The Tragedy of Indian Muslims by Areeba Ali (indian newspaper feature writer)
The point that I am trying to make is not the demonizing of Muslims in Indian
movies...but the rather tragic image that Non-Muslims in India (Hindus, Sikhs
and Jains) have of Muslims.
Yesterday, I watched the Indian movie 'Tere Naam'- a tragic love story where
two people deeply in love with each other couldn't 'live happily ever after'
because the girl commits suicide. The hit film starred popular actor Salman
Khan.
The girl in the film commits suicide and the boy is beaten up by some goons. As
a result his brain is badly damaged and he becomes 'mad'. The doctors try hard
to get him back to his normal self but to no avail. The boy's family, in a
desperate effort to treat him, sends him to an ashram where he is in the
custody of some priests. But actually, all hope dies and the family believes
that their boy isn't going to get well and has become a permanent vegetable.
The girl, because of this unfortunate reality and because of her love for him,
commits suicide (so that she isn't married to another man). The saddest part is
that the boy actually recovers after her death. But seeing that girl he loved
so much is no longer alive, he decides to spend the rest of his life in the
ashram.
The goons who had beaten up the boy in the movie were shown to be Muslims (they
are shown wearing the traditional skullcaps and Arabian red-checked scarves)
who abduct or lure Hindu Brahmin women into prostitution.
The point that I am trying to make is not the demonizing of Muslims in Indian
movies...but the rather tragic image that Non-Muslims in India (Hindus, Sikhs
and Jains) have of Muslims.
I had lived for the first time in my life in a hostel in Delhi where I was the
only Muslim girl among Hindu girls. The hostel was situated in a very posh
locality of Delhi and
After 9/11, when USA launched the war on terrorism and began its
offensive in Afghanistan, the girls in my hostel were celebrating. Their faces
were blossoming with happiness and glee.
the girls were from educated well-to-do families. I had stayed there from July
2001-June 2002. During that period, 9/11 and then the Godhra train carnage (Feb
2002) had taken place.
After 9/11, when USA launched the war on terrorism and began its offensive in
Afghanistan, the girls in my hostel were celebrating. Their faces were
blossoming with happiness and glee. My hostel warden (who was our two-years
senior) even said 'Ab to Islam down ho jayega ('Now Islam will go down'). When
the first reports of Afghan civilian casualties came in newspapers, the girls
would say 'Bas,itne hi log mare?'('Only these many people died?'). When I
countered that Afghans are also humans and are innocent, they shot back 'Nobody
is innocent in Afghanistan' and 'Why are they living in that country...they
should have left long ago. It's their fault that they are living there and are
thus being attacked'. One girl was so pathetically ignorant, she said.' America
is not killing anybody in Afghanistan'.
But all this didn't hurt me much. I actually expected such reactions. What
really hurt me was what happened between February 2002- May 2002. It made me
decide to leave the hostel and move to a Muslim-dominated area.
On February 27th, I was out the whole day and had not watched or read news. At
night, I got an SMS from my dad, which said 'Keep a low profile'. I was
puzzled. I called him up. He told me to watch the news on TV and not to go out
anywhere except to college. I had gone to the mess after the phone call, to
watch TV. Nobody was there. I put on Star News. And I saw that it had begun-
the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat.
A wave of
I visited the websites of Hindu terrorist organizations (though
they aren't deemed 'terrorist' in India) like Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh.
massacre began after Muslims allegedly burned 58 Hindus alive in a train at
Godhra in Gujarat (which later proved to be false). More than 2000 Muslims were
killed and tens of thousands left homeless and turned into refugees in their
own country. And the worst victims of the genocide were Muslim women---they
were stripped and paraded naked, gang-raped, their fetuses were burned alive in
front of them.
For the first time in my life, I had stopped reading the newspapers. I couldn't
read all that was happening. Television was of course, a no-no at that time.
And what actually moved me to tears is that my Hindu friends justified the
genocide. Every hour of the day, they would taunt me. They would say your
Muslim brothers abduct Hindu women and rape them, so they deserve the same. I
would try to explain them. But I was one. And they were around 30. I was
defenseless. And they were an army. They wouldn't listen.
I had gone on a hunt for a new home in a Muslim-dominated area of Delhi. And
luckily, found a really good accommodation there. I wanted to find out why do
Hindus thinks of Muslims the way they do and why were Muslim women being
targeted in the Gujarat massacre. For this, I visited the websites of Hindu
terrorist organizations (though they aren't deemed 'terrorist' in India) like
Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh. I was
appalled by what I read on those websites. I don't even want to type what I
read--it was that disgusting. I can just sum up that it was distortion of
history--where Muslims have been disgustingly accused of raping Hindu and Sikh
women during their 600-years rule and the partition.
These Hindu organizations run schools all over the country. They
They are told to inspire doctors and chemists to give spurious
medicines to Muslims, especially pregnant Muslims so that their fetuses die.
enroll generally children from middle-class Hindu families. And right from the
tender age of 5 or 6,they poison their minds against Muslims. And teach them to
do what they did to Muslim women in Gujarat.
I managed to get a pamphlet from the Bajrang Dal office in Delhi. It is
actually a set of instructions for the Bajrang Dal workers. Nowhere on that
pamphlet is the word 'Muslim' mentioned. Rather the word 'Mlecha' is repeated
again and again. 'Mlecha' comes from 'malich', which means 'dirty' in Hindi. It
is a derogatory term used to describe Muslims. The Bajrang Dal workers are
instructed to have illegal sexual relationship with Muslim women. They are also
encouraged to marry Muslim women (incidentally, I have seen a lot of educated
Muslim girls marrying Hindu guys over the past two-three years) They are told
to inspire doctors and chemists to give spurious medicines to Muslims,
especially pregnant Muslims so that their fetuses die.
The ugly reality is that Hindus have been fed, over centuries, with false
propaganda about Muslims. This propaganda has been unfortunately fueled by
events like the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and the ongoing Kashmir dispute.
Whatever Pakistan says or does, whatever the militants in Kashmir say or do, it
is the Indian Muslims who have to pay the price. And sadly, when Muslims were
being butchered in Gujarat, not a single Muslim nation raised voice against
India except Pakistan. The only other nations who 'expressed concern' were USA
and Western European nations like the UK.
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