I was denied entry into the club that somehow had more claim to India and Indian-ness than me. The message that I took home that day was \u2013 \u2018I was different so I did not\u00a0 belong\u2019.\u00a0 This is the same \u2018difference\u2019 which a Dalit, a Scheduled caste or any person from a minority community feels. As a person of minority, one has to struggle to be recognized as \u2018equal citizens\u2019 of India.\u00a0 This recognition has been particularly denied to Muslims in India.\u00a0 The message is not just that we do not \u2018belong\u2019, we are also assumed to be \u2018traitors and allies of Pakistan\u2019 thus making us \u2018unpatriotic\u2019.\u00a0 One is alienated from the mainstream, her self-worth as an \u2018individual\u2019 is denied, it instills in the minority the order of second grade citizenship. All this happens at a very early age, an impressionable age. It made me more vulnerable and was perhaps my first experience of being told about my second grade status in my own country, a country, which the school text book reminds us is the biggest democracy in the world.\u00a0 I was alienated in a shared space \u2013 \u2018my\u2019 school.\u00a0 I was assumed to be \u2018unpatriotic\u2019 at the age of 12 or 13.<\/p>\n And so I did the next best thing, I tried to merge and be like everyone else. I started rebelling from my own religious background.\u00a0 I studied translations of quran and found flaws with respect to women\u2019s status in it, slowly I developed a \u201csort of\u201d feminist narrative on Islam. In it, I found elements of Patriarchy, Misogyny, Gender Inequality and all other flaws of an organized religion.\u00a0 I did not realize that I was still following the \u2018Hindu\u2019 narrative about a muslim.\u00a0 I argued with my father, when all he wanted was that I pray to God, once a day.\u00a0 I gave up my religion by the age of 17 when girls around me were still fasting for Santoshi mata or Guruwaar or Shani dev or some other diety.\u00a0 At 17 you only understand \u2018liberal\u2019 in a skin-deep sense. So I became liberal in the way I dressed, ate and lived my college life, completely aligning myself with upper caste Hindus.\u00a0 I should have been shocked at my \u201creligious hindu girl friends\u201d but I was not.\u00a0 I was a \u2018subject\u2019 of the Hindu Brahminical narrative.\u00a0 So strong was the grip of this majoritarian narrative that I, a rebel-muslim, failed to question my friends.\u00a0 But a questioning mind cannot be dulled. Sooner than later I discovered the flaws in Hinduism, it too had misogyny, gender in-equality and patriarchy.\u00a0 I realised that a \u2018liberal Hindu\u2019 mindset is just a disguise for a \u2018Brahminical\u2019 mindset.\u00a0 If liberalism does not allow you to break the barriers of race and caste, if it does not filter out hatred for minorities than how can you call yourself a liberal?<\/p>\n During my college days, I lived in my jeans and tees, much like any other urban girl.\u00a0 At every introduction, at every mention of my name \u2013 I was told, \u201coh! But you do not look like a muslim.\u201d What does a muslim woman look like? Again, I was not acceptable as a non-hijab wearing modern muslim woman!\u00a0 They saw me every day yet denied my modern identity.\u00a0 I was \u2018invisible\u2019 to them.\u00a0 They wanted to stick to notions of a \u2018hijab wearing muslim woman\u2019 and when I did not conform to their narrative, they called me an exception!\u00a0 Just like our \u2018clean home\u2019 was an exception, my \u2018patriotism\u2019 was an exception, my \u2018modern identity\u2019 too was an exception! But why? Because stereotypes create Islamophobia and Islamophobia simply helps to establish Hindu Supremacy.<\/p>\n So well disguised was this denial of my identity that initially I was pleased at my \u2018liberal identity\u2019 but slowly I began to feel some anger as these remarks were thrown at me often. Things changed drastically when I went to study Film & Television at Jamia Millia Islamia University.\u00a0 Now that I look back, I feel I got into the prestigious institute because in my interview, I was able to present to the panel, a positive review of Salman Rushdie\u2019s Satanic Verses, it was a \u2018liberal\u2019 panel of interviewers.\u00a0 The book was banned in India but my father had managed to bring a copy home which he kept hidden from us.\u00a0 I read it secretly at night.\u00a0 Maybe my approach to Satanic verses helped me. Once I joined the course, my mind opened up to new experiences, this is where I began to understand the concepts of \u2018othering\u2019, \u2018us & them\u2019.\u00a0 But by now I was so used to following the Hindu narrative about Muslims that I constantly judged Muslim students outside my center as conservative, hard-core fundamentalists.\u00a0 Anyone who had a beard was a fundamentalist and I did not want to associate myself with him.\u00a0 So strong is the grip of this narrative on me that even today I want to tell Muslim men to be \u2018more normal\u2019, to be like anyone else and merge in the mainstream.\u00a0 Why should they have beards? Why should the women wear burqa? Why do they look different? Why don\u2019t we give (hindus) the Ram mandir?\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we change our profession from being butchers to some other? When it came to matters of identity I was calling ourselves \u2013 \u2018them\u2019. \u00a0 The penny dropped.\u00a0 When did I start subscribing to the majoritarian narrative and criticizing people for the way they dressed, ate, earned their living? Why was I pleased at being a liberal Muslim? Were my neighbours and colleagues friendly because I did not look like a Muslim? What if I wore a hijab and was a practicing muslim?\u00a0 Recently a \u2018muslim senior citizen\u2019 was denied a seat in a delhi metro! Isn\u2019t it alienation in a shared public space?\u00a0 What then happens in other such spaces \u2013 schools, colleges and offices \u2013 is anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n The deeper I dug, the more I realized how convoluted were my own thoughts about myself.\u00a0 Infact my entire family scrutinizes and criticizes conservative Muslims ruthlessly while singing classical Bhajans at friend\u2019s \u2018Pujas\u2019.\u00a0 Is it an attempt to appease them? We celebrate Holi and Diwali like all Hindus.\u00a0 My daughter lights up the house with lights and diyas on Diwali and our neighbours appreciate it.\u00a0 But on Eid, ours is the only house that is lit up, no neighbor has accepted Eid as their own festival.\u00a0 Clearly the majority has never wanted to please its minority but is very loud and vocal on \u2018appeasement of minorities\u2019. \u00a0 Ironically, a narrative of \u2018Hindu victimhood\u2019 has been at play since 1980s, it has led to several riots in which more muslims have been killed than hindus.\u00a0 Every riot sets back the minority community by at least a generation.\u00a0 It takes away the home that was built over a period of 20 years, it takes away savings, security, livelihood, not to mention lives of loved ones. I will not even touch on rapes and arrests of innocent muslims.\u00a0 But the Hindu goes on believing in his \u2018victimhood\u2019 and in his acts of faith.\u00a0 To the muslim, he repeats the same questions why do Muslims live in ghettos? Remember what happened to Akhlaq who did not live in a ghetto? Why does the muslim community not help their women? Muslim women need as much help as Hindu women.\u00a0 Why are they so conservative? Why are there separate laws for muslims? Are there?!!!! Why don\u2019t the muslims want uniform civil code?\u00a0 Really!!!??? All muslims may not be terrorists but all terrorists are muslims??!!! Only as much as all rioters are Hindus.\u00a0 Are the gau-rakshaks not bhakshaks? Clearly these Hindus have not known any muslim, nor do they know their own faith.<\/p>\n Muslims in India face a double-edged sword of Economic and Cultural alienation.\u00a0 They are pushed to live in ghettos, they have spent past 70 years in fear of riots. Only those who are willing to give up their religion (like me) and merge with Brahminical narrative can hope to rise economically and socially.\u00a0 They are Psychologically crushed by attacks on their cultural practices, eating habits, dressing style and professions.\u00a0 They are easy targets for the police and the mob.\u00a0 They can be lynched, beaten up, killed in encounter or be in jail for 23 years before being declared innocent.\u00a0 They can\u2019t rent a house, get their child admitted to a good school or a house help to work for them.<\/p>\n Who will take the blame for this narrative of \u2018othering\u2019 the Indian Muslim?\u00a0 An average liberal hindu is upset when people like me refuse to follow his narrative.\u00a0 He is horrified that I have decided to \u2018De-subjectify\u2019 myself and assert my equal status, my first-grade citizenship in India.\u00a0 My \u2018liberal Hindu\u2019 friend expects people like me to not raise my voice \u2013 for he alone has the right to criticise \u2018his PM\u2019, \u2018his government\u2019, \u2018his army\u2019 and \u2018his motherland\u2019?!!! He does not want me to react to communal killings or state atrocities, not even state policies. He simply does not want me to have an opinion forget criticizing political ideologies. He is also not willing to look at facts, figures, documents, history.\u00a0 He is the one who eats eggs, fish, chicken, mutton and pork, he drinks scotch, he is well dressed, he is educated and has a white collar job. Infact he even relishes my Biryani.\u00a0 He is the one whose daughter can choose to marry anyone except a muslim man\u2026<\/p>\n And lastly he expects me to be grateful to him for allowing me to live in India, imagine what my life would be in Pakistan?!!!<\/p>\n Let us make it clear that I or the Indian muslims have nothing to be grateful for, to the hindus in India.\u00a0 That we refuse to play your game in the name of \u2018liberal forces\u2019.\u00a0 You are not liberal if you have deep seated hatred for minorities.\u00a0 India, world\u2019s biggest democracy is a farce, it is a mis-recognition of the system of democracy.\u00a0 True democracy in India can only be established through its minorities\u00a0 \u2013 a solidarity of\u00a0 religious, caste and indigenous minorities.<\/p>\n P.S. By any chance, if you feel threatened by burqa or a skull cap and beard \u2013 so be it! I\u2019m not going to change till I want to. Deal with it.<\/p>\n Sabiha Farhat is a television professional and writer based in Delhi.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Unappologotic Indian Muslim The Unapologetic Indian Muslim: Sabiha\u00a0Farhat from kafila on line Guest… more
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The Unapologetic Indian Muslim: Sabiha\u00a0Farhat<\/h1>\n
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