Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Even the gods it seems aren’t amused by our doings down here, in our part of the earth they created. India, home to a billion plus people, hailed as a land of extreme tolerance, home probably to as many faiths as man conspired to create in his name, a cradle of an ancient civilization, the place which we are proudly reminded, has since time immemorial celebrated the spirit of ‘vasudeva kutmbakkam’ and ‘sarva dharma sambhav’. Or, so one is asked to believe.
But we earthlings it appears have probably failed to live up to the high value system, social, religious, philosophical and spiritual which we, Indians in particular, are supposed to have inherited, probably even before the birth of other great civilizations.
And to go by the war cries of cultural radicals and nationalists, the other great civilizations were probably a mere dream in some caveman’s head when we Indians — nay, we Hindus, the originals, not some Biblical creation, – were already travelling in space, equipped with thermonuclear weaponry and had excess to television (remember Sanjay, sitting with his blind King Dhritrashtra in the royal palace, and giving him an eye-witness account of the battle raging in distant Kurukhshetra). All such were everyday things, the weaponry like mere toys in the hands of our many Devas, and, perhaps Asuras as well.
Far be it from me to question the many claims that are on offer to make me feel proud of my Hinduness. There must be something to it, after all. How else would you explain the learned thoughts of noble thinkers like Mohan Bhaghwat, may his tribe increase, Mr. Singhal, Mr. Togadia, not to mention hundreds of other religious bigots now occupying political space in our Governments in New Delhi and in numerous States.
Tirelessly, day after day, these noble men and their peers before them, have instilled in us the pride of being the unquestioned numero uno among all humans and, importantly, among all the faiths that man has given himself ever since he was born.
Frankly, I, born to middle class Brahmin parents, have had no problem with my faith and calling. Strongly moored to a value system, largely imbibed from my mother, who would recite Bhagwad Gita without referring to the text any time you wished her to, or , whenever she wanted to.
Hate was a word that did not exist in her book. I am talking of the 40s of the last century and we had two Muslim boys as domestic help. She never treated them any differently; they were like us, growing up lads except that they didn’t go to school or college with us.
Mother, a good Hindu, if there ever was one, extremely well-versed in the scriptures and always willing to listen to a nephew of hers, an agnostic, willing to pick up an argument with her mythological trivia. Her answer usually would be “I didn’t ask you to believe it’, unlike the Hindutva notables of today who would have you exorcised of the evil that possessed you.
In my school days she insisted on my taking Sanskrit as a subject. If I gave it up it was because my father had other ideas about my career. In retrospect I hate to think of the kind of doctor I would have made had he had his way.
This apart, and coming to the point at issue just now, how come the men of pucca faith, the Hindutva kind, have allowed themselves to be bogged down in the unseemly war they have unleashed on anyone professing, practicing and propagating/ preaching any faith other than theirs. At no time did I or my friends, cousins etc, as children, in any manner feel differently towards our heavily populated Muslim neighborhood. Ours would have been some 500 houses in the middle of a 2,000 houses-strong community.
Yes, things may have changed in the intervening years but somehow I would even today find it difficult to distance myself from my neighbors. Except, of course, that things appear to have substantially changed, more pronouncedly since I had in the mean time moved further down into the plains after spurning my dad’s idea of making a doctor out of me, a teenager who could not stand the dissection of a frog before saying his farewell to the happy valley.
Aha, I nearly forgot to mention the excellent Christian missionary teachers whose contribution to the cause of education in the State during the time was phenomenal. Biscoe Sahab, Eric Sahab and Jacob Sahab, under whose watch I had the distinction of having had my schooling in three missionary schools run in Srinagar and Anantnag, were pioneers of modern education in the State, if you ask me. Not just studies.
Sometimes I wonder in these closing years of my life how really was I persuaded to go on short mountaineering expeditions in and around Srinagar and Pahalgam. Or, trying to recall the pains the Padre-teachers took to introduce us, all schoolboys, to modern swimming, this in a place where you had two or three major lakes and a once mighty river, Jhelum beckoning you top swim.
Ours usually used to be a splash in the lake or the river, not the organized sport that translated itself into the phenomenon called Dal-cross, Wular cross and, of course, the Tuesday regattas in which boys from the Church Missionary Schools, divided into different houses, would have daring rowing competitions, watched by hundreds lined up along the Boulevard, skirting the Dal lake.
Back to my theme; never ever during these years did any of the missionaries including Rev. Jacobs try to suggest the superiority of Christianity. And, mind you the missionaries had given Srinagar city its first full fledged maternity hospital. Not one Muslim or Hindu boy or girl, I know of, was ever converted, I dare say even as I wonder how can we bring ourselves round to pillorying the 18 crore Muslims and the much lesser number of Christian citizens born, brought up and educated in India, and subject them to most hostile discrimination.
Their fault they are in a minority surrounded by an ocean of Hindus. Which also leaves the likes of me and those of my way of thinking, stand by merely as mute spectators, witnesses to misinformation being sold out as gospel truth, churches continuing to be vandalized, nuns, including 72-year olds, among them, being raped. Or the Indian Muslims, constituting the second largest Muslim population in the world being subjected to the indignity of forced “reconversions” in the name of a homecoming of sorts to a supposedly original faith of theirs, Hinduism, of course.
How can one explain dimwits like Subramaniam Swami questioning the sanctity of mosques as religious places. I know of Islam permitting demolition and construction of mosques but never under duress.
And how do you explain Muslims being discriminated against securing Government jobs. Or, silly things like banning the sale / export of beef. India boasts of the largest cattle population in the world, a majority of these fallow and many more discarded as unwanted, cows and oxen dying a slow death, eating plastic wastes and what have you.
India we are told has the largest number of goshalas (cowsheds) where unwanted cows are supposed to be kept in dignity. There are hundreds of similar goshalas run by so called Swamis but they are careful to retain only milch cows.
This, when widows by the thousands, humans, please, are allowed to die in want and of hunger in places as far away as Mathura, Varanasi, Bengal etc. Only twisted minds can accuse a Mother Theresa of having provided for the dead and the dying through her various charities on condition of their accepting conversion to Christianity. Much as the Hindutva brigands would hate, I can only pray to the good lord to forgive them for they know not what they are saying.
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