Islam as the better Behaved Buddy of a non-Islamist

Educated Hindus love flaunting their pseudo-secularism. It stamps and validates their education begot in the great Indian way through rot cramming of donkey loads of books. It robs simplicity from hearts and breeds bitchy, pretentious brains. They crow at their artificial best when it comes to exaggerating the perils of Hindu fanatics, and downplaying the devilish deeds of Muslim fanatics. Of all the people, Sukh Ram gets abnormally jittery as he falls into the chasm flanked by the two extremities of these two important religions in India. The theoretical knowledge in his books, and his belief that he is true to his image as an educated Indian, tries to pull him out and not think about the sharp edges of comparatives. The fangs of these metallic hard protrusions do a serious harm to his skin. He winces with pain. There are perilous flash-backs and flash-forwards in his scared, buzzing head.  

A burly Muslim is soulfully skinning a goat. This trailer image takes him a decade back to a crowded bazaar in east Africa. A blood smeared image rises monstrously. Blood blood all over, on the clothes, hands and face. The figure walks majestically flaunting the feat, ‘Slaughtered 100 goats and skinned them since morning!’ It is evening time. Sukh Ram shudders. He recalls scores of those moments when as a weakling Hindu kid he sat around monsoon puddles to save ants and insects flapping for life in the little sea. The contrast! Scorchingly buzzes an old RSS pracharak’s word.  He was holding shakhas in the countryside to light a lamp of nationalism basically meaning awareness about the Muslim danger: ‘Let us be clear on this! The worst of a Hindu is still better than the best of a Muslim for world peace.’

Sukh Ram still tries to convince himself that he is not into comparatives. He but cannot help comparing Hindu Fanaticism with Islamic Extremism! With his limited capabilities and analytical skills he can just compare what he has seen or come across. He decides to take a look at the history sheet of the so called Hindu 'fanatics': ‘At the climax of their nationalistic chauvinism, they have just broken a medieval structure, i.e., Babri Masjid. And that too where? At a place where the supreme icon of my religion was born! So Ramlalla’s religious legacy has been hijacked in the name of justifying secularism on paper and in theory.’ As a Hindu he just cannot spare this heartburn, after all he spares his middle name (almost a surname for him) with the Maryadapurushottam Shri Ram. He just finds it amusing how in the garb of politically lucrative secularism the faith of one billion people has been allowed to be hijacked to politically appease 200 million people. Getting emotional about Shri Ram, who has been denied a temple at a place where he was born, Sukh ram naturally hates the Congress and Co. who in alliance with regional satraps like Mullah Mulayam have ensured that political gains theory considers Muslims as the most important element in vote-catch theory. ‘Just imagine who is dubbed communal?! The BJP!’ he feels pity for the BJP, the champions of his own faith. He holds a terrible grudge against his faith-brothers and even sisters, ‘Educated Hindus are the most vocal champions of raising dissenting chorus against anything aggressive related to Hinduism!’ Having grown up taking out drowning ants from water puddles, his soft self mollycoddling with the idea of secularism, he still cannot surrender to the Congressite bait of an esteemed self, the secular self. ‘The Congress gets votes for being what they pretend to be, what do I get from forcing myself into belief about something,’ he stamps his unorthodox thoughts not generally expected of an educated Hindu.

His souls rants out a long sermon as he closes his eyes and a burly khakhi short clad stick wielding figure tries to rake up a full fire out of the smouldering ambers of doubt and hate:

‘Why one billion Hindus are comfortable with the idea of a makeshift tent at Ramlalla’s birthplace? The reason is simple! Hinduism has been left unattended! It is lying in the open to be misinterpreted and misused by all and sundry including both Hindus and non-Hindus. Result is we have so many stigmatized characters, so called Godmen, within Hinduism who bring farce and shame to Hindus. There is nothing left related to Hinduism that cannot be twisted and changed to suit individual, collective, political and social choices. No sinew related to Hinduism is inviolable. If Bhagwat Geeta is lying at a public square, it is not a religious scandal. Somebody might just step on it to move ahead; another may move sideways to go ahead; someone might just pick it up and put at a safe place; and top of it, somebody might just kick it to land it at even worse place. This someone can be anyone, of any religion. When you leave your faith system to be misused at a level, where you end up having godmen like Asha Ram and Rampal, and where the supreme scripture can be kicked without even raising the dust around, where you do not leave even a single sinew related to it inviolable, you weaken yourself as a religioner, as a person, as a race! It is no clarion call to wake up Hindus and go aggressive and all. It is just a comparative situation: “Why one religion is more misinterpreted to be more violent?” ’

Sukh Ram gets really disturbed. His hands are nervously twitching, shaking and fumbling to get some support to hold onto the platform where his life-long education wants him to stand, a secular person. Does harbouring doubts about others’ religion means becoming communal? He tries to dispel these notions and clear his conscience as a full follower of the concept, to stamp his credentials that he is modern and progressive, not a religious bigot. He but falls, not being able to find a foothold as the shaky platform shakes even more perilously as the pracharak accentuates the intensity of his soul-stirring message, the comparatives being too glaring:

‘In Islam it is just the opposite. Just imagine a Koran instead of Geeta in the incident mentioned above. Do you think even a fanatic Hindu will dare to even come near the Koranic papers?! No!!! Reason is very simple! Islamists have not left even a single thing violable in their domain. That is why Islamists are ruling over their subjects like a hard-woven intact knot for so long and with such force. That is the reason why its extremist priests have such influence on the followers. That is the reason why we still see medieval barbaric things being committed by Muslim fanatics.’

Sukh Ram feels a painful twist in his guts. He cannot ignore the differentials. He is now somebody who gets afraid at the sight of a hardcore Islamist. He will be far happier and feel safe if things get changed in the Islamic world, if more and more things related to Islam are done and accepted like he the lesser religionist does. ‘That is the only way to break that final knot, to melt that blind adherence to the rigid lines misinterpreted from the original holy lines. It will give me a sense of immense safety if Muslim males, females and children lead normal lives in the normal manner of the current times without causing violent scandals and fatwas,’ he looks at his son playing with the soft, beautiful doll and assures himself that the coming times will be safer for his son primarily and the world secondarily.                    

He feels pity for the Tauji in khaki shorts:

‘It is even foolish to compare Hindu and Islamic fanaticism. When RSS and company get too agitated what does it result into? Long marches in khaki; lathi training; lessons for patriotism, ineffectual lectures from podiums because what can be expected from educated Hindus and even masses who will just move ahead with this solace that they are paying lip service to secularism. And pseudo secularists crow foul...bloody shitheads. On the contrary only a few Islamic zealots can hold the world peace at bay. No need to mention countless blood-bathed episodes resulting from blind Islamic faith. If we still do it then it sounds like comparing the attacking prowess of a peasant cart with a fighter jet.’

Emotional turmoil over, Sukh Ram thinks more about solutions, not just the problem:

‘If Islam can be misinterpreted in such dehumanised manner to unleash hell on earth, it is high time we fight to dismantle fatal Islamic stranglehold of extremist mullahs over its followers. Islam has to be brought under new set of its pure, holy, original rules. Its inviolable set of blind, misinterpreted beliefs nurtured by power-hungry mullahs should be cast away to make it compatible with other religions. Demon creating misquoted lines in Islamic books should be made to appear earthly and violable like any other misguiding book of other religions. Poison sprouting mullahs should be held by their goatee and made to eat raw barley for all this bloodshed. Shame...shame. This earth will be such a nice place without the aggressive, extremist followers of Islam.’

He finds himself fidgeting in his chair. Gets terribly scared lest it becomes blasphemy even to have such thoughts within himself. What if some fanatic Maulvi reads his mind and issues fatwa against the kafir? He is scared. It is plain fear. He is well aware of the scores of killings of those having progressive minds. ‘As a Hindu I am naturally inclined to get scared,’ he justifies his fit of scare. But today he has revolted in his mind; revolted invisibly in the safe confines of his chair. He is a full reformer now, unknown, faceless, beyond the reach of any zealous bullet and fatwa. He gets a surge of excitement for being the saviour of humanity, for nurturing revolution in his mind to positively change the fates of almost half of the humanity on earth:  

‘The only way the world can be saved from the jehadi type of Islamic deluge is to break the myth of inviolable principles sprung up by the bloodthirsty maulvis who twist lines in the Holy Scriptures to draw abstract, violent meanings. Muslims and non-Muslims both have been chained in the fear of a deadly retaliation if there is any effort to change these misguiding injunctions. Sporadic incidences to change have been met with killings, because these have been tried by individuals. Result is that Islam still appears the primitive faith meant for the older times. The only way change can be forced is to break the myth of inviolability of those who stand against change and hold their own misinterpretations as something written in stone. Let it be a frequent event. Let it be done by faceless institutions at public places so that panic stricken Maulvis do not know who has done it. Let it occur so many times at so many places that it becomes a normal issue like it is with any other religions. Let Islam be like any other peaceful religion. This is the only way to take out common Muslim population from the clutches of Islamic extremists swathed in medieval principles. Once they frequently see the people becoming free from the centuries old blindfolding principles, they will be more receptive to change. Larger forces in the non-Islamic world have to manage it with the help of faceless or not so faceless players.’

Reform! Change! Freedom! These heavy words tonk so heavily in his mind that he thinks he might be speaking loud. He gets really scared. Has he spoken loud to make somebody hear it? He prefers that nobody has heard him. It’s better to have it inaudible. It’s better for him, his son, his family. Getting even more scared, he even wants to forget it as a nightmare only. 

Better to have a Godless World Now

Let us be clear on this! The concept of God was a nice production of human thought to give answers to unanswerable happenings, mishappenings, chance throw of dice and destinies, hard fought struggles and expectedly-unexpectedly varying outcomes. And then out of this motley mix of fires, misfires; success and failure; rise and fall; ecstasies and miseries, there arose natural questions--Why?? Why?? The concept of God was offered as a panacea for numerous puzzling symptoms plaguing distraught humans seeking answers to this 'why'.

You have to believe with a blind faith if at all you want to get some solace or unproven blessing. If you suffer unjustifiably, religion tells you that you might be suffering on account of bad deeds in the previous birth. If you are not getting the results of your good deeds, it tells you that you will get it post death. Both things are not proven, previous birth and after-death status. God is not proven. All the proofs to verify His existence are themselves contrived in a way that even these cannot be proven. So the final nail in confirming His existence is: ‘He cannot be known! He can just be realized and felt!’ So ultimately it boils down to a feeling, a realization! So very smartly it has been brought down to a level of feeling, a zone where logic is pushed aside without any rhyme or reason! And this feeling and realization is shaped by the unquestionable belief in His existence.

So where do we land up?! Like we are the owners and makers of rest of all the feelings in us, here as well we possess this feeling in us. Sum and summary: Aham Brahma Asmi, means ‘I am the God I am seeking!’ It started in human brain and is realized in human heart and actualised by the human hand in practice. Rituals that are meant to appease Him, are just smart ways of keeping social order and keep the people believe in the thin line dividing good and bad, moral and immoral, otherwise there will be a chaos.            

After a debatable journey, the concept of God has outlived its utility. Mankind framed the idea of God to create a psychological field of safety against natural forces that were beyond his knowledge and comprehension. Those mysteries have been explained quite well now. So we need not continue to pay lip service to it anymore. Doing so is proving more harmful to the creator of God, the human brain, the mankind. Religion is a thriving unquestioned business. Do you remember Asha Ram? Similarly, there are hundreds of Godmen exploiting people for their belief in the concept of God. Millions are dying in the name of various Gods. Political parties are pulling votes in the name of religion. High time we abandon this redundant concept! At the practical and mass level, it is doing more harm than the psychological advantage it provides against unknown apprehensions and insecurities at the individual level. Disadvantages and losses at the collective level are far more than the individual sips of solace driven by surrendering the self to the divinity.

Times have changed across centuries. Almost everything changed in its wake. But religious differences are the same. Blood-shedding in the name of religion is the same. Isn't it high time that the world community starts dismantling the hold of exclusive religious principles on people and states? It is the time for an all inclusive world religion, the religion of all humanity, humanism. It is the time to contrive a better idea than exclusivist Gods for various groups. We can think better to have a more relevant concept. The new concept can have Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Hindu Gods and other major deities in its fold. Main issue is how can Islamists be convinced to see beyond the rigid confines of their unchanging tradition?! All other religions are melting under the warm sun of internationalism. But icy blocks of Islam are holding their medieval solidly crystallized layers like polar snows. Will Islam ever be lenient to non Muslims!? World peace and harmony depends on the answer to this question. If internationalism succeeds to liberate humanism buried inside Islamic fanaticism, we can expect to have a peaceful world following the religion of humanism. In any case religion has to be systematically dismantled to lay the foundation of a common world, like it was earlier constructed in ancient times to stamp the man's authority on earth under subservience to natural forces.

We can analyse the factors that gave birth and then propagation of the concept of God. Mathematically, God is just an incalculable sum of infinite series of chance factors.

If at all there is divinity, it is chance, coincidence! Chance is divinity! If ever there is a force that shapes things in universe and consequently the human lives, it is the chance factor. Random forces shape even the patterns that appear constant and infallible to us. Suppose you hold ten playing marbles in your hand. You keep these on your palm and take utmost focus to throw in a way so that you get maximum pieces in the hole. The chain of event that proceeds is utterly carried and pulled by the chance factor. Who knows with what balance and from what height, distance or tilt you decide to go for your throw!? You have numerous options as per the aforementioned variants! Then by chance you get carried to think one particular position more suitable than others. Who knows in what funny ways the marbles float in air? These can float in relatively favourable and unfavourable arrangement to hit earth in who knows how many ways to scatter in who knows in what directions and strike each other in who knows how many ways and how many angles to result in who knows how many moving away or into the hole? It is a long and endless series of independent still minutely dependent possibilities. One conscious act of taking the marbles in hand driven by the intention of putting as many as possible in the hole results in an endless serious of probabilities that work independently in between the throwing stage with particular intention and the resulting stage emerging as an independent result. The result is free, so are the numerous bits of independent realities driven by the free will of the chance factor. From the micro to the macro levels this factor works to coincidentally shape destinies and the way universe functions.

In the fathomless domains of this chancy super-quotient, we have independent units that recur in patterns with regularity to substantiate our scientific theories. These are but particular outcomes carried by the swift forces of chance. Universe is an outcome of some chancy explosion. Life on earth is pleasant coincidence, divine chance. See the dance of prince chance in all its charm around you and in your life and you will feel its superweight! And if chance is the God, we should take no chance with the chancy quirkiness and rather shape our destinies more practically, more logically and less blindly.   

Sukh Ram’s Nightmare

Sukh Ram, involving ‘comfort’ and ‘Lord Ram’ in his name, is not feeling as comfortable as he should given his otherwise fine-going life. He has been bitten by the bug of insecurity; a psychologically exaggerated thing possibly. But every person’s haunts are as real as anyone else. One just cannot put these into the dustbin without reflecting over them. 

Sukh Ram wants to stay happy, feel safe and operate freely in a far better world than the present one. Of the many scaring bits of facts that stop this world from being a better one, the wrong interpretations of Islam just stab him like a poor kafir, slaying his peace, robbing him of his right to believe that we have indeed made some progress in the 21^st century. He just cannot sit comfortably in the confines of his living room and watch the horrible scenes of massacres perpetrated by the blinded souls of extremist Islamists. Massacres of innocent students, beastly cut-downs on women’s already almost nonexistent freedom, live slayings of media men like they are just chicken, pumping poison in soft childhood to make them killing machines in future: the images are killing. It’s just not possible to believe that he is safe in this world, wherever on earth he is and whatever religion he is following. 

More to keep himself safe, and a bit less to help the humanity, he wants a better world by helping his Muslim brothers to redefine themselves in the ways parallel to the world involving blending of cultures and openness to beliefs and lifestyles. More than anything, it will save non-Muslims like him from the hair-raising problems at many levels in the future.

With his scared guts and his pants almost wet with cowardliness, he wishes these secular theorists to be gagged for some time and allow some real practical talk and do some reality check. He is praying for those who can find ways to gradually melt paranoid apprehension in the Muslim minds regarding anything non-Muslim, be it dress, places of worship, mode of prayer, food, relationships and what not!

He can even give a significant portion of his earnings to anybody who can ensure that the next generation of Muslims is more tolerant of those beyond the Muslim walls having their own distinct ways of life. He will embrace anybody who can tell the educated next generation of Muslims that touching a Hindu temple’s walls from outside does not mean they have lost their Muslimhood. As a Hindu he feels very lenient in what he accommodates regarding the multiple realities linked to inter-religious strains. He hardly has any qualms about entering and even offering prayers in darghas and mosques. But he has a doubt whether his best effort to take a single Muslim into the shrine of his faith will meet some success. Guys, again he cribs with a wounded judgement that Muslims from childhood are conditioned to take any such bravado into others’ shrines as blasphemous. With burning heart and sad spirit he recalls an ultra-modern, educated Muslim colleague of his in the corporate who used to openly throw Tuesday prashada into the dustbin. Well it was just a simple ritual by God-abiding Hindu employees to collect money on Tuesday and distribute prashada on the floor. ‘If the educated lot behaves that way, imagine the situation in crammed slum-type Muslim neighbourhoods!’ the ‘Ram’ portion of his name gets jittery.

The ‘Sukh’ portion of his name wants Islam has to be fundamentally redefined to inculcate mercy at its core philosophy like other world religions. A lady colleague of Sukh Ram still gets palpitations when she recalls an incident from her childhood in an African country. Her father had taken her to visit his Muslim friend’s house. All went well till she saw the host’s small kid catching a mouse and scooping out its eyes with playful relish. The proud father just looked droolingly. Highly educated and unbelievably soft, she still gets disturbed and says, ‘The fundamental philosophy is to kill the softer side in the young ones to make them less tolerant, less humane, aggressive and merciless so as to annihilate the kafirs and non-believers.’ Sukh Ram’s 7-year-old son softly mollycoddles a baby doll and serves her eatables hoping that she will grow to be his wife sometime in future. Sukh Ram shudders; takes his eyes away from his son. He has seen the documentaries portraying the consequences of this fundamental Islamic approach in war-torn and strife-lorn Islamic states where kid jehadis commit heinous crimes against humanity with the ease of performing something holy.

He wants to look far into a prosperous future, but how can he do that if he has millions around him who are looking back and crying all sorts of distractions. ‘They get antagonistic to me. My crime: I look ahead while they look back. By sticking to the rigid medieval line, my Muslims brothers think that they are surrounded by enemies like me and they have to stay and act like a pack of wolves to ward off the danger,’ he feels a painful stab in his heart. It’s evening time and the melodious azaan call blares from a minaret in ‘that’ section of the city. It draws him apprehensively to the crammed, unhygienic, slumish Muslim neighbourhood where the age-old lifestyles had been forced to stay alive in semi dark behind closed walls overlooking narrow streets. He wants them to open up; to come into the multi-religious playground and enjoy the fun the current age has to offer. He does not want this as a pious being. He does it as a scared person; scared because the volcanic eruptions from the suppressed neighbourhoods might erupt to cover his poor head with soot and ash. He counts the names of those well-to-do Muslims who can afford to shift to better social environment but still prefer to stay in narrow confines. In fact there had been a reverse trend. Upper class Muslim families had shifted to congested predominantly Muslim colonies from the earlier secular kafir-infested locations having better facilities. He becomes more insecure because it does not augur well for a cosmopolitan society. It does not augur well for him either.

He wants to have happy, safe, smiling Muslim families in his neighbourhood. He wants them to be normal people around him just like any other religioner. Following the azaan call, he spreads his palms to beg some favour. ‘The governments world over please contrive, devise direct and indirect, covert and overt ways and means to break this fear psychosis in Muslim minds to draw them out of the wolfish packs behind closed walls and redistribute and relocate them as prosperous neighbours of tolerant culture involving people of different religions,’ he finds himself praying to the governments world over instead of 320 million Hindu Gods and Goddesses and the sole supreme entity, the Almighty.

Now he pins all his hopes on the Governments and their institutions to bring about subtle fundamental changes in the ways Islamists lead their lives so that at least the next generation of Muslims would not look stealthily, apprehensively over the Islamic walls and peer at the world outside including him as an alien entity. If this is not done, he gets goosebumps at this realisation, the world inside Muslim neighbourhoods and outside will become so different that it will have sky and earth differentials. ‘Such differentials never allow stability,’ he bangs his rolled up newspaper on a flea that is distracting him and now resting on the table. He misses the aim, ‘How I wish there were many modern maulvis who keep the Koran and computer together!’  

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!

Different Reflections from the Same Facet

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our share of truths from this sea that will be suitable and complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, our perception of the world, our vision of the world and the people around.

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A beautiful woman's beauty is nurtured and blossoms by the relentless stretch of appreciating words by her lover like a rose blossoms by the dewy intoxication during misty nights. But how long the poor lover can continue to shower the words of unquestioning praise?! After caressing the rose, the lover also feels the pricks of reality around the beautiful flower. It is called the lover's awakening from the blindfolding slumber. So the words of all pervading praise dry up. The beauty sulks and her narcissism also feels deprived of its customary diet of acclaim. It is now better to go for a new lover because during the initial phase of courtship the new lover will again feed her narcissism to help it blossom at its peak again!

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A beautiful woman is like a fragrant beauteous hedge. Beauties and aesthetics apart, it has a tendency to grow heavenwards driven and pulled against gravity by the soothing sun of narcissism. But this growth also tends to turn it wild. So the beauties, the hedge and the woman, need an upkeeper, the labouring pruner who maintains the shape. In case of the gardener it is done through cutting tools. A man as a lover does it through much hyped love, care and share.

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Women are humanist! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here that the men's chance to appease their women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realise that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remarks about other women than millions of appreciating phrases about his woman!!