The Muslim man with a Vaishnavite tale

[Bang Galore]

The Muslim man with a Vaishnavite tale

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  November 4, 2015, 17:38 IST

In Dadri, Mohammad Akhlaq's brother recites a tale from the Puranas to bring communities together ... and leaves this writer with a sense of hope even after many weeks

It is one of those late afternoons when the sun refuses to set. Under a country-made tent, chairs are gradually being occupied. A motley crowd of Thakur elders, the dominant community living in the vicinity, has gathered in one corner of the Jarcha police station compound in Dadri.

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  The symbolism and idea of a peace meeting, within the compounds of a police station, under police watch, in many ways is profoundly ironic, underlining the fragility of peace, a rare prospect in western Uttar Pradesh, a state that seems to be constantly on the boil.
  
  In the forefront of everyone's minds is the lynching of one of their own, Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi, by, literally and metaphorically, their own hands. It is for the first time that village heads of all the seven villages in the vicinity of Akhlaq’s village, Bishahra, have come together since his lynching.
  
  The call for a ‘peace meeting’ is an initiative of Nagendra Pratap Singh, a 2004 batch UP cadre IAS officer and the district magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar, where Dadri is situated. Singh, mature from his experiences of handling Shamli, affected by the bloody violence of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, is now working on bringing communities together.
  
  On the stage sits Singh, three brothers of Akhlaq, the village head of Bishahra, Sanjeev Rana, besides the local police chief. The audience has journalists outnumbering the villagers.
  
  Singh, a tall, well built-man, in his early fifties, reminds his attentive audience of Thakurs of how Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in the Geeta that 'dhairya' (patience) is an essential part of an 'utkrisht' personality.
  
  "Even if we have shaurya and tej, without dhairya, we can never achieve the ideal state of being Geeta recommends for us," he tells the crowd interspersing his speech with modern English terms rather than religious jargon to explain the social impact of communal fights on village culture.
  
  Singh explains how the minds of youths in the region are poisoned. He talks about the need for "social surgery."
  
  Killings of human beings, mostly in a brutal manner, keep happening in western UP. So, Akhlaq’s killing is nothing new or extraordinary for people in the region, but the reaction of the country and its media indeed is. After talking to a cross-section of the society in western UP about Akhlaq’s death, I felt the national outrage has made these people feel confused and uncertain about their reaction. While some of them are indeed categorical in saying Akhlaq should not have been killed, like the ruling party at the centre, they look at the lynching as a normal crime at the end of the day. In the village meet too, the confusion is reflected. It seems as if the villagers don't know how to react, except for condemning the killing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Brother of Akhlaq, Jan Mohammed speaking during a peace meeting in connection with Bishara riots. ~ Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma/The Hindu
  
  It is now the turn of village heads to talk about Akhlaq’s lynching.
  
  "Akhlaq was my brother whose death was the most unfortunate thing which happened to us," Sanjeev Rana, the village head of Bishahra, says.
  
  Ehsan Ilahi, village head of Jarcha, exhibits anxiety rather than confidence. "Cow is our mother. It is due to mother cow that we exist and owe everything to her!’ Elahi, in his early forties, says, demonstrating his new-found wisdom after Akhlaq’s lynching.
  
  "And I have no hesitation in saying that we are not Babur’s aulad but Shivaji’s sons," Ilahi shouts into the mike, surprising everyone. Most of the speakers emphasise on moving on. Only the district magistrate and Akhlaq’s brother talk about justice.
  
  Towards the end of the meet, Jan Mohammad, Akhlaq’s younger brother gets hold of the mike. Bespectacled, in a safari suit, and diminutive in the frame, Mohammad is the quintessential common man. But, what he proceeds to speak about could well be a chapter in the textbook that Singh could use to perform the "social surgery" of "poisoned minds".
  
  Mohammad begins his speech with regret about not being able to save his elder brother from the frenzied mob. He describes in detail how his ancestors lived in Bishahra, part of the satta, a conglomeration of seven Rajput-dominated villages, for the last two centuries.
  
  Akhlaq’s and his brother’s houses are the only two houses belonging to Muslims in that entire Thakur-dominated neighbourhood. The Muslim population, comprising roughly 35-40 houses, stays in a different settlement on the other side of the village.
  
  Mohammad comes up with an old Vaishnavaite tale, involving Lord Vishnu and his vehicle Garud (eagle), to assert his right to a land his forefathers stayed on. His assertion comes as a surprise in the face of Air Force chief Aroop Raha’s offer to the badly traumatised family to shift to the Chennai airbase where Akhlaq’s son works.
  
  Akhlaq was not an outsider; he was one of them, Mohammad reminds the audience.
  
  "People ask us if we would go to Chennai, a metropolitan city, at the airbase. Here I am and I want to tell you the story of Garud, the vehicle of lord Vishnu. And then you tell me where should I stay," Mohammad, a clerk in a private company in Dadri, tells the Thakurs.
  
  This is how the story goes: Garud, who was staying in heaven, one day asked for few days leave, saying he wanted to go to earth. Curious at Garud’s wish to leave heaven for earth, Lord Vishnu insisted the eagle stay in heaven and not go, but finally gave in.
  
  "But the Lord changed his form and went to earth," Mohammad continues, narrating the story using vernacular jargon and expletives to an enraptured audience.
  
  "Vishnu was extremely curious to see what place the eagle was ready to leave the comfort of heaven for. To his surprise, Lord Vishnu finds," Mohammad says, throwing his hands in two different directions to illustrate lord Vishnu’s surprise, "that the eagle was playing with dust. He was surprised and changed to his original form and asked the eagle why he left the comfort of heaven to come down to earth."
  
  "Then the eagle said," adds Mohammad with a bright spark in his eye, "Lord, I may be staying in heaven, but it is this earth with all its accompanying dust and dirt where I am happy because it is my home. It is this dust which is heaven for me."
  
  "Akhlaq and I are like that Garud. Now, tell me where can I go, leaving my heaven behind?" Mohammad asks, visibly trying to control his emotions.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jan Mohammed speaking during the peace meeting . ~Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma
  
  The very sight of a Muslim narrating an incident from Hindu mythology to a dominantly Hindu crowd, in order to emphasise his hubbul watani (an Urdu phrase which means love for the motherland), is that stirring moment made quite rare now by the culture of communal riots and hatred.
  
  And for a journalist who has been mapping the trend of communal violence, it is one of the most fascinating instances of sociological study, reflecting Indian Islam — a touching moment for me as an Indian Muslim!
  
  "How can I leave my heaven and go anywhere?" Mohammad asks, making the hearts of the crowd melt with the sheer emotional quotient of his question.
  
  "It was this village my grandfather and father were born in and this is where they died. Similarly, I was born here and I will also die here," he adds.
  
  Lower caste Muslims like Saifis, who are converts from low Hindu castes, traditionally are not as religious as upper caste Muslims and have never stayed in Muslim settlements.
  
  Throughout Mohammad’s emotional speech, one haunting idea lurked around the narrative — that Akhlaq was lynched by a local mob constituted by people who were his friends and neighbours until few hours before his killing.
  
  "How can I forget all these years... your children used to greet me ‘namaste uncle ji.’ In the Hindu neighbourhood where I stayed for last 50 years, every time there was a death in my family, food for us used to come from my Hindu brothers. But what happened to you this time around when my brother was brutally killed?"
  
  "Unlike the past, none of my close friends in the neighbourhood came to ask us how were we. How can this happen? How can the centuries-old trust shake in a day?" he asks the now utterly silent audience.
  
  "We did not come from Saudi Arabia. We were born here, we will die here. We are not leaving this village despite immense pain. We decided to follow Islam, you followed Sanatan Dharma, but where can you see the difference among us? We are branches of the same tree, came from the same blood and have the same culture," adds Mohammad. "So similar is our culture that despite the communities converted, both Hindu and Muslim Rajputs have the same surnames."
  
  He reassures anxious parents whose children are in jail by saying he wouldn't allow "any innocent person to be framed during justice for my brother."
  
  Even as Mohammad continues speaking, it is as if the crowd, for the first time, comes to terms with its conscience; with the fact that Akhlaq’s death is not just a criminal incident, but something which took away the soul of their syncretic way of living.
  
  In a region which is infamous for its heinous crime record and for which the life of a human being does not hold great value, the death of Akhlaq is finally hitting home.
  
  The Muslim man with a Vaishnavite tale - thREAD