M J Akbar: Deep Inside India, Secularism is a Way of Life

I spend Eid at Telinipara, some 30 miles north of Calcutta along the jute-mill dotted banks of the Hooghly, where I was born. The men of our family walk together to the Chhoti Masjid (Small Mosque) with heads bowed. This is not due to any excessive humility. We have to avoid stepping on pats of still-wet cow dung. Early risers have first use of public facilities. The municipality has sprinkled white disinfectant powder along the drains on either side, a practice started during the British Raj and followed twice a year, during Eid and Bakr-Eid. The cows were oblivious of municipal concerns even during British rule.

The official name of the mosque is the rather grandiloquent Masjid-e-Ibrahim (Mosque of Abraham); its popular name is more appropriate, although it has become a bit larger since last Eid. This need has been felt for more than a decade, with the increasing population of Telinipara, but it became possible only when the owner of the huts adjoining the mosque sold his property to the mosque. Like any public institution, the mosque was strapped for cash. The owner gave it for less than the market value, despite higher offers. He was a Hindu. He was happy to take less because, in his words, the mosque too was “ Bhagwan ka ghar (God’s house)”. Five hundred bags of cement came as a gift from a renowned Calcutta Marwari business family. Neither made the contribution because they expected their names to appear in India’s largest English newspaper.

The maulvi leading the prayer was an angry young man. He offered an answer to a major dilemma of dialectical spiritualism. If Islam was the chosen faith, and Muslims Allah’s select people, why were they mired in poverty when non-believers in the West were flooded with riches and comfort? True wealth is not what you see in this life, but what you will be rewarded with in heaven. He went on a bit about the pleasures of heaven, not forgetting the heavenly wine that will not leave you with a headache. And his route to heaven was a trifle severe, demanding abstinence even from music. But his argument was a placebo, a calmative for a community bewildered by questions.

Later, around ten, enthusiastic young men of my mohalla took me to their single-room club, fed me sandesh bought from Bijoy Modak’s excellent shop, and asked me for “nasihat”. I had no advice to offer, just the essence of some experience along the road from Telinipara to Delhi. The peddlers of violence have nothing to offer but self-destruction, I said, and there were nods of agreement. The rungs of an upward ladder are a modern education; and education is the equal right of both boys and girls. The horizon will be outside reach, and the community remain fractured as long as there is gender bias. The young must leave the mistakes of their parents behind. We Indians laugh and cry in Urdu and Hindi and Bengali, but we rule in English. The language of economic and administrative power is English, so learn English.