The Muslim in India is not understood

Ignorance about Muslims in our country is alarming, considering that Muslims and Hindus have lived together for centuries. Many years ago, when I was a pupil at Delhi Public School, Mathura Road, in Delhi, my schoolmates called me mullah. Some indeed had an impossible time trying to distinguish a Muslim from a mullah and the latter from their favourite north Indian cuisine: murg mussallam (a stuffed chicken dish)! More recently, one person asked my sister if she did not eat pork because the pig was sacred! (According to the tenets of Islam, any form of pig meat is haram or forbidden, as it is considered to be impure and filthy.)

Of course, my schoolmates have long outgrown the unsavoury vocabulary of a Delhi childhood of the 1960s. But then they have been through the best education in the country. Yet many others, stagnating mentally, will never be able to take Muslims off their imaginary menu cards! Ignorance, of course, has variety and degree. The young Punjabi schoolchildren coming from homes of a generation uprooted from West Punjab — and now Pakistan — may be excused. But what does one make of an Indian Supreme Court judge who asserts his constitutional right, nay duty, to interpret and apply provisions of the Quran? "I can understand the Quran as well as the next man. When I was called upon to decide a case of the Quran, I called the Pakistan embassy and they sent me a copy of the Quran," was the confident declaration of the learned judge made at an Indian law institute seminar of the Indian Association of Lawyers on December 14, 1985.

There are over 130 million Muslims in India. Many of them live in Delhi and other parts of India such as Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam and Hyderabad, to name a few. Two of the world’s leading centres of Islamic theology are in India: the Dar-ul Uloom at Deoband and Nadvat-ul Ulema, both in Uttar Pradesh. Some of the most exquisite copies of the Quran have been printed in India. The Supreme Court has had at least one Muslim sitting judge over the past 20 years. The Supreme Court library is one of the best of its kind in the country. Yet a Supreme Court judge thinks of Pakistan when he needs a copy of the Quran! And to think that untutored Muslim youth are despised for myopically celebrating Pakistan’s victories in international sports events!

It is certainly not the case argued here that Muslims are, and have a reason to be, totally alienated from the mainstream of Indian society. If that were so, three Muslim presidents of India, four Muslim chief justices of India, a Muslim chief of the Union Public Service Commission, a Muslim chief of the Indian Air Force and several senior Muslim ministers and state chief ministers would not have occupied seats of national eminence. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Zafar Iqbal would not have led the Indian national sides in cricket and hockey, respectively; Dilip Kumar (born as Yousuf Khan), Nargis (born as Fatima Rashid), Madhubala (born as Mumtaz Jehan Begum Delahvi) and Meena Kumari (born as Mahjabeen Bano) would not have enthralled millions of cine fans during my growing up years just as today’s famous quartet of Khans (Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman and Saif Ali); Ustad Akbar Ali Khan and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan — both sarod maestros — would not have enchanted mixed audiences; and Begum Akhtar could not have made the Urdu ghazal a common, cherished heritage for all Indians. There are so many more such examples that have enriched the Indian landscape.

Reprinted with the publisher's permission.