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GN
Devy |
| |
This is
probably the only state that has a sizeable number of Muslims but no Urdu paper |
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
practiced 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 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 makeup.
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. My own landlord
at the time, a perfectly decent man otherwise, refused. Raoof Valiullah,
an honest and purposeful Congress mp 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 Raoof was a Muslim. There was no sense
of loss or outrage when Ehsan Jafri 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 post-graduate 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.
