India's President-to-be is a Vegetarian Muslim Brahmacari

[Guest guest]

Title: Kalam, a Muslim at peace with Hinduism

Author: M.V. Kamath

Publication: Free Press Journal

July 4, 2002

URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/040702-fpj.html

 

"A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Kalam reportedly knows no Urdu. Judged

by his dress he could be mistaken for a hippie affiliated to no

particular religion. He is apparently most fluent in his own mother

tongue Tamil; plays the rudra veena, is a confirmed bachelor and God

help him!, he is a vegetarian. No beef-eater, he."

 

Anyone who has lived in Mumbai in the twenties, thirties and even

forties would

be able to relate how citizens stayed true to stereotypes. The Parsi

male wore

his trousers and long coat and his headgear was typical of his

community. The

Parsi lady wore her sari, yes, in the typical Parsi way. The

Maharashtrian, the

Marwadi, the Gujarati businessman, the Goan Christian not to speak of

the South

Indian - male and female - were easily identifiable by their dress.

In the last

half a century there has been a sartorial revolution. Ethnic styles

have all but

disappeared. Among young women, the salwar-kameez is the in-thing.

 

The sari is fast becoming a memento from the past. On the roads few

men wearing

the 'dhoti' are noticeable. The 'dhoti' has given way to the bush

shirt and

trousers. Time has become the great leveller. And yet certain images

persist,

especially of the Muslim. As Saed Naqvi, a well-known columnist,

recently noted,

in popular perception the Muslim stands in any company. He would be

expected to

wear his skull cap, a noticeable beard and a Pathani dress,

consisting of an

outsize shirt almost reaching down to his ankles, covering a puffed

up pair of

pyjamas, that are hidden, under the flowing upper garment. He would

be speaking

Urdu as a matter of course, would have at least two wives if he

cannot afford

more - he is entitled to have four at a time, isn't he?- and for

dinner there

would be the inevitable cut of beef. To these stereotypes Naqvi has

one more to

add: that of the "Urdu-spewing, paan-chewing, hubble-bubble smoking

decadent

Nawab, leaning against a brocade sausage cush!

ion, listening to B-grade Urdu poetry with a mujra dancer in

attendance

popularised by Bollwood films of another era.

 

Now, overnight as it were a wholly different kind of Muslim is being

projected

in the Indian media: A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Kalam reportedly knows no

Urdu. Judged

by his dress he could be mistaken for a hippie affiliated to no

particular

religion. He is apparently most fluent in his own mother tongue

Tamil; plays the

rudra veena, is a confirmed bachelor and God help him!, he is a

vegetarian. No

beef-eater, he. And to add to it all, he is familiar as much with the

Bhagavad

Gita as he is with the Quran and can quote from both with relative

ease. And he

was born not in Lucknow or Moradabad or even in the former Nizam's

dominion,

but, in, of all places, Rameshwaram. What kind of Muslim can he

possibly be?

Judging from what has been appearing in the Urdu press, the average

Muslim is

appalled. And Muslims in Pakistan, one can be assured, have been

shocked out of

their wits.

 

But hasn't time come for Indians, especially, to look beyond

stereotypes and

look for humanism that goes beyond symbols and forms? Does one have

to be a

polygamist, a paan-chewer, a hater of Hindus, an eater of beef and a

lover

'only' of Urdu to be a true Muslim in India? Can't a Muslim in India

be true to

his ethnic origins and revel in it? There are Muslim writers in

Bengali, Oriya,

Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, to identify a few of the many Indian

languages. Justice

Ismail in Chennai has long been acknowledged as Tamil Nadu's leading

authority

on the 'Kambha Ramayana.' Kazi Nazzrul Islam is known for his powerful

revolutionary poetry, replete with images of Kali, in incomparable

Bengali. At

least half a dozen Muslims in Karnataka have distinguished themselves

as reputed

writers in Kannada. And Ustad Bismillah Khan never had any difficulty

in paying

his homage to the goddess Saraswati. It is difficult to think of

Banaras without

simultaneously remembering the soul - stirring mu!

sic of the great Ustad. Do we always have to identify a Muslim with

the

Urdu-speaking, meat-eating Muslim from North India? What have we come

to?

 

One therefore has to be grateful to Abdul Kalam for once and for all

or breaking

the stereotype and bringing us down to earth. There are Muslims and

Muslims. It

came as a pleasant shock to me to see, in Sunni Iraq, Muslim women

dressed in

western clothes who could have been mistaken for a sun-tanned

European from the

Mediterranean. Think of the Islam of Indonesia. Indonesia has no

qualms to name

its Air-line after Garuda. Its currency note has the image of Ganesh,

none else!

Naqvi himself reminds us of the performance of the Ramayana ballet by

150

namaz-saying Muslims under the shadow of Jakarta's magnificent

temples,

continuously for 27 years, without a break! The Indonesians are as

much proud of

their religion- Islam - as of their culture - Hindu! The current

president of

Indonesia bears the beautiful name of Meghavati Sukarnoputri.

 

How much more Sanskritised can one get? A visitor to Jakarta once

told me that

the former President Wahid's daughter is named Saraswati and one of

his security

men bore the name Krishnamurti! And the latter was a very proper

Muslim! If only

some of our fundamentalist Muslims would take note of these facts,

how much

better off and happy we all would be! Muslims in India are Indians,

just as

Christians in India are Christians. Time was when Christians inIndia

bore only

Hebraic names. May it be pointed out, even in passing, that there are

no such

things as 'Hindu', 'Muslim' or 'Christian' names.

 

There surely was a Peter and a Paul long before Christ was born, a

Mohammad and

an Ali long before the Prophet (Peace be on him) preached Islam? What

we have

are not 'Hindu' but Sanskrit names, Arabic, or Persian or Turkish but

not

'Muslim' names and Hebraic and not (Christian) names, and one can be

Dilip Kumar

and still be a good Muslim, a Lalita and still remain a good

Christian. Religion

and culture are two entirely different categories. One suspects,

though, that

things are slowly changing. The 'Deccan Herald' June 3 reported from

Srinagar

that "those who preach religious intolerance and hatred may well

learn alesson

or two" from there. And why? It would seem that "some Kashmiri

Muslims are

rebuilding a 100-year-old Narayan temple at Bulbul Lankar in downtown

Srinagar.

Ten years ago that temple had been burnt and razed to the ground by

extremists

forcing the local Pundits, barring an old couple, to migrate to Jammu.

Subsequently the temple had become a breeding ground fo!

r dogs and other stray animals. Says the Herald report: "After a

decade, the

Pandit couple, along with Muslim neighbours, met Works Minister Ali

Mohammad

Sagar and pleaded for finances to rebuild the temple.

 

Funds were immediately granted and reconstruction work was started.

Muslims in

the area shouldered the responsibility of supervising the work". All

the workers

- labourers, carpenters, masons - were Muslims. Can it be - can

it 'just' be

that Kashmiriyat, the common culture of all Kashmiris irrespective of

their

religion, is finally asserting itself? Then there is the almost

unbelievable

story of over 15,000 Kashmiri Pundits returning to Central Kashmir to

offer puja

at a famous temple with local Muslims giving all the necessary

support, like

providing flowers and milk to the Hindu devotees. Reportedly they also

participated in a 'yajna' to invoke peace in the violence-stricken

valley. Not

so long ago, a Muslim columnist, Sultan Shahin was to

write: "Kashmiri Islam is

renowned for its broad-mindedness, its deep commitment to tolerance

of all

streams of thought. It is known to be firmly anchored in the Indian

soil".

 

Sultan Shahin attributed it to Kashmiriyat, that special approach to

religion

which was all-embracing and took into account the life-styles of

Hindu rishis,

and Buddhist and Jain monks.

One suspects that ordinary Kashmiris are fed up with the

fundamentalists from

across the border and want to returnto their ancient ways of living.

If nobody

else would, they, at least, would understand and appreciate A.P.J.

Abdul Kalam,

a true Indian.

 

Abdul Kalam, from all accounts is a religious man in the best senses

of the

term. But Kalam, reportedly, sees religion in a light vastly

different from how

fundamentalists see it. Once, addressing Sri Ramakrishna Vidyashala

in August

2001 he recounted how hewas rejected, on grounds of health, from

admission to a

Technical Institute. The interview had taken place in Dehra Dun. He

told the

students: "Very dejected and disappointed, I returned via Rishikesh.

I took a

bath in the Ganges there and was wearing a dhoti. There was a

beautiful ashram

nearby, Swami Shivananda Ashram. I was tempted to enter that Ashram

and I

entered. There was a lecture going on, on the Bhagavad Gita. This

swami used to

select a person among the audience for discussion every day, after

bhajan and

prayer. It was my chance that day. The swami noticed that there was a

feeling of

sorrow on my face. I told him the details. He consoled me, taking an

instance

from the Gita. Lord Krishna revealed his Vishwaroo!

pa to Arjuna who was fear-stricken. Krishna's message to him was

to 'defeat

defeatism'. This became a message to me even".

Is this an example of syncretism? Are the Gita and the Quran really

out of tune

with each other? One hopes not. Which is why Kalam seems to be an

ideal choice

to be India's president. A Muslim at peace with Hinduism. A true

Indian, all

said.