Fighting Phantoms in India

Aijaz Zaka Syed on 25, Jan 2012 | 18 Comments | in Category: Debate Desk

When I first heard of Salman Rushdie I was at university. The Satanic Verses had set off a perfect storm in India and around the world. The book was banned in India following fiery protests by Muslims. Many died in Mumbai when police opened fire on angry protesters. Then came Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa sanctioning the novelist’s death, sparking a global debate on free speech and “excessive” Muslim sensitivity.

One day, discussing artistic freedom in one of his lectures, Prof Isaac Sequiera, who headed the English department at Osmania University and taught us American literature, launched a blistering broadside against Khomeini’s fatwa and attempts by “some people” to curtail free speech. Prof Sequiera was one of those brilliant teachers who would draw you to the class day after day. Yet it wasn’t easy to stomach his critique of the Muslim response to Rushdie’s book, comparing it to the infamous Spanish Inquisition. Was it the same thing?

The church burnt ‘heretics’ on mere hearsay – and everyone who didn’t subscribe to its worldview – at stake. When Galileo suggested that the earth was round, rather than flat as the Church insisted, he was given a chance to reconsider his opinion while he spent the rest of his life behind bars.

Rushdie, on the other hand, has repeatedly abused his creative license, and the divine gift of creativity, to assail a billion people’s revered icons. As someone born in a Muslim family, he knew what he was doing and its possible consequences.

No freedom is absolute – not even in the anything-goes West. Blasphemy is a serious crime in many European nations including in Denmark. Every freedom is qualified. Every right comes with responsibility. You can’t go around happily waving your big stick and hitting people in the name of freedom. The freedom of your stick ends where my nose begins. And if you think you have a right to offend, well, others have an equal right to take offense. If Rushdie is free to exercise his creative freedom to attack people’s sacred icons, shouldn’t his victims too have a right to exercise their freedom of action to deal with him?

Of course, I couldn’t say all this to my teacher. Blame it on my moral timidity or the fact that I was painfully shy and the only Muslim in the whole class. That was nearly two decades ago. Today, as this row over Rushdie’s participation in the Jaipur literary festival rages on, I am amazed by the fact how little has changed in this whole debate over the past two decades.

The Muslims are upset over the invitation being extended to someone whose name has become a curse word for them. On the other hand, the increasingly shrill voices in the media are crying themselves hoarse as they invoke India’s fabled tolerance while ignoring the sentiments of the minority community.

Indeed, more than their concern for the nation’s secular ethos, it’s their intolerance of all things Muslim that has them batting for Rushdie. They defend his right to visit his ‘motherland’ oblivious of the fact that the man has repeatedly heaped abuse and scorn on the same motherland and its icons in his books, from Midnight’s Children to Shame to The Moor’s Last Sigh.

The late premier Indira Gandhi took Rushdie to court over Midnight’s Children which describes her as a ‘black widow’. He was forced to expunge parts of the book that had Sanjay Gandhi accusing his mother of killing his father, Feroz Gandhi, by neglecting him. Rushdie argued in court that it was only fiction, only to be snubbed by the judge who pointed out that Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were real people.

In the case of Satanic Verses too he hid behind the same fig leaf launching cheap attacks on the noble Prophet, peace be upon him, and his blessed household, outraging his billion plus believers. As a Persian line goes, you could take liberties with God but not with His Prophet. And Rushdie knew it.

The outrage was deliberate – just as most of his books have been deliberately offensive and provocative. He loves to provoke and offend because it sells in the West. And Islam and its icons and followers have been fair game for centuries. Free speech? Gimme a break! Freedom and free speech have nothing to do with it. Even the so-called liberals and Hindutva fanatics cheering for the author and lecturing Muslims on tolerance know it. They love him because the Muslims loathe him.

That said, the way this whole issue has been handled by the Muslim leadership – if there’s such a thing as Muslim leadership – makes one extremely uncomfortable. Except for Asaduddin Owaisi, the young leader of MIM who saved the day once again, not one Muslim talking head could survive the likes of Arnab Goswami of Times Now, India’s answer to Fox News. Once again the bumbling lot did not merely fail to present their case explaining why Rushdie isn’t welcome; they managed to make a laughing stock of the whole community.

This week CNN IBN’s Sagarika Ghose had two Muslim ‘leaders’ pitted against two ‘liberals’ on the panel. One gentleman, an eminent lawyer associated with the Babri Masjid case, had one hand on his earpiece the whole time as he struggled to make sense of the brutal attacks by the anchor and her guests. And studio guests and audience couldn’t understand half the things the other gentleman, a former Maharashtra MLA, kept muttering in a chaotic mix of Urdu and English talking of an ‘international conspiracy’ against Muslims. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Do these guys really represent and speak for a 200-million strong, diverse community? More important, why do we get repeatedly bogged down in the same old, festering issues when we have far more serious challenges and problems staring us in the face?

As much as I am repelled by the ‘satanic’ Rushdie, I can’t help being intrigued by the question that has been raised by others too – why now? Rushdie has apparently been quietly and frequently visiting India over the past few years. Does it have something to do with the assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh, next month as some suggest? Given the propensity of political parties to raise such issues to excite the easily excitable Muslim public opinion so they could soothe it later, the possibility cannot be dismissed.

Of course, Rushdie will remain unwelcome as long as he remains unrepentant. And by protesting against his abuse, Muslims are only exercising their democratic rights and the suggestion that they’re undermining India’s future is ridiculous. We cannot however allow characters like Rushdie and controversies like these to define us and our agenda forever. We must choose our battles wisely. For we have far bigger wars ahead of us.

From our political and economic dispossession to our situation in education and employment sectors, the level of our deprivation is simply overwhelming. A TV documentary this week, again on CNN IBN, on the legendary weavers of Benares, literally fighting for survival with their emaciated, starving children, should be a must-watch for every Muslim.

It’s the same story with the once famous artisan communities in UP, from Aligarh to Moradabad to Bareilly and Kanpur, and the general state of affairs across the Gangetic belt. Indeed, the condition of Muslims in north India, once the power centre, is today worst in the country. When will Muslim leaders and those who claim to champion the community take up these real issues? When will we stop expending all our time and energy on fighting phantoms and chasing chimeras?

In India, The Pressure Cooker Of College Admissions

Enlarge Tsering Topgyal/AP

Competition for admission to India's top school, Delhi University, is particularly fierce. Here students fill out forms at the Arts Faculty in New Delhi, India, on June 21.

Tsering Topgyal/AP Competition for admission to India's top school, Delhi University, is particularly fierce. Here students fill out forms at the Arts Faculty in New Delhi, India, on June 21.

This can be a harrowing time for high school seniors and their parents in the U.S. as they wait to hear from college admissions offices. But the pressure can be equally intense, if not more so in India, where the massive number of applicants and one make-or-break exam keeps students on edge.

Admission to Delhi University, India's most prestigious school, is considered as tough, if not tougher than, the process at many leading schools in the U.S.

"It's a very difficult game, given the numbers," says Dinesh Singh, the vice chancellor of Delhi University.

India has 1.2 billion people, he notes, and like most things in Indian life, getting one of the limited places at the best colleges is incredibly competitive.

There's no way you could interview all of them. It's very difficult to give weight to other aspects of a student's career, and so you largely rely on the test scores.

- Dinesh Singh, vice chancellor at Delhi University, on the admissions process

Delhi University is an amalgam of 80 different colleges in the Indian capital, India's equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge in Britain or the Ivy League schools in the U.S.

All told, Singh has about 50,000 slots to fill with incoming students each year. It may sound like a lot, but it's just a small fraction of those applying.

For example, Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce has just 400 slots and gets some 28,000 applicants each year. That means less than 2 percent of the applicants get in, an acceptance rate far lower than Harvard's.

The numbers are so large that most college admissions are based on a student's performance on a single set of exams.

"There's no way you could interview all of them," Singh says. "It's very difficult to give weight to other aspects of a student's career, and so you largely rely on the test scores."

Students complain that making college admissions dependent on a single set of test results is like gambling your career on a single throw of the dice.

Some Opt To Look Abroad

Saumya Swaroop is one of a growing number of students who are side-stepping the Indian system.

"It's because the system never made any sense to me, to be frank," she says, "because how can they actually judge the merit of a student on the basis of what happens in a six-hour-long exam?

Enlarge Tsering Topgyal/AP

Parents help their children fill out applications at Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi, India, on June 16. The College of Commerce is considered one of the most difficult to get into.

Tsering Topgyal/AP Parents help their children fill out applications at Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi, India, on June 16. The College of Commerce is considered one of the most difficult to get into.

Swaroop didn't even apply to India's top universities, aiming instead for American schools. She wound up winning a scholarship at Princeton.

Swaroop says India's top schools may be missing talented students who have a lot to offer but simply can't make the cut.

Many of the candidates for India's top colleges come from exclusive private high schools such the Delhi Public School.

Principal D.R. Saini graduated about 1,000 seniors last year, and he says more than 400 qualified for top foreign universities, including prestigious colleges in the United States.

Saini says that group included students who couldn't get into Delhi University.

"At the local level, our students have not been recognized and honored, and they have not been allowed to get admission," he says, "but at the global level, in the very best universities of the world, our students are competing and getting very desirable results."

The Numbers Keep Growing

The problem is not going to get any easier. More than 120 million Indians will reach college age in the next few years.

Saini says he supports efforts by India's education ministry to come up with more holistic ways to judge a student's performance.

Most colleges are already trying to get away from the exam-only system by offering places to students who come from underprivileged groups. They also relax the rules for talented athletes and students in the arts.

Delhi University's Dinesh Singh says there are far more opportunities open at lesser-known but equally worthy colleges that are part of his own institution. The problem, he says, is that Indian parents, like many in the United States, are obsessed with the most prestigious university brands.

"Parents insist and force their children to only try for those places," he says.

One way to ease the demand for top-flight education might be to allow foreign universities to establish branches in India. India's Cabinet is considering legislation that could make that possible.

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