IN Rahul Dholakia’s film, Parzania (2007), which was for a time banned in Gujarat, there is a depiction of the Gulbarg Society massacre, one of the scenes of anti-Muslim carnage which convulsed the city of Ahmedabad during the Gujarat pogrom in 2002. One of the residents of the housing society represented in the film is a Muslim man called Asif. When his father is killed during the massacre, Asif begins to hold clandestine meetings with other Muslim men who gather weapons and plan retaliation against the Hindus.

Asif exhorts his fellow Muslims by saying, ‘It is Allah’s will for us to be victorious over the non-believers and those who have committed this crime. Our God is strong and powerful and has given us the strength to stand up to any evil. Whatever sacrifice we need to make, we must make it, we will make it. Allah-u-Akbar!’¹ This scene in Parzania builds up a common stereo-type about Muslims: that they resort to violence as political action and that their religion provides the trope of jihad as armed conflict against ‘non-believers’.

This portrayal of Muslims in the film is entirely false with respect to Muslims negotiating a post-pogrom normalcy in Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat. On the contrary, after the pogrom, Muslims began to make efforts at re-establishing communal harmony. ‘The project of sustaining communal coexistence’, as Carolyn Heitmeyer writes, ‘is one which inevitably falls much more heavily on the shoulders of local Muslims, given the wider political context in which ultimately it is their livelihoods, lives and well-being which remain most at stake.’² This essay is an endeavour to dispel caricatures of Muslims as sword-toting jihadis; it attempts to locate, instead, the commitment to peace and justice which Muslims demonstrate even in the aftermath of genocidal violence. This essay is an exploration of how faith-based activism provides the locus of agency, resistance and religious belief in the life of Muslim women such as Jameela Khan, a peace activist in Ahmedabad.

The 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom of Gujarat involved the mass rape and mutilation of Muslim women’s bodies in a spectacle of terror. Rape victims were also murdered and frequently burnt to death; as Tanika Sarkar argues, ‘The large symbolic purpose behind the deaths sums up the nature of ethnic cleansing, the shape of Hindu Rashtra.’³ There was no judicial redress to be found: as the case of Bilkis Bano reveals, those women who sought justice were subjected to further intimidation by the state.

The narrative of Muslim women who were subjected to rape, women who found themselves widowed, women like Zaheera Sheikh who had witnessed their entire families getting butchered, must not be read as one of ‘victimhood’ alone. These women had experienced gruesome brutality, but their personal struggle and their resistance to the ontological state of victimhood imposed upon them should also be chronicled as well. Hence, as Judith Butler writes, our political vocabulary needs to underscore ‘modes of vulnerability that inform modes of resistance’ and to appreciate ‘forms of political agency developed under conditions of duress.’⁴

 

What are these modes of resistance by Muslim women? Many of the women who were forced to live in relief camps after the pogrom, joined NGOs and participated in projects of rebuilding community networks, involved themselves in grassroots initiatives of providing healing to trauma victims, and also started self-help women groups focusing on learning new skills such as embroidery.⁵ Some others engaged in active measures to promote peace and friendship such as community theatre performances; these overtures were very significant in a fractured city-scape where even neighbourly relations had broken down on account of inter-community animosity.

During my fieldwork in Naroda Patiya, a woman called Ishrat told me that she had performed in several street plays after the pogrom. She said, ‘Our intention was to spread the message of peace and forgiveness. I had participated in a street theatre initiative, Sehr-e-Insaaf organized by the NGO Sahrwaru. I took part in mahila sammelans in other cities like Kolkata, along with other women like Noorjehan Apa from Bombay Hotel. We received training in the mahila sammelan. We performed our play at Lal Darwaza in Ahmedabad. My real life and the scenes depicted in the play overlapped. I played my own life in the play, about changing friendships after 2002. The last line of the dialogue which I delivered was "It’s their fault, but we didn’t return the hostility; we are still standing, hands extended for friendship." This is exactly what I feel about my actual neighbours in Chharanagar where I grew up, who became my enemies after the dhamaal.’⁶

 

Another mode of resistance adopted by Muslim women who had survived the pogrom was identification with Islamic reformist movements undertaken by the Tablighi Jamaat or the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH). As Rubina Jasani writes, new-found piety among Muslim men and women emerged ‘in the aftermath of the 2002 riots which (has) led to a spatial segregation of Ahmedabad along religious lines (following relocation of Muslims into "safe" neighbourhoods) and (has) witnessed the growing influence of Islamic reformism in the city.’⁷ Adherence to the reformist lifestyles prescribed by faith-based organizations (FBOs) was common among Muslims relocating to relief colonies built by these FBOs. ‘It is the story of many men and women who moved into Juhapura after the riots and who were attempting to redefine their Muslim identity in order to gain social acceptance in the neighbourhood.’⁸

 

Within the secular-liberal paradigm, it may seem paradoxical to locate resistance within religious belief and obedience to strictures of religious organizations. But as Raphael Susewind writes, attempts by Muslim organizations to build peace and provide relief are bolstered by ‘traditional forms of Muslim philanthropy’, namely zakat, lillah, fitra and sadka,⁹ because it is far more difficult for Muslim organizations to obtain funds from inter-national donor agencies. As Rubina Jasani writes, it is often strategic for Muslim survivors of violence to abide by the rules of FBOs, since these ensure easy access to the relief and rehabilitation provided by these organizations.

But apart from the instrumental logic of obtaining strategic access, a renewed focus on religious belief provides a greater identification of individuals to the community. For example, Jasani writes that for Muslim women associated with the Tablighi Jamaat, attending ishtemas or religious gatherings was a means of socialization which gave them mental peace.¹⁰ Similarly, those who survived the Gulbarg Society massacre gather at the site of the Gulbarg Society (which was burnt and destroyed in 2002 and has not been re-inhabited since then) to read the Quran together and pray for their dead loved ones killed in the 2002 massacre.¹¹ Since Muslims in Gujarat found themselves vulnerable because of their Islamic identity, asserting that identity through individual belief and practice and membership in religious organizations was a way to mark resistance against anti-Muslim structures of power.

 

Imbricating faith with social and political activism is the hallmark of Muslim women like Jameela Khan.¹² Jameela lives with her large family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a modest house near Jamalpur Darwaza in Ahmedabad. Although she was born in Ratlam and grew up in Ujjain, she has spent the greater part of her seventy years in Ahmedabad. When the 1969 riots broke out, the first in a long line of episodes of anti-Muslim violence in Ahmedabad, Jameela was merely twenty-one years old, and had been married for four months. But she committed herself to helping riot-affected victims in relief camps. This was her initiation into what would later emerge as a lifelong struggle against Hindutva forces and an unending commitment to helping victims of repetitive incidents of anti-Muslim violence.

Initial impressions suggest that Jameela is quite the ‘feminist’ and ‘rebel’. She has never worn the burqa, arguing that, ‘It is not pragmatic to wear the burqa during the kind of work that I do!’ She insists that she has never been the kind of woman who would be satisfied with domesticity. Her active political participation had earned her the ire of her husband. Moreover, her participation in a national level training camp of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) at Nainital in 1988 led to further conflict with her husband which ultimately ended in divorce. She was forty years old at that time.

 

But Jameela does not call herself a feminist. She identifies herself solely as a practising Muslim. Although she runs her own NGO called Adarsh Mahila, she has also been a member of the JIH for the past eight years. She is also a member of the Muslim Coordination Committee, which is an amalgamation of the Muslim FBOs in Ahmedabad. Through her NGO, she and her colleagues provide help and guidance to women survivors of anti-Muslim violence, intervene in local incidents of marital violence against women to secure justice for the victim, provide coaching classes to female students and even organize Quran classes for children.

Referring to a rival Muslim women’s organization based in Mumbai, she says that it is very important for Muslim activists to impart Islamic codes of ethics to other Muslims. Without this, the struggle for justice for Muslims would remain hollow. For example, she argues that if the legal battle against the existence of instant triple talaq would have taken cognizance of the rights of women provided within Islam, the government would not have got the opportunity to introduce a Bill¹³ seeking to criminalize Muslim men who pronounce instant divorce.

Jameela makes a strong case for reform among Muslims along religious and educational lines. She asserts that it is imperative for Muslims to remember and emulate the way of life laid down by the Prophet. She says,

‘There is a need to remember the sunnah or the Prophet’s way of life, instead of crying about Muslim victim-hood. Muslims have suffered so much violence and degradation because of their lack of faith which has led to their moral and social decline. Humari quam itni jahil, itni badkar, itni giri hui hai, kyunki humme deen nahi hai. Jis din Mussalmaan ke andar deen ki taqat aa jayegi, woh kabhi bhi kisi se nahi ghabrayega. (Our community is so ignorant, so pathetic, so lowly: this is because we have forgotten our religion. The day Muslims have strength in belief and faith, they will not fear anyone).

‘Look at Muslims: always money minded! They have even failed to recognize the difference between "halal" and "haram" livelihood, and are busy with the single-minded pursuit of modern luxuries. Muslims in Gujarat have scant knowledge and respect for religion. Kiski namaaz? Kiska kalma? Kya ibadat? Hum kisi doosron ko kya tanqeed kare? Yeh jo kuchch ho raha hai na, woh Allah ki taraf se ho raha hai; aur ye humari saza hai. Ye jitne dangefasaad neechi quam mein daal rakhkha hai. Hum Mussalman yateemmaskeen hai Hindustan mein. (How can we castigate the Hindus when we have forgotten our namaaz and kalma and worship? All this is a sentence from Allah, this is our punishment. We Muslims are orphans in this country).

‘The suppression of Muslims results from faults and misdeeds within Muslims themselves. Mere mein kami hai, deen ki kami hai, toh zaahir hai koi bhi apna parcham mere pe lagwa sakega. (I have a fault, I lack the strength of belief; obviously, anyone will be able to dominate me).’

Jameela’s insistence that we obey the code of ethics as laid down in the Quran and the sunnah (the personal example of the Prophet) is reminiscent of the formation of the ethical subject as specified by Saba Mahmood. ‘The precise embodied form that obedience to a moral code takes is not a contingent but a necessary element of ethical analysis in that it is a means to describing the specific constitution of the ethical subject. In other words, it is only through an analysis of the specific shape and character of ethical practices that one can apprehend the kind of ethical subject that is formed.’¹⁴

For Jameela, it is not enough that Muslims should merely engage in peace building activities after a pogrom. She propounds that any individual Muslim’s life must be regulated by an ethical code of conduct such that one’s subjectivity comes to be defined by ethical norms. She insists that it is also the duty of Muslim activists to appeal to fellow Muslims to imbibe this ethical subjectification.

 

Therefore, Jameela sees no contradiction between Islam and Muslim women working in the political realm, because she believes that Islam actually enjoins everyone, irrespective of gender, to agitate for justice. She quotes the last sermon of the Prophet to highlight the fact that Muslims have been instructed by the Prophet to serve the cause of their community. Thus, everything that Jameela does by way of activism is informed by a faithful adherence to Islamic prescriptions.

Jameela says that Muslims have been enjoined to obey and fear only God, and no other authority. She submits herself to the divine will, and on that basis alone, rebukes individuals like Narendra Modi. She says, ‘Saare qayenat ka malik sirf ek hai. Toh ye Modi kya hai? Aaj hai, kal nahi rahega.’ (There is only one master of the universe, so what is this Modi? He is here today; tomorrow he will not be here). She believes that even the duration of her life is circumscribed by divine will, such that no man can injure or kill her as long as she has divine protection. And this conviction gives her the courage to stand up against Hindutva terror. She narrates,

‘I went to see the trial of Maya Kodnani in High Court. I vividly remember the intimidating presence of Bajrang Dal, VHP, Shiv Sena cadres in the courtroom, the media, the long legal procedures, the suffocating crowds of nearly 30,000 people even spilling out of the court. I was alone, I had only two other Jamaat women by my side. I remember the physical threat I felt at the moment Kodnani’s sentence was pronounced.

‘The first time Kodnani’s trial was held, the case was dismissed. At that time, I was present at the court premises with four other women along with other activists like Hozefa of Jan Vikas. I shouted in court, "This is not justice, this is not justice! Humein insaaf chahiye, humein insaaf nahi mila." (We want justice, we have not been given justice). My friends calmed me down, cautioning me about contempt of court.

‘After that, for some time, my name was on the police watch-list. I told the police, "No I am not a Muslim, I am terrorist, I am terrorist, I am terrorist!" After the carnage, influential people in my locality cautioned my sons about my outspoken habits. They would threaten my sons and ask them to silence me. These people were scared of me because I organized many protest demonstrations against Modi’s electoral candidates.’

 

Not only did she agitate for legal justice, she also led a movement to initiate the repairs of the mosques such as the Ishanpur Masjid which were damaged during the pogrom. When I ask her if she ever feels scared or depressed, she says that whenever she feels discouraged, she reads the al-Burooj chapter in the Quran which says, ‘Verily, those who believe and do righteous good deeds, for them will be Gardens under which rivers flow (Paradise).’¹⁵ She refers to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s book Insaaniyat Maut ke Darwaaze; it inspires her in times of difficulty and distress.

 

Jameela accepts that she cannot do much; she cannot change the world and that everything that she does is finite. She says, ‘Mera kaam hai karte rehna, hidayat dena uska kaam hai; jab nabiyon ki nahi suni toh hum toh gunaahgar hain. Jibreel alaisalam ne khud nabi se kaha, tumhara kaam sirf allah ka paigham dena hai. Baaki woh dekhega.’ (My job in this world is to do my work; I cannot guide people on the right path, that only He can do. People have ignored the prophets, I am only a sinner. Even the messenger Gabriel told the Prophet that his task is only to spread the word of God; the rest is up to God alone).

What about her interaction with non-Muslim communities? She says that the JIH has recently started an inter-community contact programme in Ahmedabad; it is called, Islam sab ke liye (Islam is for everyone). The programme involves visiting Dalit, Christian, and other communities to tell them that Muslims want to live in peace, and to increase inter-community awareness so that the outbreak of communal violence can be prevented.

The work done by Jameela Khan and her associates in JIH does not receive adequate credit or even public attention. As Dipankar Gupta writes, ‘There is so little written up about the enormous work done by these FBOs in Ahmedabad, and indeed, in many other parts of Gujarat… This is particularly alarming as the actual work of relief and rehabilitation during this crisis in Gujarat was primarily done by Islamic organizations.’¹⁶ Gupta goes on to say that most NGO activists dismiss Muslim activists in Muslim FBOs as ‘Mullah-types’ and ‘fundamentalists’.¹⁷ But ‘contrary to popular perception, the FBOs… were not fomenting militancy or fundamentalism, but rather, greater tolerance between communities without abandoning the cause of justice or the urgency of rehabilitation… This is probably because they realise how important the status of citizenship is for minorities to function in a Hindu-majority country, especially in moments of ethnic madness.’¹⁸

 

Jameela’s agency as a Muslim activist is not derived only from her subjectivity as a devout Muslim. Her agency is also linked with her vulnerability as a Muslim woman. She said that her son has been arrested in December 2017 on a false case and even after so many months, the court refused to grant him bail. Her family members are targeted in order to thwart her relentless work. For women like Jameela, therefore, engagement in political activism against the government comes at a heavy price. She says that unlike other political groups in Gujarat, Muslims cannot easily organize and agitate for their demands. Even though there were many obstacles to Patidar and Dalit organizations, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani have acquired considerable political clout in Gujarat: something that Muslim organizations will always lack.

To illustrate her point, she narrates one particular incident from February 2018, when she and her female JIH colleagues Munawwar, Arefa and Noorjehan, visited the chief minister to present him with a memorandum appealing for the triple talaq bill to be scrapped. But the CM kept them waiting for two hours. Finally, when they were allowed to meet the CM’s secretary, she presented him with a bouquet of flowers, saying, ‘Ye phool dhoop mein murjha gaye; ab ye aap jaise ho gaye hain. Koi khushboo nahi inmein.’ (These flowers have wilted in the heat; now they are just like you, without fragrance).

 

The moral landscape of activists like Jameela dovetails both deen (religious creed) and duniya (the temporal world). As Susewind writes, faith-based actors ‘combine religious beliefs, psychological dynamics and political agency in their work for peace.’¹⁹ He further remarks, ‘All faith-based actors tended to lecture on the Quran and hadith and sketched a very orthodox image of their spiritual life… For them, morally correct behaviour is thus not simply a demand of social reciprocity, nor merely a path to future salvation – as it is for other types of activists. They rather imported a detailed idea of good life from apocalyptic into contemporary times and strive to pre-enact an eternity-to-come… salvation is guaranteed if and only if one lives accordingly and pre-enacts eternity in contemporary life. It is this conception of the afterlife that separates faith-based actors from other kinds of activists – as far as theology is concerned.’²⁰

Susewind argues that for faith-based actors, being Muslim and working for peace involves a unilateral ‘direction of causality’, namely, ‘identity to agency with very little reverse influence.’²¹ Therefore, for activists like Jameela Khan, being Muslim and working for peace are synonymous; as per her statements, a true Muslim will ipso facto work for peace and justice.

 

What is the significance of such militant religiosity as both identity and agency? It helps to dispel popularly held notions of Muslims, prevalent in both secular academia and popular culture, that the obscurantism of devout Muslims makes them violent and inimical to peace and democracy. On the contrary, as the life story of Jameela Khan delineates, a pious Muslim’s moral code of conduct and her ethical subjectivity will compulsorily enjoin her to strive for justice and harmonious co-existence with other communities. As Susewind writes, the portraits of individual Muslims working for peace qua Muslims challenges ‘the very core of Hindu nationalism – a much distorted perception of Indian Muslims as "violent" or at least "suspect… [and] the view that Muslims in India are "passive", "disempowered", and "lack leadership".’²²

Therefore, highlighting the role of Muslim peace activists questions the portrayal of Muslims as violent jihadis or terrorists at worst and passive recipients of charitable aid at best. It dispels the notion that Islam provides its adherents with only a monolithic and insular code of action precluding any engagement with the political realm. It also helps to question the prejudices of secularism which expect any individual to disavow religious belief before embarking upon meaningful political action. On the contrary, as faith-based actors demonstrate, being attuned to faith is in no way a hindrance to developing a keen sense of resistance to injustice and authoritarian power.

 

Footnotes:

1. Dialogue from Parzania, English, dir. by Rahul Dholakia, 2007.

2. Carolyn Heitmeyer, ‘"There is Peace Here": Managing Communal Relations in a Town in Central Gujarat’, Journal of South Asian Development 4(1), 2009, pp. 103-120.

3. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra’, Economic and Political Weekly 37(28), 13-19 July 2002, pp. 2872-2876, 2872. See also Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Body of the Nation’, Boston Review, Summer 2004, http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR29.3/nussbaum.html and Megha Kumar, Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad Since 1969. Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2017.

4. Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (eds.), Vulnerability in Resistance. Duke University Press, Durham and London,2016, p. 6.

5. Raphael Susewind, Being Muslim and Working for Peace: Ambivalence and Ambiguity in Gujarat. Sage, Delhi, 2013.

6. Interview taken in December 2015.

7. Rubina Jasani, ‘Violence, Reconstruction and Islamic Reform: Stories from the Muslim "Ghetto"’, Modern Asian Studies 42(2/3), March-May, 2008, Islam in South Asia, pp. 431-456, 433.

8. Ibid.

9. Raphael Susewind, op. cit., 2013, p. 23.

10. Jasani, op. cit., p. 454.

11. Heba Ahmed, ‘The Gulbarg Memorial and the Problem of Memory’, in Churnjeet Mahn and Anne Murphy (eds.), Partition and the Practice of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 175-210.

12. Interviews with Jameela Khan conducted over several field visits to Ahmedabad from 2015-2018, including phone interviews.

13. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017.

14. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005, p. 29.

15. Text of the entire chapter at http://www.iqrasense.com/quran-surahs/surah-al-burooj-chapter-85-from-quran-arabic-english-translation.html

16. Dipankar Gupta, Justice Before Reconciliation: Negotiating a New Normal in Post-riot Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Routledge, New Delhi, 2011, p. 47.

17. Ibid., p. 48.

18. Ibid., p. 93.

19. Susewind, op. cit., p. 39.

20. Ibid., pp. 47-53.

21. Ibid., p. 63.

22. Ibid., p. 21.