Say no to Racism- Part II

May be its me and you who doesn't require a name to called in the society but this society has the vision set that way. Read this

What did you see in him?" asked the immigration officer as he stamped Tarla Karnik-Khan's passport. He was referring to her Muslim husband

. Her 10-year-old son stood within earshot.

Tarla's family had no objections to her marrying family friend Rizwan, but her encounters with the Establishment have convinced Tarla that Muslims face a black, bleak future, especially if they dare to marry Hindu girls. It was bad enough that the 1984 Mumbai riots had destroyed Rizwan's home. When she and Rizwan went a year later to give notice of their impending marriage to the Marriage Registrar, the clerk there muttered, loud enough for them to hear, "This is happening too frequently now".

There should be a special bravery award for every non-Muslim, especially a Hindu girl who dares to marry a Muslim boy. The latest heroine is Thane's Chaitali Shah, who had to almost fight death which came in the form of wrathful relatives, and a conniving police, to reach court and get back to her husband, Naeem Ansari.

The feudal notion of women as property, and as repositories of family and community honour make any inter-religious marriage risky. But when a Hindu girl marries a Muslim, she fights not only her family, but also the entire Hindu-dominated Establishment.

During the 92-93 riots, knowing they enjoyed a free rein, mobs went all out to target Hindu women who were married to Muslim men. Neighbours dragged Zainabbi Pathan by her hair, tried to tie her to an electric pole, set her on fire and then stabbed her leg to prevent her from running. As policemen watched, the 35-year-old Bandra resident begged, "Maaf karo". Her dying declaration described her plight-"They were angry because being a Hindu I had married a Muslim."

Twenty-two-year-old Reshma Umar Makki was luckier. Only her home was ransacked repeatedly by neighbours who were looking for her husband. They kept taunting her, "Why did you marry him? Couldn't you find a Hindu boy?" Again, the police did not interfere.

Interviews with women of all ages who've married Muslims show little has changed over the years. In 1969, the year free India saw its first major Hindu-Muslim riots, a hesitant Neema decided to marry the Muslim man she had been in love

with through school and college after her uncles, rich Sindhi businessmen, threatened to get the Jan Sangh to attack him. In 1977, a determined Mukta rushed back from her native village where she had been packed off, to tell the police that she wanted to marry Iqbal, who lived in the neighbouring chawl . He had spent the night in the Colaba lock-up after her elder brother had filed a complaint.

In 1993, when the city was still raw from the riots, Padma had to stand and watch as a local inspector warned her boyfriend that next time he got a complaint from her college principal about his hanging around the college he would break his legs. What was a nice Hindu girl like her doing with a Muslim, the inspector asked Padma, leering at her bare legs. Did she think this miya would allow her to display them if they got married? Conscious of his duty as a Hindu, he even called up her family to inform them what their girl was up to.

Padma went ahead and married Abbas regardless, only to be threatened by her own aunt from Delhi, who couldn't take the sight of her niece in a burqah. "You two won't get away with this. I'll see to it that they come for you," she warned.

Last year, the mysterious death of Rizwanur Rehman in Kolkata, the computer graphics teacher who was married to an industrialist's daughter, shocked the nation. But long before that Kolkata's top police officers proved that they were no different from Mumbai's communalised force. Marxists have always known that their ideology did not prevent their own comrades from having strong communal prejudices.

Sometime in the 70s, left activists Bhairavi and Bilal fell in love in Baroda. Bhairavi could handle her parents' hysterical fear that their Patel clan wouldn't leave their daughter alive. What shattered her was the reaction of their comrades, who thought the two were going "too far". Bilal, who had brushed aside all the occasions when he was not allowed into the kitchen by many of his comrades' mothers, suddenly realised that for a Marxist, casting off religious identity wasn't enough. The world continued to look at him as a Muslim.

This was brought home to him again in the 92-93 riots, when he had to flee Mumbai with his little daughter. It was ironic that it was the same kind of violence that had made him lose faith and turn "fanatically atheist". In 1969, as a Std X student, Bilal fled with his family to the Muslim basti as his house was looted and set on fire by boys he had known as family friends. He never prayed again. So in the 58th year of our Constitution that promises freedom of religion

and equality before law, here's wishing Chaitali Shah and Naeem Ansari a safe married life.


(Some names have been changed)

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Review/When_a_Hindu_girl_marries_a_Muslim/articleshow/2751930.cms

Bharathiar sung

சாதிகள் -இல்லையடி பாப்பா;- குலத்
தாழ்ச்சி உயர்ச்சிசொல்லல் பாவம்;
நீதி, உயர்ந்தமதி, கல்வி - அன்பு
நிறைய உடையவர்கள் மேலோர்.

But I don't think anyone can remember this. Thinking to change the society is something that cannot be done over night. When the time goes we will be in the corner to bid adieu to life. I can only say that 'I am positive'. Because, I cannot count the breath of this human life.

Bring cheers with your eyes. Good luck!

Mr.H