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Mani unplugged
THE WORDSMITH: Mani Shankar Aiyar in New Delhi. Photo: R.V. Moorthy.
WHEN MANI speaks, you don't count. What starts off as an interview can take the form of a lecture, a book reading session, or simply a refresher course on the past or present depending less on your appetite, more on his volition.
What permeates though is erudition of a being, who has an almost a divine control over words. He doesn't speak; he flows, the only hurdles being time and space. These days Mani Shankar Aiyer is in confession mode. Admitting to wearing his secularism on his sleeve Mani has set some of the most difficult questions that Indian polity is facing in his book "Confessions Of A Secular Fundamentalist" and has come out a winner. In this Penguin publication Mani reasons that only a determined and inflexible adherence to secularism can counter communalism. "The inspiration has been my mother. It has been easier for people like me who don't have any religion worth talking about to stay secular but she stayed religious and secular at the same time," says the man who spent his early days in Lahore.
Demolishes cliches
The book demolishes many a cliché, giving fresh perspective into an alien concept, which has been ironically chewed beyond taste both by Indian politicians and media. He takes apart the popular notion that Islam found a footing in India through the sword. "Muslim conquest should not be seen as Islamic conquest. There was a difference of more than 250 years between the time Mohammed Bin Qasim invaded India and Mahmud of Ghazni's first raid. In between, where was the sword? Islam thrived on the inherent anomalies in Hinduism." He says musawwat - the Islamic concept of equality before the Lord - provided a section of Hindus who were not allowed entry in the place of worship an opportunity to redeem their status in the society. In his view British rule did much more damage to us than the Moghul rule. "They robbed us off our self-esteem in a planned way. First they translated our traditional knowledge into Latin and then taught us the same. Max Mueller has borrowed heavily from our scriptures." He keeps frequenting the past and present . From Asoka to Nehru and Tagore to Mahatma's experiments with secularism to capturing the wider external dimension of the concept in countries like Pakistan, Israel and erstwhile Yugoslavia, Mani goes on.
However, what beats all is his incisive and intellectually hilarious conversation with his fellow St. Stephanite Arun Shourie destroying his arguments to pieces. "This kind of cerebral communalism is most dangerous for the society." And to counter this you have to be fundamentalist - of the secular variety.
ANUJ KUMAR
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