Hindus & Muslims: Why we are more similar than different

I recently wrote a long rebuttal to a Pakistani journalist's article proclaiming Indian intellectuals can't accept Pakistan, only to later feel that I might have been a little jingoistic in my response. I absolutely agree that there are sections of Indians who feel that way, but to term an entire community, or so called liberal Indian intelligentsia, Anti-Muslim would be preposterous.

This has reminded me so many incidents from my life where I, as part of growing Indian middle class, faced people with varying degree of paranoia against muslims. Having grown up in a libearal environment, my parents never instilled any anti-muslim sentiments in my mind, whereas everywhere else I found that hindu children are told vicious things by parents about their muslim counterparts. Here I have tried to list down some of the misinformation fed to the children from a young age, which later perhaps shapes their perception of the community:
( based on my experience of growing up in small town north India)

• Muslims are the filthiest creatures to be found. They take bath only on friday, the day of prayer, and they make do with their customary 'wuzu' (ablutions) for rest of the days. And not to forget, they hardly ever change or wash their clothes.
• All muslims are incestuous. They don't value any sisterly or filial relationships and can be betrothed to even their step-mother.
  
• Muslims are very cruel, they have no feelings and in the event of slightest tiff, they will chop you like a butcher the moment they seize you . And muslim women are not far behind, they too can make a barrah kabab out of you single handedly with their knives in times of riots.
  
• They have no culture, tradition or customs. They will keep four wives and divorce their wife whenever they wish.
• Muslims can never be trusted, they would never fight shy of backstabbing at first available opportunity.

Now, these reasons are adequate enough to create a distorted picture in the impressionable young minds, but not enough to clamp down young childhood friendships. Inspite of all the misgivings parents or society tried to inculcate among my friends, none of them ever had any reservation in sharing our study notes or lunch boxes. I don't know how many of them feel the same way about muslims now, but I am very sure it must not be very different from what it used to be.

Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the place where I grew up, was once famous for it's ganga-jamuni tehzeeb, the camaraderie between different faiths and harmonious, peaceful co-existence.This, coupled with liberal attitude of my envioronment, led me to be enchanted by the wonderful cultural heritage I was exposed to. I looked forward to month of ramzaan much more than Holi or Deewali because unlike a single day of celebration, it brought steady stream of muslim delicacies in the form of iftaari for one whole month. Muhaaram was not far behind in my scheme of things, where I would listen to all the marsias and wait for the hissa, the food item given at the end of the majlis. I used to go to mosques and dargaahs with same reverence as to the temples every year before examination results were to be announced. ( Even today, I feel muslim dargah are quicker in listening to your wishes and granting them than hindu gods)

Cut to year 2006, while travelling through busy lanes of bangalore, my fairly liberal, educated, broadminded friend becomes wary of driving in a muslim ghetto. His fears are same. He feels he will be killed if he accidentally even just touches a kid running on the road. I prod him to know more about his paranoia and he gives me the same answers: how muslims are brute, and killing people is in their blood, they have no compunction while butchering people. When I remind him of the atrocities perpetrated by hindus in gujrat riots, he gets dismissive of it as a retaliatory action.

My arguments could not convince him on that day that there can be a non-violent muslim, and I had to give up. I normally don't try to act as an intellectual, liberal champion of muslim cause. But in his case, I was deeply hurt. I never expected somebody of his class, intelligence and awareness to be so rigid in his view of his muslims, and he never believed in right wing politics of BJP. I later realized that it was not his fault that he had not come across any muslim who challenged his set perception of muslims. Those beliefs were perpetuated in his mind by mass media where all terrorist activities are brandished as muslim handiwork.

As mentioned in the article by Mr. Ramchandra Guha, in whose response, the piece of Writing that I responded to was written; people who migrated from pakistan at the time of partition are most resentful of muslims. They see them as the reason they were displaced, and hold them responsible for everything they went through. Political parties have exploited this sentiment and used it to rouse people against each other. It has become another 'us' versus 'them'. When I look back, I find not 'them'. We were all 'us' and hope to continue to remain so.

In his particularly relavant book on this subject, Identity and Violence, Prof. Amartya Sen discusses the same nature of commonality which bonds people of different faiths. Dismemberment of Bangladesh is a case in point that religion alone cannot keep people united. I just wish more people become curious to find commonalities than differences among muslims of today's india and see that we are more similar to them than what is projected by political parties.

P.S. Some people might get confused as to how it is possible to be friends with muslims and all that ganga-jamuni tehzeeb remains intact, when such a malicious traits are attributed to muslim. The list of virtues ascribed to muslims are part of a folklore which gets passed down to different generation, and everyone renounces them when they see muslims are not what is projected of them, because they get chance to be frinds with them, study with them and interact with them, unlike living in a ghettoized envioronment