Like India, my aunt turns 70 this year, and it's just as hard to understand her illogical perception of Muslims as fifth columnists
Students at a madrassa prepare for I-Day celebrations in Lucknow. Pic/PTI
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India turns 70 years tomorrow and my mausiji also turns 70 this year; her life trajectory mirrors that of middle-class India, and so it's worth telling. She is the youngest of six siblings, my mother being the fifth. Like me she was born in Muzaffarpur, Bihar - solidly Hindi-heartland middle-class. She's an awe-inspiring cook and filled with piety - she and I observe chhath puja together - but unlike my mother, she was not interested in books or studying. She was a gorgeous young woman, so much so that my father wanted to marry her to my elder chacha (my father is also one of six siblings). Over the years, chacha has turned out to be an avaricious land-usurper and a dolt; I used to thank God for foiling my father's absurd plans. Nowadays, however, I'm not sure that mausiji and chacha weren't a match made in calendar-art heaven.
Mausiji's husband, aka mausaji, came from a poor family in Mahendru, Patna. After college, he was too short for the uniformed services, so he joined the Intelligence Bureau (IB); since it was a secret agency, my relatives believed he was in the CBI. His career was spent in clerical work or in following individuals. He is not a courageous man, always terrified of decision-making. When drunk, though, he claims he is as good as any IPS; the only difference between officers and foot-soldiers like him was access to information. Having met some IB bosses during my career, I assure you that mausaji is deluded. But we must discount his service to the nation, securing it from enemies within (counter-subversion) and external (counter-intelligence). Mausiji also did her duty, producing three children.
We differ in some beliefs. Mausaji thinks of Muslims as fifth columnists; like most Bihari upper castes, he hates Lalu Prasad for criminality and corruption, though Lalu is no different from other politicians in this regard. The real reason is mausaji's casteism, which always comes out when he is annoyed with someone.
Mausiji's attitude is like General Jack D Ripper's in Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). General Ripper initiates a nuclear war with the Soviet Union to prevent communists... from contaminating his "bodily fluids". Mausiji's fear is similarly visceral. Unlike her husband, she maintains a discreet silence, except for once, two decades ago, when in old Delhi she muttered how a bomb ought to be dropped on the Jama Masjid area.
I never questioned them throughout my life, but in the current environment I tried to locate circumstances in their lives that made them fear/hate Muslims. Our mohalla in Muzaffarpur had no Muslim homes, though my Nana kept a Muslim tenant in the back. There was no nearby mosque whose call to azaan might irritate anyone. Mausaji served in the erstwhile Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA) - IB teams were posted to make periodic treks to keep an eye on the border with China after the 1962 debacle - so no encounters with Muslims there. He also served in the 1980s in J&K - in Poonch, along the Line of Control, and in Udhampur. With his family, he was posted in Moradabad where he possibly watched persons linked to Pakistan; and his longest posting was in Lucknow, where he and mausiji built a house in middle-class Indira Nagar (no Muslim slum here, either).
In the 1990s, they lived in a government colony in Delhi - again zero Muslims - and then in posh DLF, Gurgaon, where Muslims are as rare as polar bears. They live comfortably, in a posh society, mausiji doing satsang and kitty parties with neighbours, mausaji complaining about the government with other retired men, none of them Muslims. They have never lived in a town's old quarters or in a slum.
And yet mausiji-mausaji love Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They don't think demonetisation was all that bad, because Modiji said so. They think Swachh Bharat was a wonderful and necessary initiative for India, though they complain about how they can't visit Muzaffarpur because it remains so dirty. They think the surgical strikes have silenced Pakistan. But mostly, they think Modi has put Muslims "in their place", and they approve.
As India turns 70, their dreams are realised, their children are NRIs and their journey to modest affluence parallels India's. At the moment, they are visiting California, enjoying the weather. They listen to bhajans on their iPhones. I wonder, what nasty things have Muslims done all these years that prevented mausaji from rising from Mahendru Ghat to Wellington Estate? Yet they argue over whether or not Muslims should sing "One-Day" Mataram. Absurdly, their identity is not based on personal accomplishment but on abstract fears about an imagined enemy within. As they reach 70, both India and mausiji will soon need some serious therapy.
Aditya Sinha's crime novel, The CEO Who Lost His Head, is available now. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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