Dark Times

Humra Quraishi

The latest on causing rifts and divisions and hatred between the two communities, Hindus and Muslims, was the order to display the name of owners and workers of the food carts and eateries and dhabas, all along the Kawariya route. Thankfully that order stands cancelled after the Supreme Court’s intervention and directions. A sigh of relief for daily wagers and hapless sellers, trying to survive in these absolutely tough times where the costs of everyday basic items seem going beyond reach.

Today the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled states of North India–Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh–seem as though determined to hit the minority community, along the social and economic and educational spheres. If the bulldozing of homes doesn’t take place then there’s lynching and killings amidst an atmosphere where communal poisoning seems spreading out as never before.

As an Indian Muslim, I sit not just apprehensive but pained by the ongoing communal build ups in my country. I have been asking myself: Why is it that the changing political patterns have begun to worry me; relaying threats to my identity, to my survival, to my existence? Why nostalgia tighten it holds, dragging along memories of my childhood and adulthood spent in the state of Uttar Pradesh? Why is it that my parents nor grandparents didn’t prepare us for this day and age–when not a day passes without dragging along communal attacks on my form, and rape of my psyche? Why didn’t the leaders sense and warn that a day would come when Hindutva brigades would call the shots, relaying fear; and threatening to make the Muslims refugees in their own country?

Apprehensive sits the Muslim community, as fears mount. I would describe this as the massacre of the very spirit of the minority population. Dents on the very identity of the Muslims. Gone are the days of living on par. The apolitical Muslims cannot openly voice their disgust or dissent, for fear of the aftermath. They could be branded terrorists if not anti-nationals; with that killed in encounters or else dumped in hell holes.

Today many more Muslims are threatened if not attacked or lynched, many more Muslim children are bullied in schools, many more Muslim families are moving into ghettoes, and many more Muslims are harassed along the various alibis by the Hindutva goons. Not to overlook the fact that many more Muslim men are sitting imprisoned–the percentage of imprisoned Muslim men is higher than their population percentage.

Today the very machinery looks at every second Muslim with suspicion! Why is it that under the Right Wing, the weirdest possible dangerous notions are getting heaped on the Muslims? Why it is that traitor labels and terror tags are pinned on innocents?

The fact is that the largest minority community is going through the worst possible crisis. Today the Indian Muslim is on the lowest possible rung on any even given sphere. As a young girl or even as an adolescent I couldn’t have visualised that a day will come when I, an Indian Muslim, have to think twice what to cook or eat or wear or talk!

The tragedy is that today nobody even bothers to independently investigate and probe; fed that we are on that dangerous dose of outrageously biased propaganda against the Muslims. Can’t the administrators and planners see the disasters unfolding? What’s left of our democracy? Correct me if I’m wrong, a day could soon come when each one of us could have to carry an ID card or a placard with these words scribbled on it- ‘I’m a Muslim/Dalit /Christian/Sikh/Tribal/Leftist/Marxist/ Trade Unionist… but no terrorist!

Or come up with this basic introductory note: ‘Surviving in a Hindu Rashtra, ruled by a bunch of pracharacks and maha-pracharaks. Don’t know till about when I can breathe before I am lynched and murdered by the political mafia, on any given pretext–cow trader, triple-talaq giver or taker, again-lover, mosque-goer for namaaz!’

Needless to add that the state machinery is doing little to harness these rounds of humiliation! Nor any apparent curb on the spread of myths and misconceptions and propaganda and utter lies! It’s not just dangerous but downright insulting. Mind you, this is not been happening overnight. Been on for several years, but fast accelerating now with the backing of the political mafia.
Bollywood film star, Farooq Sheikh had, during the course of an interview, detailed to me the negative slants given to the Muslim characters on the big and small screens. And a senior bureaucrat, Parvez Dewan, (a non-Muslim; imagine the decay of our times when I have to add this as a footnote so that there’s no misconception along the lines that religion didn’t come in the way of his findings) had conducted a research on what’s relayed through Bollywood films and the television serials. And his findings focused on stark realities: Christians shown in a particularly negative light with their men drunk and women in skirts bare, Dalits and the tribal in another shade of the make-believe and Muslims with a bunch of negatives hovering around them–invariably the villain or the terror striking characters equipped with a Muslim name and surname! Have you wondered the effect the lopsided projections can have on the psyche of the viewer?

The poisonous unleashed by the Right-Wing seems lethal. Hitting psyches on a mass scale, in the backdrop of divides along communal lines, myths and misconceptions and twisted notions in circulation. In the background stand out the discriminations and biases and double standards. Also, the non-implementation of the suggestions made by the specially set up Commissions and Committees on the condition of the Muslims. There’s also the shrinkage or slow disappearance of the traditional and the aristocratic class. Above all, the mounting danger of the destruction of the very ethos cum secular fabric, as the Right- Wing is spreading its fangs, intruding into everyday life and living. It may sound harsh but this is the harsh truth of the dark times we are surviving in.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 7, Aug 11 - 17, 2024