Broken Wheels of the Rickety Cart of His Secularism

A common man’s story is very common indeed. Just like a common man lurches and staggers ahead on the testing path of survival, so are his ideas, opinions and ideologies. These also take different shapes and sizes after being hammered on the anvil of harsh realities. The world of hard nouns in the book of ideologies and concepts is not made for the common man because a common man’s world is always shaking. Take for example the concepts like secularism, leftism, rightism, right of the centre, left to the centre, etc., etc. These are like slippery eels in the hands of a common man. They slip, twist, turn, bite and kiss as many times as the common man gets into the pits dug by the ones who really matter to these concepts. Or to whom these concepts really matter. These are the people who have an agenda, a profession, a propensity and capability to stick to a concept or ideology theoretically to milk the conceptual cow for utilitarian means. For example, one can be a staunch extremist as long as he is in the profession of it either at the political or the religious level. Adherence to the concept pays him directly like a common man gets salary for the petty job. Similarly one can be a flawless secularist as long as one cashes votes for being so and win accolades for being tolerant and adjusting to other faiths.

Where does a common man go with his bundle of concepts and ideas? He just sways and swaggers to fall this way or that; most of the time it is for getting petty gains, for drawing little sips of solace against emotional flare up. A common man rarely walks steadily on the conceptual stage or ideology wearing the attractive shoes of identifying trademark. It is simple because the utility of that concept does not pay him suitable rewards. Ideology is for a bigger breed who can milk it, encash it at the political, economic, social and religious fronts. Here but we are talking about a common man who loves his ideology as long as it pays him in some form. So the political rightists, leftists, centralists, etc., keep walking on the razor’s edge because they are into a profession. They manipulate the mass sentiments of the common people to encash their devotion to a particular ideology. He but as a common man has no business to stick to a particular concept.

Much as he would try his level best to adhere to the concept of ‘secularism’ to prove his status as an educated modern Indian, as a common man but he falls into the pit of opposing sentiments on his little path of unpaying ‘secularism’. As a common man his notion of secularism gets jolted when he sees horrifying images of religious zealotry in the media or when his own personal soft skin and conscience gets bruised by a pricking experience. He has grown up considering himself to be an extremely secular person having visited and prayed soulfully at the shrines of all the religions in India. He has kissed mazaars, the holy resting places of Muslim saints and fakirs. He has felt amazing solace in surrendering to that incense-hypnotised aura. But his concept of secularism gets a dent when he tries to recall a single Muslim hand touching the outer wall of a Hindu temple forget about praying inside. Then there are many incidences, people and happenings that just severely jolt his sense of secularism and he finds himself thinking like an extremist. That is pardonable. By being a common man, and not having any arm to milk the ideology for his personal gain, he earns the right to carry his garbage of varying thoughts, concepts and ideas. He recalls some incidences, people and mishappenings that have given very serious jolts to his concept of secularism.       

Hafeez Sayeed is a fuckingly fabulous dreamer and often kicks him out of his secularist slumber. He thunders and rants. Hafeez Sayeed, who? He is that champion jehadi of Lashkar e Taibba ill fame! Well the poor innocent Hindu in him gets scared whenever he sees him thundering in public meetings in Pakistan. He has reasons to get scared! He has read enough of medieval Indian history to know Muslim zeal in cutting down Kafir Hindus to size and get them, the poor grass eaters, intimidated by the burly meat-eating champions of Islam.

Well, Lashkar e Taibba has taken up the goal of liberating Kashmir from India and then set up a Mughal state of Islamic India. It is a free world by the way! Hafeez Sayeed reserves the right to act and behave as per the norms set by his sanity or insanity (both are same by the way). Suppose he succeeds in installing some descendant of Mughal kings on the throne (he has to find out peacock throne as well for this purpose), the main challenge facing him will be to find out the real claimant out of the thousands of princes of royal blood who may turn up for the title. It will be still more arduous task given that most of these princes will comprise emaciated rickshawallas and beetle-nut chewing poor people. But even to claim that authority they need to know about Mughal history and for that you need at least a history book. One needs elementary education. So the dreamers of pre 1857 world should know that at least basic education is essential even for the mindless work of jehad.

When he hears of their nefarious designs and sees the bloodied streets of Bombay after the attacks, as a chicken-hearted Hindu raging with disgust, fear and hate, he at least pays namashkar to the Englishmen for weeding out the Mughal dynasty. The grass eaters would have continued to pay homage to the feeble most Mughal princelings for the centuries to come. Somehow that era still rules the hearts of common Muslims and unfortunately even the educated ones: a still bigger jolt to his earth-made concept of secularism; taking a huge bite off his poor ball. He had this Muslim friend as colleague in corporate. He was dashing, handsome and his narcissism ever pampered by the adoring ogles of the Hindu fillies. On top of that he got extra soft treatment by educated cultured Hindus because the latter, as less common than the common people, are so damn crazy about proving their secular status. A must have element for their educated self dying to make a permanent footing on the shaking stage. They will leave no stone unturned in mollycoddling the minority prince charming lest he felt bruised and broken hearted on account of the majority’s tyranny. So this educated minority prince was his closest buddy. He would drag him to eat chicken and mutton biryanis by the mosque, muttering, ‘Enough of grass eating! Eat the real food!’ Then there was some issue where he felt let down because he found the Hindu friend lacking in overenthusiastic support of an educated-secular-Hindu for the cause of minority. Sullen faced, his Muslim brother just muttered over the lunch plate, ‘Yes bro! Now this has to happen. We guys are surviving under your rule!’ It just seared through his Hindu heart. If an English speaking ultra modern Muslim still recalls Mughal era with such aggrieved nostalgia, what will be the situation of illiterate maulvi-blinded people in the minority! So at least Hafeez Sayeed is entitled to keep his Mughal Raj dream alive.

One of his friends was passing through a really tough phase in life. Somebody suggested the help of a tantric-type-mullah from a mosque. The happy glutton arrived at his friend’s place; got pampered by the royal treatment; suggested a few things to dispel the evil spirits; lecher-eyed scanned the Hindu females around, and made them cram ‘La ilaha illaha, Mohamed rasool-ul-ullah, salal lallahu illahi vassalam!’ thousands of times. The whole peasant family of his friend chanted this new supposedly more powerful mantra for months, hoping that at least Allah’s angels will bring them happy days. Even though the faith healer was just a single Muslim entity in the neighbourhood, he still had the last laugh on many poor Hindu heads. He realized it four years later in the sleepy suburbs of a North African town. Till that time he had parroted the mantra thousands of times much to the chagrin of Hindu Gods.

Just like a typical educated Hindu he never missed an opportunity to chant out the Islamic holy verse to every tom, dick and harry of a Muslim coming his way, just to showcase his secular spirit and prove that he also knew about Islam. But the secret was busted that sultry evening on the residential outskirts of Djibouti in East Africa. He was talking to this young chap Moosa, sipping coke at their small eating point round the corner of their house. Moosa had been to Pune in India for studies. Again to prove his Hindu secular credentials, he started the Islamic mantra. He was expecting appreciation. But lo what happens! Moosa was dying with laughter. He nearly choked over. Almost fell down from the wooden chair. He frantically called dozens of his siblings. They rushed in for entertainment. Being asked to cite it again, and to prove his secular status to a larger audience now, he sang out with more enthusiasm. It created a flutter of curious, proud peals of laughter.  Then Moosa the great told him the secret. Now he got to know it was in fact the holy verse of somebody getting initiated into Islam. ‘Anybody saying it even once becomes a Muslim’, educated and enthused Moosa informed him. O God! Moosa seemed all eager to consider him a fully authentic co-religioner now. Thank God his little friend somewhere in his pants did not get a taste of Muslim religious initiation by getting a cut on its poor head!

More than a secular India he wants a prosperous India. India has tragically imbalanced people to resource ratio. Population time bomb gives him Goosebumps. How much of infrastructure we should create? This question is redundant as long as Indian population is on the rampage. He believes in birth control, and that he thinks is better than being a lip-serviced secularist. He cannot but help wince with pain when he realises that at the general level Muslim society believes in quantity. Even if the quality of life stinks and people grow in crowded, corrugated confines of congested neighbourhoods. The more the numbers, the better! With his irritated non-secular self, he over-analyses the situation and finds the Muslim food, even certain postures to be meant to add to the men’s libido to keep four wives and produce as many kids as possible. In the distant future, he gets scared, becomes suspicious and thinks that they are aiming numbers on their side; they will teach them the grass-eating Hindus a mighty lesson once they add a significant percentage to their population. A few months back a Muslim family took up a rented accommodation in his part. Miyanji was a burly man. But as a carpenter he earned almost negligible in comparison to his Himalayan libido targeting his emaciated wife. Result?! They were poorest of the poor and had six children. Again getting into his temporary fit of extremism, he felt pity for the future of these kids. Had it been just two kids they might have at least got some education. With these resources they will also become just some human-producing machines. Anyway, oblivious to this Hindu heart-burn, in his heart of heart the carpenter must have been thinking, ‘Even I am contributing to Hafeez Sayeed’s dream of a Mughal India in the 21^st century by bringing as many true species of Allah as possible!’

As an average nation-loving guy and a well wisher of fellow Indians, he wants Indians of all religions to blossom up in open physical spaces, and openness and peace in minds and hearts to grow and prosper. Passing through a Muslim neighbourhood, scared of each blood-shot glance and afraid for his life for not wearing a skull cap, he had no option but to throw his secularism near a stinking goat carcass and the dogs busy around. Holding his hanky against his red sensitive nose, he again fell into the pit of getting judgemental, ‘Muslim society is haunted by this massive insecurity that puts them closeted within a claustrophobic sphere. It pervades in Muslim neighbourhoods. From first world countries to the poorest ones, the very same pattern of Muslim neighbourhoods shows a deep sense of distrust for anything un-Islamic. The streets are so narrow that you just find it difficult to sneak out once you are unlucky to get in. The doors are shut. Almost no windows! They just do not want to see the world globalising in beautiful blend of cross-cultural sinews. It is a world lost in its own strange maze.’ Guys he wants them to come out in the open, in an open safe world. To make it safer for himself as well. That narrowness is terrifying.

He never felt more insecure as he did when he committed the mistake of searching a Muslim merchant in the claustrophobic Muslim neighbourhood in Colombo, Sri Lanka. To make it worse he was having a vermilion mark on his poor Hindu brow, put by a smiling priest in a Tamil temple in some other quarter of the city. The first skull-capped person whom he asked about the concerned individual just shot through his Hindu-marked forehead with his blood shot aggressive eyes. He could feel that typical antagonism for the kafir. He will never forget that arrowshot by the eyes. Bullet wounds might heal, but such soul-hitting mad glances never do. Afterwards, while he walked lanes after lanes in this lost world, he felt his feet giving under him. To be hell with metropolitan Colombo, this world ruled itself in its narrow lanes, dim light, dingy shut-doored and windowless houses and foul smelling stagnated air! ‘If they decide to slaughter me, the outer world would not even come to know in which quarter I had my last breath!’ he felt horrified. Thanks to the Hindu priest’s blessing hand, he came out in one piece. For a moment he became a firm believer in Hinduism. He had exactly the same feeling in Rangoon where his Muslim friends found him intimidated while he just chickened out of their quarters like a rabbit runs away from a pack of wolves.

Travelling in a train across the snowbound wastes of central Asian republics, he and his group of friends was scanned by the blood-shot eyes of another Islamic zealot. Baring his gold-plated fangs, that allowed him to tear any type of meat, he asked, ‘From Pakistan?’ ‘From India!’ they bleated like lambs. There was a queer aggression in the onlooker’s eyes. A joker friend of his had the audacity to say, ‘I am Hamidullha!’ God, how he wishes if you guys had seen the sense of relief and composure pervading fake Hamidullah’s new-found brother’s agitated being after meeting a co-religionist! The rest of them, the poor Hindus, did not even exist for the happy-to-find-a-Muslim-brother journeyman. As a human being it just saddened him terribly. He can never forget that cold, merciless indifference. Such symbolic gestures are more overpowering than the straight slaughtering of a kafir by an extremist Muslim.  

No hesitation in confessing that he is losing his poor grasp on his tiny, fragile concept of secularism; feeling more and more scared of exclusivist Islam and rampant Islamists. And more so because he has just closed his doors to Hindu rituals and that means Hindu Gods would not have anything to do in saving this newly turned atheist. How did he come to turn an atheist? Well about that sometimes later! Till that time some God of some true religion please save him from the Muslim tyranny! Although far away from the Middle East, he gets jittery and fidgets in his chair as he watches ISIS brutalities in Iraq and Syria. No man he does not feel safe. At least not when millions of fellow human beings belonging to a different religion suffer like this!