by SUMANTA BANERJEE
Famous 13th century West Asian humorist Mullah Nasiruddin IMAGE/Square One Explorations
From Copenhagen and Paris to Mumbai and Kolkata, satirists and cartoonists have become targets of bigoted followers of both religious gods (who choose to murder them) and political gods (who put them behind bars). One is reminded of the story of the famous 13th century West Asian humorist Mullah Nasiruddin, who went to a tailor to order a shirt, and the latter promised to deliver it within a week, adding the rider, “God willing!” After several weeks, having listened to the same promise—along with the same rider—a disappointed Nasiruddin finally asked the tailor: “How long will it take, if we leave God out of it?” Nasiruddin’s question, seemingly innocuous, but as a metaphor, tears up the vast canopy of religious hypocrisy that covers our socio-economic practices.
In today’s context, it poses the problem at two levels—(i) the uneasy relationship between the exploitation of popular belief in religious authority (“God willing”) by opportunist charlatans on the one hand, and the quotidian needs of the common people (a shirt, for instance) of which they are deprived on that religious plea, on the other; and (ii) the alliance of religious authority and the modern state, with its paraphernalia of mini gods—politicians, bureaucrats, judges, businessmen, contractors, mafia dons, among others—who also keep reassuring the Nasiruddins of today with the same old promises in the name of some superior authority while denying them their basic needs.
Ironically enough, Nasiruddin’s humorous quip, about keeping God out, predates the current debate over the concept of secularism as keeping all forms of religion separate from civic and political governance. While a breed of Indian politicians and intellectuals suggests that it is a Western idea which is unsuitable for the East, it was actually an Eastern folk humorist who came up with the idea of “leaving God” out of our daily transactions. By expressing his personal scepticism, Nasiruddin in a sense, forewarned us about the conflict that is rending apart our world today over the question of separation of religion from state polity. Quite a large number of people (whether the mutually feuding Shia–Sunni militant groups among the Islamic communities in West Asia and Pakistan, or the Zionists in Israel, or the Hindu fascist organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal in India) subscribe to the belief that their respective gods and religious practices must determine state policies. However outrageous and inhuman such practices may be (like the Islamic Sharia laws of punishment, or the Hindu rules on untouchability and pollution), anyone opposing or violating them (even from within their own communities) are targeted by these fanatics.
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Humour in Islamic and Hindu Cultures
At this stage of the discussion, it may be relevant to recall the role of humour in both Islamic and Hindu cultural traditions. To start with, it is necessary to disabuse Muslim believers of the idea that their Prophet was a scowling killjoy—an image which has been meticulously advertised by the mullahs. The idea has been reinforced in the Muslim psyche by the prudish and censorious edicts of the Sunni clergy of Saudi Arabia, and the Shia Ayatollahs of Iran. During Prophet Muhammad’s times, from contemporary sources like reminiscences of his sahabas (companions), the Hadith and other texts, it appears that the early Islamic society was easy-going and far removed from the narrow-mindedness and murderous morbidity that prevail over it today.
Muhammad himself cracked jokes with his sahabas and wife Aisha—often at his own expense. When asked by his companions why he did this, he said: “But I only tell the truth.” In other words, the truth can often be expressed through jokes which can be easily comprehended by the common people. After all, the Quran said: “That is He who granted Laughter and Tears.” As Islam granted its followers this right to laugh, the later disciples of Muhammad made innovative use of it to lampoon the Muslim clergy (who usurped the right to interpret the Hadith in the name of the Prophet), and mocked self-righteous Islamic institutions and disciplines.
One such humorist was Ash’ab, a singer and entertainer who lived in Medina in the eighth century, and whose jokes were later collected in the form of a text in the 10th century. In one of his jokes, he disparaged a cleric who claimed that the Prophet had defined only two qualities in human beings which would make them God’s chosen friends. When asked what these two qualities were, Ash’ab replied that the cleric had forgotten one, and he himself had forgotten the other!
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