Onion Uttapam : India's Leading Satire Daily

Caste, Class, Quom, Biradari, tribe within a Tribe, sub-sect within a Sect...One can keep adding; have a lot to do with at least three factors: birth, hereditary profession and exposure to Saudi Preachers' influences.

There are a few honest-to-God Muslims who practice discrimination most unwittingly. They really don't mean any harm but they themselves are First Victims. There is a couple of interesting twists:

Firstly: - A Muslim Family considers itself higher on social-scale depending upon how long "Islam" has been in their Clan, genuinely or as per exaggerated family lore. Thus, it is common for one Clan to look down on the other claiming that while WE have been Muslims right since the days of the Prophet (or, near about of Qasim's times) YOU are actually recent Hindu "converts" who are practicing some mixed-up form. Who really knows the truth?

Take the case of Allama Iqbal. As per one version, his great-grandfather was a Kashmiri Hindu Pandit named Sapru who became a Muslim. Angry counter arguments were put forth by somebody else that Iqbal's family had been Muslim at the very least for 250 years. I do not understand the economy exercised by the latter. Neither may have cared much for Iqbal's world view or his own mystical thoughts. Conclusions are self-serving: longer your Clan has been Muslim; better you must be.

Secondly: - The harder the form of Islam one claims to profess, better class he belongs to. Soft-speaking, easy going South-Indian and Bengal Muslims had mostly remained undistinguishable from their Hindu or Christian peers except in few details. Dress, culture, social practices, cuisine and most important the language is almost identical. This is no longer acceptable to the New Brand of Evangelists who keeps looking for finding ways of accentuating differences. The Gulf influence is trying to create a gulf among peoples and drive a wedge in a social scene that had simply and painlessly evolved over centuries.

Thirdly:- One tends to look for ancient roots as far away from (British)India as possible, claiming ownership with present locale-the motherland-at the same time. The desire for conformity is always at conflict with a desire to be somebody special. One, who can manage to demonstrate, in some acceptable manner, his kinship with some group far away, always can claim a higher status on the social ladder. His Quom, Khaandaan, Biradari is greater in the pecking order. What is so great about being just another Balochi; one needs to be more and it is the Omani or Kurdish connection that matters and that does NOT mean one is negating one's present environs!

There is a kind of dichotomy here and some poorly informed but well meaning Hindu Indians, who do not understand, straightaway think that the Muslim loyalties are divided. It is not so. He loves his land of birth and would remain forever loyal to it but it gives him some temporary joy to show that look, I am somebody DIFFERENT, even as I am part of you. And I choose to live with you but I am STILL somebody SPECIAL. I am of ancestry from far off lands and though you are my own, there are some whom I have never seen but they are more of my own even if THEY never acknowledge me to be one of theirs. There is sweet agony and harmless wistfulness with an added pinch of fevered imagination leading to false pride of a kind which I understand but I am unable to articulate here well.

Such harmless sentiments are the ones on which an Arab-petro-dollar financed Wahabi plays. An innocent desire to be "special" can lead in a matter of a single generation to a hard form of Islamism where anything that has a "local" flavour needs to be discarded as un-Islamic. In reality, what the Evangelist means is all that is Non-Arabic is Un-Islamic!

Instead of guiding a person towards piety and tolerance they goad a man towards hate and intolerance. If every other chap claims that he is a direct descendent of the Prophet or Companions of Prophets or early Khalifas or the Rashidun or of stock from the Turk or Mughal or Afghan or Arian or Early Converts or First One to Embrace Islam or related to a pioneer's family....it merely points to a need to acquire the seal of antiquity as proof of superiority within his peer group. Whether they have actually practiced piety or not is a separate matter. And then whether he calls all that "Casteism" or something else is just a matter of semantics.

And the crowning glory would be a City dwelling Tribal fellow holding on to some Pre-Islamic semi-barbarous Code of Honour and calling a simple, peace-loving Namazi a "Pagan-Muslim" lacking in any such Code!

Mughals are dead and gone and Shah Jahan is just a name and Babur's ancestry of Samarqand & Bokhara is just a wisp of memory but not for anything that the Cleric who runs the imposing Jama Masjid in Delhi still calls himself: Shahi Imam of Bokhara.

The self-indulgences of men of High Birth!

Related: Indian Muslims (Part 1)

Comments (3)

Kabir said:

captainjohann: To understand Pakistan Indians merely need to look within. Orthodox Pakistanis may think that Indian Muslims are not Muslim enough but that is not the whole story. If Maulana's influence was widespread and if Land of Pure by itself was important enough, West Pakistanis would have never looked down upon East Pakistanis and Mohajirs the way they did and do. As the finest racists in the world Indians should be the first to understand why fair-skin ones have open dislike for dark skin, irrespective of common religion. Pathan, Punj, Sindhi and Baloch generally have an almost contemptuous attitude towards fellow Pakistanis of UP-Bihar origins and towards all Indians-Muslims included. Kashmiris, Sikhs and Bollywoodians are the exceptions. Most of the closet racists are good humoured and mean no harm really like a rare Indian worthy who can actually be surprised that Madras is full of Madrasis as if he half expected it to be full of Eskimos. I have come across such display of surprises often enough. Mostly they are just funny. Once I-a proverbial pot who can't call anybody anything- sat next to an elderly Anglo Indian woman-more Indian than Anglo-fanning herself with her fingers in a crowded local train on a sweltry day in Bombay. Her skin was glowing like freshly washed embers while sweat cut through the fine cake on her face forming the furrows that delineated her ethnicity. There was a perfect blend of imperial disgust and Livingstonian surprise in her voice as she kept grumbling to nobody in particular:"Helluva hot country this, man". The tribe of "Fair & Lovely" Varnasanker Indians is on the increase. And so it is in Pakistan.

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June 03, 2008
Votes: +1

captainjohann said:

	Pakistani Muslims are considred superior to Indians because they live in a Pure Islmaic country while Indian muslims live under laws of the infidels as per Maulana maudoodi founder of jAMAAT-I-ISLAMI.
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June 02, 2008
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derebail2008 said:

	As far as I know Indian muslims are discriminated in the Gulf. They are given second rate treatment, Pakistani Muslims are considered superior. I don t understand such discrimination ?
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May 18, 2008
Votes: +0

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