A letter to Mr Chetan Bhagat
by RAFIUL ALOM RAHMAN, et al
Author Chetan Bhagat (right) with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. “It has been discussed much that Modiji has done well in Gujarat, but what I believe is that he is a very good politician. A politician has to change with public mood. When communal issue mood was there in the country, that was Modi version 1, when he elected for the first time. And when he won the election for second time, he won it on development agenda.”
“And (now) Modi 3 will be about how to push India ahead, how to run country, how to make relations beyond Gujarat, because it is people’s demand.”PHOTO/TEXT/Desh Gujarat
Following is the text of a letter that was initially written by some of us and subsequently endorsed by the undersigned. This letter is a rejoinder to the article written by Chetan Bhagat titled, ‘Letter from an Indian Muslim Youth published in The Times of India on 30th of June, 2013. The letter was sent to The Times of India for publication with 166 signatures but we are yet to receive any response, or even an acknowledgment. Hence, we are left with no option but to make it public with additional signatures which we have received in the course of time. In the letter sent to The Times of India, we included only ‘Muslim names’ since Mr Bhagat, in his letter pretended to be an Indian Muslim Youth. However, here we are including all the endorsements we received because a large number of the emails read, ‘I am not a Muslim but I am equally disgusted by Chetan Bhagat’s letter’.
Given below is the text of letter followed by more than 200 signatures:
A Letter to Mr Chetan Bhagat from Indian Muslim Youth
3rd July, 2013
Dear Mr Bhagat,
At the very outset, let us make it clear that we are not fans of your regressive fiction. Therefore, we write to you not as crazy fans but as Indian Muslim youth, who felt utterly patronized, insulted and hurt after reading your article, ‘ Letter from an Indian Muslim Youth‘. You might have not realized this, but in pretending to render “a strong modern Indian Muslim voice’’ to the youth and the Muslim community at large, you have ripped them of their agency. You have reaffirmed stereotypes that many in the community have been fighting against. Heard of the Muslim god and his flock?
Sir, one does not need a name like Ahmed or Saeed or Mirza, or even be a Muslim to show one’s genuine concern for the community. One just needs to see beyond one’s own prejudice and biases. Believe us, this disgusting piece of your writing made us more nauseous than any of your (or Madhu Kishwar’s) love-verses to Modi. Your article is nothing but an extension of the thought process that anything Muslim is backward and regressive. Since you have assigned to yourself the task of bearing the moral burden of the community, would you care to explain what a ‘Muslim cap’ is?
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Three questions for Madhu Kishwar:
by DILIP D’SOUZA
Dear Madhu,
20+ years ago, I picked you up at the airport in Austin and you stayed at my home there for a few days. You had come there to deliver a lecture, as I’m sure you remember. We developed a friendship based on a degree of mutual respect and liking. I think you’ll agree? Several years after that I remember a stimulating afternoon sitting with you in Panchgani, catching up on many things and discussing various issues threadbare.
We haven’t met in some years now, but I’m going to call on the privilege of our 20+ years of friendship as I write these lines.
I have no problem at all with your desire to learn about Gujarat and Narendra Modi for yourself. Nor with your desire to see beyond what you’ve called the “targeting” of Modi. Nor with your speaking in support of Modi: if there are people who criticize Modi, I understand and accept that there are those who support him — it’s a democracy we live in after all. Nor with your speaking your mind: you have always done so and it’s the least I expect from you. (In turn, it’s the least you should expect from me).
No Madhu, I have no problem with any of that. And I’m not going to get into debates about Gujarat’s development (as with most things, there are multiple ways of looking at it). Not even into debates about what Modi did or did not do in 2002 to stop the massacres. I travelled there in that time and I have my own opinions, but I realize others see things differently.
There are probably three things I do have problems with.
One is in your reply to Zahir Janmohammed. Your third sentence there says his letter “annoyed me no end.” Your sixth sentence says “my annoyance kept increasing at your jaundiced viewpoint.” It seemed to me this set the tone for the whole reply. So I’d like to ask: Zahir’s viewpoint is clearly and dramatically different from yours; does that necessarily mean it is “jaundiced”?
Kafila for more
The Man Who Doesn’t Wear Dark Green
by ZAHIR JANMOHAMED
Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
Westland Ltd/Tranquebar Press, $49.75 (cloth)
The physician sat in the corner of his office in Ahmedabad, a map of India’s western state of Gujarat on one side, a map of the human nervous system on the other, his hip leaning against the drawer that I spent weeks trying to convince him to open.
After agreeing to a list of conditions—I could not take any photographs, I could not remove anything from his office—he agreed to show me the drawer’s contents. It was a six-inch stack of letters between two longtime pen pals, the physician and a young man named Narendra Modi, the current chief minister of Gujarat and the official candidate from the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest next year’s elections for India’s prime minister. I took out my digital recorder and began reading each letter aloud. A few days before I boarded my return flight to California, the physician called me to his office.
“Zahir bhai,” he said. It was unusual for him to address me this way—he is in his 60s, twice my age, and “bhai” means brother in Hindi and is used most often with someone older.
“Zahir bhai,” he repeated. “I am very sorry. You cannot use my name in your piece.”
I was not surprised; very few in Gujarat are willing to use their real name when asked about Modi. I told him I would be happy to change his name.
“No, you cannot use my name or my letters or my story. I have three children. Modi will ruin their lives if people know my views on him.”
I pleaded with him to reconsider but he would not budge.
“You do not have children. You do not know what it is like to live in Gujarat. You will return to America eventually. Please, you must understand.”
Unfortunately, I do understand. Two years ago, I started conducting research about the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, a wave of communal violence in which over 1,000 were killed, almost all of them Muslim. One person I interviewed, Nadeem Saiyed, was an eyewitness to the Naroda Patiya massacre in which 97 people were killed by a mob of 5,000. When Saiyed and I met, he insisted on checking my passport to verify my name and told me it was a bad idea for him to talk with me about his work in organizing witnesses to testify that Modi’s was complicit in the Gujarat riots.
A few months after we met, Saiyed was fatally stabbed 28 times two blocks away from my apartment in Juhapura, the Muslim ghetto of Ahmedabad where 400,000 live with limited roads, schools, and drainage lines. Since then, when someone tells me they fear repercussions for speaking about Modi, I have learned to pay attention.
Boston Review for more