IT has been a bad year to be ‘Muslim’. In an increasingly ‘media-ted’, makeshift world, ‘identity’ is what gets beamed down via satellite. A violent, seamless homogeneity thrust upon all who are Muslim by accident of birth – the intimates of mosques and madrasas and the Quran. Like cardboard cutouts for target practice. Except that it actually puts soldiers on the ground and determines acts of real, bloodletting war.

It has happened before. Muslims were caricatured in the western media throughout the 1960s and ’70s. Beady eyed, swarthy and satiated with harem sex. Back then they were Arab, and they lived in Libya or in Palestine. Back then it affected few Indian Muslims. Despite a growing number of riots (which always killed more of one than the other), India still carried its secular burden. Ayodhya and the rise of the BJP changed that. Meanwhile the global media came of age and brought with it global Islamic terror. And then Kargil happened. Our fledgling electronic media fed its own peculiar subcontinental demons in imitative jingoism and televised nationalism. It was a media ballet. In sync, national and global spaces worked an instinctive jugalbandi, while the God of the righteous few, we are told, himself choreographed the big dance.

Never mind that Ho Chi Minh was a terrorist, so was Che Guevara, and Subhash Chandra Bose, and Gerry Adams of the Sinn Fein before he donned a pinstriped suit and sat across a table in a most un-terrorist manner. Arafat, poor man, remained somewhat of a terrorist, sartorially stubborn with trademark headscarf and sans the pinstripe, till the bitter end. But never mind this delightful variety of terrorists of yore, Islam was unquestionably the poster boy of new media, new age terrorism, and the Indian Muslim like others elsewhere began inching into a corner. Old RSS propaganda booklets were dusted off the shelves. Reprints were ordered and the Hindutva press sweated the night shift.

Then came Gujarat 2002. And it struck the wrong note. In this age of abundant senselessness, we like events that fit into patterns, and affirm narratives we have woven over the ages. Like Linus’ blanket, we carry our narratives around with us. They send soothing subliminal messages to the brain when confronted with uncertain events. Gujarat fell annoyingly outside the dominant narrative of the age.

Muslims as victims were irritating and hard to accept. Even if one put that one gory tale of foetus slashed from swollen belly down to diabolically fevered imagination, the vast numbers of charred bodies and limbs littering the streets of Gujarat were undeniable proof of victim-hood. The narrative of a world held hostage by the Muslim terrorist threat shifted uneasily. And the subliminal messages, forced into short circuit, now sent only jabs of discomfort.

So Gujarat was forced into the other handy narrative. The narrative of the ‘riot’. As a nation we are ‘okay’ with riots. Riots here are like a periodic ritual of domination in the public akhara. Every so once in a while community strongmen jostle for a greater share of the public pie. Stones are thrown, houses torched, and a few people die. The azaan and the bhajan blare ever louder in noisy competition and then its back to business as usual. Gujarat, it bears repeating, was different.

 

In its spatial and symbolic organization Gujarat bore a unique signature.¹ This was no riot-like jostle between two opposed enemies. This was a matter of ‘survival of the Hindu nation’ through total annihilation of that which threatened it. The enemy had to be crushed both physically and symbolically – as person, citizen and community.

‘The moment of survival is the moment of power,’ writes Elias Canetti. ‘The lowest form of survival is killing. …But this other must not disappear completely; his physical presence as a corpse is indispensable for the feeling of triumph. Now the victor can do whatever he wants with him, and he cannot retaliate, but must lie there, never to stand upright again. His weapon can be taken away and pieces cut from his body and kept forever as trophies. This moment of confronting the man he has killed fills the survivor with a special kind of strength. There is nothing that can be compared with it, and there is no moment which more demands repetition.’

Canetti wrote this in 1960 of the psychopathology of crowds, power, and the pull of fascism.² Gujarat was this, only more. And yet, across the board the words were spoken, softly at first and then in the brazen bullying strength of numbers – ‘Gujarat was terrible, but these Muslims also have a lot to answer for.’

 

Some say Gujarat lost the BJP the national election. Unlikely. But it was an all too brief respite. The Muslims had a lot to answer for. And they were once again under the national scanner. Much as the poor are blamed for their own poverty (they are illiterate and have too many children), the Muslim in classic aggressive-defensive perversion was certainly a victim – but apparently largely of his own making. Victimized by his own religion – Islam. Shariat and personal law became the new sites of study. To the exclusion of every other aspect of Muslim life (income, jobs, education, sense of security, even caloric intake) the rules of marriage, right to divorce and personal choice became the benchmark of wholesome community life. In the guise of ‘gender justice’ the status of Muslim women was scrutinized like atomized nuggets to use as moral fodder. Forget the whole picture. And even forget that women too need jobs, education and sufficient caloric intake, apart from the right to marry and divorce at will.

Imrana’s fatwa (apparently) stirred the conscience of the nation. And it made a good media story. Small irony that the fatwa was issued at the behest of a local reporter (from a Noida based Urdu paper, the Rashtriya Sahara) and not at the urging of Imrana’s family. And even though the learned men from Deoband clearly fell short on wisdom, the media lost sight of the issue. Imrana’s story, as I have argued elsewhere,³ began at the same place as numerous stories do in India – in the village. In that patriarchal institution called the jati-panchayat.

Across large swathes of western UP a bunch of men routinely pronounce judgments on women – cut off her nose, parade her naked, stone her, excommunicate her – if she broke their arbitrary rules. AALI, a Lucknow based legal advocacy organization, documented 11 cases between 2000-2003 in which jati-panchayats in Muzaffarnagar forced their choices on women. A majority of these cases involved Hindus. Call it jati panchayat, call it fatwa – it was the same cultural practice taking different institutional forms. The problem was the practice. The media became obsessed with the form; happy yet again to make ‘Muslim’ out of the issue. ‘Fatwas’ fit the dominant narrative, sending subliminal pleasure-pain messages to the brain – Salman Rushdie on the run and evil Ayatollah’s from a country hungry for nuclear weapons. Like watching a scary movie on TV. Like something you love to fear.

 

The fatwa frenzy held the nation in thrall. Imrana’s fatwa was followed by a fatwa forbidding Muslim women from participating in panchayat elections – unless they hid behind veils. And then a fatwa, which, at first, turned out to be a false alarm, on Sania’s skirts. Each foolish clerical utterance was instigated by journalists in search of a selling story. But the conservative face of Islam was nakedly exposed. Along with Ulema from Deoband, every capped and bearded Muslim organization came in for criticism. Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind – the whole lot of them. Purveyors of medievalia, dragging Muslims down into the dark ages.

‘Liberal’ Muslims were called upon to take sides. And they did. Many of them wrote passionate pieces of op-ed outrage, others condemned the fatwa fetish on TV, urging Muslims to defy the clerics. Yet, what was being demanded of them was a curious doublespeak. Survey the list of organizations which fed, clothed, and housed Muslims who survived Gujarat – Islamic Relief Committee, Gujarat Sarvajanik, Jamiat-Ulama- i-Hind, Jamaat-e-Islami, United Economic Forum. Each, with few exceptions, is a Muslim organization. The bulk are conservative in the extreme, many believe in Tabligh, none of them have much time for women’s rights. It is these people who built the camp-colonies in Gujarat – such as they are – shabby little cubbyholes, but even today home to thousands.

 

At a modest estimate there are still 10,000 Muslim families displaced by the Gujarat massacres.⁴ But their existence is denied. All government aid ceased in June 2002. The state continues to provide nothing. No electricity, no sewage, no civic amenities. Nothing. One camp organizer in Halol, Mehboob Bhai visited the Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) over 40 times over a period of six months before the Halol camp (of 201 resettlement houses) got electricity meters. But GEB did not so much as subsidize the electricity infrastructure. Local NGOs did. The electricity continues to be irregular and low voltage.

His is just one story.⁵ Granted that Modi bashing is boring. Withholding electricity from Muslims is the least we should expect from him. But even the UPA government has not kept the faith. Compensation for those who were killed in Gujarat remains a paltry Rs 1.5 lakh, and there is no rehabilitation for survivors. Many of those who lost everything (homes, shops, belongings all burnt to a cinder) were given Rs 2500 to restart their lives, and nothing since. Perhaps the Muslims of Gujarat need to be as patient as the Sikhs of Delhi were. Lie low and quiet for at least 20 years.

 

Conservatism is on the rise all around – among all communities and for many reasons. But the collapsing promise of the modern Indian state and its rapidly, blatantly, visibly shrinking role in the lives of many Muslims bears large blame for the expansion of community-based boundaries, and the tightening of community controls. The solution lies not in uncovering progressive interpretations of the Shariat. Or, scurrying off to find the right sura in defence of Islam. But in loosening the control of a conservative clergy. At the moment, they can say pretty much what they like, and they will be heard and they will be followed. Because they fill a space vacated by the state.

But the nation is so busy being outraged over fatwas and Sharia courts, that it has lost sight of the discursive paradigms of civilized democracy – justice, security, right to life, rule of law. On 17 August 2004, the Supreme Court had directed the State of Gujarat to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to review the summary closure of 2024 cases in Gujarat and to report back within 90 days. If the SIT found no need for further investigation, it was asked to give its reasons on a website. A review of the site (http://www.riotcell2002. gujarat.gov.in) on 15 November 2005 showed that the SIT had reviewed 1711 cases and decided not to reopen 886. Reasons for not opening were given only for 22 cases.

It is cruel irony that the Supreme Court, after initial hope and bluster, finds time to entertain a PIL about the illegality of Sharia courts but for over a year, since 6 December 2004, has not found the will to hear the main NHRC petition on Gujarat. (The matter is currently listed for hearing on 7 February 2006.) There continues to be a stay on the 13 major trials – the very ones that shocked the country – Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gaon, Gulbarga Society, Sardarpura, Meghaninagar, Ode and more. One Zaheera Sheikh apparently pulverizes the highest court in the land. It is approaching four years to the date of these ‘crimes that shook the nation.’ But the dead are dead, the nation perhaps busy with other pressing matters, and the survivors live corralled in ghettoes, being looked after by the same ‘medieval Muslim types’ they are being asked to spurn.

 

By all means declare Sharia courts unconstitutional and illegal. Who cares? The uniqueness of this vast country lies in its abundant illegality. Tribal councils, jati-panchayats, and now Sharia courts – these are social formations. Matters of cultural choice and behaviour, which no court can adjudicate on. The day justice is seen to be given through constitutional courts, these extra-judicial bodies will loose their sheen. They will atrophy and slowly die. But another government ATR (Action Taken Report) like the one we saw on the Sikh riots and the Nanavati report, more SIT scams and we push Muslims further into the arms of the Ulema.

Besides, our obsessive focus on the plight of Muslim women – Gudiya, Imrana, and their more famous predecessor, Shah Bano – reveals a sinister continuity with the events of 2002. For it perpetuates the construction of women – their bodies and their selves – as valid sites of contestation (between one community and the other, between the secular and the religious, between the public and the private). As I and other feminists have argued elsewhere,⁶ ‘women’ were at the core of the symbolic repertoire available to the mob in Gujarat. I quote from The Survivors Speak:

‘On February 28th, Sandesh, a leading Gujarati Daily, in addition to reporting the Godhra tragedy in provocative language, also ran a story on page 1 saying the following: "10-15 Hindu women were dragged away by a fanatic mob from the railway compartment." The same story was repeated on page 16 with the heading "Mob dragged away 8-10 women into the slums." The story was entirely false. The police denied the incident, and other newspapers, including the Times of India could not find confirmation of this news. A day later, on 1 March 2002, Sandesh carried a follow-up to this false story on page 16 with the heading – "Out of kidnapped young ladies from Sabarmati Express, dead bodies of two women recovered – breasts of women were cut off…"

 

Wherever the fact-finding team went, we heard some version of this story, spreading through word of mouth, through the channels of overworked rumour mills – sometimes it was 10 Hindu women raped, sometimes it was 6 Hindu women – but the essential contours remained the same. In one place we heard details like, "The Muslims took the Hindu women to their madrasa and gang-raped them there." Because the madrasa is the site of learning, raping women there projects the perpetrators as truly bestial men to whom nothing is sacred. In another village, "Hindu women" had been replaced by "Adivasi women" and this was given as the justification for Adivasi participation in the attacks on Muslims.’⁷ (Sandesh later printed a small retraction buried in a corner of the paper, but the damage had been done).

 

The full meaning of what happened to women in Gujarat has yet to be acknowledged. This was not the ‘mayhem’ and ‘madness’ of 1947, or the abduction and forced possession of tens of thousands of women. This was not the hit-and-run rapes by a Pakistani Army sweeping through the Bangladeshi countryside in 1971, nor the systematic nightly barrack-rapes of ‘war booty’ Bangladeshi women. Gujarat was about the torture, mutilation and burning of sexually violated bodies. A sexualized narrative of fear and anxiety about ‘self’ and ‘Hindu nation-hood’ projected on to the ‘other’ as hatred, violence, and power. It was done in full public view – like a web of signs to the nation, which apparently went unread.

In July 2004, a delegation of women groups met the prime minister with a memorandum asking for a national task force on sexual violence in sectarian conflict (wherever it might be – in Gujarat, in Delhi, in the North East). Asking the government to support survivors, to evolve a framework for reparation, to read the message and to intervene. He was sympathetic. But nothing happened. All we have today by way of recognizing what happened to women in Gujarat is one survivor – Bilkis Yakub Rasool. After nearly four years – Supreme Court intervention, CBI enquiry, transfer of the case to a Mumbai court – after all this, Bilkis finally had her day in court on 21 February 2005. And as the year ends, her truth is slowly snaking its way past a battery of defence lawyers in a Mumbai session court.

In the meantime, Bilkis’ trauma notwithstanding, Islamophobia, like bird flu, is here to stay. Everyday, another Muslim becomes ‘Muslim’ – burdened by a global identity, reluctant defender of the many sins of his faith. Filled with nagging unease at the sudden prominence but helpless and unable to protest. Except in whispers, nostalgically remembering a better time before the global infamy, a time when life was little, lived only between obscurity and small fears.

 

So what do we do about Osama and his band of merry men who will no doubt continue to give Islam a bad name in years to come? I recall scenes from Kenny Glenaan’s engaging 2004 film, ‘Yasmin’ – the story of a young British Muslim whose life changes after 9/11. ‘Who is Ossma?’ asks Yasmin. ‘Clearly not a TV junkie’, she innocently mispronounces the famous Bin Laden name, as she asks her white, male British colleague this question. She asks not because she’s suddenly heard of the head of the evil empire, but because one day post 9/11 she finds a note stuck on her locker. ‘Yasmin loves Osama’, it says. A joke played on her by her white office colleagues. Silly, really. Cute, even. And she shrugs it off. For now. Silly gets serious later in the film, as Yasmin is made increasingly aware by every look and act that she is Muslim, above all else. And accountable for every last one of them ‘Izzlamic’ buggers. One day Yasmin has finally had enough and she yells: ‘Hey I am sorry. Is that what you lot wanted to hear, yeah? I didn’t do it. But I am really, really sorry. Not me flying the plane, right? But yeah I am f…ing sorry. That better now?’

 

Footnotes:

1. Veena Das has discussed the notion of the ‘form of the riot’ and of the web of signifiers through which violence is organized in her introduction to Mirrors of Violence (ed), OUP, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 9-10.

2. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power. Phoenix Press, London, 2000, p. 227.

3. Farah Naqvi, ‘It’s a Woman Thing’, The Hindustan Times, 4 July 2005.

4. A Status Report on the rehabilitation of victims of communal violence in Gujarat (March 2002-July 2004). Prepared by the Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad with guidance of the NHRC monitoring committee.

5. Ibid., p. 28.

6. The Survivors Speak: How Has the Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women. Citizens Initiative, Ahmedabad, 16 April 2002 and Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat. International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat, December 2003.

7. The Survivors Speak, ibid., pp. 10-11.