[Reader-list] Thoughts about Indo Centrism from Istanbul

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

I am delighted to see the amount of noise and energy on this list. And 
to see that it is not all only about the indignation of ARKP+VD.It makes 
me fee that the 'community of correspondents' that Jeebesh has invoked 
is not a fiction after all. Whether it is shamans, jeans or any other 
matter, it will be discussed, and discussed threadbare.

I want to take up Naeem's point about Indo-Centrism, because I think it 
is extremely significant. The default 'we' that most Indians 
irrespective of political affiliation assume has been grating against my 
consciousness of a while now. And I realize that in obsessing with the 
Indian state (and its shadow boxers') obsession with their nationalist 
paranoia, I too am guilty of occasionally indulging in that default 
'we'. Apologies. From now on every 'we' that I will type will be as 
capacious as you, my fellow readers make it. I renounce any claim to any 
  boundary or border around the first person plural.

But since I have been declared an undercover Bangladeshi by an ARKP 
personnel, let me at least rejoice in my divided (or should I say 
multiplied) loyalties. My delight is a Turkish Delight at being accused 
of possessing suspect loyalties.

I spent this evening looking out on to the piece of water that divides 
Asia from Europe, I mean the narrow strip called the Bosphorus Strait 
bisects the city of Istanbul. I could not help wondering, as I sat 
sipping Raki and committing unprintable oral blasphemies against the 
three abrahamic faiths and a few non abrahamic ones, including Turkish 
and Indian secular nationalism, how inconsequential the lines that we 
draw on the map actually are. Here was a city that straddled two 
continents with confidence, that had seen the rise and fall of empires 
and nations, that embraced pious atheists and doubting muslims and 
lapsed christians and non kosher jews in its arms, that continuously 
asked us to refine our declarations of certainty about who we think we 
are in the direction of a graceful, civilized yet playful skepticism.

On Istiklal Caddeshi, the central pedestrian thoroughfare of Istanbul, I 
saw young women (some who wore a headscarf, and most who did not), 
spontaneously break into a dance to greet a midnight thunderstorm. I saw 
friendship and solidarities that cut through the headscarf/non-headscarf 
issue. I heard laughter and singing compete with the call for prayer. I 
watched old men play backgammon, drink beer, head into a mosque for 
prayer, and then come out and play backgammon and drink beer again. The 
rhythms of everyday life in a city like Istanbul make our (and here by 
using the word 'our' I am gesturing to the sad diminished 'Indian' we) 
nervous anxieties about identity seem utterly insignificant.

I spent a long time talking Quranic exegesis, asking questions about 
Nazim Hikmet's poem to mysterious Bengali friend (a certain Bannerji, 
who the Turks call 'Benerji') who committed suicide, and laughed at 
wicked jokes about why there is not yet a Muslim version of the Da Vinci 
code.

I heard sorrow at how it was turkish secularism that wraps the historic 
tragedy of the Armenian genocide in the shroud of silence. I heard many 
conflicting versions of history - Kemalist, Communist, Anarchist, 
Islamist, Ottoman but I did not find the arrogant, pompous, self 
righteous tone that so easily enters an 'Indian' (or should I say 
'Indo-Centric' conversation) where past and present, truth, lies and 
fabrications are hurled about freely to score cheap points.

I also heard an affection, from a few lurking turks that are reading 
everything we write on the Sarai Reader List about the way issues to do 
nationalism are confronted on the list, and particularly about how 
issues to do with Kashmir have been discussed in the recent days. There 
was amusement at the ARKP+ VD antics (guys, I mean ARKP + VD, you just 
lost the Istanbul vote, even though people find you hugely entertaining 
in) and then there was recounting of parallel narratives of how Turkish 
nationalists (both Secular and Islamist) froth at the mouth when they 
have to deal with the 'Kurdish' question. Perhaps, with time, they (the 
lurking turks) will make their voices and thoughts heard, and make this 
list less 'Indo-Centric' and more hospitable to currents and ideas from 
everywhere.

In the last few weeks we have had a few sad and pathetic attempts at 
Islamophobia on this list. These attempts betray a tremendous ignorance 
of the diversity within islamicate cultures and spaces. While in 
Istanbul, I stepped into the maginificient Hagia Sophia, which has had 
different lives in different epochs, as pagan temple, christian 
basilica, moslem mosque and secular museum. But there is no denying that 
it remains before us as a living testimony of the catholicity of Ottoman 
Islamicate culture. The byzantine mosaics of Christ Pantocrator, the 
Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist continue to astound us today, 
mainly because no Muslim sultan ever destroyed them, or even thought of 
destroying them. Today they happily occupy a space that also accomodates 
giant and beautiful calligraphic medallions that invoke Allah, Muhammad, 
Ali, Umar, Abu-Baqer, Hasan and Husain (sadly, Fatima, my personal 
favourite, is absent).

The Christian Icons were 'veiled' by a plastering device that also 
served to prolong their life and preserve them. And they were restored 
in the nineteenth century by the order of the reigning Caliph.

Similarly, the presence of beautiful synagogues in Istanbul is a 
terstament to the fact that the Ottoman empire was a place where Spanish 
and Portugese speaking Jews fleeing the christian inquisition found 
refuge. Istanbul continues to be a significantly Jewish city, and 
despite occasional provocations from the lunatic fringe, no one even 
dreams of Muslim-Jewish enmity taking a popular form. The anti-semitic 
veneer (not to be confused with anti-zionism) of both secular as well as 
islamist forms of Arab nationalism is a non issue in Istanbul. Neither 
secular Turks, nor mainstream Islamists have any truck with 
anti-semitism of any kind. And this in a society that contains the 
largest jewish population after Israel in the middle east.

And it was the Muslim Caliph who guaranteed and underwrote the power of 
the Christian 'millet' in Turkey. Even the fact that Yazidism, a 
pre-Islamic synrectic religion with strong pagan currents has survived 
till today in Turkish Kurdistan, Armenia, and Northern Iraq is signatory 
of the tolerance of Ottoman culture.

This is not to say that the Ottoman Empire, or modern Turkey were, or 
are model societies by any means. Ottoman rulers were tyrants, and 
Turkey has had ruthless and violent military rule. Kemalism, or the 
ideology of secular turkish nationalism is not a particularly benign 
form of politics, and it has waged a war aginst Kurdish minorities, not 
unlike the way in which the Indian state has dealth with Kashmir. I 
write this not to glamourize Turkey but only to illustrate the obvious 
and not very interesting point that goes to show that Islamicate society 
and forms of political power have a historical record of a far higher 
degree of tolerance towards religious difference than is commonly 
understood.

I feel that there is a lot we can all learn if we try and cultivate an 
interest and curiosity about the history of places like Istanbul. For 
that to happen, the Indians on this list, both patriots and 
internationalists, will have to be a little more modest and realize that 
India is not the centre of the world, or indeed of the universe. The 
world does not, in fact have a centre. And what a relief it is to 
realize this simple fact.

many salaams from Istanbul.

Shuddha