Category: opinion

PATAL LOK WEBSERIES AND THE TRANSPIRING IDEA OF ‘NEW AGE’ MUSLIMS IN INDIA

Cinema plays a significant role in forming and reforming a culture and a cultural identity. It mirrors what we believe in and how we co exist as people. A good example is when people copy fashion trends from movie stars. It is also common these days to find people using figures of speech that are inspired by the film industry. 

There is an awkward ‘formality’ in the way Muslims are shown in films, part of the problem has to do with political correctness and a desire to not offend. Whether it is the character of Captain Bashir who served a hand in saving Indians during a plane hijack, in the film Zameen; Iqbal, an Indian cook from Ghazi attack; character of smile from the movie Lagaan, who plays for the villagers with a crippling leg and lastly the character of Imran Ansari from the latest web series Patal Lok. 

Whenever a movie tries to portray a Muslim character in a “positive light”, they are often shown as the backbone of the protagonist. They are shown as equally good as the main ‘hero’ character but certainly not chosen to put in the position of influence even if the film actually mean to break the stereotypical way of perceiving Muslims. In the series Patal Lok the character of Ansari is shown as a calm and hardworking officer who accompanies Hathi Ram, the protagonist, through thick and thin. But, this aspiring civil  servant, despite the evident ‘nationalism’, had to go through communal slurs, the show portrays as a depiction of an Islamophobic society. 

If we consider the top 12 Bollywood movies that crossed the Rs.300-crore mark in box office collections within previous years, 10 out of 12 films did not have a single Muslim protagonist based in India. 

India consists of diverse ethnic communities, classes and sects, which are the building blocks of the Indian society by large. In such a society, hegemony of the majority in the public sphere paves the way for inequalities and oppression of the marginalized. This society measures Muslims in an over-simplistic categorization in binaries of good and evil. The scene where Ansari eats the prasad his Hindu colleague offers him by ‘joining his hands one below the other’, shows that good Muslims are not only expected to listen to the communal slurs like ‘katua’ silently but are also expected to obey the majority religion at every sphere of their lives. 

Unfortunately, the radicalisation of which we are now witnessing, where Hindu mobs can be seen killing and compelling Muslims to chant Jai Shri Ram in public to prove their “decency”.

Contrary to this, whenever we find Muslims revealing their identity explicitly in a public sphere, either wearing a skull cap and Kurta or keeping a beard, we immediately label them as ‘orthodox’. Perceiving their clothes as not ‘secular enough’ has now become a normalised understanding of society. We as a society have failed to accept them the way they are, as Indian enough.

Movies like Lipstick Under my Burkha and Gully boy among others are perceived as stories where ‘new-age’ Muslim characters choose an Indian identity overriding their religious one. Now, this creates another discourse about ‘new-age Muslims’, who are meant to be rebellious, passionate and probably don’t care much about their religious identity. But, though these movies give us a false conscience of Muslim representation, it did nothing to normalise their religious identity within the society in other words, to build a society that can absorb them as one of their own without any judgement. Contrary to this, they only create an image of a more ‘secular’, ‘new age’ Muslim, who basically tries to dress up and practice like the majority permits or expect.

This very notion has resulted in building a mentality where we seek ‘proof’ to even consider Muslims as a decent human being. The recent incidents of Jamaatis refusing to eat medicines and misbehaving with doctors, where somehow tend to confirm these biases, the later incident about them donating blood plasma to COVID-19 patients or a Muslim doctor sacrificing his life treating corona patients not only came to us as a shock but also drive us to believe that these are ‘some’ good Muslims, considering the given as ‘proof’.  This not only leads to some immediate consequences but also impacts society by large.

This tokenistic treatment of Muslims discretely from their community, in reel and real life as well is effectively making them the ‘other’. We are building a society where ‘they’ have to face extra security checking for wearing a pathani kurta, a society where ‘their’ dissent is termed as anti-national and are charged with UAPA, where ‘they’ need to prove their nationalism to live in a country in which ‘they’ are living since years, a society which continued to make ‘them’ feel more vulnerable, a society where a father of a Muslim boy feel scared to even raise him as a Muslim. 

India’s 2 biggest hegemonies, and the Ideological warfare

Congress and BJP are the two hegemonies of Indian politics with two vastly different identities. They both have different values and cater to two diverse groups of people in India. One party survive on its historical legacy, while the other over it’s populist speeches and hyper-nationalism. While one is perceived for its liberal approach and extended sense of individual freedom, the other seemingly holds radical conservative values and tends to curb individual freedom. But are these two parties really that different?

Nowadays, it has become a fashion to rule out much difference between the Congress and the BJP, as both are corrupt, communal, statist, share similar foreign policy goals and are fainthearted in their pursuit of policies to make India prosperous. Both the parties have been owning a certain section of media. Both field candidates who have serious criminal cases against them. Both do communal vote bank politics. Both are funded by crony-capitalists. The sole motive of both the parties is to increase their vote banks.

Now here is a catch. The main difference between both the parties lies in the nature and magnitude of the ways adopted for increasing these vote banks. For instance, BJP consistently did not support a more active role for the state in the economy and social norms, unlike the Left. While Congress is in the middle. These ideological leanings were consistent in every election study from 1967 to 2014. 

Congress and the BJP appear as sworn enemies in politics and also in the matters of religion but there are certain cases when both are seen on the same side such as the Sabarimala issue. Both the parties are protesting against the Kerala government, which is finding it difficult to implement September 28 order of the Supreme Court of allowing entry of women of all age in the Sabarimala Temple. BJP believes that the uniqueness of the temple is that, the rituals for the particular deity and the devotees who have to go there were decided by God, and not by anybody else. The Congress, after an initial flip-flop, also came out in support of the devotees. The political analysts have observed that the controversy is likely to boost the electoral fortunes of the BJP and the Congress in the state.

On the other hand, the citizenship (amendment) Bill experienced a contrast of opinions amongst the hegemonies. BJP believes that the bill is not for the benefit of anyone but a penance against the injustice and wrongdoings in the past. Mainly to let in the Hindu refugees from Muslim dominated neighbouring countries. However, the scrapping of the bill by the upper house made the BJP upset for not only being incapable of keeping the bill alive but also failing in one of its election campaigning strategies of polarising Hindu and Muslim votes.  While the Congress intend to bank on the sentiments against the Bill while campaigning in the North-East.

While the BJP is pragmatically communal, the Congress is pragmatically so. For instance, the two-month-old Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh has brought about several changes that positively distinguish his government from the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s. But secularism, which is supposed to be one of the core ideology of Congress, is not one of those changes.

The state invokes the National Security Act (NSA) against three Muslim youth on charges of cow slaughter. This act allows governments to detain people for up to a year if they are suspected to be a threat to public order or national security. Now, this assumed threat to national security is again a subject one should give a thought to.

The Congress’s silence on Muslim issues portrays that the Congress’s grassroots workers have become ideologically similar to those of the BJP. The Congress appears to peddle soft-Hindutva at the expense of secularism, especially in Madhya Pradesh.