Living with the neighbour

Kamila Hyat says this in the end of this article:

"The recent events on the Line of Control (LoC), just as Pak-India relations were reaching greater normalcy, are perhaps the latest example. The brutal beheadings bear the trademark of the Taliban, and their mode of action. Yes, the Indian response has not been mature either, but looking at things from our own side of the fence, the timing of key events has been extraordinary.

The 2008 Mumbai siege came just as President Zardari had suggested Pakistan’s willingness for a ‘no-first-strike’ agreement on nuclear weapons. Such an agreement is of course now a thing of the future. There have been other events before this that also raise suspicions. The inane action in Kargil began in May 1999, soon after then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan and signs of rapidly melting ice. The hijacking of an Indian aircraft in December, 1999 and the subsequent release of key militants seemed also to be part of a larger plan. We need to be mature and wise enough to realise this, and make others aware as well. The truth is that without peace with India, we cannot move forward at all. As it is, we have moved many, many steps back." 

If only more Pakistani commentators acknowledged this fact, it would be a better mahaul, conducive to building trust. 

Fact of the matter is, Indians do not trust the nation of Pakistan. This is not because of the remnants of the partition. It is because of repeated incidents that show Pakistan as an aggressor. Not only do the incidents rankle, the immediate denials followed by mealy-mouthed acceptance makes the experience of dealing with Pakistan a constant despair.

Look at this report called ‘India Growling’. Or this called, ‘Hope on the wane’. It is mealy-mouthed and takes the line, ‘it was only a tiny incident’and it completely exonerates Musharraf for planning Kargil in the first place. The beheading incident is not seen as a possible ‘final straw that broke the camel’s back’. In this case it has certainly snapped the patience of many Indian citizens. Politicians in India have jumped on the bandwagon to milk it, and there might also be a few of them who are genuine (possible but not probable). In every war with Pakistan its been them who have instigated. They do not hold themselves responsible for the first act of aggression; they think it is a legitimate tactic to use against its larger neighbour. In every argument thereafter, this initial act of aggression is minimised and even dismissed as irrelevant. The subsequent reaction from India is shown as illegitimate, extreme, oversensitive, etc. They are lucky that they do not have Israel as their neighbour.

The question to ask is, do we as Indian citizens, need to go through this stress? The response often is, ‘since there is no option but to have friendly relations with Pakistan, we do need to make the best of it’. At this juncture I cant help but ask, ‘do we really need to have friendly relations with Pakistan? Why? Why can’t we simply ignore them, ensure that a fence is built where possible and ensure that everywhere else there are troops to block intrusion. Sure we can trade. Friends trade, so do enemies and all the rest in between. If there is something that Pakistanis value, let them negotiate a price and buy. Similarly, if there is something that Indians want, let them negotiate and buy. If it does not work out, well, tough, but that is the nature of trade negotiations; look elsewhere to trade.

 The change in perspective that we in India need to start thinking about Pakistan is this: True, we started off from the same cradle of civilization. But Pakistan is as far away from it and as alien to it as modern white Europeans are to the Greek and Ionian culture. They have replaced it with a Christian, specifically, a Protestant ethos. Pakistan has done it by adopting Islam. Europe and Pakistan are at different periods of adapting to their new ideologies – while Europe has had a few hundred years to figure some of it out, to argue it and even argue against it, Pakistan is only at the cusp of getting overwhelmed by Islam and by the vision of the Ummah. It does not see any merit in accepting Indic civilizations, be it the Indus Valley or the Vedic or the later syncretic versions. So the point for us Indians is to understand that Pakistanis are no longer our cousins in the way we want to think of them. Yes, they look like us sometimes, and speak some common languages. But culturally they have moved away and are inexorably moving farther.

The important point is not that they are moving away, but that they are moving away to embrace a creed that is virulently opposed to our ways. Their’s is about excluding. Our’s is about including. Both are problems while they are work in progress. However I would like to think that the problem of including and to be truly pluraristic is a more rewarding exercise than the move towards excluding and being exclusive. Being pluralistic has always been in the Indic DNA (as Diana Eck has shown), and with luck and perseverence we Indians will forge an identity that is more and more inclusive without being hegemonic, a culture that will try to understand and appreciate as many world cultures as possible, taking what it wants to but at all times honouring each its space. We are not there, but we will. Pakistan on the other hand is on the way to becoming an isolated monoculture, believing and breathing one particular form of Islam, disdainful of and violent against any other belief and norm. If their neighbours, from close and far, for the world is now but an oyster, choose to leave them alone, they too will prosper in isolation, if prosper is the word to be used. They too will find equilibrium in isolation. One wishes them luck.

One might argue that if India is inclusive, why can it not include Pakistan too? We have tried, and we continue to try in our own way. The results are indifferent, vulnerable to derailment by Rawalpindi and, in the last 15 years, by various shades of islamic fundamentalists. No relationship can survive if one party continues to break trust with small and large actions. Kargil was a large bertrayal, the beheading of our Jawan was a small one. They have all added up over the years. Apart from trust, the form of Islam that is being nurtured in Pakistan does not allow for anything that is Indic and western – no images, no festivals, no music, no medication, no blood transfusion, no non-Islamic education, no international norms for justice (only Sharia, and for all, believers and non-believers), clearly defined (but narrow) gender roles, no scope for accommodating new ideas of urbanization and multi-culturism and disdain for science. To put it differently, how can you include a person in your space who says that, ‘you may accept my beliefs and even indulge in them, but that does not mean I will accept yours or even acknowledge it as a valid and honourable way’? This is  the Pakistani way now. And it is inimical to everyone else who is not a votary to their vision of Islam.

Thus it is time for us to rethink our relationship with Pakistan. It would do us no harm to distance ourselves, give them a wide berth, and continue with our lives as best we can. It sure won’t be easy because we have seen in the past that neighbours can be pesky and interfering. India is specially vulnerable to such a charge by all our neighbours – and often for sound reasons. We too have been short-sighted and brusque – not with Pakistan, but with our other neighbours. With Pakistan we have been far more accommodating than appropriate. With Bangladesh and Nepal we have been far more brusque than appropriate.

It is time to redress this mistake with respect to Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and even Sri Lanka. But that is another story and another article.

Stop Press: Here is a sensible article by Talat Farooq. Specially interesting are her last two paras. It is the disease that needs to be remedied. Elsewhere, I would like to argue that such a thing is not possible unless the power structure in Pakistan changes, namely, where Islamabad is in complete control rather than Pindi. And that, as they say, is aint gonna happen.

In what way does Pakistan affect our internal sensibilities, especially the one between the adherents of the Indic religions and those of Islam?

For India, the conceptual segregation of Pakistan and Pakistanis is far more difficult in practise. That is because the primary identity, in exclusion of all the other identities that they possess and the one that the Pakistanis want to forge is that of a Muslim, a Saudi version of Islam more generally lumped under Wahaabi Islam. And we in India have almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. So what about the Indians who are Muslim? Do all these agruments also not apply to them?

Yes, to those who follow and want to follow the Sharia to its letter, those who yearn for the Ummah, for such Muslims living in India is living in Dar-al-harb, i.e. the land of warfare, till the day when the holy writ of Islam is established in the lands. The land then becomes dar-al-Islam. Such Muslims have no peace and will feel no peace while they live in India. They will either need to amend their personal interpretation of Islam or leave to join where the Ummah exists. Only then will they find peace. I know of many colleagues who have probably followed this thought and are now comfortable leading their lives in many of the Islamic countries in the middle-east.

But such Muslims, I would like to think, are hopefully few. One somehow gets the idea that the Muslim sketched above is a quarreling, intransigent, redneck of a person. He (or she) may not be. He may be a quiet, studious, hardworking man, deep in the thrall of the teachings of the Koran. For him, he may not see, or not want to see the world that is not described in the Koran, of worldviews and beliefs that are indescribably different, so different that there is no access to even start grappling with them. To bring it in perspective,this is no different from a Meerabai who could see only Krishna and rejected every thing else (I can already see some readers saying, ‘what an apologist! Why does he have to bring the Hindu example, only to deride it?’ Not to deride, dear reader, only to make the idea more accessible). What does such a person do when faced with neighbours and people, cities and systems with whom he has not even a starting point? One may argue that such a worldview is exclusivist and not conducive to urban living and to the modern world that is so well connected. But that is an argument that ‘others’ have; for the believer, it may not be as important a consideration, and as a free nation, he should feel no compunction to toe the ‘majority’ line as long as he is within the laws of the land.

It is therefore natural, that such a person is likely to find solace in those like him. It is hardly any surprise that we have a preponderance of Muslim ghettoes.  Do note that such an explanation is simplistic. People of same religions, or languages or ethnicity or region; have tended to be together for millennia. What distinguishes a Muslim being discussed here from other Indian Muslims is the idea that he is different and superior, that under no circumstances is he to succumb to the tempatations of the culture around him. For such a Muslim living life everyday with constant reminders of the unislamic would be very painful indeed. For many it would be a cause for rage, especially if he sees his space being encroached and demands, real and imagined, being made on him to dilute his beliefs. It becomes an even more potent situation if the Muslim also identifies himself with the class that ruled these lands for many centuries. This happens more ofthen than we think. One of the reasons it is so is because of the nature of Islam – its central message is so focused and laserlike, that it can make believers forget (or ignore) other kinships like language, land of birth and the culture of their parents and forefathers. (to make a passing point: Bangladeshis have taken care to not forget these kinships).

What about the other kinds of Muslim? What about those who happily (or with some misgivings) merge in the cultures of the time, who seek to include and get included? For such Muslims, the problem is unacceptance. Having taken the first (tentative) steps, such a Muslim often faces prejudice. Renting a place in a city like Mumbai is a problem for Muslims (no matter how much the media and commentators may want to trivialise it); employment in semi-skilled areas is driven by caste and regional affiliations and in such a situation the Muslim often finds himself at the perprtual ‘other’. Of course there are trades that are overwhelmingly Muslim; just to take the case of UP – weavers in Banaras, metalware of Moradabad, lock industry in Aligarh, zari work in Bareilly, glass works of Ferozabad – all predominantly Muslim artisans. But in a city, trying to get office work for a Muslim is more arduous than for a non-Muslim. Police in most states are under-represented by Muslims. The military has low Muslim enrolment. They get picked up by police more often, they hear inadvertant harangues by friends and acquaintances – its not uncommon to hear variations on the conversations below:

Friend 1, ’Do you know Firoz and Azeem were bashed up by some guys yesterday outside the cinema’

Friend 2, ‘I can bet they were trying to be too smart. These miyas don’t know how to behave in public yaar – always aggro, u know!’

Or

Neighbour 1, ‘Do you know some Muslim family has come to stay on the second floor. I don’t know why there was need to rent the flat to them. Had I known I would have found them a better family’

Neighbour 2, ‘yes, shocking. Just wait till Eid and when the bakra is cut in the courtyard then we will know the real horror of the mistake. They are so filthy.’

Muslims too have pet peeves about Hindus and other religions. However, because non-Muslims are four times the population, it is 4-times more likely for a Muslim to overhear such comments. One can imagine what a Muslim friend will go through if he is part of a group and someone starts taking the above line of conversation. Almost all of us have experienced this in our lives. Remember, the Indian Muslim lives through this every day all his life. These are like small chips being chiselled away from one’s confidence, from one’s sense of belonging and of acceptance. It cannot be pleasant, no matter how blasé one wants to be about it.

Yes, the reason why urban jobs have low Muslim employment is also because of other reasons – for instance lower educational standards, reluctance to break away from the comfort of the community’s ‘protection’, relatively hidebound thinking amongst family elders and social leaders. All of this is, of course, helped by the fact that Islam teaches active exclusivism. Hence even when they try, this second kind of Muslim, they receive very little support from families and immediate friends.

What I have painted is very much an urban landscape. The realities of rural India are different and more complex. There is rigid segregation yet cultural amalgamation; there is violence yet there is acceptance of the other; there are clearly demarcated cultural lines, of cuisine and food habits, or clothes and language; yet there is commonality in all of them. It is impossible to draw a neat line where one ends and the other begins. If there is a change then the change is for the worse – this change is in the growing numbers of hardliners in each of the communities. And these hardliners are isolating arguments and decisions, they are demanding a singularity where multiplicity is the only way. 

To summarize then.

Islam awaits the time when its adherents will find the strength and conviction to reintrepret the tenets such that it is amenable to inclusive living in a world that is becoming multicultural and in some cases even pluralistic. It will take longer because Muslims are more community and congregation based than any other religion at this point in time. Hence, the unshackling of an individual (and many such individuals) will still not turn the tide; it will need to be consensus that will need to run across a community, a congregation. And that, as we well know by now, is difficult. Not because consensus amongst many is a challenge, but because those who will be rabidly opposed to the changes will be able to hold sway even if their numbers are miniscule. That is how group dynamics works everywhere. The ‘silent majority’ as they are often called, has so far received a very good press. The arch villians are always the rabid lot. But in my books, it is this ‘silent majority’ which has been the culprit, the biggest perpetrator of horrors. To be silent is not to be irresolute. But that is what this majority has been. To be silent is not to be cynical, the majority has been so. The ‘silent majority’ has used its invisibility to follow its personal, often parochial goals.

It took many hundred years for Christianity to turn the tide. Judaism has been flexible for other reasons, but it has shown remarkable resilience and ability of reinvention over the millennia. Indic religions have other kinds of challenges, not these, but they have been supple to the demands of new thought. Will Muslims care enough about giving the other as much space as they themselves demand from everybody? Only then will Islam start the journey of including the rest of the world. And in turn, find peace and contentment.