[nukkad] morbid difference

When a Hindu girl marries a Muslim 
There is a morbid difference between a Muslim girl marrying a Hindu and a Hindu 
girl marrying a Muslim.



What did you see in him?” asked the 
immigration officer as he stamped Tarla Karnik-Khan’s passport. He was 
referring 
to her Muslim husband. Her 10-year-old son stood within earshot. 



 


Tarla’s family had no objections to her marrying 
family friend Rizwan, but her encounters with the Establishment have convinced 
Tarla that Muslims face a black, bleak future, especially if they dare to marry 
Hindu girls. It was bad enough that the 1984 Mumbai riots had destroyed 
Rizwan’s 
home. When she and Rizwan went a year later to give notice 20of their impending 
marriage to the Marriage Registrar, the clerk there muttered, loud enough for 
them to hear, “This is happening too frequently now”. 


 


There should be a special bravery award for 
every non-Muslim, especially a Hindu girl who dares to marry a Muslim boy. The 
latest heroine is Thane’s Chaitali Shah, who had to almost fight death which 
came in the form of wrathful relatives, and a conniving police, to reach court 
and get back to her husband, Naeem Ansari. 


 


The feudal notion of women as property, and as 
repositories of family and community honour make any inter-religious marriage 
risky. But when a Hindu girl marries a Muslim, she fights not only 
 her family, 
but also the entire Hindu-dominated Establishment. 


 


During the 92-93 riots, knowing they enjoyed a 
free rein, mobs went all out to target Hindu women who were married to Muslim 
men. Neighbours dragged Zainabbi Pathan by her hair, tried to tie her to an 
electric pole, set her on fire and then stabbed her leg to prevent her from 
running. As policemen watched, the 35-yearold Bandra resident begged, “Maaf 
karo”. Her dying declaration described her plight—“They were angry 
because being 
a Hindu I had married a Muslim.” 


 


Twenty-two-year-old Reshma Umar Makki was 
luckier. Only her home was ransacked repeatedly by neighbours who were looking 
for her h
 usband. They kept taunting her, “Why did you marry him? Couldn’t you 
find a Hindu boy?” Again, the police did not interfere. 


 


Interviews with women of all ages who’ve married 
Muslims show little has changed over the years. In 1969, the year free India 
saw 
its first major Hindu-Muslim riots, a hesitant Neema decided to marry the 
Muslim 
man she had been in love with through school and college after her uncles, rich 
Sindhi businessmen, threatened to get the Jan Sangh to attack him. In 1977, a 
determined Mukta rushed back from her native village where she had been packed 
off, to tell the police that she wanted to marry Iqbal, who lived in the 
neighbouring chawl. He had 20spent the night in the Colaba lock-up after her 
elder 
brother had filed a complaint. 


 


In 1993, when the city was still raw from the 
riots, Padma had to stand and watch as a local inspector warned her boyfriend 
that next time he got a complaint from her college principal about his hanging 
around the college he would break his legs. What was a nice Hindu girl like her 
doing with a Muslim, the inspector asked Padma, leering at her bare legs. Did 
she think this miya would allow her to display them if they got married? 
Conscious of his duty as a Hindu, he even called up her family to inform them 
what their girl was up to. 


 


Padma went ahead and married Abbas regard
 less, 
only to be threatened by her own aunt from Delhi, who couldn’t take the sight 
of 
her niece in a burqah. “You two won’t get away with this. I’ll see to it 
that 
they come for you,” she warned. 


 


Last year, the mysterious death of Rizwanur 
Rehman in Kolkata, the computer graphics teacher who was married to an 
industrialist’s daughter, shocked the nation. But long before that 
Kolkata’s top 
police officers proved that they were no different from Mumbai’s communalised 
force. Marxists have always known that their ideology did not prevent their own 
comrades from having strong communal prejudices. 


 


Sometime in the 70s, left activists Bhair
 avi and 
Bilal fell in love in Baroda. Bhairavi could handle her parents’ hysterical 
fear 
that their Patel clan wouldn’t leave their daughter alive. What shattered her 
was the reaction of their comrades, who thought the two were going “too 
far”. 
Bilal, who had brushed aside all the occasions when he was not allowed into the 
kitchen by many of his comrades’ mothers, suddenly realised that for a 
Marxist, 
casting off religious identity wasn’t enough. The world continued to look at 
him 
as a Muslim. 


 


This was brought home to him again in the 92-93 
riots, when he had to flee Mumbai with his little daughter. It was ironic that 
it was the same kind of violence
  that had made him lose faith and turn 
“fanatically atheist”. In 1969, as a Std X student, Bilal fled with his 
family 
to the Muslim basti as his house was looted and set on fire by boys he had 
known 
as family friends. He never prayed again. So in the 58th year of our 
Constitution that promises freedom of religion and equality before law, 
here’s 
wishing Chaitali Shah and Naeem Ansari a safe married 
life.


 


- 
Jyoti Punwani 


   
Times News Network

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