Now the mosques are solid and the prayers are raw…
In today’s world, India is also constantly being transformed into a tight hearted society. In this society, the distinction of oneself was very old, but now it is being taken to the extent of extreme hatred.
By Priyadarshan,
The debate that Kabir settled six hundred years ago has resurfaced in 21st century India. Even then, Kabir made fun of the bigotry of both Hindu and Muslim, their dogma. He had sarcastically said that worshiping a stone leads to God, so he is ready to worship the mountain and reminded, in an almost leftist manner, that the mill is good with which the world eats wheat after grinding it. He had also made fun of Azaan – he had asked the Mullah, who built the mosque by adding pebbles and climbed it, and gave ‘Bang’ to it – Has he been deaf?
Even at that time it was possible that a Hindu or a Muslim would have caught Kabir and dragged him to the emperor and requested that his skin be stripped because it has hurt the religious sentiments of the people. But then people really trusted their Gods or Gods so much that they used to think, what will Kabir do to them. Or he used to feel that in some rude way, but he says it right. Kabir had also said – Jo ghar jaarai aapna chale with us. That is, they were ready to burn the house, cut their heads.
Although history is replete with such examples when people standing against religious hypocrisy or social practice or seeking their way, their God or their religion, were lynched, burnt, made homeless. Sarmad said that if God is not there, then his head was beheaded. When Mansoor wanted to see God in man, he was crucified. Meera was humiliated. An attempt was made to burn Tulsi’s psyche, Gandhi, an ardent devotee of Ram, was shot. All these are the works of those times when the society remained shrunk, stuck in the lane of some narrow mentality. Whenever he became generous, whenever he felt himself stretched out, he absorbed all those who were against him or were different from him. He assured that he could do the work of reinventing himself, reinventing himself by crossing rotten value codes. When the heart remained big, he tried to know the strangers and when the tension increased, he conspired to kill his loved ones.
In today’s world, India is also constantly being transformed into a tight hearted society. In this society, the distinction of oneself was very old, but now it is being taken to the extent of extreme hatred. Whatever is happening here in public life these days, it is happening either for demonstration or for vengeance. Here worship is done to tease others, other communities are abused in the procession, Hanuman Chalisa is played on loudspeakers to counter the azaan. Hanuman Chalisa is recited to drive away the fear of the invisible, but here it is being done to create fear. Once God was called another name of love, God was synonymous with love, today he is being changed into the god of murder. Suspicion, suspicion, hate, murder are becoming the values of this new society.
Do people today no longer have faith in their gods? Is their righteousness so crude that at one blow their faith is shaken, their spirit is stripped? Actually it is not a matter of pure or raw religiosity. This is a case of the age-old communalism that grew under the shadow of scorched, cooked politics, which serves its own interests by making a large population uneducated, unemployed and insensitive. She makes the fake identity game so great that every alien seems to be an enemy, she even turns worship into an unholy act, and those who draw her attention to it, are intent on taking her life. is.
It is not that this new India was born overnight. It was coined for years. A communal discourse has been strengthened with great precision, finesse and silence that other political ideologies and strategies have become completely useless before it. On the contrary, this communalism has acquired such a force in parliamentary politics that it now calls for democracy and reminds on its criticism that the people are with it, not with its critics. This has become a sentimental comment. There is no slack in this ideology which investigates these conditions, ventures to reach its root. It has its disappointments. But Dr Ram Manohar Lohia used to say that even despair has its duties. There are many legends about Kabir. One is that when he died, there was a fight between Hindus and Muslims about who he belonged to, with whom he should go. When the sheet was removed, it came to know that Kabir’s body had turned into flowers. Both Hindus and Muslims distributed these flowers and went to their respective homes.
We all know that this is just a story – a figment of imagination. But who would have imagined this, would have fabricated such a story? What would be the time in which there would have been room for the imagination that even death would turn into flowers. It will be that big-hearted, big-minded society, which will know what heritage is so precious and how it can be saved by turning it into flowers.
So right now when everything is turning into a dead body, it is becoming a corpse, then it is necessary that we find the remaining pool of Kabir. Or try to turn the corpse that is being turned into flowers. It was not the magic of Kabir, it was the magic of the imagination which had taken life from the teachings of Kabir. Will this magic return in our time? It’s hard to tell. But this magic will return only when the resolve to return it will be equally firm, the worship done for it will be equally true, the determination taken for it will also be equally firm. Is that possible? I don’t know who has written it, but on such occasions one often remembers – when mosques were uncooked, there were pucca prayers, now mosques are pucca and kutcha hai namazis. It can only be hoped that the readers will understand which Namazis, which new Muslims are talking about.
Priyadarshan is the Executive Editor at NDTV India…
Courtesy : NDTV
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