Protest Fast Against January 22 Production

On January 19th, 2024 I announced a three-day fast in a statement reproduced below. I also made this statement in Hindi. During the fast I would do readings and talk about various matters connected with the reason for my fast which you can see here - Readings from Tagore on Day 2 of Fast; Day 2 of the Fast: Readings from Louis Fischer's A Week with Gandhi, A Terrible Morning to Wake Up To, Day 3 of Fast. A ghazal to cheer you up , Day 3: Last Reading of Fast. After the three days, I broke my fast with a teaspoon of honey from my mother. I was inspired to write this poem We Will Cajole the Sullen Earth on breaking my fast.

 

Presenting my statement on Facebook & YouTube

Dear friends and fellow travelers,

With the forthcoming event in Ayodhya on January 22, the atmosphere here in Delhi, already famous for being polluted in a material sense, has thickened to a spiritually poisonous and unbreathable concentrate of Hindu chauvinism, malice and bullying. I am deeply anguished by all this as an Indian and as a Hindu. And after thinking hard about what I can do, I have decided to go on a fast starting tomorrow, Saturday the 20^th , and ending on Tuesday the 23^rd , a day after the January 22^nd production at Ayodhya.

I am doing this first and foremost as an expression of my love and sorrow to my Muslim fellow citizens of India. I cannot let this moment pass without saying as loud as I can to my Muslim brothers and sisters that I love you, and that I condemn and repudiate what is being done in the name of Hinduism and nationalism in Ayodhya.

I am also doing this as an expression of my love for my Mughal heritage. This is not only about feeling protective towards someone else. It is about my culture and my ethos. 

I love dhrupad and khayal music. I love kathak. I love the Mughal and Sultanate buildings in my city of Delhi – I cannot imagine Delhi without the Qutub Minar, or Humayun’s Tomb, or the Sabz Burj. Not to mention the Taj Mahal next door in Agra.

I revere the magnificent culture spawned by the court of Awadh under Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. I see the Delhi Sultanate as also having given something precious to India, as it was with them that the Sufis and Amir Khusroe’s father came here. In North India we owe so much of our language and culture to Hazrat Amir Khusroe. He adopted Hindavi into a language of poetry which later spawned the grand languages of Hindi and Urdu. He made innovations in music that laid the foundation of Shastriya Sangeet – the classical music of North India  - of which we are all so proud. The list is endless.

There is no part of our high classical culture in North India which does not bear the stamp of the Sultanate, the Mughals, the nawabs and the nizams. This is not to say that any of these traditions were the sole product of these rulers, or that it was Muslims that enlightened us. On the contrary, this culture is the result of the mingling of the native arts, traditions and languages with those that were brought by the Sultans and the Mughals. A mingling which only happened because of the embrace by them of the existing culture.

Can we speak of Amir Khusroe’s music without speaking of Gopal Naik, the famous Hindu court musician from whom Khusroe learnt so much? Can we speak of Hindustani Classical music or Kathak without speaking of the Dhruvapadas or the Rasas of the Natya Shastra? Can we speak of Tansen without speaking of Pandit Haridas? Can we have Kathak without the traditions of the raasleela, and the performance of the Ramayana and the Mahabharat in India from times immemorial? Can we have Dhrupad without the worship of Lord Shiva? Can we have Dhamar without Holi? 

Read the writings of Abul Fazl, the court biographer of Akbar. See how he sings praises of Hindu beliefs, practices, sciences and philosophies. Do you know that Akbar commissioned a Persian translation of the Mahabharata to showcase what a great culture the Hindus had? And he was such an admirer of the Mahabharata, that when the translation was read to him he scoffed and said that it was not good enough. 

Look up the work that Nawab Wajid Ali Shah did with kathak compositions, dance dramas and poetry – they were all inspired by the traditional celebration of Radha-Krishna by his Hindu subjects.

This is not meant to be a lecture in history so I will stop here, but the examples go on and on. And I have given them to explain that when I say that I love my Mughal heritage, I am saying that I love the composite culture that grew out of the Hindu and Muslim traditions of this land. A culture in which you cannot pick out what is Muslim and what is Hindu anymore; or what was native and what was foreign.

It has been a millennium - a millennium - of intermingling, and of reciprocal inspiration and admiration. Influences are from everywhere. This is not an imposition of foreign things, it is how a culture develops in conversation with other languages, other aesthetic traditions, other faiths and other philosophies. 

The dramatic form that is described in the Natya Shastra emerged from a culture that branched out of the encounter of the subcontinent with the Greeks. Are you going to throw that out also?

If you keep throwing things out by calling them foreign or not-Hindu, then what will we be left with? 

The culture that grew under the Mughal empire was not imposed, it was not developed anywhere else, it grew from here, from this soil and is unique to this land.

And let me tell you that I do not consider my only heritage to be Mughal. I come from a mixed background of Tamil Brahmin and Punjabi Sikh – and I love and cherish all those parts of my heritage too. 

My husband has mixed Rajasthani Jat and Jat Sikh heritage with a family history in the military and I have been delighted to adopt his legacy, with all his tales of valour and chivalry, as my own.

In the work that I do helping Indian families abroad whose children have been snatched by cruel foreign child services agencies, I inevitably end up learning about the culture and religion that they come from, and I found that they would seep into me. From my Bengali families I was introduced to Maa Durga whom I now celebrate with as much joy as my Bengali friends. From a recent case involving a Jain family, I have been intrigued enough to start studying some Jain scriptures. And this behaviour, this pattern, this life history is not unique to me. It is repeated in countless Indians of all ethnic and religious backgrounds all over the country for centuries.

Hindutvavadis insist that you need one religion, one culture and one language to develop a coherent identity. It is simply not true. You can equally develop a cosmopolitan and porous identity. It is not a question of what you exclude or include, but of values and of conviction. 

And this is not some new, modern idea. India has always been a land of diversity and these question of identity, community, authenticity and social division have always been there. And we have always been faced with a choice - to be open or to be closed. This is a conversation going back millennia. 

Emperor Ashoka in the 3^rd century BC said "पियदसी राजा सर्वता इचति सवे पासंडा वसेयु, सवे ते सयामाम च भाव- सुधिम् च इचति ।" [Meaning:] It is always my wish for persons of all faiths live on my lands. For they all essentially believe in good thinking and good conduct. "पूजेतया तू एव पर-पासंडा तेन-तेन प्रकारणेना ।"- Find numerous ways of honouring those of other beliefs. "एवम् हि देवानंपियस इच्छा किंति सव - पासंडा बहु - स्रुता च असू कलाणागमा च असू ।" "बहु - स्रुता " "कलाणागमा" - "It is the desire of the King that you should be broad of knowledge and seek to understand others’ beliefs. Cultivate an attitude of friendliness and openness to all."

This is the 3rd century BC. It is not some Western import. It's one of the greatest Samrats that India ever saw.

Two millennia later in the 16^th century, Emperor Akbar is saying the same thing:

“He is a man who makes Justice his guide on the path of inquiry, and takes from every belief what is consonant with reason. Perhaps in this way the lock, whose key has been lost, may be opened.”

“Notwithstanding that at all periods of time [this is from the Ain-e-Akbari], Hindustan has never been lacking in prudent men with excellent resolutions and well-intentioned designs, there are misunderstandings and quarrels between its different religions. 

“Through the apathy of princes each sect is bigoted to its own creed and dissensions have waxed high. Each one, regarding his own persuasion as alone true, has set himself to the persecution of other worshippers of God.

“Were the eyes of the mind possessed of true vision, each individual would withdraw from this indiscriminating turmoil and attend rather to his own solicitudes, than interfere in the concerns of others so that dissensions within and without can be turned to peace and the thornbrake of strife bloom into a garden of concord."

Five hundred years later Gandhiji says the same thing: “The essence of true religious teaching is that one should serve and befriend all. I learnt this in my mother’s lap. You may refuse to call me a Hindu. I know no defense except to quote a line from Iqbal’s famous song: "मज़हब नहीं सीखता आपस में बैर रखना", meaning, religion does not teach us to bear ill-will towards one another.”

So I personally have found no difficulty in embracing diverse ideas and practices while all the time thinking of myself as a Hindu. In my personal practice, for wedding or functions in my family I have rituals conducted in the manner of my paternal grandmother – as the homam is done among Tamils because, personally, I prefer the way Sanskrit is pronounced by the Tamil purohits and the way the puja is done. But that is because that is how I grew up seeing pujas. 

This does not stop me from feeling shraddha, astha and gaining comfort in any place of worship – whether Nizamuddin Dargah or the Vatican or Jama Masjid or the Ganeshji Mandir built by my paternal grandfather here in Delhi on Baba Kharag Singh Marg. Or my personal favourite temple – the magnificent Brihadeshwara temple built by Rajarajachola in Tanjore which is a few minutes’ drive from my ancestral village in Tamil Nadu.    

I am not an orthodox Hindu. I do not know all the mantras or observe the fasts or the dietary taboos or pray every morning or regularly go to any temple. But I don’t see the votaries of Hindutvavad as being very orthodox either. All our saffron twitter influencers, our saffron actors, our bhakt news personalities live very modern lives. They are not living the traditional orthodox Hindu way, whether in marriage, food habits, clothes or lifestyle. Even the January 22 function is not following the Hindu orthodox way - the Shankaracharyas are complaining that it is not being done according to the strict traditions.

For me this is not an issue. Hinduism is not a hidebound faith. For every shastric way of conducting some prayer there is always an upay around it. This is the openness of Hinduism and its constant reminder to us, to Hindus, to keep the focus on the spirit of things and not the material side, even when conducting prayers.  

For me Hinduism is all the stories of our gods and goddesses which somehow define my very existence. It is like they are always present with their epic stories, and great wars, and loves, and philosophical dialogues in an unseen but very real drama that is always going on around me, and filling my inner world with colour, counsel and comfort. Everything comes alive with them, and becomes an offering to them. When I bow to my harmonium or the stage (as my Muslim Ustads have taught me to) Devi Saraswati comes before my eyes. When I was exhausted and frustrated as a young mother with my naughty toddlers, it was the tales of Yashodha driven to distraction by the mischievous Krishna that gave me comfort and understanding. Feminists will start groaning when I say this, but when I gave up work to become a full-time mother, and everyone looked at me as though I was an alien, I found a wellspring of strength and self-assurance in the feminine Hindu ideal of seva  – of devotion, sacrifice and service – in which you forget yourself and give everything – tan, man, dhan – to serving those, whom it is your duty to serve. 

So I am very sincere when I say that I think of myself as a Hindu. This is what Hinduism is to me. And if I am not a Hindu or if this is not Hinduism then you come and you say it to my face.

Again and again we are reminded by the Hindutvavadis that the Mughals invaded us. Yes, the first Mughal came here as a conqueror. But he did not take Delhi from any Hindu ruler. Whom did Babar fight in Panipat?  It was Ibrahim Lodhi. Before that he defeated Daulat Khan in Punjab. 

Let us be clear, the Mughals entered India with the conquest of a Muslim by a Muslim. In fact, it was the conquest by a Muslim of several Muslims. Before defeating Lodhi, Babar had conquered the Afghans in Kabul. Some historians say that there might have even been proposals of an alliance between Babur and Rana Sanga, the Rajput king, to fight Ibrahim Lodi together. That alliance did not happen, but when Ibrahim Lodi was defeated by Babar, his brother joined forces with Rana Sanga in order to try and defeat Babur. So Babar’s was not by any means a simple story of a Muslim conquest of India.

I am not going to say that Babur’s victory here was not without its pathos. Conquest is terrible in its violence and destruction. No doubt each conquest is the end of something, the death of something. And I can imagine that there would have been an adjustment that Hindus would have had to make, especially in the initial years, being ruled by non-Hindus. Although that adjustment would have already have begun to have happened many, many years before the Mughals got here. Because Muslim rulers, conquerors were coming here since the 8^th century and they were here by the 10th century. 

But the point is that Mughal rule in India was never particularly focussed on Islam. That was the time of kings and conquests. It was the age of imperialism. And it was precisely to end imperialism, to end blood feuds and war that people turned to ideas of democracy, pluralism, secularism and pacifism. Ideas that we in India are recklessly rejecting in the name of some invasion 1000 ago and 500 years ago. Is it not possible to say: can’t we just move on from all this?

The Mughals were also not enemies of the Rajputs for all the 500 hundred years that they ruled here. They entered into marriage alliance with Rajput Kings. Some of their senior-most generals and officials were Rajputs. Their clothes, architecture and culture took so much from the Rajputs. 

Get into your car, drive out of Delhi, and within minutes you are in Rajput territory, with their forts, palaces and temples all around. Were they erased? Were they taken over by the Mughals? No. They were right there, a stone’s throw from the Mughal capital.

This is why the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation was such a lie when it claimed to be fighting 500 hundred years of Hindu ghulami. Mughal rule was nothing like that. It was about the ambitions of kings and conquerors; and neither Hinduism nor Islam played any other than an ancillary role in all this. 

Except for Aurangzeb none of the Mughals were very observant. They drank wine, consumed opium, they preferred the Sufis over the Ullema. Akbar was even accused of being un-Islamic, his Din-e-Ilahi was seen as a direct challenge to the Muslim orthodoxy. Even the name that he took was objectionable to the orthodoxy. [They said] how can he call himself "Akbar" it comes from Allahu Akbar.

So whatever you say about the pain of Mughal invasion, it did not give birth to centuries of Hindu repression or enslavement. It gave birth to a beautiful culture that took nothing away from Hindu religion or Hindu culture.

And now we come to the vexed question of conversions and breaking of temples by invaders. From today’s point of view, both are wrong. But let us be clear, first and foremost, about the limits of the claimed historical wrong. We are not talking about hundreds of years of repression of Hinduism, we are not talking about a state policy of conversion to Islam, we are not talking about of mass building-over of temples with mosques. While such things did occur both before, during and after the Mughals, it was not the policy of the Mughals to convert Hindus or break temples in India. In fact, they built temples, patronised native arts, and many of them, like Akbar, made huge efforts in stopping religious prejudice, persecution and maintaining communal harmony here.

So, at most we are talking of a handful of mosques, built hundreds of years ago, on the one hand; coming up in a context and a society that no longer exists here, in terms of its power structures and how a ruler in chosen, and on the other hand, causing hurt, mistrust, instability and division in the fabric of our society along the length and breadth of our country. 

Look at what happened in Manipur when old antagonisms were provoked. There is no justification for stoking such deep and lasting social turmoil for the sake of destroying a few mosques. 

And it never ends. You heard what the Karnartaka BJP MP said about wanting to demolish mosques in Karnataka. Why can’t we simply say that we have better things to do than endlessly fight over mosques and build temples? 

The worst thing about these temple agitations is the ugly feelings they provoke; feelings that take us as far away as it is possible to go from religion. I was about fifteen years old when the Ram Janma Bhoomi agitation started, with LK Advani’s Rath Yatra. My entire school was for it. My entire school. There is no ugly statement about Muslims that is made today, that I did not hear from my fellow students in school. I will never forget the malice in their eyes; the spite dripping from their lips. I will never forget the glee with which they would wave the tapes of Sadhvi Ritambra... wave the tapes... which they would play in their cars on the way to school. But you know what, I never ever, ever, ever, ever, before, then or after, heard them talk about Lord Ram, or any other god. Never.

It was the same with BJP supporters when I went to college. That was when the Babri Masjid fell. The saffronites were never short of snarky comments about Muslims in my college but I never saw them express or demonstrate any devotion to any god, or any eagerness to go to any temple. And there was nothing particularly dharmic or Indic about these people and their families either. They lived a life which was no different from any secular, liberal family, save in their abuse of Muslims.

It was never about devotion to Lord Ram. It was all, all only and only about Hindu chauvinism and insulting Muslims.

How can anyone celebrate a temple built on the back of such lies, violence, spite and vengefulness? How can this be squared with the teachings of Hinduism? Let us accept that there was a cause for revenge in building this temple....let us accept that there was a cause for revenge......how is such a motivation of revenge and anger, how is it justified in Hinduism? Show me where Hinduism tells you to take revenge and to act in anger. Show that to me.

Take the Bhagavad Gita - I hope those rejoicing at the building of this mandir consider the Bhagavad Gita to be a Hindu text? What does the Gita say about morality in action? It says that your acts can be moral only if you perform them selflessly, in the spirit of duty, as an offering to god, and not to fulfil your desires and wishes. According to the Bhagvad Gita no act of revenge or anger or with an eye to the fruits of action is a moral act. कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते, मा फलेषु कदाचन. We all know this. It's what the Gita says.

Look at what the Gita says about anger, acting in anger: "क्रोधाद्भवति सम्मोहः - Anger plunges you into Maya, into Delusion - सम्मोहात्स्मृतिविभ्रम: -  Delusion erases your Smriti, your Knowledge, whatever you have learnt, your shastras- स्मृतिभ्रंशाद् बुद्धिनाशो - once you forget your knowledge you lose your mind - buddhinasho -  बुद्धिनाशात्प्रणश्यति  -  once you lose your mind, you're destroyed. 

The Gita starts with Arjun saying to Krishna that he does not want to fight. We know that famous scene. And what is Krishna’s first response - you have to fight, rise up warrior - "तस्माद् युध्यस्व भारत". Get up you are a warrior, you must fight or you will be reviled by the world.  This is the 18th shloka in  the 2nd chapter of the Gita. So if that is the simple message of the Gita - be  warrior, go and fight - why does it carry on after that for 18 chapters? The simple answer is already given in Krishna's first reply - you have to fight this war, you can't just walk away, you can't just think about whether it's your brother or your uncle.....What more was there left to to be said for the Gita to carry on for 16 chapters more?

Does Krishna repeat his sayings about the duty of a warrior, and how a king cannot run from the battlefield? No. The dialogue goes on, and on and on for 16 more chapters because there is so much more to question about what is moral action; what is a Dharma Yudh. Because even when we breathe, the Gita says this, we kill so many tiny beings, so how can we humans ever speak of moral action?  

All those 18 chapter that follow the initial exchange where the simple answer is given - you must be a proud soldier, you must fight, you must do your duty - the entire 18 chapters are a deep reflection on this question, that you must fight a Dharma Yudh, but what is a Dharma Yudh?  

And the answer that emerges is that you can never truly renounce action; you can never be free of karma. Simply in living, by existing you perform karma. But equally, you must always be ethical in your karma, in your actions. And how do you do this? The answer of the Gita to this question - How can you keep your moral purity while engaging in any act, whether eating or breathing; or killing your brothers and uncles in a war? How do you maintain your moral purity when to act is inevitable and the answer is what we call 'nishkaama karma'. Acting without desire, without greed, without anger, without self-interest. Does the slogan like 'मंदिर वहीं बनेगा' strike you as anything but angry and vengeful?

This is what the Mahabharat says about anger - "अक्रोधेन जयेत् क्रोधम् - defeat anger with calm, defeat krodh with akrodh - असाधुं साधुना जयेत् defeat bad conduct with good conduct - जयेत् कदर्यम् दानेन - win over meanness, smallness, with generosity, with giving, with charity - जयेत् सत्येन चानृतम् defeat falsehood with the truth.  This is how a Hindu is supposed to fight and conduct himself. Freeing himself from the maya of anger; and never using wrong action to counter what he believes in wrong action.

And we all know Gandhiji's, one of his favourite sayings - “Ahimsa Parmo Dharma”. 

Manu Smriti – it's the fashion nowadays to laugh at the Manu Smriti but I would be happy if Hindus would follow the Manu Smriti. Because it's full of many things. It does not only talk about caste. All the Hindu scriptures talk about caste. So if that is going ot be a criteria for us rejecting and mocking this then we have to reject all of them. 

I saw that if you want to be a Hindu, then be a Hindu. Let's look at what the Manu Smriti says about the "दशकं धर्मलक्षणम्" - the 10 lakshan, - the principles of Dharma: "धृति: क्षमा दमोऽस्तेयं शौचमिन्द्रियनिग्रह: । धीर्विद्या सत्यमक्रोधो दशकं धर्मलक्षणम् ।।" Patience, forgiveness, self-restraint, not to take that which another’s, purity, abstention (sayyam, control, restraint, proportionality in action  - are you seeing any of that in what happened in the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation and everything that has followed? righteous action, pursuit of knowledge, truth, renouncing anger - again and again it comes - renounce your anger, akrodh, a-krodh.

And this is everywhere. Some people who...I think there is a certain amount of confusion which is also stepped in the mind of well-meaning people in India, you know they say that we are not taught the classics, the Indian classic, and we are away from our culture....we don't have a limited cultural heritage like you see in the West where you have to be taught the classics. Frankly, I've met very few people in the West who actually had read the Greek and the Latin texts and there is a dispute also as to whether that is actually their inheritance or more connected with the Orient. 

Anyway, the point is the knowledge in the Hindu system is preserved and passed on in many, many ways. Firstly, there is an oral tradition. Secondly, if you participate in any of the art forms of the sub-continent, each art-form is a complete teaching of everything in itself. In fact even our scriptures are like this. You know why they say that after you...anybody who has read the Valmiki Ramayan - you should touch their feet because they are very wise. I have read the Valmiki Ramayan, parts of it. We performed it over 10 days once. Because all these scriptures, even the Bhagwad Gita, they dont - unlike Western knowledge forms - they don't just explain one point. The Valmiki Ramayan is a description of an entire culture, civilisation, everything with it - from the landscape, to the trees, to the sculpture. So if you participate, if you go to the temple, instance, the way in which our gods and goddesses are shown by the shilpakars in the old system, in the traditional system, there is a serenity and a calm. There is a message in those statues just in the way in which the gods and goddesses, the devis and devatas are represented. This smile, which is neither "ha,ha,ha,ha", nor stern. That smile is a very important message of Hinduism. 

So you don't have to be a vidvan in Sanskrit and be taught texts and all to know this, to imbibe our Hindu values. You don't need any of it. And what I find very ironical is what this regime is doing to our iconography. The way in which they are showing these graphics and portraits of our different gods. Of Lord Shiva with the hair flying and the anger, and the ...this is not our iconography. They are showing Hanuman almost like he is a lion, growling. This is not it. If you are concerned about our culture and our our civilisation you should be looking at all of these things.    

So for all these reasons I say that whatever is happening in Ayodhya on January 22^nd  and the entire build-up to it that has been taking place is a lie, it is a celebration of wickedness, and it a a desecration of Hinduism, and it is an affront to our civilisational heritage. And I am doing this fast as an act of protest and sorrow. I will start tomorrow and I will continue till Tuesday the 23rd because I don't want to break my fast on the day of the production in Ayodhya. I will take be taking liquids and some sugar and salt to keep my health in balance.

And I have some family matters that need to attend outside my house which I will try to do. I hope that I will be able to do so. Otherwise, I will be at home, and I will log on from time to time, and we can keep talking. I will do readings from Tagore, from Gandhi, from Martin Luther King. In this deep tie of despair and loss maybe we an find some margdarshan from the great people who have come from this land and who have been inspired by by people from this land.  

Jai Hind.

Two weeks after this, Hindutvavadis created a controversy about my fast and ran a three-week campaign of abuse and intimidation against me and my family in the press, television news channels and social media which you can read about here. This episode inspired me to start this blog. It also inspired another poem 'One day, one day'.