Ayesha And the Scarf
By Ram Puniyani
23 October, 2003
While walking down the pavement a few days after the
25th August (2003) blasts in Mumbai, I got a bit of a
shock when I saw Ayesha covering her head with scarf,
duppata. I have known her from her childhood and her
father happened to be well acquainted to me. She is
the only child of her beard-sporting father. She grew
up as a bright young child in the English medium
school. One could never see any typical Muslim
identity from her dress. So in a way I was taken aback
with her taking duppatta on her head. Since this has been a
comparatively recent phenomenon, one presumes
this way of putting the duppata has been a post
Gujarat carnage effect for her.While seeing her like that some more incidents flashed
instantly. It was during the Mumbai riots of 92-93
that my doctoral student Salim, who earlier was
indistinguishable from any other student, started
sporting a typical Muslim beard and walked into my
office one of the days telling me that if we have to
die like this why should we not we kill few before
dying. It was a very traumatic experience for me to be
unable to convince my student that violence is no
answer to the ongoing anti Muslim pogrom. It was
during that period only that one of my friend born in
a Christian family, who was an atheist,
told me to my utter surprise that in the aftermath of
the Mumbai riots he has started going to the Church
regularly, essentially searching for his community
association, which may be the only savior in such
situations.One more incident at personal level is
worth recalling here. One of the activists of
Muslim women's rights group confessed that their
movement got serious set back in the wake of Mumbai
riots. This movement of Muslim women had primarily
been demanding abolition of triple talaq, end of
polygamy and opposition to burqua. This had started
picking up slowly in mid eighties, had a setback post
Mumbai riots, came up a bit later and again was pushed
back seriously in the wake of Gujarat riots!Of course, Mumbai riots were a severe jolt to me as
well. But initially it was difficult for me to
comprehend as to why Salim has to grow beard, why he
has to go to the level of insanity in talking the
language of an eye for an eye, knowing fully well that
in this case it is the whole body and not just the eye
which is at stake, knowing fully well that this is not
going to compensate for the lives of coreligionists
who have lost their lives. It gradually dawned upon me
that a life lost in violence sets in chain of
socio-cultural thought process and makes the holes in
the feeling of security of the community and that of
the person.In the times when Osama bin Laden and Kashmir centered
terrorism is stalking the globe and the country, one
can only feel the heat through the expressions of
communities and people in their lifestyles. Narendra
Modi demonstrated the limit of this when without
naming the local Muslim community he could give a
clear message that Muslims are terrorists and so need
to be given a punishment. How could Mr. Modi give this
message? How could the average common sense accept
that the neighboring Muslim deserves the same
treatment, which should be meted out to the criminal
terrorists? In a way the process of demonisation of
Muslims community, which has been, going on at social
level found its culmination in the Gujarat carnage.
Now when one talks of terrorist it is not even
necessary to use to prefix Muslim, as Terrorist has
become a synonym of Muslims.One wonders as to what must have been the plight of an
average Sikh during the Khalistani movement. One
wonders what must be the image of an average Tamil in
Srilanka where LTTE has been indulging in the acts of
terror at mega scale. What impact Dhanu's acting as a
live bomb to kill Rajiv Gandhi, must have had on the
image of Srilankan Tamils in India. It is fortunate
that these acts of terror have not crossed the
critical level where the whole community continues to
be branded in that stereotype.Coming back to Muslims, Islam and Ayesha, one is
struck by the critical levels having been crossed many
times over. Multiple factors have contributed to
stereotypes about Muslims. To begin with the
continuation of Pre Indepencedence communal politics
of Muslims surfaced in the decades of 80s to play the
retrograde role in the Shah Bano case in particular.
The more assertive Hindu communalism kept going up and
up all through again getting its critical mass in the
decade of 80s when it used the Meenakshipuram
conversions of Dalits to Islam, the Shah Bano case,
and the rising Dalit presence in the social space, to
launch the Ram Temple campaign. This campaign took the
anti Muslim propaganda, spread through RSS Shakhas in
a consistent manner from decades, to the higher
levels. And from this time on every incident served to
increase the heat of communalism. The riots, which
accompanied this politics, saw that the number of
victims from Muslim community in proportionately much
much large in numbers. Also it was successfully
propagated that Muslims start the riots and than
Hindus just retaliate. This has no grain of truth in
it whatsoever, but in a polarizing society this
formulation found an easy acceptance. This was further
compounded by the problem of adverse Indo Pak
relations on the issue of Kashmir and alienation of
Kashmiri youth.The phenomenon of "Islamic terrorism" emerges from
three major components. The first and major being the
formation of Israel, the plight of Palestinian
refugees. This is closely associated with the US lust
for control over oil resources, its intervention in
Afghanistan through Jihadi Muslims to evacuate the
Communist occupation, its alliance with the despotic
rulers and curbing of democracy in this region with an
overall view that it is easier to manipulate the
Sheikhs and dictators than the democracies. The
unresolved Indo-Pak relations getting manifested in
the Kashmir imbroglio is another major factor
contributing to the triad of reasons contributing to
'Islamic terrorism'. One has to slightly introspect as
to what is primary. Terrorism or US imperialist
polices of control over oil resources? What is
primary, Palestinian militants or the Israeli
highhandedness in controlling vast lands or Palestine?
What is primary, the terrorism of Kashmiri militants
or the alienation of Kashmiris? The Gujarat Muslim
revange group or the Gujarat carnage? Here off course
Modi and his ilk wants us to belive that Godhra, an
act of Muslim terrorism in Godhra led to Gujarat, but
off course this popularized version has too many holes
in it to believe that. In nutshell, whether terrorism
is a disease by itself or whether it a manifestation
of the deeper diseases needs to be understood.The Gujarat carnage has many a lessons to learn from.
Two of these stick out in prominence. When an affluent
and socially prominent Ahsan Jaffery is killed after
being mutilated what message it sends to millions of
less privileged Muslims? When the Muslim women's being
is violated, what signal it sends to millions of women
of that community? And to top it all who than gives
the shelter to these hapless survivors of the
violation of their democratic rights? As witnessed in
Gujarat, it was the mosque or the Muslim run charity,
which gave shelter to the survivors. What message it
sends for the whole community except increasing the
hold of obscurantist mullahs and orthodox elements in
the community.My atheist friend born in a Christian family starts
going to Church when he witnesses the violence against
another minority community. My research scholar Salim
grows the beard to show his Muslim identity in the
face the Mumbai riots, can Ayesha be far behind in
succumbing to the pressures of the same elements to
start putting the duppatta on her head? Will Salim's
progeny take to terrorism or will they come to take
the path, which their father had taken before the
92-93 riots in Mumbai? Will Ayesha graduate into a
burqua clad women in due course or will she revert to
the earlier carefree self of pre-pogrom phase is a
question which has no clear answers today. If we can
provide a situation where Ayesha is not intimidated by
the violations outside, then the internal pressures
will get diluted. Its time we struggle against the
deeper disease which gives rise to the symptom of
terrorism rather than letting a particular religious
community be demonized by the vested elements globally
and locally.