Re: [nukkad] morbid difference

["Dr.M.C. Gupta" <>]

Ref: 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.

>> Only fools can afford to close their eyes to reality. Religion is a
reality. Communist thought or philosophy cannot wipe away that reality from
the minds and lives of followers of communism or members of the communist
party. Incidentally, that is what I have been trying at nukkad over the
years--to impress upon the people not to despise religion, nor followers of
a particular religion, whether Hindus or muslims.

MCG

=========================================================


On 2/5/08, pmwalunjkar@aol.in <pmwalunjkar@aol.in> wrote:
>
>
> 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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>
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-- 
Prof. M C Gupta
MD (Medicine), MPH,  LL.M.,

Advocate & Health and Medico-legal Consultant

mcgupta44@gmail.com
www.writing.com/authors/mcgupta44
http://mcgupta44.blogspot.com/
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