Do I blame the Indian Muslim when he complains of suffocation, of being asked unwarranted, abrasive questions, some so arrogant and contemptible that you wonder why now, why never so intensely these past seven decades or the day when he had made his choice – silly, it seems now to many of the stay-backs in India when Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah finally got his Pakistan and thousands of the faithful from both sides of the divide migrated in opposite directions, drawn by hope. I have since heard some of the stay- at-homes recalling the urgings of Maulana Azad and some other nationalist Muslim leaders of the day urging fellow Muslims not to leave. “This is and has been your home for centuries. It’s your country the stay-back were reassured. Many years after the partition of India I do remember the very sophisticated Pakistani Foreign Minister, Gen Yakub Khan recalling how he and his brother had fought on opposite sides having made their choices when the British Indian Army was divided, one opting for Pakistan and the other for India. And both had lived long useful lives. My meeting with Yakub Khan took place over an informal lunch at the Pakistan High Commissioner’s House to which I and the late Editor of Mainstream, Chatterjee were invited: to break bread with Gen Yakub. A warm man was he, surefooted generally and confident of speech. Such lunches involving Indians and Pakistanis usually follow a certain route which we faithfully did. Kashmir always thawed free flow of views, stood out as a sore thumb. So, we spoke of futility of wars etc., before Yakub turned to the senior man, Mr. Chatterjee, and intoned “Now, you tell, me sir, how are you going to solve the Muslim problem. You, Sir, surely are not going to make bundles of crores of your Muslims and feed the carcasses to fill up the Arabian Sea. There are human dimensions, leaving aside for the moment political, historical or geographical reasons. And if you ask me, many Gen Yakub Khans and Narasimha Raos, later Kashmir still stands there, an unyielding problem, and I hate to say a situation which somehow the ruling BJP dispensation in Delhi relishes, as a potent weapon in its armour. The party loves to crow about it. And, mind you, I maintain this is not because there is something pathologically incompatible between me and the saffronites; indeed, I had a most informal and healty relationship with Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee which survived including his years as Morarji’s Foreign Minister. It was only when the saffron guards took over upon his becoming the Prime Minister that access became scarce.
That’s for background, if you will. Now do tell me what’s the similarity between Mother Teresa and Taj Mahal or between Prayag Raj and Allahabad. No prizes on offer. Yes, even a cursory glance will convince you that it’s more of the same of what we have been dealt these past four years of the saffronite rule under Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. Teresa, you remember, the Christian missionary, the nun, who for decades on end sought to restore some dignity to the lives of the terminally sick, lying on Calcutta streets for decades, was no saint after all. Her Missionaries of Charity, Nirmal Hriday etc, all these were sham. She was actually a gun runner and a supplier of arms to the terrorists. And this after India, her adopted home, had conferred its highest honour – the Bharat Ratna – on her and also the world had acknowledged her as a figure of great compassion honouring her with a Nobel, the Vatican had anointed her as a Saint. The saffron saints were never impressed; she was converting good Hindus into Christianity. (The fact is there was very little life left in all those thousands of men and women, mostly old, whom, her many homes of charity, tended for years with care that defied reason – and compassion, too, if you will. And now you have some nitwit BJP Chief Minister of Jharkhand who has urged New Delhi to take stern action action against the terror factories run in the name of Sisters of Charity. And the Bhagwa CM has found an echo everywhere in the cow belt including of course in neighbouring Bengal which was home to the Mother for decades.If Mamta Banerjee, the Bengal Chief Minister, has expectedly run in to defend the Mother and her Missionaries she is doing what any normal human being would. For Mother was no terrorist. For the State BJP the anti-mother slur is obviously a most welcome dirt heap, enough, it believes, to besmirch the Mother’s memory. Now you know why the Mother’s name is poison to the BJP. Taj Mahal that other Islamic slur on the fair name of Bharat Mata is the next hate word for the moment. The Supreme Court might, for a change, have come down heavily on the State and Central authorities – going to the extent of suggesting demolition of the Taj if it cannot be maintained, the world’s eighth wonder, and the prettiest of monuments which as someone has seen as a tear drop on a lotus leaf. But such is the saffronite hatred of things Islamic that given the chance it would rename every moholla, every gully after one of the RSS deities. It’s just now busy renaming the ancient cultural capital of Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad as Prayag Raj. The priest-turned Chief Minister of Utttar Pradesh Adityanath Yogi, he is already the head of a very Allahabad, largely because of its high special and cultural linkages. Jai Ho prayag raj! whoever he be.