On November 3, just about a month ago, my dear friend and colleague Faisal Khan was arrested for doing namaz in a Hindu temple in Mathura. He was about to go outside to pray, but the priest invited him to pray right in the temple compound. Faisal bhai is being charged with praying in the temple without permission, with an intent to cause communal disharmony.
Faisal bhai is on the advisory board of my organisation, Hindus for Human Rights. We are in regular touch because his work of peacemaking takes him to temples and mosques, and I am myself devoted to interfaith dialogue and unity. Faisal bhai is a devout Muslim, but he can also recite Hindu prayers and scriptures with more authority and passion than most Hindus I know.
A few months ago, I interviewed Faisal bhai for a blog on present-day nonviolent resistance movements. Every time I broached politics, he steered the conversation towards love. He said, “Of course I am very concerned about the state of the Indian democracy. It is a challenging time, I don’t deny that. A dark time. Some people think I am mad, but I maintain that the only way we will bring light to this darkness is with even more truth and love. Khudai Kidmatgar is doing it, but we need to do more. We must take from Gandhi’s example and Bacha Khan’s example, and go among the people with love and humanity. And the most important thing is to work with both Muslim and Hindu youth.”
What does it say about our world, about India, that a man that represents love and peace is in prison, accused of inciting communal disharmony, and denied bail twice?
This time last year, my organisation along with so many others in the diaspora took to the streets to protest the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens.
Sunita with her son Gautama and a friend at an anti-CAA rally in NYC, in January 2020. Photo: Special arrangement
But things seem so much worse than they did a year ago. More activists and dissenters have been imprisoned – Faisal bhai is one of thousands in a growing list of prisoners of conscience. Amnesty India has been shut down. The mainstream media in India speaks of a parallel universe to the one I am aware of: one in which freedom of speech, protest, expression, thought and belief are being diminished to the extent that I wonder if India can still be called a free country.
In the past month, I have been working daily on the #FreeFaisalKhan campaign. We were part of a press conference as soon as Faisal bhai was arrested, and will soon have a second press conference. We have been mobilising Hindus to defend Faisal bhai. We have launched a petition, and have been promoting it. Rajmohan Gandhi and Anand Patwardhan, both of whom are close to Faisal bhai, wrote heartfelt appeals for his release. Anand ji also made a short video on Faisal bhai’s arrest, in both English and Hindi. We cannot and will not give up.
Watch: Who Is the Man Arrested for Offering Namaz In a Temple? Hear from His Friends
And yet, I feel powerless. Are the things we are doing making any difference, or worse, causing the enemies of justice to be even more entrenched in their position? Some of the conversations I have had during this month of trying to bring attention to this crisis have been painful and discouraging..
One Hindu friend who didn’t think Faisal should be in prison, still felt the need to ask: Is there any mosque in the world that would allow aarti?
I don’t know if there are mosques that would allow aarti. This is a question for Muslims to answer, not me. I know that if Faisal bhai ran a mosque, he would allow aarti.
For my part, even if not a single mosque in the world would allow aarti, I would still ask that Hindu temples remain open to all. In the Bhagavad Gita, when Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, “If anyone offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it,” he didn’t say he is only addressing Hindus. Hindu philosophy and faith are expansive and inclusive, and invite us to see the divine not only in each other, but in every leaf, flower, river and mountain.
Is our faith as Hindus so insecure today that we need to constrain and limit this universal and eternal notion of the divine?
The Taittiriya Upanishad tells us, Atithi Devo Bhava. Atithi means guest or stranger, and we are being told, “Be one for whom the guest or stranger is God.” And it doesn’t describe atithi in any way. It doesn’t say “atithi of the same faith, race or opinion.” The stories of our Gods include so many instances when God arrives in disguise, and people are either blessed or cursed depending on how they treat the stranger. I believe that the Nand Baba Temple priest did see his atithi, Faisal bhai, the way the Upanishads taught. The video and photos of the visit shows pleasant exchanges: Faisal bhai reciting the Ramcharitmanas, and the priest inviting Faisal Bhai to have prasad.
However, four days later, the same priest filed the FIR against Faisal bhai. When an aggressive journalist asked Faisal bhai repeatedly about this just before his arrest, Faisal bhai refused to speak badly of the priest. Faisal Khan is the best kind of Indian, the best kind of human. He sees no difference between us, he devotes his life to peace and harmony between us all, and he refuses to focus on the negative, but instead lives and spreads love. Why are we so threatened by Faisal Khan’s message of love that we need to imprison him?
Also read: Making Dua in a Hindu Household, or My Earliest Memories of a Secular India
Recently, a prominent Hindu priest in India, who cannot go on the record for his safety, told me: “They (the BJP government) don’t care about Badshah Khan and Khudai Kidmatgar. As far as they are concerned, India was born in 2014. Any of us who care for Hindu-Muslim unity are a problem for them.”
I wept during this conversation because I desperately want this priest to stand up in our press conference and say these words openly. I understand that he is a good man, on the side of truth, but he has to be responsible to his temple and his family. He does not want to land up in jail.
I ask anyone reading these words to remember that there are many like this Hindu priest, who are decent and kind, but are not yet speaking up openly. I will keep pushing Hindus to speak up because otherwise India will keep moving towards Hindutva authoritarianism (if not fascism). My deepest fear is that they will only speak when it is too late.
Sunita Viswanath is a co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), a US-wide human rights advocacy group that is committed to the ideals of multi-religious pluralism both in the United States and India, the country of her origin. She was honoured by President Barack Obama at the White House in 2015 as a “Champion of Change” for her work. Sunita has edited Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future (Palgrave McMillan), a book of essays.
