On the Crossroads - My Take on the Faith, Culture and Identity in South Asia

ON THE CROSSROADS MY TAKE ON THE FAITH, CULTURE AND IDENTITY’S IN SOUTH ASIA

Fizzah Mansoor

Despite being born in and having grown up in Pakistan, my family’s Indian roots were always front and centre; in the saris both my grandmothers wore, in our pride in our dialect of Urdu, in our desperation to marry within the community so the forthcoming generations would continue to dress and speak like us, all to avoid disappearing - every immigrant’s worst fear. At no point was I allowed to forget that we belonged to the Muhajir community, a collection of different ethnicities that had immigrated to Pakistan in the years following the country’s independence in 1947. Yet, the customs are changing, despite the struggle to continue them. Saris are considered either too old fashioned or too risqué for “proper” Muslim women and have largely been abandoned in favor of the more ubiquitous local shalwar kameez. The accent and dialect my grandparents wore like a badge of honor has been awkwardly shed by their own children, who prefer to speak in their new cities’ local slang. To their grandchildren, their identity as immigrants (second and third generation, but immigrants nonetheless) is just a weight on top of their shoulders that they don’t know how to shed. In the wake of rising tensions between India and Pakistan, the identity crisis deepens. One is told by both sides that the other is inherently evil and monstrous yet one is never allowed to forget that both are an integral part of one’s identity; you may belong to only one now, but in the shape of your eyes and the color of your hair, it’s impossible to ignore that you have a connection to the other. South Asian identity is fragile. What initially began as a culture that embraced and thrived on its religious pluralism has now devolved into one that is fragmented and fearful, that vehemently rejects what is not familiar. The only thing we have in common now, it seems, is the dislike that divides us. Of course, a lot of this was compounded by centuries of colonialism and its deliberate, racist policies that were meant to divide the population in order to make their exploitation easier. The modern, independent nation states, it seems, have largely been unable or at times unwilling to go past the colonial legacy. The menace is well and alive on both sides of the border. In 2017, the Uttar Pradesh state government removed all mention and imagery of the states most prominent tourist attraction, the Taj Mahal from its tourism brochure, choosing instead to focus on the state’s Hindu and Buddhist heritage sites. This news was met with widespread criticism and confusion; the Taj Mahal is what most of the world pictures when it thinks of India, a romantic fantasy. How could the government consciously overlook its greatest asset while promoting tourism? The ugly but true answer is, because it was symbolic of the grandeur a Muslim empire enjoyed. This did not stop here. Over the years, the establishment has ventured further and the next frontier seems to be changing the names of towns in order to strip them of their Muslim identity; an important example was the renaming of Allahabad (also located in Uttar Pradesh) to Prayagraj. The city of Akbar Allahabadi, a revered advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity, and among the most prominent voices of his time against British colonialism, no longer exists on the map of India. Many have commented that Prayagaj was simply the correct historical name of the city before the Mughal Emperor Akbar renamed it Allahabad. While this is true, the fact remains that there was no indigenous movement demanding a name change on this basis. To South Asian Muslims on both sides of the border this was a cause for greater concern; it was viewed, above all, as another facet of the rising nationalist jingoism which has come to dominate political discourse in the subcontinent; one which preys not only on the vulnerable minorities, but on their histories as well. By demonizing the Mughal dynasty as violent usurpers and tyrants who were determined to oppress Indians and enact their own form of foreign rule, what the Indian establishment is doi is that it is actively working to destroy Islam’s prominence and its impact on the subcontinent’s prolific past. In Pakistan, similar nationalist policies are being enacted. In the aftermath of General Zia’s fervent attempt at “Islamization”, the discourse around Islam and what constitutes an Islamic identity has narrowed. This has resulted in changes of attitudes towards religious minorities, who have progressively been driven into suspicion. In addition to the overtly visible change in Pakistan’s treatment of its minorities through the decades, there is also a shift in public attitudes towards cultural practices themselves. An example of this is Pakistan’s selective patronage of its art forms; in an article for Prism, a prominent local magazine, Wajiha Athat Naqvi explores why Pakistan patronizes some art forms over others. The spiritual Qawwali (though not without its critics) is extensively promoted and discussed as one of the great musical styles while Khyal, another expressive style of music which has most of its practitioners in Pakistan, but is more abstract and decidedly non-Islamic in its subject matter, is not given nearly as much attention. In a sense, Pakistan too, has always been committed to propagating only one half of its Indo-Islamic cultural heritage - only the one that holds Pakistanis in direct opposition to the Indians as if just a few centuries ago the two were not mutually inclusive. Attempts to separate the cultural identity from Islamic identity will ultimately be, in my opinion, prove to be futile. Islam doesn’t exist in a vacuum from those who practice it. Adherence has been historically influenced by culture, and conversely, culture has been influenced by Islam. The Indian Subcontinent was the perfect example of how this process of internalization and growth works. The subcontinent’s culture was massively influenced by Islamic thought and principles. To actively deny and erase those contributions is to destroy the culture itself. “Desi” and “Muslim” are not mutually exclusive terms. Rejecting geographical influences on Muslim culture, and/or Muslim influences on Indian culture will lead only to greater fragmentation of South Asian identity.