Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

Varanasi in the time of terror

Vidya Subrahmaniam

State action against terrorism will succeed if Muslims have the confidence that the community as a whole will not be called to account for terror executed by a few. Communal harmony is not a pseudo-secular cliché, it is a necessity in the aftermath of terror, and for proof there is Varanasi.

CALM RETURNED to Mumbai within 24 hours of the July 11 bomb blasts that blew up train after local train, killing, maiming, and visiting ruin upon hundreds. The bustling megalopolis' famed matter-of-factness was heart-warmingly captured by a photograph of the day after, frontpaged by a daily. It showed commuters spilling out of a speeding "local" — almost as if to challenge the merchants of terror who struck at their beloved city.

Calm returned to Varanasi too — again within hours of the March 7 bomb blasts. The primary target was the outlying Sankat Mochan temple — a quaintly uplifting shrine, large of heart and eclectic in spirit, much like Varanasi itself. The strike on the temple was intended to inflame passions, to pit injured Hindu religious sentiment against perceived Muslim savagery. But Varanasi rose so superbly to the occasion that columnists doffed their hats to its indomitable strength, marvelling at a people who said they were nothing without their composite culture. Kashi Nagri, of the conjoined Vishwanath temple and Gyanvapi mosque, of Hindus and Muslims as silken in manner and speech as the beautiful Banarasi saree, and as interlinked as its warp and weft, became a byword for peace and harmony.

Yet something has changed. In the days since July 11, "the spirit of Mumbai" has come under subtle attack. The derring-do that earned the city rave headlines is now "foolish bravado." The Guardian's Jonathan Steele called talk of citizens defying terrorism "nonsense spouted after the bomb blasts." Within India there is a weariness with the postured normality, with the flaunting of Hindu-Muslim unity after every terrorist strike. The media that celebrated the Kashiwasi's resilience are urging Mumbaikars to show their anger, say they have had enough. Which is understandable; there is only so much any city can take. But how does anyone ensure that the anger does not spiral out of control? And at a time when accepted wisdom has it that home-grown terrorism has spread its roots far and deep? Suddenly, there is nobody who is not a suspect — not computer engineers, not doctors, not even your genial carpenter whom you good-humouredly chided for taking too many namaaz breaks.

Over the past two weeks, commentators have urged the Government to crush indigenous terror, arguing that the "rigged up" conviviality after a terrorist strike can only embolden Muslims, increasingly falling for pan-global jihad. The contention in essence is this: called upon to meet terrorism frontally and squarely, the state exults in the forbearance shown by its citizens, in the communal harmony maintained in the face of terrorist provocation. Yet communal harmony is nothing if not a euphemism for official inaction, for an outmoded notion of political correctness that will not allow for local terror cells to be busted nor for local boys to be chased out of their shadowy seminaries. For all this leniency, Muslims — as always — do not even "adequately" protest terrorism. In the words of more than one columnist: why do Muslims protest George Bush's India visit but not the terror attacks?

Good question, except Muslims protested Mr. Bush's visit unasked, without the pressure of having to prove themselves, while after every terrorist act they have to protest on demand, condemn on order. Paradoxically, the anti-Bush protests met with the opposite concern in the media: Just why have they turned up in such huge numbers? In one case, Muslims had no business protesting as Muslims; in another, they had no business not protesting as Muslims. This aside, there is a larger question: How does anybody know that Muslims have not mourned the blast dead or "adequately" expressed themselves against terrorism?

Reporting on a post-blast police raid on a Muslim slum colony in Mahim, Mumbai, The Telegraph of July 16 said that while ordinary Muslims felt humiliated for being rounded up and interrogated (of 300 people detained, all but seven were let off and even the seven were held for past offences), the mood among the clergy — condemned as inflexible and fundamentalist — was to accept the combing operations as a necessary part of the anti-terror drive. Just days after the blasts, the All-India Ulema Council, the apex body of imams and maulanas, convened a meeting of 150 city mosque heads where the message was one of restraint and responsibility: "The need of the hour is peace and brotherhood. [The] Quran says killing an innocent is akin to the massacre of humanity. Imams can play a big role in spreading this message... " The previous day, all 150 mosques organised special Friday prayers for the recovery of the blast injured. The aftermath of a terrorist strike is not an easy time to be Muslim — to be under surveillance by the state and yet having to prove allegiance to the state.

In Mumbai, 150 mosque heads did the needful in stressful circumstances, even as raid and search drills focussed on mostly Muslim ghettos. It is a different matter that the media that questioned and berated Muslims for not adequately protesting terrorism did not adequately report the protests.

Of a piece with the periodic questioning of Muslim loyalty is the contempt for communal harmony, which is seen as diluting the emphasis on terrorism. Yet communal harmony, far from being a pseudo-secular cliché or a convenient diversion from flat-out state action, is a necessary pre-condition for tackling terrorism. In the powder-keg post-blast environment in which the state is hectored not to pull its punches, to show results, to go after the local boys, bust their hideouts, raid their homes, and shut all madrassas, the slightest indiscretion, a single wrong done to one innocent local boy, can mean lighting the fuse. Add to this the inevitable rantings of an Ashok Singhal or anyone of his kind, and a conflagration is not far away. Communal empathy is important especially when the state is on an anti-terror drive; with the state seeming hostile, civil society becomes the only mechanism to heal the hurt and instil trust. To pursue and hunt down terrorists is one aspect, a vital aspect, of dealing with terrorism. But equally lynch mobs cannot set the rules. State action will succeed if Muslims have the confidence that the community will not be called to account for terror executed in the name of Islam, that the "war against terror" is not a war against the community.

The Varanasi example

This is not political correctness, and for proof there is Varanasi, where two men of religion, one Hindu, the other Muslim, showed the way to mutual trust, the amazing spin-off from which includes voluntary Muslim action to regulate the functioning of madrassas, searching questions within the community on the place of terrorism in Islam, and, above all, the ringing denunciation of terrorism by Islamic scholars belonging to different schools. The process was started by Veer Bhadra Misra, the learned Mahant of the Sankat Mochan temple, who today commands an iconic following among Muslims for his expert management of the post-blast fallout. Having reopened the temple within hours of the blast and resumed puja and aarti, the Mahant did the one thing that needed to be done — eviction from the complex of those looking to start trouble, among them the volatile Vinay Katiyar. The return to normality was essential to prevent communal distrust. The Mahant was to find a friend in Abdul Batin Nomani, Mufti-e-Benaras and Imam of the Gyanvapi mosque. The first Sunday after the blast, the young Muslim priest was in the temple, receiving ganga jal from the Mahant. The Mahant and the Mufti jointly visited hospitals and attended to the comfort of the injured. Inspired by them, leaders from both communities, including a dozen or so Muslim clerics, followed suit.

Four months after the Mahant and the Mufti joined hands in an affirmation of Hindu-Muslim solidarity, the tentative "reaching out" has flowered into a movement the impact of which is plain to see. Joint campaigns, composite music festivals, seminars on communal amity, invitations to the Mahant from Muslims and to the Mufti from Hindus, and the incredible sight of burqa-clad women reciting the Hanuman Chalisa at the Sankat Mochan temple — it is competitive secularism of a kind rarely seen, wonderfully elevating, and all the more special for daring to take root on holy soil defiled by terrorists intending to spread doubt and disharmony.

Is this merely showcase cohabitation? How long will it be before another bomb blast, or a deliberate provocation from a disgruntled element from either side, disrupts this joyous celebration of unity? Communal harmony is easier extolled in seminars than achieved on the ground, and to pretend that Varanasi's unique experiment has no detractors would be to oversimplify the achievement. The Mufti received flak from orthodox Muslims for his foray into the temple to accept ganga jal as did the Muslim women who recited the Hanuman Chalisa. The Mahant is a disliked figure among Hindu extremists. But as the Mufti told The Hindu, "terrorism, fundamentalism, are all threats to communal harmony. The important thing is that we have understood and defeated that design. We have emerged stronger from terrorism. Today Varanasi is a model of communal amity. Let other cities follow our example."

Faced with terror, Kashi Nagri showed courage, returned to normal, and embraced peace. It does not matter to Varanasi's Muslims that the state pursues Islamist militants. Spunk and harmony may not foil terrorism, but they do foil the design to divide and disrupt.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Continuing worry over inflation
Even Tigers can cry
Varanasi in the time of terror
Can Mumbai take any more?
China greying too fast
Corrections and clarifications
Why the terrorist mind is closed to most authors
Top U.S. lawyers attack Bush's legal exceptions
Operation Prince
Shocking
Office of Profit Bill

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu