These are disconcerting times. All is not going well in this erstwhile secular country of ours. Not at least for me coz ‘I am a Muslim’. Yes the same Muslim, whom u see 24 hours on news channels, being the face behind every crime of terror; the Muslim whose terror acts makes it to the headlines of all the national dailies. The picture of a topi-clad, bearded Muslim terrorist has become the wall paper of your lives. The grand stereotyping of Muslims is on the go!
I’ve never in these 21 years, felt any differences with 95% of my friends who are so called ‘non-Muslims’. I always was a part of all there festivities, and so were they. Incidentally A.R. Rahman, Aamir, Saif, Shahrukh, Salman are my favourites. I love Pakistani bands like Junoon, Jal, Strings, Fuzon, Call and listen to Md.Rafi, Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hassan. Am I being a fundamentalist??? I believe so, as after watching Kay Kay Menon, playing a Hindu Fundamentalist in Mumbai Meri Jaan, saying disgustedly while in a Muslim neighbourhood and listening to a Md. Rafi song: “Yeh log Kishor Kumar kabhi nahi sunenge!” Suddenly I feel ‘Muslim’. It might well be paranoia. But I was not paranoid post 9/11 or even post Gujarat. But something drastically changed now and I cud feel it in my bones.
How easy it is to say as someone said to me after the Delhi blasts: “These are all educated Muslims. Don’t they know that their bombs could also kill their own?” As if anyone with a Muslim name is a terrorist’s very “own”! To feel the brunt of being under suspicion in your own country ain’t that easy. I’m a Muslim and that isn’t a crime, no not yet!!!
