Silencing Kashmir? The Valley’s Voices

Everyone is singing the Kashmir tune. An all girl-band has been banned. Most of us outside, and many in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, had never heard about them until this happened. The problem is not that one should refrain from opposing such censorship, but how the arguments are reduced to basics.

Most engagement with social issues is increasingly becoming one of transaction. This conscience barter is extremely populist and the agenda is clearly not to topple political correctness. Those who profess freedom of expression do not entertain even a devil’s advocate stance, which only reveals how close-minded and muzzling such ostensible independent thinking is. If we want to permit all kinds of thought, why do we seek to curb what in our opinion is regressive?

Three high school students – Farah Deeba, Aneeqa Khalid and Noma Nazir – formed a rock band.  Pragaash (First Light) has performed only one concert. Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad, Kashmir’s state-appointed grand cleric, issued a fatwa asking them to “stop from these activities and not to get influenced by the support of political leadership”.

Odes are being sung to their talent, their courage. The right to expression does not need a quality certificate and those who back them could well be ignorant of their music. It is about not being allowed to do what they like.

I agree with this, but having lived all my life in Mumbai, the pivot of modern India, I can cite several instances where parents have objected to their teenage children participating in cultural activities, let alone taking an initiative to independently perform. This information is crucial because we use the convenient subterfuge of censorship to camouflage our own dissonant private behaviour. When we speak about Pragaash we are already dealing with young women who have not been stifled, have been exposed to world music, managed to train, buy equipment, and market themselves in a state that is considered repressive. It is rather unfortunate that even though they are way ahead than many of their well-wishers, they are now the object of sympathy.

Those fighting for their freedom are essentially offering condolences. After saying, “We are with you”, has support for the band gone beyond disingenuous analogy?

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Pragaash’s manager and teacher Adnan Matoo, quoted in The Washington Post, said: 

“They feel terribly scared and want an immediate end to this controversy once for all. First, the girls had decided to quit live performance due to an online hate campaign and concentrate on making an album. But after an edict by the government’s own cleric, these girls are saying goodbye to music.”

As it did not start with the cleric, but an online hate campaign, it would fall under cyber law. Unfortunately, in India the hyperactive media ensures people are drugged and religion takes centrestage in almost every argument. Is the Grand Mufti’s fatwa the final word?

Mr. Mattoo follows the pattern set by the mainstream: 

“I know it from my last eight years’ experience that we could have easily dealt with the online abuse. We were failed by the government-run mufti, who asked us to forget our music and declared our band against the religion.”

While Indians have been arguing for long about the separation of state and religion, it is not possible in a country where building of a temple is the main agenda of the largest opposition party and the ruling party panders to all manner of minority votes. There is also talk about the Islamisation of Kashmir. Part of it may be attributed to the influx of jihadi elements in the separatist movement. However, intellectual discourse too harps on this aspect and uses ‘progressive’ quotes from scriptures, forgetting that much of what we call contemporary culture did not exist in the time of prophets and messiahs.

Why did it take a month for the Mufti to issue a diktat? Was he under political pressure, too? This might seem like a shocking query, but his mosque comes under the government’s purview. J&K isn’t really a rocking state.  Since the concert was for the paramilitary forces, there is a likelihood of intense anger among the locals. Stories of abuse of women by the security forces are a constant refrain in the troubled area. Why did the hate campaign against the girls not address this and instead choose to harp on their ‘un-Islamic’ vocation?

Pragaash band members

One reason is that the moment they criticise the ‘saviours’, they’d be dubbed militants. Anonymity might imbue them with temporary courage, but even in their unknown status there is a need for self-recognition. This is as much of an identity need as the cultural space for freedom. It is their azaadi (freedom) call versus the azaadi of what they perceive to be the copped-out coddled lot. A more nuanced reading would be that Islam, with its broad brush-stroke possibility of what is haraam (heathen), can factor in their ire and keep it alive. Politicians wake up. Pontiffs wake up. Separatist organisations wake up.

This is not to imply that there have been no strictures on modes of dressing, education and cultural activities. But these certainly do not happen in Kashmir alone.  It does not make them right. However, should there be no room for more than simplistic ideas of right and wrong?

The chief minister, Omar Abdullah, was applauded for standing by the band members: 

“I hope these talented young girls will not let a handful of morons silence them. Shame on those who claim freedom of speech via social media and then use that freedom to threaten girls who have the right to choose to sing.”

However, on Headlines Today he said he had not asked them to sing so he cannot ask them to continue to do so. He would be willing to provide security for them, though.

The BJP only needed this to further its anti-Islamic position. Its party president in the state said: 

“It is an attempt towards 'Talibanisation' of the society by certain fundamentalist groups who are uncomfortable with the return of normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir.”

The BJP ought not to speak out of turn. Its record in giving women liberty is abominable. The rightwing does not permit even the celebration of Valentine’s Day, using the same argument that the Mufti has used – it is western culture. Besides, the BJP has earlier had an alliance with the current party, the National Conference. Did they reach normalcy?

***

One cannot wish away politicisation. In fact, pop culture is political, in that it attempts to convey popular consumerist sentiment as retail therapy. Does this exclude political theism?

Mehbooba Mufti, president of People's Democratic Party (PDP), was being intimidated on a TV debate. Despite it, she made a most reasonable comment by saying that as a believer although she would not abuse a religious leader, she could well disagree with his views. Did this get any attention? It does not suit the archetype.

As happens with anything to do with Islam, when in doubt bring in the Sufi. The prevalence of Sufi music is mentioned as an example of the existence of such open expression in the Valley. People do not realise that it is deeply rooted in religion. It may not be seen as theological, but the fact is that it almost always addresses the Higher Being and seeks to drown the identity of the singer into the pool of devotion. The reason Sufi music is now being given a wider platform is because it falls well and truly into the ‘music bazaar’ as a commercial product.

Is this what drives liberalism? Asiya Andrabi, leader of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, has had some amazing achievements to her credit – blackening the faces of women, shutting down beauty parlours. But, then, her political affiliations do not lie with India, as she openly states. For a moment, let us stand aside and check whether what she says and what some feminists do is much different. She believes that women are objectified; feminists think so too when they discuss certain advertisements where women expose their bodies. How do we decide to accept one version and not the other?

***

If this is indeed a larger issue about artistic license, then why did the Pragaash supporters have objections to rapper Honey Singh soon after the Delhi gangrape? His song, “Main balatkari hoon” (I am a rapist) was not new. It was obvious that this was not about concern, but a need to be acceptable and part of a trending movement. Among the many voices was one of senior journalist Vir Sanghvi, who used the social network to say: 

“For God's sake, Bristol Hotel. Cancel the Honey Singh show. Are you guys in the rape business or the hotel business? If the Bristol does not cancel the Honey Singh show then I would urge every decent Indian to boycott the hotel.”

No one seemed to have realised that the terminology, “rape business”, itself was offensive. Besides, how does one define decency? 

The moral spine of the amoral and unconstrained tends to be willing to bend as the occasion demands. Had there been no immediate ‘case’, there would be no such importance given to the singer or his lyrics. If we understand that art does have freedom – in films, paintings, music – then it follows that there ought not to be conditions that curtail it. Why is one boycott legitimate and another not? Why are the words of liberal sages acceptable and the concerns of the socially-conservative reprehensible?

MC Kash

Omar Abdullah too raised the question about local rapper MC Kash, wondering why he has not been banned for his obscene lyrics. This is telling and not surprising, for the singer questions the authorities and the security forces: 

“You sit your ass down & don't make a sound/you take off that Pheran, you Mother Fucking clown - Words said by Indian Forces durin' a crackdown.” 

Is such obscenity not proactive rebellion?

The online campaign referred to the girls as “sluts” and “prostitutes”. These words are used by supposedly reasonable people in the social media for what they look down upon, be it the item girls in Bollywood films or the increasingly brash young women who do not consider nudity to be an issue. One rarely hears any applause for them. Therefore, who really is in a position to take a high moral ground?

Kashmiri dancers for video albums

Perhaps we’d like to consider this story about dancers and singers in Kashmiri music albums. One of them, Sweety, said: 

“My mom accompanies me to the bus stop when I have to go to Srinagar. My profession annoys my maternal uncles, neighbours talk (bad things) about me.” 

A choreographer explains: 

“Most of them join to support their families after the death of their father. It comes as a handy option because they come from uneducated families and here they do not need any educational qualification. I request them either do something else or to be careful.”

This is a universal concern, more so when people cannot do “what they like” even in their daily routine because death is not too far away. Because singing and dancing are not about the luxury of freedom, but the last resort of orphaned hopes. 

(c) Farzana Versey

The Brotherhood of Hindu-Muslim Clerics

The maulvi says TV is haram. The sadhu says gambling is immoral.

Baba Ramdev and Maulana Madani

Under the skin they are the same, so what tells the mullah apart from the swami? Nothing. If we ignore the outside perception, then it is quite another matter. There is bound to be an Us vs. Them battle for the worse agent of regression. The mullahs win because the way they dress is pretty much how many traditional Muslims dress. The sadhu’s robes are restricted to the ashram community or the occasional flash of saffron donned by political leaders of a religious stripe.

Two recent reports have brought the underlying similarities to light and in fact raises questions about how religion is viewed by those responsible for propagating it. It is interesting that they seem clueless and appear to be more interested in playing god themselves. The media, predictably, plays to the gallery and especially in the case of Muslims tries desperately to get the moderate or liberal faces, though one is not quite certain about the distinction between the moderate and the liberal in this context. It is assumed that the Muslim community is held hostage by the utterings of a handful of mullahs and consolidates such a viewpoint. Curiously, they use other religious figures or scholars of Islam as the voices of reason, quite forgetting that the large populace has no such scholarly knowledge or interest and faith is just one more way to express their beliefs and identities.

This does not suit the Indian media, so you have a screaming headline: ‘TV and cinema are SATAN’S TOOLS’. Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind (JUH) chief Mahmood Madani has declared:

“Watching television and cinema are haram. They are the tools of Satan and must be buried as soon as possible.”

This debate has been going on for years. and Madani is right that only such sensational pronouncements are reported. Education and employment reservations may lend themselves to panel discussions, but not quick news stories. The anti-polio stand has fewer takers than the anti-condom stand.

A moot point here is that rarely is there a poser regarding how these maulvis themselves appear on television to promote their version of religion or indulge in political discussions. If television is haram, then what are they doing before the cameras? Why are they using the internet to advise believers about everything from sexuality to health issues?

Maulana Madani on TV

Will the media have the courage to ban these religious authorities and then let us see how their views are made available? It is a mutually-beneficial game they both play, and it reached its absolute nadir when they had the audacity to conduct a kangaroo court on TV in the Gudiya case, where clerics debated about a young woman’s marital fate. How different is it from fatwas and underworld diktats or even regional politicians holding court and dispensing justice?

The progressive mullahs, usually the likes of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, state, “By asking Muslims to boycott television and films, they are Islamising non-Islamic issues.” He goes on to answer his own query: “How many Muslims will listen to them and switch off their television sets?” Precisely. However, what exactly are non-Islamic issues? Islam or any other religion can be applied to any field or behaviour, if the believers want it to be so. There is no reason to drag in Islam at all simply because by doing so such scholars make these issues haram, for to the faithful anything ‘non-Islamic’ will be unacceptable.


Blind devotees do not look at history. They might not even exercise their minds to realise that during the time of the Prophet there were no electronic gadgets. Unfortunately, it is the modern inventions that are projecting regressive views and are responsible for the creation of a standard scapegoat fanatic, when there is fanaticism in every sphere. What does a political scientist mean when he says, “Conservatism is only a step behind fanaticism”? Does fanaticism not base its fervour on the foundation of conservativism? How many liberals are deemed fanatical?

Entertainment is taboo in many societies, yet most of them skirt it by using music and even dance to sing praises of god. The number of shrines that have such performances is evidence of it. The camera-friendly staff members at such mausoleums are ready to entertain celebrities.

The discourse on Islam also ignores the fact that the idea of Satan is not in opposition to god, but to angels. Satan is a flitting character, which is why he has to be hit by stones in a symbolic ritual at Mecca. To grant Satan the ability and right to influence the gullible is itself wrong.


The Biblical connotation is a curious intrusion. It seems to have entered the Hinduism discourse, too. Is there a concept of the seven deadly sins in the religion? It is not even part of pure Christianity and is referred to only in Matthew’s Gospel. But a code of conduct has been promulgated for the priests in Karnataka to stay away from such sins. It states:

“Archakas (priests), who give prasada and teertha to devotees, should be above board. They should be free from sapta vyasanas (seven sins) so as to maintain the sanctity of the profession. We are also bringing in an amendment saying that priests should know vedic mantras or shlokas related to rituals of temples where they work, without which they can be disqualified.”

They must also not indulge in gambling, smoking, immoral sex and cannot take the money deposited in the hundis, which will go to the temple account. Why are these not seen as regular laws by the Temple Boards rather than sins? There have been instances where priests have indulged in some or all of these acts, but they usually operate from their own or smaller ashrams. One of the clauses in the amendment is rather surprising – priests should be free from virulent or contagious diseases. How can they lose their jobs over this? They may not perform certain rituals that might affect the gathering, but they are not to blame.


One might ask how it is possible to extricate morality from religion when the former is based on the belief system. This is largely true. However, the concept of sinning also has the convenient proviso of penance, so religious authorities might sin and find an exit through penance. This luxury is not as easily granted to the ordinary person, who often has to use dubious middle-men to cleanse themselves. Swami Nityanand is a case in point. Despite the videos where he was captured in compromising positions with his female devotees, he had audaciously organised a havan to purge himself.

Mata, Vidya and the cellphone

The sins also reveal that the activities mentioned are indulged in and this is across religions. Do the priests indulge in them due to lack of entertainment or because of their exposure to it? Access to the world and to religion itself has become dependent on such means. Why do pirs and sadhus advertise their ‘wares’? Why do they conduct nikaahs or hold pujas over the internet? Are they not aware that other ‘immoral’ websites are just a click away? If technology is haram or exploits religion, then before preaching to the public, the clerics should take the first step and refuse to use it. There was this photograph of actress Vidya Balan with Mata Amritanandmayi who is apparently blessing someone on her cellphone in a Page 3 moment. Aren’t these instances of commercialisation of religion where every scripture-reading session by some ‘devi’ or ‘maulvi’ is a sponsored event and the happening crowd that has suddenly discovered their roots gets into designer stupor?

The media will not highlight these, at least not to expose the farce. It needs the fanatics and it needs the liberals and they have to be on two sides fencing. This is prime-time faith, where even invoking of god’s name is TRP-driven.

(c) Farzana Versey

Playing both sides of the religious coin

Playing Both Sides of the Religious Coin
by Farzana Versey
Countercurrents, May 15

“You cannot represent Islam,” I was told by a Muslim friend. It isn’t the first time and it pushes me into an uncomfortable position.

I am also not a ‘communist’ who appears regularly on TV to call the ulema “mad and insane”, for which Javed Akhtar gets into trouble, though the nature of the trouble is not known. So, I don’t get brownie points from non-Muslims.

I have not done research into madrassas to understand the working of the minds of mullahs nor am I a convert to Islam that I can pretend to give a ‘balanced’ picture. No espionage here. So, I am not terribly smart.

I am not a trained religious acrobat who has done time with the faith.

Then why am I a Muslim and why do I now state that I can speak for some of us? Because I was born one; I am secure in my ability to not follow any rules unthinkingly. And I can speak on behalf of my kind of Muslims because I do not feel the need to appease any group.

Hence, I feel quite disappointed to read letters to the mullahs that are an apology for the faith as well as a desperate attempt to sound like the ‘nice Muslims’ that non-Muslims wish to see us as. It is offensive to women who have had to fight several odds to read the “sister-in-Islam”, Nigar Ataulla, write an open letter to the fatwa-makers wherein she states that besides giving a large part of her zakat to the madrassas she is not a “a radical feminist out to attack you out of blind prejudice”. Is one to suppose that radical feminism is about blind prejudice? When any person who believes in an ideology takes a position there is embedded in it a prejudice against the contrarian position. It is done with open eyes and a questioning mind.

While there is some attempt at sarcasm, it does not flip the coin but furthers the stereotype:

“While some of you have issued fatwas declaring watching television (including even Islamic programmes) as wholly haram, I do turn on the TV once in a while, but only to watch my favourite cartoon show ‘Tom and Jerry’ (It’s about a cat and a mouse chasing each other and having loads of fun. You can also watch it, its clean stuff!). For my job as a writer, I have to interact and interview people, and not just women. Given all this, perhaps I do not fit your description of what the ideal Muslimah is.”

Perhaps the writer might have added Discovery Channel where animals mate. Islam has never said anything against cohabitation. The problem with the cat and mouse game is that the positions can get changed. Even in Islamic countries that have a strict code there are programmes that show women in strong positions.

I take exception to a comment like:

“What I wish to convey to you as a Muslim working woman is that your fatwa sends out wrong signals to not just us Muslims but to non-Muslims as well.”

I had already stated in my piece Subjugating the Muslim woman (that led to an interesting discussion on this blog here) that women do earn and contribute. However, it does not mean a non-working woman does not have access to similar rights in other spheres of life. A letter such as this sends out even worse signals. It strives too hard to please. Take this example:

“I sometimes wonder how religious scholars from other communities, such as Hindus Christians, Buddhists, and Sikhs, interact with the common folk among their co-religionists. Frankly, sometimes I really envy them. Non-Muslim women can freely ask questions to their priests, gurus and so on and discuss religious matters with them. I simply cannot, for the life of me, fathom why Muslim women cannot have a healthy and positive dialogue with the ulema. Is it because of some deep-rooted fear on both sides? Is it because of a totally unwarranted hierarchy that seems to prevail between the ulema and the common folk, paralleling that between medieval kings and their subjects? I don’t need to explain who the ‘kings’ and the ‘subjects’ here are, for surely you will understand.”

This is a most ridiculous argument. This fatwa was issued because there was a specific question asked. Therefore, some woman felt the need to discuss it with a maulvi. How many women from the other communities mentioned consult their religious heads? The Confession in churches is not about a religious discourse. Ashrams do not encourage inconvenient queries and are essentially a spiritual salve.

Which woman will have the courage to question any of these holy men about the patriarchal nature of all religions? There is also the aspect about who truly represents the priesthood. There are several sects in all faiths and they have their own cushy set-up. Women as well as men, when they do become a part of the active believer fraternity, end up as slaves to religion and therefore the priests running the establishment. Such slavery can be emotional or physical, as we have seen from some recent reports.

If fatwas have to be opposed, as some of us have done, then it must not become a mandate for everyone else to jump on one community. There is no need to show Muslim women wearing slit-eye veils in the media, when there are very few such women in this country. If we oppose the fatwa, we must be actively involved in opposing the state machinery too that uses these same organisations when it comes to garnering votes or to appease the community. Why is there no anger when the liberals go out to claim that we are not terrorists and use the mullahs for their rallies? Why are the voices silent then?

When there is anger against the Deoband, which the writer has not mentioned by name, then there must be no need for a dialogue. I am not interested in having a chat with the mullahs just as I am not interested in a chat with any establishment figure.

They can refuse to accept me as a Muslim. My friends can say that I do not represent the community. It does not bother me. I work, I wear what I want, and I do represent myself and those who identity with me. I won’t play into the hands of the mullahs or those who watch from the sidelines tittering, “Look, Islam is such a problem”. It is. And so is every religion that seeks to interfere in the public domain that is outside its periphery.

Surveying the Indian woman? Rubbish!

Last night I was watching a ‘serious’ discussion as part of the ‘State of the Nation’ surveys conducted by CNN-IBN on women across the country regarding different issues. The topic was ‘Morality and the Indian woman's mind’.

Let me quote one of the participants:

“This agenda of liberation that women have—which has come with financial freedom and changing roles—has made them prisoners of war in confines of morality. They want to free out of that. A prisoner of war is good only when he is free. I am not sure if the survey indicates that (women believe) marriage is a freer of women and live-in relationship enslaves them.”

Good. Except for that huh comment…like when a POW is free s/he ceases to be a POW. And how smart is it to call women prisoners of war…who is at war? No one knows. It just sounded so smashing tough that it made the grade.

This is a so-called ‘modern’ woman. Now let me get to the bottom of it. The survey showed that 48 % of Indians women want a ban on inter-caste marriages and 50 % want a ban on inter-religious marriages.

I would like to know how anyone can ask such a question in a survey at all. Who has given the media groups the right to butt their noses in what would amount to a legal provision? You might say this is hypothetical. Fine. Then, hypothetically the query ought to have been: do you believe in such and such marriages? We are not living in a dictatorship where we can have banning on certain kinds of alliances.

Now comes the ‘let us scrape the surface’ scenario. The above-mentioned modern woman, wearing two strings of pearls with a black outfit, who spoke openly about live-in relationships, about pre-marital sex, said that she would not be comfortable as a Hindu to be married to…uh-huh…a Muslim. Yes, she said it. She also added that she was being politically incorrect, which immediately made her feel veryyyy brave. This is not political incorrectness; it is prejudice. Her reason: The two religions are completely different ideologically. Yeah, sure. Like Hindusim is ideologically the same as Catholicism and Zoroastrianism. Come on now, we can see through this…

So would a Hindu be comfy marrying a Hindu from a ‘backward’ community? Or with less education? Or whose financial status was not good? Or who did not socially fit into one’s idea of an asset? All this because the gods are pretty much in agreement?

Worse, the anchor, known to be liberal who usually baits right-wing politicians, did not counter-question the lady. She just accepted it.

And this sort of nonsensical acceptance is what is passing for debate on television and numbing people’s thoughts.

I won't talk your talk

The hypocrisy of the liberal Muslim is in evidence. Everyone does not have to agree with my views on Taslima, but the very people who line up outside my Inbox to laud me for speaking up for the riots are now silent. Reason? It does not sound right. By showing they are on Taslima’s side, they will prove that they are not that kind of Muslim.

I don’t give a rat’s ass how I am perceived. Some Muslim Intellectual forum has “condemned the attack” and is now saying it was “not by a conservative Muslim organisation but by legislators”. Whoa. Imagine if Ms. Nasreen pays heed to this. Her world will come crashing down. Oh, they are not Muslims? Then how will I butter my toast? I can hear her mutter…

So I am like really being nasty to her? As I just wrote to a friend who spoke about the hegemony of the West (and if it is of any consequence, he is a Hindu): “The strange response I get these days is that perhaps I have become a fan of the clergy! This is so far from the truth. The thing is that most people blindly wish to accept the West's version of Islam, and the liberals in our subcontinent swallow this. The idea has been to question their questioning of a group that itself has disparate streams of thought. Sometimes, I do feel like the battle is a losing one. The West has colonised minds and few are putting up a spirited fight. Even our concept of liberalism is borrowed. I wish it did not seem like a fight each time I tapped on the keyboard.”

- - -

We have a new Vice President. In his first public comment after being elected vice-president, Hamid Ansari on Friday night condemned the attack on Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. "Use of violence to make a point of view is wrong."

The V-P had nothing else to say? Hello, isn’t India dealing with the nuclear issue, kidnappings, Maoists, and if he did not want to start with a politically-sensitive subject then how about illiteracy, malnutrition, child rights, women’s empowerment? I will tell you why he has spoken up for Taslima. See, he is a Muslim. He has already been put on the mat to prove that he is a good guy. And what better way than to take on your own community.

If he is so concerned about violence, then why does he not talk about human rights violations, the treatment of under trials, encounter killings? Will he have the courage to even utter a word about this report which says that a 1993 riot victim is being hounded?

Yes, you heard it right. A victim is being hounded.

Excerpts:

Farook Mapkar, who had received a gunshot wound in the Hari Masjid shootout in the 1992-93 riots, is being hounded by the Maharashtra government even today. He had already been tried in the case made against him in the Hari Masjid firing even though he was the victim. Yet, on Friday, the government asked the fast track court for time to file supplementary charges against him. His lawyer, Mr Shakeel Ahmed, told this newspaper: "On the one hand the government says that it is going to implement the Srikrishna Commission report, and on the other they are hounding him. Why don’t they withdraw the case?"

Mr Mapkar is one of the material witnesses to the unprovoked firing by sub-inspector Nikhil Kapse at Hari Masjid on Mumbai’s Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road. He said that on January 19, 1993, the situation in the masjid area was tense and Shiv Sainiks had taken to the streets. Then suddenly, at around 12.45 pm, a police van appeared near the masjid, forced its way into the premises of the masjid and the policemen beat up the namazis and started firing indiscriminately with their rifles and service revolvers. Seven people died on the spot and several were injured. The police arrested 50 persons, all Muslims.