[Reader-list] India Today and Being Muslim

Samina Mishra saminamishra at gmail.com
Sun Oct 12 08:30:02 IST 2008


This is a piece I wrote for India Today but the version that has appeared in
the magazine is an edit that I did not agree to. It's not clear to me how
that happened since I edited the longer article down to this final version
and sent it in to them. But the magazine is out and I am both angry and
saddened at their careless editing of ideas that are particularly under
siege at this point of time.

So, here is my edit and I would be glad if it was circulated widely on the
net - more widely than the magazine!

Samina


Not far from L18, in the posh part of Jamia Nagar, is a house on a
tree-lined avenue that will always be home to me. But my life, with all its
easy privileges, could not be more different from Atif and Sajid's, the two
young men shot as alleged terrorists at L18. I contain multitudes, Whitman
so eloquently said. But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to
lay claim to a singular label. And so by writing this, perhaps, I will
forever be labelled the voice of the liberal secular Muslim. A voice that is
accused of not speaking up. Ironically, it is this very tyranny of labels
that grants me this space in a mainstream national magazine.

As someone with a Muslim first name and a Hindu surname, I suppose I have
always swung between labels - a poster girl for communal harmony or a
confused, rootless individual, depending on who was doing the labelling. I
went to a public school and have never worn a burkha. I might escape being
thrown in the big cauldron with "Islamic Terrorists" but I will certainly be
added to the one for "misguided intellectuals". While there is no mistaking
that it is zealous nationalists who seek to light the fire under the first
cauldron, the other is a bone of contention between those who seek to define
for me how to be Indian and those who seek to define for me how to be
Muslim. My condemnation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Imrana's rape
or the media circus around Gudiya will always be seen in the context of my
privileged background, my gender, my religious identity. Perhaps, it can be
no other way.

In this rhetoric of binaries of "us and them", it is difficult to find the
space to create a new paradigm of discussion. And so, in conversations that
throw up Islamic terrorists, rigid religious beliefs, Pakistan and madrasas,
the response is inevitably another set of questions - why is the Bajrang Dal
not labelled a terrorist outfit, why is the growing public display of Hindu
festivals like Navratras and Karva Chauth not considered rigid religious
beliefs, why should Muslims in India be answerable for what goes on in
Pakistan, what spaces other than madrasas are available for thousands of
believing Muslims who choose to get educated and still retain their
Muslim-ness. As a Muslim in India today, not only are you fighting to shrug
off the label of fundamentalist- if not terrorist - but you are also
succumbing to a paradigm of dialogue which has been set for homogenous
communities with clear markers of identities.

But how does one fight that when shared cultural spaces, other than those
created by the market, shrink? How does one speak of the diversity of being
Indian when Diwali is celebrated in schools and Eid just in Muslim homes?
How does one avoid a singular label for experiences that are diverse and yet
have a common thread running through them - the experience of a tailor in
Ahmedabad whose Hindu patrons have stopped giving work to, the butcher in
Batla House who couldn't get a bank loan, the software professional who will
now have to watch every single byte that leaves his computer.

Being Muslim in India today means many things to many people. But how easy
it is to forget that one fundamental reality. How easy it is to say, as
someone said to me after the Delhi blasts - "These are all educated Muslims.
Don't they know that their bombs can also kill their own?" As if everyone
with a Muslim name is a terrorist's very "own".


Samina Mishra / October 2008



-- 
So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.

Samina Mishra
264/1, Gulmohar Avenue
Jamia Nagar
New Delhi 25
Tel 91 11 26832030 Fax 91 11 26928553
saminamishra at gmail.com


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