Punished for a prayer

Seventy-six years later, a young Indian Muslim woman has rejected the premise of Partition. This should be cause for celebration.

On September 16, a 19-year-old Muslim woman was arrested along with her stepmother and a maulvi after she was seen praying at a temple at Bareilly, in Uttar Pradesh. All three were charged with hurting religious sentiments.

Truth be told, if at all anyone’s religious feelings were hurt, they had to be the feelings of the Muslim woman. Videos show her deep in prayer on her mat, eyes fixed on the idol in front of her. The sequence of events that took place immediately after this must have felt like a slap in her face. All this humiliation for what? Just an act of prayer. Ironically, this took place barely 20 km from the dargah of Hazrat Niyaz Ahmad, where Bareilly’s Hindus worship as fervently as Muslims.

The three Muslims were also charged with criminal conspiracy. What conspiracy could this lone worshipper have been a part of? Ill for a long time and unable to get relief from anywhere, she took her stepmother’s advice to ask for divine help at the nearby temple. What else was this but an expression of faith in a Hindu god by a troubled Muslim family? It was, at the same time, testimony that the teachings of saints are still alive among ordinary Indians. For true believers, all gods are the same — this message of Guru Nanak and Kabir is embodied in the hymns to ‘Hari’ and ‘Shivji’ by Bhakti poet Rahim and Nazeer Akbarabadi; and equally in the naats (verses in praise of Prophet Muhammad) composed by Hindu poets, including Kashmiri Pandits. While some temples and mosques continue to follow the tradition of involving members of the other faith on certain occasions, many Indians don’t hesitate before praying at shrines of all hues. Muslims line up for darshan at Ganpati mandals; some even install the idol at home. A surprising number of Hindus observe the Ramzan fast. Among devout worshippers at Mumbai’s famous St Michael’s church there are Hindus as well.

These shared beliefs are the essence of India’s culture. To an aggressive interviewer who wanted to know who had ‘instigated’ her, the Muslim woman replied that she lived among Hindus, and her family did not differentiate between mosque and temple. “We see a masjid and go in to pray; we see a mandir and bow our head.”

Her answer should be celebrated. Seventy-six years after Partition, a poor young Indian Muslim woman has rejected its basic premise: that Hindus and Muslims are two distinct blocs who can’t co-exist peacefully. Gandhiji would have been proud. The hate being spread by TV news channels and social media hasn’t touched this young woman. The temple’s pujari should have blessed her with prasad; after all, she had shown faith in the deity.

Alas! The self-proclaimed defenders of Hindu faith would not allow this to happen. They today define what constitutes a crime, and the police in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states follow their dictates, arresting not only Muslims praying alone or in groups, but also principals and teachers giving students lessons in communal harmony.

Do we any longer have the right to pour scorn on the Taliban, the symbol of religious intolerance? Thanks to our own ‘Taliban’, a young Hindu ended his life last month, unable to provide for his family. Thirty-two-year-old Mohit Yadav had been sacked by the UP transport department following complaints that as conductor he allowed two Muslim passengers to get off and offer namaz while the bus stopped for a toilet break. The video of the incident shows him arguing that he too was a Hindu; and this wasn’t a Hindu-Muslim issue.

Both these instances come from Uttar Pradesh, a state held up as ‘new’ India’s success story, with its Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath a Hindutva icon. Is this the model of governance the rest of India should follow?

This incident throws up some puzzling contradictions. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) holds that all Indians are Hindus; ghar wapasi is part of the RSS project. Then shouldn’t a Muslim woman offering namaz in front of a Hindu deity be welcomed? Or do these foot soldiers of Hindutva believe that non-Hindus ‘defile’ temples? These very warriors force Muslims to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’. Yet, a Muslim voluntarily praying inside a temple is offensive to them. One can only conclude that what they desire is forced submission by Muslims to Hindu gods.

But even these bullies can’t stop a Shah Rukh Khan from praying at the Vaishno Devi temple, or at the Tirumala Tirupati temple. Nor can they prevent Prime Minister Narendra Modi sending a chadar to the Ajmer Sharif dargah.

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.

(The views expressed here are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)