[Reader-list] Thoughts about Indo Centrism from Istanbul (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)

[Rohan DSouza]

Dear Shuddha,

Have been following this recent cacaphony/symphony of voices with
great interest, especially your interludes. Loved this recounting of
yours of Turkey and its relevance in the context. Thought Ill add a
line or two about and from Rumi, who made Konya in Turkey his home,
which I think fits into the recent ebbs and flows of readerslist -

'Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshipper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.'

Rgds,
Rohan

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:49:57 +0530
> From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Thoughts about Indo Centrism from Istanbul
> To: sarai list <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Message-ID: <46E48DAD.3030302 at sarai.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> 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
>