“I was frustrated at the unwillingness of people, Hindus and Muslims, to comprehend that a relationship of hate was not natural. There is too much of shared culture, music, poetry, cuisine, architecture, dress, customs of marriage and so much more, over the centuries, for hatred to define relations. This deterioration of relations was a function of ugly politics of power-grab,” tells me esteemed journalist and author Saeed Naqvi, who decided to employ this frustration as a driving force to create his newly released play, The Muslim Vanishes. In this play, as the title suggests, all Muslims vanish from India. What ensues is a profound and highly nuanced attempt by the author to unfurl for us the layers of prejudice and hate that have pervaded our social consciousness, seeped not just in religion-based ideological politics, but also in caste based ideological politics. Before you read this play, perhaps this simple question should be asked by you — what will happen if every Muslim individual vanishes from this country, will the culture of hate and division truly vanish as well? And when you do reach the end of the play, the author suggests that, “Readers will be shocked, astonished, sometimes angry when I cut too close to the bone, but in the end chastened, converted.”
In my interview with Saeed Naqvi, he tells me more about his astoundingly relevant play’s inception, its core, his writing process, and more. Excerpts follow:
Could you acquaint us with the inception of The Muslim Vanishes? What led you towards its creation?
The media space has been saturated at least for three decades with Hindu-Muslim tension, conflict, riots, pogroms but there is no clarity on why this equation is so consistently conflictual. There is no uniform Hindu perspective on the problem, just as there are differences among Muslims on the phenomena. This splintered perspective on Hindu-Muslim relations is quite obviously a function of India’s variety. A country where every denomination of a currency note is indicated in seventeen languages, many of these with classical literatures predating Christ, is not so much a Westphalian nation-state as a multicultural, multi religious, multi lingual civilizational unit contained from the Himalayas, across the holy rivers, right upto the Indian oceans.
This variety is also reflected in the way the two communities relate to each other. Thus, Mapilla Muslims of Kerala, are different from Tamil Muslims, from among whom the Kilakrai Muslims in Ramanathapuram are dis- tinct. Likewise, Bengali Muslims are culturally poles apart from, say, Kashmiris who too find Kargil Muslims a variety unto themselves. There is also no Hindu monolith either — linguistically or culturally. And yet a little noticed but obvious difference between Hindus and Muslims conditions their attitudes towards each other. Muslims live among Hindus, in the work place, common theatres, parks, markets, cinema. Hindus, on the other hand, do not live “among” Muslims. They casually know the odd Muslims in the office. The Hindu is therefore more prone to be afflicted by an apartheid of the mind. This apartheid or separate development, this social unfamiliarity with the Muslim makes it easy for the Hindu to see Muslims as the “other” during periods of stress. Even otherwise, it is difficult to persuade a Hindu friend to visit, say, the Jama Masjid area, for instance, for a cultural experience during Ramadan. The Muslim Vanishes tries to bridge this chasm by making you aware of it in the first place.
What is at the core of this play?
The core of the play is an elaboration of my theory of two interlocking triangles. If I could go back to the university, I would do my Phd on the theory. First, the caste triangle: this has Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishya or the Savarna, the upper caste at the top of the cone. Much the bigger part of the triangle consists of an overwhelming majority of the Avarna or the lower castes, an endless hierarchy. It is so cleverly designed as to give everyone the satisfaction of having a few groups below it. If the word hierarchy was not in the dictionary, we would have to discover it by studying the caste structure.
The second triangle represents communalism. The base of his triangle consists of a motivated extraction of 1200 years of Hindu Muslim history. This base leaves out the great civilizational, cultural commerce between the two communities which is the basis of our composite culture. This baseline is constructed by the communalist on real and invented conflicts between the two. The second line of this triangle consists of India-Pakistan hostility — since Pakistan is a country we have been taught to hate. Third is the Srinagar-New Delhi axis or the Kashmir issue, another acute problem involving Muslims. In brief, Hindu-Muslim, India-Pakistan, Srinagar-New Delhi are one complex of issues. Place these elements in a cauldron and you have vapours of communalism choking you. This triangle is played up generally by the politician to manage turbulence in the caste triangle. This is what “Hindu consolidation” means. In other words communalism is a political device to control the caste pyramid. Communalism has political sponsorship; caste is an ancient social habit.
Why did you decide to employ the genre of play for this work?
As you can make out from the above, the communalism versus caste is far too complex to explain. In a play of ideas, as by Bernard Shaw, the polemics are resolved with greater clarity.
Could you give us a glimpse into your writing process behind this book? What did a day, during your process of writing the book, look like?
Coleridge’s masterpiece Kubla Khan was composed in an opium dream. Consumption of opium was common among the British elite in 18th - 19th centuries. No, I am not an opium addict but I do have my reveries. In one such I dictated the first few pages of the play to my secretary Ramesh Kumar. Every now and again Ramesh would look at me with wonder. “Yeh kya bakwas likh rahey hain aap?” (What nonsense are you writing?)
Were there any major influences, literary or otherwise, that guided your creation of this book?
In the background were poets like Nazir Akbarabadi, Raskhan and all the others who figure us the play. Brecht’s technique of using props, Shaw’s intellectual banter — all these popped up at phases of writing.
Did the creation of this narrative come with roadblocks?
Yes, people I thought were friends in the publishing world returned the manuscript with high praise. I have preserved some of their praise in writing. They chickened because they feared The Muslim Vanishes would be too controversial, given the political climate.
Lastly, what are you working on next?
My life has been a chronicle of wasted time because it is a chronicle unwritten. Journalism covering 110 countries, interviewing Castro, Mandela, Qaddafi, all the Israeli Prime Ministers since Yitzhak Shamir, Iranian and Egyptian Presidents. Working in three continents and surviving as a freelance for 36 years so that I could be independent. All of this in my next book. All those who helped me in my exciting career were Hindus — not one Muslim. So where is the communalism?
This interview is an all exclusive from our March EZ. To read more such articles, follow the link here.
Text Nidhi Verma
Date 08-03-2022