Debating the Muslim identity

But You Don’t Look Like A Muslim
 

Rakshanda Jalil

HarperCollins

Pages 223, Rs 599

In the book under review, Rakshanda Jalil, a noted translator of Urdu prose and poetry, offers a wide-ranging analysis of the history of the language in the subcontinent and ties it with the pluralistic ethos of India. She also discusses what being Muslim means in today’s times and stresses how a discussion on integrating the community is overdue.

Ms Jalil divides her book into thematic sections: There are chapters on the literature of partition, on Urdu pulp fiction, and on Urdu poets celebrating Diwali and Christmas. From Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s writings on peasants to Amir Khusrau’s poetry of the commonplace, Ms Jalil quotes at length from a variety of sources and provides meticulous translations, bringing out the variety and depth of cultural and social eclecticism in Urdu writings.

While these sections can be savoured by any lay reader, it is her analysis of Muslim identity that adds another dimension to the book. As the book’s title suggests, Ms Jalil is against the idea of conflating a community and its mores with a certain dress code or food habit. Yet, she is also critical of the regressive nature of the “burqa”, whose wearing, she reiterates, is not a Quranic edict but a social custom.

Ms Jalil calls such attempts at stereotyping the “othering” of the community. At several points, she quotes personal examples of experiencing this “othering”. She writes about being grilled as a child about her connection to Pakistan. She writes of her shift from Delhi’s Gulmohar Park to Jamia, and what the move entailed for her social life. She worries for her daughters in a climate of increased polarisation.  

While such grievances are real, Ms Jalil is quick to blame their origin on an increasing right-wing ethos that pits the Muslim as “bomb-throwing, beef-smuggling, jihad-spouting”. Her argument reminded me of the poster of last year’s film Mulq  in which a bellicose Taapsee Pannu, defending a Muslim man in court, asks, “Kya farak padta hai ki woh Muslim hai?”  (What does it matter if he is a Muslim?)

Such questions assume that those who debate Muslim identity are all bigots to a person denying Muslims their essential humanity. But the issue is more complex than that. Muslims, for example, follow a separate civil code — this means that a Muslim man, say, can have more than one wife, and until recently, could divorce her by uttering the word “talaq” thrice. It is arguable, then, if the difference that all right-thinking people call for celebrating encompasses practices that are debatable at best and disharmonious at worst.

Similarly intricate is the question of the burqa.  On the one hand is the argument of modesty and a woman’s right to dress as she chooses; on the other is the question of women’s rights and the deeply problematic conflation of modesty with covering the face. And it goes even beyond this: in the wake of Sri Lanka bombings and the banning of all face coverings in that country, the issue has acquired a security dimension. 

Popular cinema, interestingly, has grown more open to challenging truths about the community that have traditionally been shunned in cultural products for fear of stereotyping. In 2017’s Secret Superstar, a Muslim girl comes up against opposition from her family as she dreams of becoming a singing sensation. In last year’s Gully Boy, a talented rapper must protect his mother from an abusive father who has married a much younger woman. 

In both films, the women of the household are shown struggling for basic rights — in Secret Superstar, the singer’s mother is a victim of domestic abuse and Gully Boy turns around a dramatic sequence in which the rapper’s father beats his wife. Such depictions on film would have been impossible earlier. One wonders if this is an outcome of the polarisation that Ms Jalil speaks of or, more likely, an attempt to look squarely at problems that are the source of communal stereotyping.

In last year’s Raazi, an Indian spy marries a Pakistani so that she can share state secrets with her backers at home — a glorious, if tragic, account of Muslim patriotism. Ms Jalil’s book mirrors the dichotomy between Secret Superstar and Gully Boy on the one hand and Raazi on the other. What should the ordinary Muslim worry about: bread-and-butter issues or the majoritarian impulse? 

The bogey of the jihadi Muslim may have roots in the rise of global terror but that is not, Ms Jalil argues, the principal problem the community faces and should not be the yardstick by which it is judged. There are far more pertinent issues around survival, gender rights and freedom that Muslims needs to address. There is bigotry and hate, yes, but there are other forces churning the community and an enlightened outcome rests on the ability of Muslims to seek and welcome reform.