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 ruffians. 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 holy hymn. 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 hymn 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 21st 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!
