Hating Muslims is a natural thing in Gujarat
Y Ganesh Devy
Gujarat has become an intolerable place; at least that is
how I find it. Today, there are very few people I can talk to in Gujarat
because they simply do not understand basic things or don’t want to, I can
make myself a very comfortable citizen of Vadodara. But the problem is, I
cannot talk to the people of this city; it is like walking in the desert;
I find the popular myth of Gujaratis being peace-loving people impossible
to believe. How could all the riots, so many of them since 1969, have
happened if this were true? I have thought about this deeply and my sense
is that violence is an attribute of their acquisitive nature, Gujaratis
are extremely acquisitive people. They will do anything to acquire. The
most decent people here, people I would otherwise respect, would do
anything to get a visa to the United States, even resort to cheating and
dishonesty. They are hungry to acquire. Even Gujarati devotion is about
acquiring. They have an exchange relationship with God – I give you
devotion, you give me riches.
The Muslim hatred practised here is not conscious or
learnt. It is just somehow normal, as nature would have meant it to be.
There is no bitterness of partition here, as is the case with Punjab.
There is only the deep, almost genetic, knowledge of Somnath and the
invasions and an accumulation of prejudices. Then there is a huge void in
their memory until Gandhi arrives.
Gandhi, I have to say, is not a popular man in Gujarat;
they merely pay him lip service. You do not become a bad man in Gujarat if
you hate Muslims, you are normal. Decent people hate Muslims. And it is
not a city phenomenon alone; this is true of villages as well. If a Muslim
is traumatised, it is a normal thing. Just to give a sense of how Gujarati
Hindus relate to Muslims, I will come to the Narmada issue. Gujarat is
extremely pro-dam and, therefore, extremely anti-Medha Patkar. Gujaratis
will call all pro-Medha people Muslims. Intolerance in Gujarat is
unanimous. If Muslims are hated, entire Gujarat will hate them. If Medha
is seen as an ‘enemy’, all of Gujarat will look at her as an enemy. In
that sense, Gujarat has treated Medha as much as an ‘enemy’ or a
‘fundamentalist’ as Muslims are treated. The minds have got locked here.
The culture of disagreement and dissent is pervasively shunned. This is so
even when Gujarat is not a feudal state in terms of its economic make-up.
Some years ago, Habib Tanvir wanted to come and stay and
work in Vadodara. He did not find a house for six months. Eventually, he
went back. Some of us tried to find him a place to stay but nobody was
willing (to give him accommodation). My own landlord at the time, a
perfectly decent man otherwise, refused. Rauf Valiullah, an honest and
purposeful Congress MP (member of parliament) was killed by gangsters in
the centre of Ahmedabad a few years ago. Not even the Congress party made
a noise about it. I think because Rauf was a Muslim. There was no sense of
loss or outrage when Ahsan Jaffri was killed. There is no political or
ideological divide in Gujarat on the Muslim question; even the Congress
hates Muslims.
I have a young Muslim associate who has been pursuing
postgraduate studies. After the 2002 violence, I suddenly noticed that he
was having a problem trying to form his sentences while speaking. He used
to write clearly but I saw that his writing too was breaking up. In fact,
he wasn’t able to write. This was a typical case of aphasia, which is a
condition of loss of speech and articulation caused by external trauma.
Gujarat is probably the only state that has a sizeable Muslim population
but no Urdu paper. I wonder if there is something to it, a state of
collective aphasia. I often wonder how it must feel to be a Muslim in
Gujarat. I shudder to think what it must require to live at the wrong end
of so much hatred, contempt and threat. Do they have a strategy of
reaction? Is something in the process of evolving? I do not know. n
— Tehelka News, Vol.3 May 20, 2006
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