Stand up Routine

By Girish Menon. This is copyright material

Introduction:

S: Daddy, why don’t we make short satirical films  on issues that need some clarity?

D: Why, what’s the purpose?

S: This will give us a chance to explore what we think,  what we see and what it means?

D: I don’t know, son. 

 1.

Son: Daddy, Om Birla says that the names of Adani and Ambani cannot be raised in the Lok Sabha.

Daddy: Yes, I heard it too. He says, it's because Adani and Ambani are not in a position to respond to the allegations.

S: But the BJP always raises Nehru and Gandhi? Can they respond to the claims?

D: They believe the soul of Nehru and the Gandhis pervades parliament and hence can be invoked?

S: Does that mean that Ambani and Adani are soulless, Daddy?

D: I don't know son.

2.

Modiji phones Nirmala Sitharaman, 'Nirmalaji, yeh madhyam varg kyon ro rahen hai?

Nirmala: Sir, in Mussalmano ko rone do, Kuch dere ke baad chup ho jayenge'.

Modi: 'Kya matlab? Inme to koi Mussalman nahi hai'

Nirmala: Sir, yeh log hamare Mussaalman hai. Mera matlab hum shasan mein kuch bhi kar sakte hain aur chunav ke time par agar ham bole ki Hindu khatren mein hai to yeh kamal par angootha laga hi denge.

Modi: Ha, ha, main bhool gaya tha! Lage raho Nirmalaji.

3.

S: Daddy, a 40 year old American woman was found chained to a tree in the Sindhudurg forests for 40 days.

D: Yes, I heard that Lalita Kayi had come to India to learn yoga and meditation.

S: Doesn’t this chaining  require her to intensely meditate about her condition for 40 days, Daddy?

D: I don’t know son!

4.

S: Daddy, you remember the fairy tale 'The Emperor's New Clothes'? hat eventually happened to the truthful child?

D: Why do you ask? I think the child was subjected to severe punishment. Immediately after the parade he was pulled up by the Enforcement Directorate for being anti-national.

S: Did the people honour the child after the emperor was deposed?

D: Honoured? After the emperor was deposed the public pilloried him for destroying their dream.

S: Does that explain your experience with your bhakt friends and relatives?

D: I don’t know son!

5.

S: Daddy, are Indian industrialists as a class really patriotic?

D: Can we paint them all with one brush stroke? In any case, why do you ask?

S: The recent economic survey shows that while corporate profits have  risen significantly they have not invested or created new jobs in the economy? I thought we were doing trickle down economics?

D: So, while what you say is true, what's the question?

S: They also welcome free trade in all sectors but their own. Keep their money abroad and use robots and AI to meet their labour needs. So are they really patriotic, daddy?

D: I don’t know, son.

6.

S: Daddy, can we call Modi 3.0 a UPA 3 government?

D: Why, please explain.

S: Yesterday, both Modi and Seetharaman were comparing their performance with the UPA 1 & 2's performance 2004-2014.

D: But, didn't we vote for Modi expecting a big difference?

S: I don't know daddy?

7.

S: Daddy, most of the friends I meet these days hush hushedly refer to the threat posed by the increasing Muslim population. Is there such a threat to India?

D: I am not sure. I too have noticed more folks wearing the Islamist dress. One good way to know is to conduct a census. India's last census was in 2011.

S: Then, why does this eleven year old government shy away from any census, daddy?

D: I don't know, son

8.

S: Daddy, Rahul Gandhi has emerged as the voice of India’s downtrodden; the Dalits, Adivasis etc.

D: Yes, he appears popular with these groups. So what's your question?

S: Why don’t India’s downtrodden produce a leader from amongst their people?

D: I don’t know, son

9. 

S: Daddy, Rahul Gandhi tweeted the ED wants to question him.

D: Yes, I read that. I think he tweeted that from Wayanad.

S: Do you think the ED wants to know why he’s only visiting Manipur and Wayanad when our Agniveers are struggling in Russia and Ukraine?

D: I don’t know, son.

10.

S: Daddy, is Rahul Gandhi a loser?

D: He went to Manipur, set up a mohabbat ka dukaan and was seen consoling the victims of Wayanad?

S: But, he did not meet the cricket team nor congratulate Ms. Bhaker? Does that make Modiji a winner?

D: I don’t know, son.

11.

S: Daddy, The NGO 'Vote for Democracy' says that in 538 constituencies there is a discrepancy between the number of votes polled and the number of votes counted.

D: Yes, I read this. The discrepancy is to the tune of 50 million votes.

S: Could it then mean that the India alliance won the vote but the NDA won the count?

D: I don't know, son.

India's Supreme Court's alimony order settled a fundamental question—a Muslim woman is Indian first, Muslim later

Ibn Khaldun Bharati in The Print

The spectre of gender justice continues to haunt the identity politics of Indian Muslims. These visitations shall not cease till the fundamental issue of the status of women in Muslim society remains unattended and unresolved.

Let me illustrate this point by citing what happened in the cause célèbre, the 1985 Shah Bano case. A Muslim woman from Indore, Shah Bano Begum, was married to her cousin, Mohammed Ahmad Khan, in 1932. They had five children. Khan became a prosperous advocate and got into polygamy by marrying another cousin of theirs in 1946. In 1975, he threw Shah Bano out of their house. She approached the court to seek maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). Khan, a successful advocate, was arguing his own case. Upon being questioned by the court why he wouldn’t pay maintenance to the woman who was very much his wife, he pronounced triple talaq on Shah Bano and washed his hands off her. The scandalous story that the talaq happened inside the courtroom and during the proceedings has remained relatively unknown for reasons which could only be guessed.

This anecdote brings into bold relief two important facets that have shaped Muslim politics in India. First, the helplessness of the Muslim woman against arbitrary and unilateral divorce under the sharia law before the Narendra Modi government made triple talaq a criminal offence in 2019; and second, the cavalier attitude and utter disregard for the dignity of the court, with which Khan inflicted triple talaq was reflective of class characteristic that the Muslim ruling class had cultivated over the centuries of their rule.

Whether it be the issue of triple talaq, maintenance to divorced women, or the controversy over hijab, the secular laws, constitutional morality, and progressive judicial pronouncements have been coming up against the wall of antiquated religious laws of Islam that the Muslim identitarians defend as the last bastion against assimilation intothe Indian culture. They have had the phobia of losing their distinction of foreign origin and wouldn’t mind using regressive religious laws to safeguard their separateness. Syed Shahabuddin, their most articulate spokesman had said, “Ours is not a communal fight. It only amounts to resisting the inexorable process of assimilation. We want to keep our religious identity at all costs.”

So, according to its own website, “All India Muslim Personal Law Board was established at a time when then Government of India was trying to subvert Shariah law applicable to Indian Muslims through parallel legislation. Adoption Bill had been tabled in the Parliament. Mr. H.R.Gokhle, then Union Law Minister had termed this Bill as the first step towards Uniform Civil Code.” It was in 1973.

Thus, the 10 July verdict of the Supreme Court, which says that a divorced Muslim woman, like all other women, has a right to maintenance from her ex-husband under Section 125 of CrPC, has settled some issues but, more importantly, has revived many more.

The verdict has settled that Section 125 of CrPC continues to be applicable with regard to divorced Muslim women; and, more importantly, that it remains unaffected by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986.

This is a reiteration of the judgment of the 5-judges bench of the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case, which said that the Muslim Personal Law couldn’t come in the way of a divorced woman seeking maintenance under Section 125. This law was applicable to all Indians without any discrimination on the basis of religion. It also re-confirms another judgment of the Supreme Court in the Danial Latifi Case, 2001, which upheld the validity of 125 CrPC notwithstanding the Act of 1986 whose overt purport was to nullify the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case.

But beyond all these legal issues, the 10 July verdict has settled a fundamental ideological and constitutional question — that is, a Muslim woman, like all other men and women, is an Indian first and a Muslim later. Therefore, what is hers as an Indian can’t be taken away from her because of her religion. It is a re-statement of her right to equality and justice as envisaged under the Constitution.

It may be recalled that it was on the question of the Muslim-first identity that the Muslim leadership of the 1980s — which wasn’t ideologically much different either from the Muslim League of the 1940s or the identity minoritarians of the 2020s — waged a vicious communal campaign against the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the competence of its judges to adjudicate in the matter of Muslim Personal Law. Their objection was religious. They contended that the judges, not being Muslim themselves, lacked the primary qualification to adjudicate in the “sacred” law. Their rhetoric touched such a feverish pitch that a cabinet minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, Ziaur Rahman Ansari, while speaking in Parliament, used casteist slurs against the judges. Such impunity they had. They eventually succeeded in bending the government to their will. A law was enacted to nullify the Supreme Court’s judgment.

In less than four decades of having won Pakistan, they had struck again. The spectacle of the government with the largest-ever majority, going down in abject capitulation before the dictates of the vote-bank politics, left the entire nation aghast and humiliated. It revived the fear of the return of the barbarians in a country that had just become independent after centuries of foreign rule. No historian can deny that the Shah Bano case was the inadvertent catalyst in the mainstreaming of Hindutva, the ideology of cultural nationalism and political Hinduism. Since this movement crystallised around the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, the announcement for tabling a Bill in Parliament to overthrow the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case, and the unlocking of the disputed structure at Ayodhya, in early 1986, had such a stamp of choreographed synchronisation that it’s hard to dismiss it as a mere coincidence. It’s undeniable that the government was trying to effect a cynical balancing between the two communities.

What needs an answer, however, is whether the Muslim leadership were a party to this disingenuous deal. Did they give a tacit assent for the unlocking of the disputed structure, and the construction of Ram temple on the site, as a quid pro quo for the massive public victory that the government had handed them? If so, did they renege on the understanding by whipping up emotions and making a mountain out of the Babri mole?

Changed situation

All that was then. Now, no one is surprised at the stoic indifference with which the Muslim leadership has received the 10 July verdict, a reiteration of the 23 April 1985 verdict. The agitation against the earlier judgment had shaken the country, and the repercussions that followed caused a permanent bend in the course of Indian politics. But the situation has changed. Much water has flown in the Ganges since. The nation has become stronger, and its leadership can’t be browbeaten in the manner it was done in 1985-86. The old Muslim leadership has been discredited, and is slowly disappearing. The ubiquitous slogan, Islam-in-danger, has vanished from public discourse. And, though communal fault lines remain, and the ideological issues regarding nationalism are not yet settled, the Muslim community has evolved enough as to not unabashedly uphold regressive religious laws, and challenge a progressive judgment of the Supreme Court by brazenly questioning its authority.

What next?

Now that the Muslim Women (Protection Of Rights On Divorce) Act, 1986, has effectively, if not technically, been read down, shouldn’t it also be taken off the statute to right the wrong that was committed, under communal duress, against both the Muslim woman and the Indian polity? To begin with, this Act was more about politics and less about law. The Muslim communalists had won their first victory after winning Pakistan. They had put the Indian state in its place and taken a decisive step toward securing the state-within-state, which would confirm their rule over the Muslim community, defined by the juridical ghetto of the personal law.

Euphoric with victory, but lacking intellect and acumen, they failed to notice how the conscientious law minister, Ashok Sen, embedded the phraseology that subverted from within the stated purpose of the law. Section 3(a) says, “a reasonable and fair provision and maintenance to be made and paid to her within the iddat period by her former husband.” Thus, the amount for maintenance had to be paid “within the iddat period (three months)” and not only for the said period. The Muslim leadership had taken the community to war with the state to limit the maintenance only to three months. That was the crux of the matter. Their fanatic frenzy was vanquished by the cool conscience of superior wisdom.

Both the operation of this law and the later judgments that it didn’t supersede the CrPC 125 make it superfluous. It should be annulled, and so should be the mother of all such laws, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, in fulfilment of the constitutional obligation for the Uniform Civil Code.

Article 44 of the Constitution lays the directive principle: “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.” In recent times, there have been some important developments, which make the situation conducive for bringing in the UCC.

Since the anti-CAA agitation of 2019-20, the Muslim community has been most effusive in the expression of love for the Constitution. Their public discourse, earlier conducted in religious idiom, is now full of constitutional jargon. Furthermore, the way the INDIA bloc parties made the Constitution the central debating point in the run-up to the recently concluded Lok Sabha election, clearly shows that there is a sincere eagerness to live by the Constitutional ideal and morality. Gender inequality, as institutionalised under the Muslim Personal Law, is clearly against constitutional morality, and therefore, it is hoped that the Muslim leadership and the liberal-secular parties would campaign for the UCC so that such evil practices as polygamy, unilateral and arbitrary divorce, denial of inheritance and property rights, etc., should be abolished in accordance with the moral standards of the Constitution.

The moral influence of the last 10 years of the Modi government has done the groundwork for the UCC. Now it is conceded that Muslim Personal Law is not the same as sharia and, more importantly, sharia is not the divine law. So, it’s not the domain of the ulema. Parliament can legislate and the courts can adjudicate in the matter. With this clarity, one of the emotional barriers to the integration of the Muslim community, the Muslim Personal Law, should be removed. This would be the corollary to the abrogation of Article 370 and precursor to the reform of Aligarh Muslim University.

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Is asking Muslims to introspect too much?

Ibn Khaldun Bharati in The Print

The Modi Raj has been an undisguised blessing for Indian Muslims. They never experienced the kind of peace and prosperity that they have been enjoying for the past 10 years. Never in the history of independent India a decade has been so free from long, protracted bouts of Hindu-Muslim riots as the one from 2014-24; and never since the 1990s have Muslims remained so untouched by the shadow of suspicion on account of frequent bomb blasts and terrorist attacks. More importantly, never have Muslims evinced such little sign of unrest over non-issues as in these 10 years.

There has been a positive behavioural change in the community. Their focus has shifted from emotional agitation to constructive pursuits, which has begun to reflect in the unprecedented success of their youth in competitive examinations. A sign of their all-round progress is this year’s Civil Services Examination results, which have as many as 51 Muslims in the list of successful candidates. Such a number was unheard of during the Secular Raj.

Though Modi Raj has inspired a behavioural change in the Muslim community, for it to become permanent, it has to be accompanied by a sincere ideological transformation.

Narendra Modi, who always spoke of Muslims as inseparable from the 140 crore Indians, recently, in an interview with Times Now, spoke especially to them, and urged them to do something which no one wants them to — introspect!

He urged them to look into the sense of deprivation that they have been nurturing. The day such introspection is undertaken, the ground will slip from under the feet of the liberal politics of appeasement and the Muslim politics of victimhood.

Aversion to introspection

Introspection is a word that infuriates Muslim ideologues and makes Left-liberals no less indignant. In their opinion, Muslims, as self-proclaimed victims, can only have a litany of grievances against the Hindu community and the Indian state and make the claim — the First Claim — on its resources as compensation. Introspection is another name for self-investigation. A guilty conscience can’t face it. Not surprising why it makes the Muslim opinion makers so uneasy. The entitlements internalised over centuries of Muslim rule have made the Muslim elite incapable of self-enquiry. They are a people of rights, not duties. Therefore, they want the Hindu community and the Indian state to introspect why the Muslims are not happy with them.

One may ask why the idea of introspection so unsettles Muslim ideologues — the ulema, politicians, academics, columnists, journalists and social media influencers. Is it because the inconvenient questions may lay much of blame at their own doorstep? For example, how Islam came to India and what the nature of the Muslim rule was may be an academic question, but to ask whether medieval supremacism has been renounced or continues to flow in the contemporary Islamic discourse is a politically pertinent question. Do they have the character to answer it honestly? The inability to satisfactorily answer it forces them to allege “victim-blaming” — they being the universal victims. There is a deeper reason too. Muslim politics is so intricately imbricated into Islam that questioning it may implicate the religion and bring discredit whose consequences may unravel their worldview. It’s an existential question.

Enemy’s enemy is a friend

Muslims’ aversion to introspection has been as much their fault as of the post-Independence ‘secular’ politics. Independence came with Partition — the triumph of Muslim communalism over secular nationalism. Even as secularism lay defeated, Jawaharlal Nehru sensed a threat to his rule from the large Hindu nationalist faction of the Congress, and the forces represented by Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He needed allies to fight them, and who could be a better ally against Hindu nationalism than the people of the Muslim League, who, having carved out a separate country for themselves, decided to stay back in India as they saw their interests better served here? Nehru needed them and pleaded with them to not leave. They were inducted into the Congress and made legislators and ministers without any re-education into the secular ethos on which he professed to base the new state. What an irony that they were taken into Congress not for their new-found secularism but for their old commitment to Muslim communalism. The perverse import that the Nehruvian template — the communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than the communalism of the minority — imparted to the secular praxis, has been so enduring that 77 years hence, no secular party wants Muslims to secularise. Indian secularism has thrived on Muslim communalism.

If the Muslim society is haunted by dejection for not having the standing that is its due, it’s the responsibility of their thought-leaders to diagnose the malaise and prescribe the recovery. Though the public intellectuals of any society come from its elite section, they inevitably end up critiquing the privileges of their own class, which hinders the progress of the masses. This small band of conscientious individuals keeps the moral compass of the society headed true north.

The Hindu society has been brought back to life by the people whose critique abolished their own privileges. In the social reform movements of the 19th century, it were the ‘upper’ caste men who first agitated against caste and gender discrimination. Later, the Constitution was enacted by the members of the Constituent Assembly, who had come from privileged backgrounds and were elected by a very limited electorate of the elite. However, by enshrining the promise of equality and instituting adult suffrage, they effectively abolished their own class. And, in the aftermath of independence, it were largely the legislators from the landed gentry who passed the zamindari abolition and land ceiling laws. The regeneration of Hindu society owes a lot to the self-annihilation of its elite. The ideal of tyag (sacrifice) had some reflection in collective renunciation too.

Character of Muslim elite

The Indian Muslim elite, aka the Ashraaf, remained tenaciously wedded to their tribal interests, and with animalistic instinct of self-preservation, tried to defend their privileges. They couldn’t reconcile to the loss of centuries-old political power, and as the Hindu society developed and raced past them in education, culture and politics, they formulated the ideology of victimhood. The promise of equal citizenship appeared to them as a diminution of their historical stature, and therefore, ‘weightage’ and ‘special treatment’ became the stock phrases in their political lexicon. They wanted an equivalent of Article 370, or special provision, in every sphere.

And, because they controlled the religious discourse and the political narrative, their sense of loss became universalised as the deprivation of the Muslim masses. In reality, however, the Muslim masses had been steadily prospering alongside other Indians, as the economy grew and democracy deepened. The Muslim melancholia is a poetic trope and narrative tool. It is a false consciousness.

Playing kingmaker

The arrogance of “satta pe hum bithayenge, hum utarenge (We decide who shall rule and who shall not)” is another delusion that Modi has appealed to Muslims to disabuse themselves of. The Hindu society has been in continuous churn for the last 200 years. India’s growth is a direct outcome of the progress toward social justice achieved through caste and gender reforms. Muslim ideologues mistook this churning as implosion, and the reform as derangement. They not only looked with glee at what they misperceived as the disintegration of the Hindu society, but actively interfered with the process by siding with one caste group against another. The only thing worse than divide-and-rule is divide-but-not-rule. While the Muslims strutted around as kingmakers, they were just wageless mercenaries. Being viewed as the ones who, after dividing the country, were now dividing the Hindu society, the Muslims invited the wrath that they could have done without.

And what did they receive from their favoured parties in return for the en bloc voting? Little besides a license to indulge in socially aggressive behaviour that would give them an illusion of political domination. Very often, there would be an open display of brazenly communal, anti-social and even anti-national activities. Riots were the inevitable consequence of this kind of politics. The irony is that when a riot erupted, the vote-bank parties left Muslims to their fate. During the Secular Raj, Hindu-Muslim riots were as regular as seasonal crops.

Not against Muslims

Though he need not, but Modi specified that he is not anti-Muslim or anti-Islam. He is just pro-India, which, besides being 80 per cent Hindu, is 14 per cent Muslim too. If Muslim ideologues see him as anti-Muslim, they would better introspect about the inherent conflict between their idea of the Muslim identity and India. Have they ever wondered why there isn’t a complete overlap between Muslim and Indian as there is between Hindu and Indian? Why the phrase ‘Indian Muslim’ doesn’t sound as ludicrous as Indian Hindu? Why do they have to resort to arcane theories of multiple identities and avoid answering their own question about the hierarchy of identities, whether one is first an Indian or a Muslim? They have to resolve the self-created dichotomy of belief and belonging. The Modi era is the best time for this, for he is not into a transactional relationship with them. He serves them equally irrespective of whether they vote for him or not.

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