Nehru in heaven?

Last year on my trip to India, I subscribed to the Indian Journal of Secularism. Yesterday, I received four issues of the journal. The journals will keep me busy for some time. While browsing through one of the issues (Volume 19. No. 1. April-June 2015), I came across a paper by Prof. Monirul Hussain titled ‘When Nehru Died: Excavating the Response of Muslim Minority Citizens in a Small Town of Assam.’   

While most of the paper describes the reaction of the people in North Lakhimpur (in Upper Assam) to Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in 1964, and especially the devastation stemming from fear that Prof. Hussain’s maternal grandfather experiences, towards the end, he narrates his own efforts to make sense of an event that obviously had a great personal and public impact.

Prof. Hussain narrates: “When we all went to bed at night I was very much disturbed. As a 12 year old child I was thinking of life after death. What would happen to Nehru in the aftermath of his death in the court of invisible Allah/God? 

“Our Moulvi Sahib told us earlier that only Muslims will go to heaven. Next morning when our Moulvi Sahib came to teach us how to read the Holy Quran, I raised a question before him. The Moulvi had quite hard opinions about religion. I asked him whether Nehru is going to heaven or not? The Moulvi was somewhat embarrassed. He wanted to avoid the question I raised. He asked me to concentrate on reciting the Quran. However, I was not relenting I raised the question again. 

“He paused for a while and said, “Nehru will go to heaven Insa Allah.” I reminded him that it was he who told me on an earlier occasion that only Muslims will go to heaven after death. He paused for a while again, and then asserted very firmly: “Don’t you know the Muslims all over India are praying for him hence Nehru will go to heaven Insa Allah.” 

“As a 12-year-old child I was relieved that Nehru will go to heaven! Later in the day I saw the Moulvi Sahib attending the Sarba Dharma prayer along with the priests of all other religions at the local Gandhi Maidan.”

Image: http://tvaraj.com/tag/jawaharlal-nehru/

A book all non-Muslims in Canada must read

The Syrian refugee crisis and the November 13 Paris attacks have once again focused the West’s attention on the Muslim Question. The abominable and reprehensible Paris attacks pushed to surface the subterranean resentment that western societies harbour against Muslims and Islam.

The attacks clouded the West’s effort to provide humanitarian succour to the millions of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war. The debate that should have focused on humanitarian objectives such as providing safety to the fleeing millions, turned into fear-mongering, and resulted into devising means to delay if not altogether prevent the influx of the refugees.

Arguments such as ‘why the Arab states aren’t offering aid’, to ‘the Arab world need to fix its problems’, and statements such as ‘what if ISIS terrorists pretend to be refugees and infiltrate western societies to wreak mayhem’, to ‘western societies should have a right to choose who it should take in’, were (are) being made not merely in everyday conversations, but even in policy-making forums.

Canada emerged with dignity from a particularly brutish election campaign where the Conservative Party of Canada led by Stephen Harper focused on portraying Canadian Muslims as a threat to Canadian values. Justin Trudeau’s sweeping victory may provide temporary relief to the embittered Muslims of Canada, but unless the new Liberal government resolves to undertake substantive measures to rectify inherent biases, no far-reaching, long-lasting systemic changes should be anticipated.

Haroon Siddiqui at the
launch of the book

The Relevance of Islamic Identity in Canada published by Mawenzi House and edited by Nurjehan Aziz analyzes critical issues pertaining to Islam and Muslims. (Disclosure: My essay ‘Married to a Believer’ is in this anthology).

The essays in the volume discuss nearly every aspect of the Muslim identity, and how it impacts and is impacted by Canada. The collection is a great mix of the personal, the academic, and the polemical; all the 11 essays address the issue of identity, and what it means to be a Muslim immigrant. The volume offers a rich diversity of opinions, reinforcing the fact that Islam in Canada is multicultural and varied.

Nurjehan Aziz notes in the Preface of the book that it “began as an exploration” of “What does it mean to be a Muslim,” and that “the responses have been illuminating, though-provoking, and also disturbing…To our great surprise, however, one observation was almost universal: recently in Canada Muslims have found themselves the objects of vilification and discrimination. Being a Muslim then means being a victim.”

The three essays that contribute original though on the issue of Islam’s place in Canada are by Monia Mazigh (Reexamining Relations Between Men and Women); Haroon Siddiqui (Anti-Muslim Bigotry Goes Official – Canada’s Newest Dark Chapter); and Mohamed Abualy Alibhai (The Future of Islam in North America).

Audience at the launch program

Alibhai’s essay in particular is radically refreshing in its approach to interpreting Islam in present times. He says, “The time may have finally arrived when North American Muslims will not be able to avoid thinking the unthinkable with respect to verbal revelation. The experience of American Jews teaches us that once the question is raised it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. The only way forward is to abandon the belief in the verbal revelation of the Quran and to adopt an alternative understanding – for example, that the words of the Quran are words that Muhammed uttered and authored in a divinely inspired involuntary and creative cognitive-emotional state.” 

He adds, “Perhaps the most important practical consequence of abandoning the belief in the verbal revelation of the Quran is the corresponding abandonment of the legalist conception of Islam. The new denomination would be premised on the principle that it is possible to practice Islam without the Shariah.”

An Evening with Barbara Ehrenreich: Inequality in the United States

Across the developed world, a debate that has been gathering momentum and seems to be on the verge of taking over public discourse, is the flagrant and growing inequality in these societies. Inequality is no longer merely economic, although it is the economic dimension that seems to be the most obvious. 

For instance, in the United States of America, a country that even now retains its sheen as the world’s beacon of hope, a mere one percent of the rich control 80 percent of its wealth.  

From a democracy, the US (and, for that matter, most of the developed world) seem to be veering away to plutocracy where the rich have become the occupying force that arm-twist the apparatuses of the state to suit their ever-increasing greed.

A growing band of activists have persistently raised awareness of the masses by asking inconvenient questions and telling truthful tales that are at once shocking and hair-raising. For instance, corporate America indulges in wage theft to the tune of $106billion, by making workers labour more hours but paying only for regulation hours.

And that while corporate America continues to resist the implementation of $15 an hour minimum wage, the minimum hourly wage required for bare minimum, subsistence existence as determined by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Barbara Ehrenreich is among those activists who have consistently spoken out loudly against the inherently unjust system that has been created in the last four decades in the United States.

Author of over 20 books, Ehrenreich was in Toronto to deliver a special lecture under the aegis of the F Ross Johnson-Connaught Speaker Series organized by the Munk School of Global Affair’s Centre for the Study of the United States. 

The program was titled An Evening with Barbara Ehrenreich: Inequality in the United States.

Unrelenting, scathing and sarcastic, Ehrenreich lambasted the present state of the United States where poverty is treated as a character failing. “Poverty is a shortage of money. It is not a character failing,” she declared.  

The author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), and Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (2010) castigated the overwhelming tendency of the police in the US to victimize the African American minority, including minor school girls.

Describing the police as an occupying force, she said that police harassment of the blacks and minorities has actually increased manifold after the economic downturn because it has become a major revenue earner for the law enforcement agencies.

An honourary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, who also serves on the NORML Board of Directors, the Institute for Policy Studies Board of Trustees, Ehrenreich said it was time fundamental changes were introduced that would skew the balance in the favour of the poor, who at present seemingly have just two choices – destitution or incarceration, which is a direct result of the criminalization of poverty.

These changes include: 

• Stoppage of upward distribution of wealth and distribute it down; 
• Stoppage of wage theft by corporate America; stoppage of police assault on people of colour; 
• Regulating the untrammeled flow of money into politics, which results in policy formulations that favour the rich.

Before becoming an activist, she studied cell biology and physics, graduating with a degree in physics from Reed College in 1963, and a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University in 1968. Ehrenreich has taught at State University of NY, Old Westbury, University of Missouri at Columbia, New York University, and at Sangamon State University.

In 2006, Ehrenreich founded United Professionals, an organization described as a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. Her latest publication is entitled, Living with a Wild God (2014).

A roundup of books and authors

The Word on the Street

Book fairs and book launches: The annual Canada-wide book fair The Word on the Street (WOTS) organized every September was held at a different venue – the Harbourfront Centre instead of the Queen’s Park. Space constraints at Harbourfront Centre made the fair intimate. There were fewer booths, or at least it seemed that way, and not enough writers reading.

The sprawl at Queen’s Park had ensured a leisurely and enjoyable afternoon stroll across different sections; at the Harbourfront Centre the stroll ended before it could even begin. WOTS is a great occasion for meeting friends; and this year’s wasn’t any different. I bought a few books (Danila Bootha’s novel Too much on the inside, an anthology of short stories set in Toronto, and a few others), and renewed subscriptions to a few magazines.

All Inclusive

Farzana & Susan G. Cole 

Later in September, I also went to the launch of Farzana Doctor’s All Inclusive, a novel that has already received a tremendous response. Among the early admirers is Austin Clarke. And this is what he says about the book and the author: “Her outstanding characterization and the depth of language establish the importance of Farzana Doctor’s writing. In her startling and evocative description of the lives of people in the tourist industry, All Inclusive is more than just a title.”

All Inclusive is Farzana’s third novel (after Stealing Nasreen and Six Meters of Pavement). She was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2012 for Six Meters, which won the Lambda Award for Lesbian General Fiction. From the reception All Inclusive has received, it is evident that Farzana is the next big thing in Canadian literature.

Partha Chatterjee

The redoubtable Partha Chatterjee came to Munk Centre early October, and I took leave from work to attend his lecture on nationalism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism. 

Expectedly, it was fascinating and sweeping in scope. Replete with historical anecdotes going all the way back to the beginnings of the colonial period, Partha Chatterjee spoke about the rise of Indian nationalism in the early 20th century, the rise of internationalism through the League of Nations, which led to the formation of global institutions which enabled the gradual end of colonialism.

He spoke about the three different types of internationalisms – the western interpretation, the communist version that began promisingly with the Comintern (and the role of MN Roy), and the non-aligned movement. The rise of cosmopolitanism saw the rise of the elite in urban setup usurping power through the support of state institutions.

All the three ideas – nationalism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism were 20th century ideas that changed the world comprehensively. Tellingly, he compared the Khilafat movement of the 1920s to the ISIS mobilization of the present times.

Subsequently, after the lecture, I had an occasion to talk to him about the current situation in India, and Akshay Mukul’s book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India. I said that increasingly it seems that the present Hindutva dispensation that has come to control India may find everyone (including Gandhi) acceptable, but cannot come to terms with Nehru’s concept of secularism. He disagreed and pointed me to read Gandhi’s views on beef. 

Coincidentally, the next day was Gandhi Jayanti and The Wire published Gandhi’s letter on the subject (read here: Gandhi on beef).

Real Justice

Early this month, I also attended the launch of Jasmine D’Costa’s non-fiction book. Real Justice: Branded a Baby Killer The Story of TammyMarquardt. The book narrates the story of Tammy a mother who was convicted for the murder of her two-year-old son based the evidence given by Dr. Charles Smith, a famous pediatric, who, it was later discovered, had made serious errors in his assessments, leading to wrongful convictions of many.

Jasmine is the author of the famed short story collection Curry is thicker than water, which has been translated into many European languages. She was the editor of Canadian Voices I & II and Indian Voices I.  Unfortunately, by the time I reached the venue of the launch event (the elegant Toronto Heliconian Club), the event was over. 

Jasmine sent the following quote from the Indian Consul General in Toronto Akhilesh Mishra, “Your presentation was superb, sensitive and very touching and left profound impact on us, as on most others in the audience.”