The following is the camera ready version of the story of community relations in India that liberals want to tell the whole world.
There it is. A young male who looks like he could get violent any minute. He is waving an angry finger in the face of an elderly Muslim who appears to be getting ready for prayers. In case you didn’t notice, two powerful foreign leaders have also been tagged in this tweet. And in case Joe Biden is too lazy to watch, they have labelled the video in bold letters. “Hindutva extremists” on one side, “Muslims” on the other.
Why won’t the “Hindutva extremists” just let the Muslims perform their prayers? Why don’t these “Hindutva extremists” just live and let live?
The ‘camera ready’ version distracts us from looking at what is really happening. First, one group of people begin to encroach upon a public space. By the time others wake up and realize what is happening, the space already belongs to someone else in all but name.
For the encroachers, being slow, patient and strategic has paid off. All they have to do now is act with dignity in front of cameras as they assert their new moral title to the land. They get to keep the land and play the victim. The camera will show the other side as thugs.
This is what makes the controversy over namaz in public spaces in Gurugram so unprecedented in the context of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. In the liberal argument, there is no mention of the secular ideal. There is no reference to any constitutional or legal principle. Members of one community want the public land, and so it is theirs. Apparently because they are the “good” community. Or at least the community with the “first right” to resources (famous words, remember?). Anyone who opposes this is an extremist.
How did it become controversial to say that public space belongs to everyone? But quite unbelievably, it has. You can no longer even refer to these spaces as public land. They are now “Muslim prayer sites.”
And “Hindu groups” are now on notice for targeting them. In other words, local Hindus are now invaders for demanding the right to public space.
That headline in The Guardian is not unique. This kind of usage is now common across all forms of media.
The public space of yesterday has become the “namaz ground” of today. And local Hindus now stand accused of interfering with the rights of Muslims to use their newly acquired private space as they see fit.
Seems like one side was caught napping, no?
Again, notice that nobody is even mentioning the legal principles involved. Because there simply isn’t one. Instead, we are watching an altogether new moral principle being manufactured here. If a certain community wants something, it must belong to them. You must not complain. You must not protest.
Where did this new principle come from? We cannot say, but let us read more closely the language of the article in The Guardian
“Usually such prayers are held in mosques but Gurgaon, a city that rose in the 1990s from the brushland on the outskirts of Delhi to serve India’s new middle class, has a severe shortage, with around 13 to cater for a city of more than 1.5 million people.”
A severe shortage? Just 13 places to cater to a city of more than 1.5 million people. Listen for the tone. They make it sound like they are talking about the shortage of a public amenity, don’t they? Not enough schools, not enough hospitals, not enough mosques.
Wait a second! It is not the role of the government to provide prayer spaces. Private individuals and communities may establish institutions of their faith, on land they own. They can’t just take public land if they feel that they don’t have enough.
But the Guardian article works very hard to gloss over this point. The way they write, it feels like someone somewhere will soon compile a Global Mosque Index and find that India ranks something like 109th out of 120 countries in mosques per capita. And that the rank has dropped 6 places since last year. What is the government doing about this?
It’s not just this Guardian article. Read this article by Hilal Ahmed on the same issue.
Namaz on busy streets? Don’t you love the author chooses not to make a distinction between various types of spaces? Namaz inside a functional Hindu temple? Who am I to say no if the temple administration says yes. In the corridor of a hospital? I would say that a hospital corridor should be left open for patients. So if it is a state run hospital, the answer is no for sure. On a busy street? Definitely not. You can’t block the street because it belongs to us all. So the answer varies in each case, depending on the scenario.
But the point of that article is that it doesn’t matter. Whether in a hospital, a train, or on a street, the right to perform namaz anywhere and everywhere comes first. And if you don’t like that, they will label you bigoted.
The argument seems to be that public space in India must be reorganized around the practices of one religion. You know, as in Middle Eastern theocracies.
There is another curious angle to this controversy over namaz in Gurugram. Read this line from the Guardian article.
“They even sought permission from the administration and by 2018 the Muslim community had been granted permission for outdoor prayers in 108 places across the district.“
Everyone knows that the liberal media, especially the Guardian, is no fan of the BJP. But look how the Guardian plays this story. They don’t blame the BJP for allowing this. Instead, they wave this permission from the local authorities as legitimization for the religious takeover of public space. Like I said, they are thinking about namaz facilities as public amenities that the state is somehow legally required to provide to citizens. Apparently, the Indian state failed to provide enough mosques to “cater” to a population of 1.5 million. And so the least they could do was offer public land as unofficial namaz grounds.
And read the sense of hurt in this line:
” … the Gurgaon administration reduced the number of namaz sites from 108 to 37, to the dismay of the Muslim leaders who felt the administration was bowing to the demands of fanatics. “
Indeed, where are the priorities of the Indian state? As it is, the population is already dealing with a severe shortage of prayer areas. And they go ahead and reduce the availability of even unofficial prayer areas!
This idea of treating mosques as part of essential infrastructure of a city has been everywhere in the media coverage around this incident. And the media has been acting as if it is the moral duty of people to come to aid of those who are suffering from this lack of critical infrastructure. When one Hindu individual offered his own house as a namaz space, the media was ecstatic. Well, that person can do whatever he wants with his house, but I find it hard to see him as a hero. Worshipers of one particular faith are not humanitarian aid workers. But they made it sound like they were.
Here is what I found most interesting. Despite the extreme media pressure to virtue signal on this issue, nobody else in the local population volunteered their home or business space. The media may think prayer spaces for one community are a public amenity, but hardly anyone is fooled by this.
So there is hope. Not everyone is woke.