The book opens with an unputdownable 42-page introduction that delves into the root of fear and despair among Muslims who have embraced the country as theirs but are polarised because of the identity they bear.
The shock and shame of communal riots, orchestrated mass violence and lynchings that served political agendas and led to societal divisions during the past decades hits you, as journalist Ghazala Wahab lays bare instances from her life.
Balanced narrative
She meticulously balances her narrative because she wishes to build a bridge of conversation. While she addresses fellow Muslims asking them to embrace modernity and be an integral part of positive change, she also alerts non-Muslim Indians about their perception of Muslims based on prejudice and hearsay, not facts.
Self-examining her own community members, she admits it never struck her how an average Muslim struggles to stay alive because she looked at things from her position of privilege. As she researched, she found equal opportunity and justice are only concepts and that law- making and law-enforcing agencies act in contradiction to vilify and stigmatise Muslims.
It is a vicious cycle, writes Ghazala, because the post-partition Muslims have remained an irrelevant votebank and sought security in their ghettos perpetuated by illiteracy, poverty and unemployment. The mullahs and clergy have easily taken them under their religious fold to exploit them. The general backwardness of the community has fed into a sense of loss of identity and unmet aspirations for Muslim youth, men and women.
Personal experience
In the mid-80s, Ghazala’s father shifted from their ancestral home in a middle class mohalla to an upscale Hindu-majority neighbourhood in Agra. His successful business and hobnobbing with the powerful, gave him the comfort of keeping his family under a security net. But that was till Agra was engulfed in violence post-kar seva after BJP leader L.K. Advani rolled out his rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodha in October, 1990, and was subsequently arrested. As sporadic violence spread across north India, Ghazala’s family wondered where they would be more secure — in their new neighbourhood or in a Muslim majority insulated mohalla.
Ghazala’s father called his brothers to safety and her mohalla uncles requested them to move back to the old Muslim locality. Ultimately everybody stayed where they were as fury was unleashed on their community everywhere. A young collegian then, Ghazala, her parents and three siblings were at home when an angry mob led by a neighbour shouted slogans, smashed windows, pelted stones and damaged their car. Desperate phone calls for help went unanswered.
When Ghazala’s father went to the police station to enquire about the adult males who were forcibly picked up from the mohalla during search operations, senior officials known to him avoided him. Those he thought had accepted him treated him as nothing more than a Muslim when it came to communal division. For Ghazala’s father it was not about being a victim but it was more about the humiliation, a betrayal of belief.