Indian Identity

by Sudhir Kakar

  Whereas the loss of collective self-idealization due to changed historical and socioeconomic circumstances evokes a depressive response among the Muslim poor, for many sensitive members of the community—including some of its writers, scholars, and artists—this loss of Muslim power and glory is explicitly mourned. The despair at the moral decay and political decline of Muslim societies, the historian Mushirul Hasan tells us, is a recurrent theme in Urdu poetry, literature, and journalism.6 Ideally, such a mourning should clear the decks for the birth of new ideals and a more confident encounter with the future. For many, though, the mourning is never completed; its stock of narratives of loss and their elegiac mood become a part of the family heritage that is passed from one generation to the other. For these men and women, the poet Iqbal’s line, ‘Lightning only strikes the hapless Muslims (Barq girti hai to bechare Mushulmanon par)’ has acquired a personal significance which has been incorporated into the social aspect of their identity. In other words, whenever a person feels, thinks, and acts as a Muslim rather than as an individual, there is a perceptible undertone of grief, a miasma of mourning in what has been called ‘the Andalus syndrome’.7 The syndrome, of course, refers to the great Muslim civilization on the Iberian peninsula that ended abruptly in the 16th century, plunging the Islamic world into gloom and leaving a yearning for its lost glory in Muslim societies on the rim of the Mediterranean, In the Indian situation, the Andalus response, I believe, is more the province of the upper and middle classes rather than of the vast number of Muslim poor. Of course, in Hyderabad, with its history bearing a striking similarity to the fate of Andalusia, especially in the abrupt ending of Muslim rule, the heartbreak is more widespread than in most other parts of the country.

  Gilani Bano, a novelist from Hyderabad, is one of the more eminent Urdu writers who has tried to capture the elusive spirit of the Andalus response in her fiction. In her novel Aiwan-e-ghazal, she takes as her subject a slice of Muslim life just before and after 1948, the year in which Hyderabad abruptly ceased being an independent state with its own administration, ruler, and ethos, and became part of India—a country which was geographically contiguous with Hyderabad but was emotionally distant for many of its inhabitants. The title of the novel is from the name of the family mansion of an old aristocratic (nawabi) family. Literally, it also means ‘the palace of the ghazal,’ the ghazal more often than not being an elegy of unhappy love where the lover bemoans the loss, the inaccessibility, or the turning away of the beloved.

  One of the main characters in the novel through whose eyes the events of those years are viewed is Nawab Wahid Hussain, a man in his early 50s, steeped in the ethos of a vanishing world, who is fearful and contemptuous of the change that is poised to destroy the old civilization. Wahid Hussain looks down on what he considers the crass commercialism of the modern era and deems the writing of poetry and the play of love with a favoured mistress—normally an accomplished courtesan—as the only worthwhile occupations of a civilized man. He admires his grandfather whose dead body was discovered one morning surrounded by sheets of paper covered with Urdu calligraphy while the flame in his bedroom lamp burnt low. The family had thought that the papers pertained to the affairs of the family home which the British Resident, acting on complaints of debauchery and the kidnapping of girls, had demanded for his inquiry. The papers, however, turned out to be the final drafts of 15 ghazals which the old nawab had composed throughout the night in a burst of feverish activity. With the threat of the inquiry and eventual disgrace looming over him, they were still some of the best ghazals his grandfather had ever written. Wahid Hussain ruminates on Hyderabad’s fate:

  [He] opened his eyes and saw the portrait of Quli Qutub Shah on the wall opposite the portrait of the last ruler, Osman Ali. Wahid Hussain saw Quli Qutub Shah’s eyes brimming with contentment as if he was searching for a ghazal or, standing on the ramparts of Golconda, lost in the dream of a beautiful city springing up on the forested land around the fort. The city he founded for Bhagmati to live in was like a garden, its magnificent buildings like lotus flowers lit with the lamps of civility and culture. He looks as if he is saying to one of his lovers, ‘Prepare the festivities. The tender shoots of Urdu are coming out but we do not have much time left. Behind the hills of a few centuries, the caravans of time are moving in our direction. Soon the plunderers will fall upon us. Under the rubble of Golconda people will search for our stories. The dust particles of our fallen glory will become a diamond glittering in the crown of a queen in a distant land.’8

  The diamond, of course, was the Kohinoor, the queen, Victoria of Great Britain.

  Morality of Violence

  Although they live in separate bastis, the inevitably close contact between Hindus and Muslims in the crowded inner city leads to interactions between the two which span the full emotional range from friendship to deadly hatred during the time of a riot. The exchanges with members of the other community which are considered to be transgressions of the group’s code governing such transactions were of particular interest and invited a more systematic exploration.

  In this exploration, my focus was not on questions close to the hearts of moral philosophers such as whether it was reason, reason dependent upon individual desire, religious prescription, role obligation, or a convention that was being violated by a particular action. Nor was I concerned with the religious foundations of the morality governing Hindu-Muslim relations; with what, for instance, the Qur’an has to say on a Muslim’s various interactions with those who are outside the faith. My aim was more to understand the way people experienced these interactions and the psychological processes underlying the experiences.

  It was evident from the preliminary interviews that these interactions had to be divided into two parts: those which pertain to normal, peace-time life and others which take place during a riot. In both Hindus and Muslims, riot-time interactions deviated substantially from the code that governs their actions during normal times. There are, however, as we shall see later, still a few acts that invite universal moral condemnation from both sides, independent of their temporal context—normalcy versus riot. These obligations are considered universally binding. Even within context-dependent obligations, there are interactions which are perceived as binding on one’s own group and not on others; they are viewed as distinctive expressions of the community’s moral qualities, uniqueness, and traditions. These obligations are perceived as objective and moral and yet not universally binding. Their violation is usually remarked upon by the phrase, ‘A good Muslim (or Hindu) does not do that,’ implying that the bad other may indeed do so.

  Using the method developed by the anthropologist Richard Shweder who, in a series of studies, has explored the moral ideas of children and adults in India and the United States, I have attempted to examine adult Muslim and Hindu interpretations of 19 behavioural cases of Hindu-Muslim interaction in the ‘Morality Interview’ (Appendix II).9 The first 12 cases represent different kinds of interactions in normal times while the last seven cases are descriptive of certain interactions during a riot. Examples of normal interactions are: ‘A Muslim rents his house to a Hindu’; ‘A Muslim girl marries a Hindu boy.’ Examples of riot-time interactions are: ‘Some Muslims rape a Hindu girl’; ‘Some Muslims loot Hindu shops’. Further interview questions seek to elicit the respondent’s view of the seriousness of the violation and the kind of sanctions it should invite.

  Before discussing the results of the interviews, I need to sound a note of caution. The interactions between Hindus and Muslims had also come up during the more freewheeling conversations with some of the same respondents. I had the impression that people became ‘more moral’ in the situation of a structured interview using a questionnaire than they were in the unstructured setting where they were more uninhibited in the expression of violent sentiments. The ‘questionnaire morality’ is perhaps inclined to be more conservative than the actually lived one.

  It seems, and this may be of methodological impor
tance in the collection of psychological data, that the expression of an individual’s views on subjects close to his heart becomes more and more controlled as the setting changes from an informal conversation to a formal interview to the filling in of a questionnaire, to writing for wider dissemination, and finally, to the most controlled expression of all, the enactment of views in the public arena. Differently but tentatively stated, it is perhaps less the nature of the medium in which self-disclosure is made than the imagined intimacy with the presumed recipients of our views which is important. Our openness and honesty in revealing ourselves decreases in tandem with the degree of intimacy we believe we share with our ultimate listeners (although on rare occasions, such as an encounter on a train, we may for a time imagine sharing great intimacy with a total stranger). Writing a book for an impersonal audience is less intimate than talking to longstanding disciples; filling a questionnaire is less intimate than a friendly conversation which, in turn, is less intimate than responding to someone even closer than a friend.

  The Muslim sample from Karwan consisted of ten men and ten women. The women ranged in age from 18 to 50 and all except the youngest were illiterate. The ages of the men were between 19 and 75. A couple of the men had a few years of schooling but none had finished high school. A third of them were unemployed while others worked in low paid jobs as casual labourers, vegetable sellers and auto-rickshaw drivers.

  Before I discuss the morality judgments of the Muslims, there are two general remarks that need to be made. First, the idea of convention, the idea that the disapproved interactions with the Hindus could be based on a consensus within the community and are relative and alterable, is almost totally absent. Once a behaviour is seen as a violation it generally tends to be viewed starkly as a sin and it does not matter if it is done secretly or openly or whether it is permitted in other places. These interactions, except in the area of religious faith, tend to be viewed as part of a moral order, categorical, imperative and binding on all Muslims. Second, the moral code, to follow Dworkin’s distinction, is duty-rather than right-or goal-based.10 In other words, a duty like ‘obedience to Allah’s will as expressed in the Qur’an’ is taken as fundamental and given priority over a right such as the ‘individual’s right to freedom of choice’ or a goal like ‘improving the welfare of the community’. The morality is traditional or customary, deeply connected to the ancestry and the narrated history of a group. The transgressions of moral ways of acting are accompanied by anxieties relating to the unexpected and the fear of narcissistic injuries such as being excluded from the group or the loss of a fantasized union with others of the community.

  The statements on which there was a consensus—a consensus referring to judgements of right and wrong shared by at least 75 per cent of the sample—are the following:

  Permitted Interactions

  In Normal times

  To have Hindu friends.

  To eat with Hindus.

  To work with Hindus in a factory.

  To learn the Gita from a pandit.

  To beat up a Hindu boy for whistling at a Muslim girl.

  To beat up a Hindu who is making fun of Allah.

  In Riot Time

  To give shelter to a Hindu.

  Wrong Interactions

  In Normal Times

  A Muslim girl going to the cinema with a Hindu boy.

  A Muslim girl eloping with a Hindu boy.

  To throw a dead cow in a temple.

  In Riot Time.

  To rape a Hindu girl.

  To kill a Hindu woman.

  Let us begin by looking at the interactions which are consensually considered wrong. In normal times, the strongest reaction is evoked by the idea of a Muslim girl going to the cinema with a Hindu boy. This is not only a serious violation of the moral code but unequivocally a sin. ‘The other day we beat up one such pair,’ says a 19-year-old man. ‘We watched them for three days and followed them to the cinema. I slapped the girl and informed the girl’s brother. He was ready to poison himself and die as he could not bear the dishonour of his sister being caught with one of their [Hindu] boys.’ Almost a third of the respondents would have the girl killed, expecting the parents to quietly poison her, bury her alive or themselves commit suicide. Here, of course, our ‘law’ that ‘expression is contingent upon its medium’ also works in the reverse direction. The outrage which is being expressed in such violent words will generally be more controlled if and when it comes to concrete action. Then we can expect a beating rather than murder, wounding words, yes, but rarely the sharp stabs of a knife.

  The younger Muslim women, whom I would have expected to identify more with the girl, are at one with their menfolk in considering the action a grave sin. They are, however, much less harsh in the punishment they envisage as adequate. Most would be content if the girl got a good thrashing and a couple recommend marrying the girl off against her will. In fact, the only two voices which do not consider the behaviour a sin, though it remains a serious offence, are women.

  What is the culture-specific aspect of the moral code which invites such wrath on the head of a Muslim girl who goes to a movie with a Hindu boy? Preeminent here is a notion of the family which is not an association of individuals but a structure with differentiated roles and obligations. The structure itself is a part of and in service of a larger whole, the Muslim community. The movie-going of a Muslim girl is not an individual affair but the establishment of a particular kind of relationship with the other qaum which is a deadly insult to the Muslim community. Yet the ferocity of the imagined punishments arouses the suspicion that there are also some unconscious fantasies involved in this act which, for instance, are absent in the case of a Muslim girl eloping with a Hindu boy. To an outside observer, with a different moral code, the latter would seem to be a far more serious affair. Although considered a sin, the punishments for elopement are not so severe. The girl should not be readmitted to the home and should be considered dead by the community, is the general tenor of opinion in dealing with this particular ‘sin’. My hunch is that going to the cinema gives rise to images of hot, hurried gropings in the darkness of its foyer, fantasies of forbidden sexuality between the pair, whereas the elopement makes sexual congress between the couple more acceptable in that it is legitimized by marriage. The girl who went to the cinema is still a part of the community, a boil which must be lanced.

  Throwing a dead cow in a temple is the only violation which is not considered a sin but a minor transgression. It is wrong because it hurts the religious sentiments of the Hindus and, more rationally, can lead to outbreak of a riot. Some will content themselves with pointing out to the offender the error of his ways while others will consider handing him over to the police.

  During riot time, the two consensually forbidden acts of violence relate both to Hindu women, namely, their rape and murder. In contrast, there is no consensus on the moral status of the killing of men, looting, and arson. Although both rape and killing of women are regarded as sinful, there is a hesitation, almost reluctance when it comes to punishment of the guilty. What comes to the fore here is the conflict between the perceived interests of the community and its moral codes. ‘The men who have raped and killed are our own. Who will protect us if they are severely punished or handed over to the police?’ expresses the nature of the dilemma. The recommended punishments range from educating the culprit, leaving it to Allah, letting the law take its course, of handing over the men to the police.

  In the case of rape, there is no difference of opinion between men and women in either perception of the act or punishment of the wrongdoers. Of the two in the sample who favour the severest sanctions—castration and killing of the man—one is a man and the other a woman. During a riot, a time of danger to individual and collective survival, identification with the community outweighs all other identifications, including the identification with one’s gender.

  Killing and rape of Hindu women are sins because they are forbidden by Islam. This is ela
borated through the idea of Islamic chivalry where a riot between Hindus and Muslims is a battle exclusively between men in defence of the honour of their qaums. The women are noncombatants. Weak and vulnerable, they are entitled to protection, even by men of the enemy host.

  Rape of a Hindu woman, though, has some surprising twists to the nature of its sinfulness. The 75-year-old man regards rape as a sin because a Hindu woman is haram, forbidden to the Muslim like the eating of pork or meat of an animal not slaughtered in the ritually correct manner. Rape of a Muslim woman, on the other hand, is not a sin because she is halal. This view is echoed by another, much younger man, who reacts with horror to the idea of raping a Hindu woman and thereby entering the polluted and contaminating inner regions of an infidel body. In these two cases rape is not a violation of the moral code that forbids the causing of harm to another individual but the breaking of a code that decrees the preservation of one’s own sanctity.

  Turning to permitted interactions in normal times, there is no difficulty in Muslims having Hindus as friends. There are three sceptics, all women, who believe such friendships are no longer possible after the riots of the last decade. They mistrust the Hindu; ‘Hindus are sweet outside but have poison in their hearts.’