“A 25-year-old Hindu man was allegedly strangled to death in Rajasthan’s Dausa district for trying to stop three men from applying colour on him during Holi celebration”. Every year on Holi, we hear news reports of molestation and non-consensual touches. Year after year these stories have become so widespread and familiar that now we have got subconsciously wired to simply ignore them and move on with our lives. “Holi hai!” (It’s Holi!) is a cry that is shouted, and like clockwork, anyone would come, apply colour to you and proceed further to the next person. Implicit in that cry is, all is well, or all goes on Holi. But in recent years, incidents of communal nature have added themselves to the long list of Holi complaints. Protecting law and order is the job of the police. A murder by a murderer can be stopped in two ways: either you control the situation such that the murderer does not get the opportunity to commit the crime, or you do the murder yourself, leaving the murderer no chance in hell to commit the crime himself. In the first act, the police protect the victim from being murdered and in the second, they protect the murderer. This is not to suggest that police forces are superhumans who can foresee all crimes and prevent them from happening. That is understandable. And precisely why, police are generally not blamed for the crime being committed. They are blamed for what they do once the crime has been committed. And what they do after the crime sets the stage for the next crime. Their actions gesture as to whether such crimes are allowed or not. 

The administration in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal covered 10 mosques, including the historic Jama Masjid, with plastic and tarpaulin sheets. Why were they covered? What did the administration fear may happen? And who will make it happen? And why would those who would make it happen feel they can do it and get away from the police?

A group of Hindus celebrating Holi festivities in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, were carrying the tree trunk to the temple as per tradition but decided on a detour, ramming it into the gate of a mosque several times while also raising provocative slogans. There are several videos of the act with identifiable faces. Police have registered an FIR but I’m sure nothing will come out of this. The record of the police does not suggest otherwise. Not because the police force is incompetent and cannot identify people from video. If wanted, police can pick you based on you being part of a Whatsapp group even if you never posted any text in the same. Those are the charges against Umar Khalid — being part of a WhatsApp group  — he did not post in those groups, not to suggest posting would have made his incarceration justifiable.

Ask anyone if they are against molestation or non-consensual touching and they will say yes, they are against it. Naturally so as anyone should be. Ask them if they believe Holi as a festival warrants such touching or if touching inappropriately is part of Holi tradition, as in if this is what the festival is about like lighting lamps on Diwali is a tradition. Is molesting and touching inappropriately part of the Holi celebration? They will probably laugh and say no. That some fringe elements do it. The impression is, these are outlaw incidents. People at large do not support these incidents. You want to believe this line of thought. But think about it from a distance. What do we do when someone does something wrong? Say, how do we react when we encounter a molestation video from Metro? Or from a college? How do we react? We seek punishment, we ask for police intervention, right? We do no such thing for Holi molestation. And we do so despite there being so many videos of these crimes, year on year. Does the school, college, workplace or even homes of these men, do you think they are held accountable for their waywardness? Have you heard of any such case where someone was held accountable for inappropriately touching some woman? We don’t. We tolerate it, we accept it. Suggesting what? What do we tolerate? Pouring milk on statues is stupid but we do so, why? Because it is tradition and part of our faith. If someone was pouring fresh milk on say middle of the road, we would call him mad. But inside a temple, it is part of faith. Same for animal sacrifice, pouring alcohol on gods, dropping oil lamps in rivers, and taking dips in poopy water, we know what they are, and we react to them differently in different contexts but we also tolerate them on special days and special places. Same way, molesting, and touching whatever body part of strangers without their consent on Holi is our tradition. It is indeed part of our festival. We have accepted it in past and we continue to accept it by immediately saying, Holi Hai, this is not the regular touch needing a law to take its course but a special Holi touch, outside the purview of law and order. This is an acceptable pouring of milk on rocks. This is part of our faith, and tradition and how it is celebrated every year.

A 48-year-old Muslim man was allegedly assaulted and killed by a Hindu mob while on his way to a mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao on Saturday after he resisted having colours thrown on him during Holi.

So, a group of Hindus want to play Holi with a Muslim man. They want it so badly that they — as is the tradition — force him to play Holi with them, without his consent of course. He resists, they insist, so much so that they end up killing him. Leaving apart the renowned good-intention-but-wrong-implementation, they wanted him to participate in their festival. India is a secular country where for generations most of our festivals have been shared with each other. Holi definitely is one such and these boys were only doing that. They wanted him to participate in their festival. That's not bad, it's sweet.

A Muslim youth was thrashed by members of a saffron outfit in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur town after he “tried to enter” a ‘garba, dandiya’ (dance event organised during the Navratri) event.

Here, a group of Hindus do not want Muslims to participate in their festival. On the other hand, Muslims want to carry on the famed secular traditions of shared festivals here but Hindus do not.

You then have to ask, what do the Hindus want? Why do they in one case, want Muslims to participate and in another don’t? The answer lies in the birth or definition of Hinduism.

Hinduism was born or defined in the backdrop of the British census exercise. Traditionally upper-castes have held power over masses by virtue of their birth in forward castes who derive power from the books written by their forefathers and whose readership was gatekept by their clans. But as the British held provincial elections and masses started to elect Muslims as their representatives, those who enjoyed power until then using caste saw the danger new tides were bringing for them. But they were disadvantaged by numbers. They were not in the majority. The people they oppressed, the lower castes, made up the majority population. And there was bonhomie between this population and Muslims despite there being differences in their practice and faith. Upper castes wanted to create a separate identity for themselves and other people. Which other people? Those who were not Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains etc. So they started identifying themselves and these others as ‘Hindoos’. So anyone who did not identify as Muslim, Christian etc was counted as Hindoo. Initially, many upper caste elites objected to them being clubbed alongside lower castes, they were different people they argued. And they indeed were in many aspects. These people had different gods of their own and many of these gods were exclusive and were not shared. Even today, many Hindus don’t know so many gods that other Hindus pray to. It was even more widespread back then. Many of these gods were meat-eaters, and many partake in alcohol. But slowly, the othering caught on. And so the upper castes successfully created the Hindu majority, out of thin air.

The Hindu religion then is defined not as what it is but as what it is not. What is the Hindu religion? Is it a collection of people that don’t eat beef? No. Those who eat beef? No. That pray to one god? No. Collection of god? No, many don’t even know the existence of very many gods of others. Hinduism is defined the other way. It is defined by way of saying what it is not. It is not Islam, it is not the faith of Christians. And so, it and its gatekeepers, constantly try and create tensions between two sets of people. They constantly create myths and stories and WhatsApp forwards that tell their adherents how bad, terrible, scheming, monster-like people Muslims are. The fear is created to stop Hindus from interacting with Muslims. If they interact, they will start to see similarities that the two share, similar struggles and anxieties they go through; they will see through the lies and appear like a single entity of people. Just like a beef eater and beef haters call themselves and identify as a monolithic Hindu entity without flinching once, Hindus and Muslims with interaction will identify as some shared block. What will this do? Who will this shared identity harm? Whose existence depends on the support of a hostile, feared, bigoted population?

#Holi #festival #Hinduism #tradition #culture #hatecrime #women #molestation #Muslims #uttarpradesh #India

Every day when a Muslim person walks out of their home they come across or by the time they get back to their home in the evening, they invariably would have interacted with close to five or seven non-Muslims. This has been happening for generations and continues to happen even today with most Muslims, and to the most extent even without their own explicit knowledge. But in contrast, how many Hindus interact with Muslims on a daily basis? In fact, many Hindus end up knowing zero Muslim persons in the entirety of their life. Try to think of yourself, randomly ask elders at your home, how many Muslims have they interacted with and know personally. So Muslims interact with non-Muslims, especially Hindus on a daily basis while Hindus by and large do not. One mingles and the other does not. In fact, Hindus have gone out of their way to move Muslims away from spaces they previously existed in and where there was a chance for Hindus to encounter and interact with Muslims. Hindus have evicted and moved Muslims away from spaces thereby reducing or completely nullifying even the bare-minimum possibility of interaction with them. Secularism in India, unlike what’s practised in France, is tolerance and respect for all faiths. In schools, offices and almost every sphere of their life they participate in Hindu festivals that are celebrated there, they wish you on your festivals, they adjust their businesses to accommodate your religious beliefs, and they go out of their way to make you and your practice of faith possible without any hassle. There are Muslim poets who have written songs praising lord Krishna, Muslim qawwals who sing Hindu bhajans and a lot more. Clearly, Muslims (compared to Hindus) come out as more secular or better practitioners of secularism in India. If secularism is at the heart of Indian identity and the core ideal of the Indian republic then Muslims come out as its strongest practitioners and custodians.

Let’s travel back into the past for a moment. Few decades, to the time when the British were leaving the Indian subcontinent.

India and Pakistan both became independent dominions on the 14–15 of August 1947. While doing so, portions of the Punjab Province and Bengal Presidency of British India (which included present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) were divided through an imaginary line, now famously referred to as Radcliffe Line, after its architect, Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions for the two provinces, received the responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km-squared) of territory with 88 million people. The demarcation line was published on 17 August 1947 upon the Partition of British India.

The regions affected by the extended Partition of India: green regions were all part of Pakistan by 1948, and orange part of India. The darker-shaded regions represent the Punjab and Bengal provinces partitioned by the Radcliffe Line. The grey areas represent some of the key princely states that were eventually integrated into India or Pakistan, but others which initially became independent are not shown. Courtesy: Wikipedia

At this point during the partition, the Muslims of India had to make a choice. They had two options to choose from. Two new nations, both ready to accept them as their citizens, required them to decide their fate regarding their domicile. They could either stay in India which had declared itself as a non-religious nation-state where all religions were accepted and respected, where anyone could practice the faith of their choosing and the state had pledged itself to respect faiths and people of all kinds; or they could choose Pakistan which had declared itself as an Islamic state, the faith of Muslims. So they could either choose to live in an Islamic state or a secular India. And Muslims of India chose India. They chose to be secular over Islamic subjects. Indian Hindus on the other hand never had any such offering. They never had to make any choice. They didn’t have anything to choose from. So retrospectively if you have to think, Muslims chose India, they became citizens of India by choice and they did so despite there being a state of their own faith inviting them to come and settle. In other words, Muslims of India rejected a theocratic state, and Muslims of India rejected a nation-state based on religion, their own religion. They wanted or at least they chose to stay with Hindus and other citizens of India. They chose diversity over narrow-mindedness. What does this mean? This means Muslims have already pledged allegiance to the Indian state, they have already spoken about their choice and so their patriotism, if you think of it, is not under speculation, suspicion or in question. But in comparison, Hindus of India never really asserted their allegiance to secular India, they never made it clear that they wanted to stay in a secular state and not a religious one, they never discarded a state of their own faith, Hindus never rejected a Hindu state. You might say, Hindus never had to make that decision, they were never offered such a choice. And you are right, they never were offered such a proposal. And I’m not saying we have to question the commitment of Hindus towards the Indian republic. We should not. But if it ever comes to that, if we ever come to a point where we have to doubt someone’s commitment to the nation vis-a-vis their faith then it isn’t Muslims who are to be questioned or seen through a lens of suspicion but Hindus. It is Hindus whose allegiance and commitment to the ideals and spirit of the Indian republic are under suspicion not that of Muslims. Muslims made the choice, when there was an opportunity they spoke their intentions, they rejected a religious state (of their own faith) and thus they are in the clear. The rest of us are not so much in there, not definitively.

#RSS #Hinduism #Islam #Muslims #Patriotism