Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

Black marks everywhere

The black marks in the book are quite crude, but there's no doubting their intent. They carefully block out a few specific words from the minutes of a meeting that was held in November 1992. The words that are left still make sense, though clearly not the sense the minutes originally intended. This little misdemeanour seems to have gone unnoticed till over a year later.

The minutes of a meeting held in January, 1994 state blandly that the earlier scoring out has been noticed. Since it was blocked out then, the resolution that was adopted at the earlier meeting was adopted once again.

'Any member wishing to sell his flat,' it says in its restored glory, 'will not sell to a Muslim.'

That's it, as simple as that. Now I'm trying to decide what makes me more nauseated. Is it that my neighbours have adopted such a resolution? Or that one of them, even though clearly unhappy about it, didn't have the guts to stand up and object at the November meeting, nor even the guts to put his name to the black marks?

I live in a co-operative housing society, that uniquely Indian institution. The flat actually belongs to my uncle, whom my wife and I have lived with for a little less than three years now. Nearly deaf, unsteady on his feet, my 89-year-old uncle has not attended meetings of the society for some years. That's why I'm gradually finding out the joys of housing societies, of exactly how 'co-operative' they are.

I can report to you that that book of minutes of the meetings, with its record of acrimonious running battles, accusations, counter-accusations and, of course, peculiar resolutions, is far more interesting than any novel.

So why did this collection of generally placid, nondescript citizens suddenly decide on this despicable resolution, never mind its dubious legality? I can't answer that, but I do know that my neighbours are in no way unique. Some weeks ago a Bombay newspaper carried a series of stories about societies all over the city that turn away Muslim buyers routinely. The stories were written with some concern for this state of affairs.

But several letters to the newspaper's editor followed, angrily denouncing the articles. If Hindus choose not to sell flats to Muslims, they said, that cannot be seen as evidence of communal feelings. After all, they went on, Hindus have suffered injustice at the hands of Muslims for centuries. Besides, Muslims slaughter goats in their flats, don't they? Some vegetarians find that repellent. So why should they not object to Muslims in their buildings? Nothing communal there!

Illogic apart, the letters, the articles, the resolutions, they all show just how far we have allowed the rot to creep. Years of lying, vicious propaganda, never countered strongly -- or at all -- has worked its way deep into the minds of millions of us. No longer are the people who feel the hatred for the other religion some shadowy, far off sorts.

''I hate Islam like poison,'' a well-known journalist told me not long ago. ''Not Muslims, but Islam." Whatever that may mean, such feelings have become respectable. The people who harbour them are our neighbours. They are us.

This is the backdrop that explains why we lurch from one non-issue to another, the national psyche that is now fertile ground for those non-issues to take root and overwhelm urgent priorities. Only in such a climate could two hundred thousand louts have been persuaded that smashing a dusty mosque was an act of national pride. Only in such times could an obscure painting by M F Husain, unnoticed for two decades, be elevated into yet another sign that all Muslims are anti-Hindu, anti-national.

And only at such a time could so many otherwise ordinary, sensible and perhaps even educated Indians applaud these efforts. This is where we are today.

What happened to Husain is just one more sign of the times. The offensive painting is actually a line drawing of the goddess Saraswati. She's topless in it, a state she is in in more than one sculpture on our temples. But because Husain is a Muslim, this painting was suddenly picked up and used as a stick to beat him and all Muslims with. How could he defile Hinduism by painting Saraswati 'naked'? No matter that several of his other paintings show a deep understanding and respect for all religions, Hinduism included. No matter that this one is really an elegant, graceful tribute to the goddess.

Now I am convinced that had the people who made such a fuss over Husain tried to do the same even twenty years ago, they would have been laughed off as the kooks they really are. But twenty years ago might as well be prehistory today.

Today the most powerful man in this city, a man our movers and shakers think nothing of fawning over, has ridden to where he is on a gravy train of lies about Muslims. In the revolting rag he edits, Bal Thackeray published an unsigned -- unsigned, please note -- article about Husain's painting. Among other pearls of wisdom in it was the opinion that Husain's fingers 'will have to be cut off' to punish him.

If that wasn't enough, a later article by the rag's executive editor announced that now Muslims would have to 'join Hindus in their relentless campaign against Husain. Or else the ordinary Hindu will get confirmed in his belief that what Husain is doing is the culture and tradition of Islam.'

What is truly revolting about all this is not that it sees print and so the light of day. No, what's worse is that the rag -- it's called Saamna -- is read and treated as a newspaper like any other by thousands. None of them think it even strange -- quite apart from promoting enmity between religions, the offence Husain was accused of -- to be reading suggestions like this. Or that a painting has been transformed into one more hoop for Muslims to leap through to prove themselves.

Or that the painting, this 'crime' Husain is accused of, is an issue at all.

I feel like a stuck CD saying it, but it doesn't need some fabulous vision or insight to identify issues we really should be concentrating on. Every second Indian cannot read his own name. Six of every ten Bombay residents live in slums or on the streets, in horrifying conditions that shame us all. Indians who have no water to drink number in the hundreds of millions. And if it's crimes we are concerned about, over a thousand murders of innocent Indians four years ago in Bombay remain unpunished, just as over three thousand murders of innocent Indians twelve years ago in New Delhi remain unpunished.

What is it that has persuaded so many of us to believe that these are acceptable situations that need no comment at all, but a painting by a Muslim is deserving of all the outrage we can muster? Why is it that the misery of millions is not seen as defiling religion? Nor the slaughter of thousands?

Those are some more questions I cannot answer. But I have a strange feeling their answers have something to do with what's in that book of minutes.

Dilip D'Souza, a computer scientist by training, is a frequent contributors to Indian newspapers.