by GARGA CHATTERJEE
Overstepping mandate: The West Bengal government has used public funds to lay down through advertisements what kind of behaviour Bengali Muslims must follow during Ramzan, ignoring the variances within the community. PHOTO: Sushanta Patronobish
Rather than naseehat [advise] from Mamata Banerjee about obligatory fasting, the hungry Bengali mussalman might appreciate some food
In this subcontinent of a million gods, a cynical display of public secularism is played out on specific days that mark particularly holy events. Union ministers, Chief Ministers and other demi-gods gladden newspaper owners by buying full-page ads, typically exhibiting their own beaming faces, often with a nimbus that makes it hard to distinguish who the god or goddess of the day is — Durga, Krishna or the “dear leader.” The quarter page or full-page advertisements generally pass on bland greetings which sound uncannily like telegram messages to “the people” for this occasion or other. Given that a large proportion of the citizens of India cannot read, one wonders why almost all such greetings are directed towards the literate, but let’s put aside that macabre example of distributive injustice for the moment. There is a certain tragicomic element in the fact that people’s money is spent in crores to greet and congratulate them.
The Islamic month of Romjan (or Ramzan or Ramadan) has already seen its share of greetings in newsprint this year.
There was nothing extraordinary in these annual banalities till an advertisement from the Ministry of Information and Culture of the government of West Bengal came along. In newspapers and magazines, it has published a large advertisement that shows the smiling face of the Information and Culture minister (who also happens to be the Chief Minister) with the silhouette of a domed structure, ostensibly a mosque with two tall minarets — a design virtually unknown in West Bengal during much of the time Islam has been around in this area. Bengal developed its own exquisite syncretic architectural style of mosques which are as Mussalman and as Bengali as they get. Given that this advertisement is directed towards the “Mussalman brothers and sisters” of West Bengal, it was the first departure from things that are both Bengali and Muslim.
There is also a faint hint of an intricate design of Indo-Persianate extraction that is quite commonplace in the upper Gangetic-Indus plane but not in Bengal. For centuries, Bengal has had its own design traditions interwoven with its Muslim practices. This was the second departure, but the design is faint and presumably was the only thing that came up on Google image search that could be photoshopped into the design. So that is fine too, I guess. But the most striking feature of the advertisement is the text.
Posturing
It starts: “The holy roja (roza) of Romjan, mandatory for the adherents of the Islamic faith, will start.” This is quite an extraordinary statement coming from the head of administration of West Bengal. The government, using public funds, has made a publicly advertised pronouncement on what kind of behaviour is mandated (or not) for adherents of a particular faith — something it has no business doing. However, the subtext is more important than the text. Mussalmans of Bengal are a varied lot. Some fast for the whole month of Romjan, some fast for a few days, some do not fast at all, some offer the namaz five times a day or more, some once, some do not, some are teetotallers, some drink. At its core, it is a human society — not marked by its fallibility but resplendent in its human variance and vibrations. When the government of the day makes it its business to point out what the some of them are mandated to if they are adherents of Islam, it is clearly overstepping its own mandate. What is more sinister is an official sanction and patronage of certain behaviour forms among the Musslamans of West Bengal, in effect delegitimising the Mussalman-ness of those who are doing (or not doing) certain things.
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