Much like their architecture, the lives of Muslims in India have become objects of exhumation, with the gravel of their dignity and the foundation of their citizenship under constant threat of the bulldozer of raging Hindutva. Not any different from their mosques, their existence lies at the hands of a frenzied Hindutva mob, ever-ready to hollow out the remnants of their respect and honour on this land.
In fact, on every Indian Muslim’s body, there is etched a crevice of the shattered brick of their historic mosque, the Babri Masjid, that awaits another blow, this time from the highest court of the land – that which rarely disappoints in such matters.
The dilapidated body of the Indian Muslim is quite easy to demolish. All one needs is a reminder that others have every right to satisfy their curiosity about the nature of it.
Not to mention, a Muslim’s body in India is open to any analysis or authentication. It is much like a ground of investigation, which, to remind, is carried out with the purpose of the satisfaction of one’s curiosity. And, no constitutional law, act or provision can prohibit this investigation of the Indian Muslim’s body.
Also, the older the body, the more contentment it offers to scrutinise and investigate it. Once the investigation starts, the Muslim body may resist, but since it is too afraid and weak to retaliate, it calls upon other Muslim bodies to protest its diagnosis. The major step to achieving victory over the body is to accompany a mob of ‘investigators’. This accompanying team of scrutinisers must be well-versed with basic war cries including ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and must know how to intimidate the body. If other bodies try to protest any of these actions, the team can and may annihilate them. In case of any further inquiry, the team must remember to state that their annihilation was an outcome of the first body fighting with other bodies that had come in its rescue. This alibi has been found to work for up to 6 bodies and more.
An Indian Muslim body, therefore, remains not just a body. In fact, it is an artefact, a relic to be unearthed and dissected for others. Its silhouettes and contours have on them engraved thousands of scars of hammers and chisels that tried to peer through it. An Indian Muslim body is not mere flesh and blood, but a piece of history etched into skin and bone. It is a mleccha, a standing evidence of exclusion and obliteration, always under the siege of fascism and extreme Hindu nationalism.
Sometimes, it assumes the role of a 400-year mosque, while at other times, it forms itself into a revered dargah of a 13th century Sufi saint. In yet other moments, the body becomes a Muslim settlement accused of standing over a Hindu crematorium. The Muslim body does not even shy away from becoming a woman resisting a Bajrang Dal activist threatening to break into her place and fighting for her right to have a congregation prayer at her home.
The Indian Muslim body is also capable of seamlessly slipping into secular roles including that of a doctor, Ashok Bajaj from Moradabad, who made the mistake of inviting a protest in a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood against himself for selling his house to a Muslim doctor.
To make sense of its historical entanglements, the Indian Muslim body cannot escape its connection to Shah Jahan and his monumental legacy. At times, it takes on the form of the Jama Masjid, burdened with the weight of accusations that it hides remnants of temples beneath its magnificent domes and parapets. In its effort to avoid being solely identified with the Mughals, the Muslim body time and again also aligns itself with the Mamluks, acknowledging even broad historic concepts. And so, it becomes, at various moments, the Adhai Din ka Jhopra – a place waiting to be unearthed under the harsh glare of scrutiny.
In this erratic change and becoming of numerous identities, the Indian Muslim body is snatched off the privilege of possessing an identity of its own. In an exclusive effort of assigning traits and characteristics by the chaperons of Hindu nationalism, the Indian Muslim body is never let to form an individual identity. A Pakistani sometimes, a Bangladeshi or a Rohingya at others, it fails in being called an Indian Muslim body.
In fact, it is reduced to be the “other,” no longer seen as part of the land, but as an object upon which hate can be vented, ideologies enforced and death inflicted.
It is then that it strikes if an Indian Muslim body can ever be fully liberated by the exclusionary Hindu nationalist ideology? Or, like the ruins of the Babri Masjid, is it destined to be forever broken while resisting Hindu chauvinism, always subject to the gaze of those who wish to dictate the narrative of its existence?
Madeeha Fatima is a journalist and writer.
