by JAWED NAQVI
When my brother Shannay was thrashed 11-0 in a table tennis match with a friendly female champion of the sport at JNU, he left the room muttering: “I somehow prefer cricket.”
India faces innumerable social and political challenges, but the purported solvers of problems seem to pick out the Hindu-Muslim question for their benign gaze, on most occasions being wary of addressing issues of perennially deeper strife, namely caste, a more complex proposition than any swinging delivery in cricket, or a spinning serve in table tennis.
Religion is the doctored pitch Hindutva wants everyone to play on. Even Gandhiji fell for it, preferring to frame the Hindu-Muslim binary instead of confronting the challenges of a pervasive caste conflict dogging India.
Had Jinnah linked up with Ambedkar, instead of troubling himself with Gandhi, and explored the complex debate and struggle within the Hindu society — as his mentor G.K. Gokhale would have liked — instead of allowing himself to feel threatened by the upper caste presumptuousness of the Congress, (and an equally upper-caste pursuit of the Muslim League) India’s fate might have been perhaps more agreeable for India and its women by a stretch. Had Jinnah seen the potential of an alliance with, say, a Gauri Lankesh or Periyar or felt encouraged to see a composite India as Tagore visualised it, while being watchful of the communal trap the Congress and the League had set for him, the story of India and of its women might have been more rewarding. That was sadly not to be.
The plight of the commenting classes is not any less pitiable for it. The Bihar elections are looming, crucial for testing the opposition’s frayed sinews against a backdrop of surging patriarchal fascism. Next year, more crucially, is West Bengal’s turn. Taming the pandemic is, of course, extremely urgent. Fixing the economy poses insurmountable challenges too, given the government’s obsession with crony privatisation as panacea.
In the meantime, the world hunger index has shown an embarrassing mirror to South Asia’s largest economy, rather sullying for its imposing military plumage. The probe into a Dalit girl’s rape at the hands of men from a dominant caste grabbed the headlines momentarily. However, instead of a judicial probe, the case was handed to discredited federal investigators.
Dawn for more