Irrfan Khan Is Right, But Don’t Others Need To Introspect Too?

We are inflicting careless cruelty on fellow citizens everyday only because they are followers of Islam.

It was the first day of junior college in Kolkata. And as it happens on first days when little coteries haven’t yet taken shape, most of the girls in class were huddling together between classes. The conversation had somehow turned to fashion, and someone remarked, “Oh, that’s so like the mollahs!”

‘Mollah’ is how Muslims are referred to derogatorily in common parlance.

Everyone, I remember, laughed, but one girl walked away silently. Everyone belatedly realised that she was Muslim - though she didn’t “look” like one. It was the first time I consciously became aware of the daily alienation a Muslim citizen faces in our country. The image of that girl - she remains one of my closest friends - walking away silently from that large group, is somehow still a memory that hurts.

Another friend was in class six in an upscale school when one day a teacher asked how many of the girls were watching the big India-Pakistan match that night. She didn’t watch cricket and so didn’t raise her hand. Though she was not the only Muslim present, her teacher laughed derisively and called her a ‘Pakistan supporter’ in front of the whole class.

“I was so surprised! Looking back, I find it disturbing that it happened to me in school,” she says.

What is really disturbing is that all of us have been part of groups or situations where such sentiments have been bandied about freely. Muslims are always the “them” and “those”, who are somehow taking an unlawful share of the pie that should have been all “ours”.

“Don’t dress like the mollahs”, “there they go screeching again” (at the call of the muezzin for prayer), “You won’t be able to live there - the area is full of Muslims” - it goes on and on and on. I even know a die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan, who stopped watching his movies when the star spoke out about being discriminated as an Indian Muslim. “These mollahs are always like this,” he told me.

What is also disturbing is that these sentiments are most ripe among the privileged - read “educated and cultured” - upper middle class that I hail from. Appalling as it sounds, there are still households that would not touch the utensils that a Muslim guest has eaten from. And of course, renting your house to one is inconceivable.

A friendly broker once told a friend’s sister after yet another failed attempt to find a flat in Delhi, “Don’t feel bad, beta. People don’t want to rent their houses to Afghans.”

“I am an Indian, Uncle,” the girl told him and walked away.  

What bothers me most is that midst all the allegations and counter allegations, history and politics, riots and terror attacks, we have somewhere left behind the basic tenets that describe us as human beings.

When I listen to my friends’ experiences, I always try to imagine what it would feel like if someone did this to me. And the answer is always very, very subduing.

I can’t even begin to feel the utter loneliness and alienation a Muslim must feel in a gathering largely made up of people from other communities everyday - in school, on the playground, in office, at a wedding. It is the casual cruelty that hurts the most, doesn’t it, when people don’t even care enough to realise that they are inflicting so much pain.

And what’s worse, we are teaching our children to do the same.

When I hugged my seven-year-old nephew on Bijoya Doshomi (the last day of Durga Puja when Bengalis touch the feet of elders and hug their peers in greeting), he told me, “Why are you hugging like this? Mussalmans do it.”

I stared at him in complete disbelief, and then explained to him that everyone hugged, there’s no way it can be patented to one community. But after all he sees and hears around him, would it make a difference? I doubt it.

So yes, I think Irrfan Khan is refreshingly brave - and right - about the need for Muslims to introspect about their faith. But they are not the only ones. It’s time for each of us to look within and wonder where we lost the hearts in which our gods are said to have made their homes.