Mohammed Wajihuddin
I turn 49 today. Ideally a birthday is an occasion to rejoice, to celebrate. My kids have wished me happy birthday. So will many friends. But I ask myself: what is there to celebrate? When I see around myself, I find little reason to go out, buy and cut the cake, put on a smile. It will be sheer hypocrisy on my part to put on a fake smile, to appear very happy which I am not. I covered one anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protest yesterday. And will cover another tomorrow. Ever since the draconian, divisive law was passed in the Parliament, I seem to have lost something within me.
Those who control the levers of power have tried to assure the country that no Indian citizen has to worry since CAA grants citizenship to the refugees and doesn’t take away anybody’s citizenship. Yet I am not convinced. I am not convinced because I was not born in the India that I see today. I spent my childhood, teenage and a better part of youth in an India which was different. Just the other day Vinod, my classmate at the High school at a sleepy, rural locale in Bihar we went to, called.
He was my competitor in the class. We worked hard, never shared notes, seldom discussed how many hours we put in to outshine each other. He defeated me in the 9th standard exam. I defeated him at the 10th Board exam. In fact, I had topped the class and I still remember how proud I felt when our Physics teacher, in his inimitable fine Hindi handwriting, prepared the chart of successful candidates and pasted it on the school notice board. I didn’t have the luxury of possessing a camera and those were pre-smart phone days. I never got that moment captured on a camera. But it is etched in my memory. So, despite remaining rivals for years till we parted ways in college, Vinod and I remain friends. That day we spoke about our parents, teachers, spouses and kids.
I am glad his only child, a daughter, is studying medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College in Delhi. The love and care with which he spoke overwhelmed me. That is the India I grew up in and cherish. Will I be able to bequeath that India to my children? I doubt. Religion, before this new law was hammered through the two houses of Parliament, never defined citizenship. The founding fathers of this great nation debated it at length and finally decided a path that echoed the eternal message enshrined in the dictum of Vasudeva Kutumbakam (the world is my family).
Our Prime Minister was recently at Ramkrishna Mission’s Math in Belur(West Bengal) founded by the philosopher Vivekananda. Speaking on CAA there, the PM slammed Pakistan for mistreating its minorities. I was waiting that the PM would use the occasion and the place to speak about the minorities in India too. How ironic that the institution of Vivekananda whose idea of India sits on inclusivity had to host a leader who has failed to allay the fears of a huge section of Indians.
And why I am saying this? Shabnam is among hundreds of women who have participated in the sit-in at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi over the last one month. Her six-month -old baby clinging to her neck, Shabnam wept Inconsolably to a TV reporter’s camera. Fighting tears, she told Ravish Kumar of NDTV that this is not the India that her parents had left for her. Many others who have camped here, braving biting cold, rains and other discomforts complain that Modiji has no time to hear them.
Well, I am against blocking highways and Inconveniencing commuters. But what do you do when you feel pushed to the wall? Whether the government and its foot soldiers in the media accept it or not, the majority of Muslims in India see CAA and the proposed NRC as existential threats.
Today discrimination in deciding citizenship for the refugees from three countries ( Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan) has been allowed. What will stop them from framing other discriminatory and more dangerous laws?, they fear. In drunken stupor, people are known to become reckless. And recklessness can easily lead to ruination.
Let India, my beloved India, not see that day. We took pride in the fact that, while we were surrounded by some hopeless Theocracies, India chose to remain a secular democracy. Many in our neighbourhood and far off dysfunctional democracies envied us.
I remember a meeting I, along with a dozen journalists from Mumbai, attended at a College in Lahore a couple of years ago. In my brief talk I spoke of hope, peace, career and strife-free subcontinent. I liberally quoted the poet Allama Iqbal who is buried in that city. After the meeting, a boy came up to me and shook hands, saying, “Sir mujhe yaqeen nahin ho raha hai ke Hindustan mein itne confident musalman hain aur itni achchi Urdu bolte hain ( Sir, I can’t believe that there are such confident Muslims in India and they speak Urdu so well.” Where does this conference come from? This comes from our Constitution which doesn’t discriminate and treats everyone equally.
This conference comes from the feeling that I enjoy the same rights as my non-Muslim neighbors do. Now things are being designed to take away that confidence. I grew up in an India where pluralism was not a mere lip service.It was an India where diversity and multiculturalism were celebrated.Nobody identified us with our clothes.
Though I was born into a devout Muslim family, I never had to attend a community-managed school or college. Nobody tried to make me aware of my Muslim identity. Nobody tried to otherise me, invisibilise me. But of late, there seems to be a concerted effort to make the Muslims feel that they are the other. With provocative slogans and blatantly repressive, badla-induced measures, the community is made to feel that they may have right to vote, not to veto. The silver lining is that all is not lost yet. The battle to reclaim the soul of India is long.
We fought for the country’s freedom together. We will fight to keep the country free and the Constitution intact. it is from the Constitution that all rights flow from. And I am celebrating my birthday by not taking a day off but going out to work. Pardon me if I tell you that there is yet another anti-CAA rally that I plan to cover.