On 11th July, I was at Ahmedabad
international airport, waiting for a flight to Istanbul ( Turkey ).
Twitter was abuzz with arguments on whether we need a uniform civil code
in the country. The sharp divide in opinions was evident and I wondered
if we can ever have a meaningful consensus on the subject. An image of
Indian Muslims being enamored by political parties for them being a minority
but vocal, was quite evident. Generally impoverished and requiring to be
emancipated through education and economic terms, Indian muslims appeared to be
a community struggling to hold on to a viable identity and mainstream harmony.
It appeared to be a community, not free from its own internal social
forcings as well as the boundaries it had built around itself. To an
average Indian, it appeared to be in a state of uncertain stress trying to free
itself from its self bindings in a free State.
I landed in Istanbul some hours later, with
an apprehension that I may not have made the right choice of a country to
travel in Ramadan. Being a Muslim State, I thought Turkey would flummox
me with an extreme exhibition of faith and alienate me in spirit and reality.
I was also apprehensive of a possible disadvantage being a non-Muslim in
a Muslim neighbourhood, that too in their holiest of seasons. But I was
in for a great surprise. There were smiling faces all around. In
spite of being Ramadan, every eatery in town was open to non-muslim like me and everyone made it a point to see that I felt comfortable. The
country was clean, posh and highly sophisticated in comparison to mine, in
spite of some neighborhoods being poorer than the rest. There was no
sense of discrimination or separated identity between muslims and non-muslims
and every one enjoyed the company of the other like the religion did not matter
in this world at all. It was an extremely tolerant world of mutual
respect and mutual restraint.
From there, I landed in Dubai some days
later. The usually bubbling megapolis of modernity was shrouded with the
enormity of Ramadan silence, frequently torn by the high voice of calls for
prayer from the mosques. Eateries were closed, people had fear in their
eyes even to sip a drop of water in the battering heat and humidity of the
land. There was no ambiguity of identity in the air that thickly
descended as an islamic shroud on everyone, regardless of what religion you belonged
to. There was this air of intolerance to what you believed in and a
commanding demand that you better follow the religious dictat of the land if
you cared not to end up in a jail. People clandestinely ate and drank
inside the closed public toilets and threw the wrappers and food waste in the
sink.
When I returned to India, I wondered about
the diversity of Muslim spheres in this world that we live in. From not
so affluent populace striving to preserve its identity in India to the one that
shares free joy with everyone in Turkey to an authoritative society that
imposes its will on others in UAE, I had seen three different worlds in one
small world.
Islamic 'loko bhinna ruchi'.
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