Being Human Is Not Enough

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You have to be an Indian, an American, a Pakistani, a German.

You have to be a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Jain, a Sikh, a Buddhist.

You have to be a Bengali, a Punjabi, a Marathi, a Bihari, a Kashmiri, a Malyali.

You have to be a brahmin, a jat , a shia, a sunni

You have to be general caste or scheduled caste.

You have to be upper class, middle class, lower class.

You have to know Hindi, English, Tamil, Singhalese, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi.

You have to be married, single or committed.

It is not enough to be human. It is not enough to be you. Because that may offend the beliefs of anyone who is more than human.

If you are just human, you are less. If you are only you and not defined by your nationality, your faith, your caste, your language, your status – you are incomplete. Or worse, a cipher.

To be someone, you have to be more than human.

Faithfully Yours

What do a Jain nun, a low caste theyyam dancer, an upper caste idol maker, an illiterate folk singer from Rajasthan and another from Bengal and an HIV+ devdasi have in common? Not their language, not their nationality, not their religion. Faith – that’s what makes them alike.

If you have read William Dalrymple’s remarkably written and extremely relevant Nine Lives, you would have come across the stories of all these people. If you have not read it, I would strongly recommend it. It is a simply written book, objective yet understanding. Never judgemental, never harsh but always insightful.

The book reaffirmed what I have always believed – that it’s the Faith that matters. Nothing else. Religion is just an outer shell. A name given for identification. A protocol that one can follow. But at the heart, Faith is the bigger and truer emotion. Everything else is incidental.

Because what is Faith after all? Faith is knowing everything will be alright. Faith is hoping that your grandma is now a star smiling benevolently upon you. Faith is the child’s certainty that Santa would bring her gifts if she is good. Faith is praying so that India wins the match. Faith is adding your best wishes to Egyptian and Libyan revolutionaries. Faith is even building temples for Rajnikanth. Faith is being strong. Faith is simply believing in Him or Her or It – whatever suits you.

When I look back upon my own life, I find that while I always had a practising religion, it was my belief in God, a greater Providence or the Force, whatever you may choose to call it, that saw me through all the difficult times. Whether it was a spat with my closest friends or bad exam results. My first experience of seeing someone I care for die or my first day at work. At all these times, I believed and prayed that someone up there would guide me, keep watch over me.

And I like to think that this is true for all, or at least, most of us. Our prayers may take different forms and incantations but instinctively we are appealing to that entity or being beyond the skies. The blessings of our elders and the wishes of our friends are never directed by which religion they follow.

So many of my friends have found similar peace praying inside a church and inside a Buddhist temple. So many of us have travelled all the way to a dargah (the resting place of a Sufi saint) and asked for a mannat (a form of prayer, where the devotee promises the deity a comeback visit if his wish is granted). There are instances of temples which are maintained and revered by non-Hindu devotees.

Don’t these prove that it’s Faith and Faith alone that drives us when we pray? What does it matter whether you wear a cross or face west while praying? Who cares if you worship an idol and somebody else prays in front of a holy book? Who cares if you cannot recite the right shlokas or do not observe all the rituals?

I believe in angels and don’t care a whit whether they wear halos or wings, whether they speak Arabic or Hebrew, Sanskrit or Greek. Whether they carry an ektara or a harp. Whether they are white and golden or dusky and dark.

That is why it comes as such a shock when people persist in classifying people by their religion, race, caste, language etc. Everyone feels that their community is wronged and that their people who are victims of prejudice. But who are these people – ours and theirs? When would we realize that all of us have more in common than we give credence? If we were all the same, would we not become robotic and mechanical? Something straight out of a sci-fi horror novel.

But we may yet learn to see our Faith reflected in others. Maybe we can begin a quiet revolution for that. Amen.

Veiled Matters

In July, earlier this year, the French Parliament passed a ban on burqa. There are other countries which are debating the same. Then there are some which do not have a law against face veils but where women sometimes are persecuted because of the same.

In today’s world, due to a volatile mix of xenophobia, half truths and media hype, the image of a veiled woman is almost always that of burqa clad Muslim woman or in the most liberal instances of a woman wearing headscarves. It is, however, worth remembering that the custom of face veils was common across religions as diverse as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam at the turn of the twentieth century. Even today, at a traditional wedding, women opt to wear veils, either in the form of the Indian Ghoonghat or the gauzy piece of cloth or net hanging from the headdress of a Christian bride.

The point is that whether a woman wears a veil or not should be her personal choice and not the diktat of either democratic government or dictatorial, tyrant regimes, a la Taliban. Some women claim that they feel safer behind the burqa while there are others who feel suffocated in its close confines, both physically and emotionally. I say, let all of them be.

The paranoid world in which we live today sees the burqa as a threat, as a veil (pun intended) behind which terrorists can hide. To some extent, perhaps the world is justified. After all, even in our potboiler movies we have seen heroes and villains alike wear a burqa to hide their identities in an attempt to either save the day or commit some folly. So, maybe when security checks are required, burqa clad women can be asked to show their faces but to ban it altogether is a mite overreaching.

In Dalrymple’s City of Djinns, there is a very moving account of Mughal women being strip searched for hidden valuables by British soldiers post the 1857 uprising. These were women whose faces were seen by only a handful of people so far, mostly comprising maids and female relatives.

In modern and progressive societies, such incidents evoke outrage at the insult along with a sense of wonder at women who spent their entire lives behind purdah. Then there are old timers who would remember the tehzeeb and adab (courtly manners and chivalry) that marked the heydays of Mughal India. Such people, however, are few and far in between. Mostly people now remember the angst and pain born out of sheer stupidity and violent malice of a handful of gun-toting madmen.

I think it’s time to get past such prejudices. Banning headscarves and veils are not signs of modernity. Neither is passing fatwas in favour of them. Accepting them as a woman’s choice is.

It’s time to remember that each culture and each religion has something unique, something special. We may or may not agree with them. But intolerance should not be tolerated either.

Such proclamations sound preachy to most people (including yours truly) yet they are true. I remember reading a small Sanskrit phrase in school: vasudhev kutumbkam, that is, “the entire world is my home and all its residents my family”. While we selectively quote scriptures to justify all sorts of excesses, maybe we should sometimes quote them to invoke a common goodwill. Surely it’s not that difficult.

And let’s dispel the notion that only illiterates and conservative societies are prejudiced. We, the educated and modern populace, are as misguided by half truths and propaganda as our not so educated counterparts. In some instances, we are as rigid and intolerant as those we deride for their outdated ideas. Just last week or so, I read in the newspaper, how a schoolteacher was slapped by her colleague because she wore salwar kameez to school and not the sari. Another was boycotted by her own students because they did not approve of her choice of attire. And in case you think that these things happen in some remote town, think again. These are real incidents that took place in the outskirts of Kolkata, the thinking man's city.  

Therefore, the least we all can do is, try. We are not revolutionaries who can change the world by ourselves. But we can surely start the revolution to accept what we do not fully understand, not to indiscriminately condemn everything that we cannot comprehend.

Here's raising a toast to such attempts. Slainte.