by SABA NAQVI
Yakub Memon’s body leaves for his burial, July 30, Mumbai
Two Muslims passed on July 30, made larger-than-life in death
On July 30, two bodies were wrapped in the unstitched cloth in which Muslims go to their grave. One was hailed a national hero, his body draped in the national flag, the other was hanged in jail. As the morality play of good versus evil unfolded before our eyes, the two deaths seemed to bring about a sort of national catharsis, of different sorts, for different reasons. It must be the most curious coincidence that former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Bombay blast convict Yakub Memon ended up being buried on the same day.
There’s no escaping the ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’ stereotype in the world’s largest democracy with the third largest Muslim population in the world. The phrase, ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’, was first used by former US president George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 and picked up as the title of his masterly work by political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani. His book, published in 2005, was titled Good Muslim Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. One of the central points of the work is that the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not markers of religious purity or the lack thereof. They are a judgement of their utility to US foreign policy, based upon which images are constructed.
A Google search for Mamdani’s book goes straight to the Amazon books page where the suggested book to buy alongside is Edward Said’s Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts See the Rest of the World. The title is self-explanatory and I have copies of both books at home. Hence I take the liberty to cannibalise the ideas and the Bush phraseology to understand what we have seen in India in the past week.
Why is Abdul Kalam—who incidentally also happens to be a Muslim—so valorised that he has become one of the most popular figures in recent Indian history? Whatever his achievements in the field of science (and there are some arguments about that), Kalam was propped up by the system and the political-military complex. He was devoted to a vision that sees India as a great military power, regardless of the multitudes of the very poor who live in it. He was very simply the “Missile Man” whose books sold more than any other author, whose lectures went housefull, who was adored by little children as he delivered easy-to-digest sermons about being good, having purpose, being motivated and so on.
He was also to my mind the Perfect Muslim, the one whom India has sought. Someone who did not wear his religion on his sleeve, came from a modest background, but educated himself to rise to the top. He was certainly far removed from the usual Muslim stereotype of the bearded trouble-maker who lives sullenly in the ghetto. Most significantly, Kalam never challenged the system nor highlighted injustice; instead, he glorified the state and the military-industrial complex. The kind of figure right-wing ideologues would find useful for what they call “nation-building”. He was after all named for president by the BJP regime led by A.B. Vajpayee. In an old 2002 article in Outlook, I find this quote from Tarun Vijay, then editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya: “Indianism is…Hindutva. That does not mean that Muslims should convert to Hinduism or Christians should go to temples. What it does mean is that you can be what you like but share the same vision of Dr Abdul Kalam.” The piece also mentions the fact that his pals in isro called the late president Kalam Iyer. The nomenclature, no doubt, was also a reference to his vegetarianism, his knowledge of Sanskrit and the Bhagwad Gita and his playing of the veena.
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