The death of innocent diversity

As expected, Andheri, the suburb in Mumbai where I stay, was dressed to the nines for Eid. Returning from work, I took a few pictures of the revelry at Andheri station - from the rows of nattily lighted shops to the heaps of mouth-watering food within easy grasp. I hurried home and posted the pictures on Facebook.

Apart from several Likes, I also received a private message from a close friend. "I have never seen you post pictures of Diwali celebrations hahaha," he wrote, the forced laughter clearly intended to deflect attention from his consternation. I tried to take offence, but it was true - I had never posted pictures of Diwali.

Well, I do not post pictures of Diwali, or any other Hindu festival for that matter, not because I am some bleeding-heart jholawallah who looks down on his own. I identify myself as a Hindu, which means so many things that it is impossible to articulate its scope fully. I love the fact that there is a day reserved for little girls to go around the neighbourhood and have their feet washed and tummies filled. I look forward to November because it is a time of such joyous abandon as one festival after another fights for supremacy. As has been said a million times before, the term Hindu itself denotes not so much a religion as a way of life, with no central religious authority or fixed precepts.

The reason I don't talk about these things is that they are mine. I have grown up with them and know them so intimately as to be the living embodiment of their imprint on my younger self - from the gorgeous beauty of the diyas at the foot of anything auspicious to the mounds of offerings made to a string of Gods.

There is that young self and then there is the self of today, which has tried to decide what sort of God to believe in - this self that is not ritualistic yet refuses to accept the barrenness of atheism. The self that knows its history and culture so well that it is perfectly comfortable mocking its Gods, starting with Lord Ram, who, any feminist will tell you, has a lot to answer for his treatment of his wife. It seems rather silly, then, to celebrate his homecoming. 

This familiarity-breeds-contempt argument doubtless applies to thinking Muslims and Christians too, as they pick flaws in their own theological doctrines. To me, the Eid revelry reflects nothing more than an "other" something that is exotic enough to capture. Neither does it reflect some enlarged sympathy on my behalf nor does it necessarily show me as "secular" with all the loaded connotations that word captures in India.

One must, pace one's best instincts, choose what to think in these politicised times. In the days immediately following the suspension of Indian Administrative Service officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, there was a sense in some quarters that the Samajwadi Party might have been right after all because Ms Nagpal had done something that might vitiate the communal balance in Gautam Budh Nagar. It was only later when the truth emerged and various Muslim organisations came out in support of Ms Nagpal that the issue acquired an anti-graft dimension.

Look to the United States. A debate currently raging in that country relates to Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by theologian Reza Aslan. A Muslim expounding on Jesus' life was always going to be troublesome, never mind Mr Aslan's credentials, but the dirt really hit the fan after a Fox News interview made Mr Aslan's religious background a pointed matter of debate. Several critics have weighed in on both sides, but surely Mr Aslan must at least be credited with tone deafness, given how he chose to analyse Jesus' political instincts when the misinterpretation of the word of his God is the burning issue of our times.

Back home, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh would have us believe that all Muslims are inherently Hindus who must be brought back to the fold. At the other end of the spectrum, the Left sees Muslims as minorities whose rights need to be protected at all costs. Between these racist and apologetic extremes, respectively, lies that twilight space of apolitical acceptance.

For someone coming of age in today's India, a sort of innocent love for religious diversity is impossible. He would either be forced to love "others" by eliminating his own identity in a mask of cute self-deprecation or emerge as a chauvinist with not even a glimmer of accommodation. Both ideas are dangerous and worth disparaging.

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