Saturday, August 1, 2015

Small acts of inter-religious honour can bring about peace and unity

It has been over two weeks since this year's Ramzan. Though belonging to the Hindu religion, my parents undergo the one-month fast that Muslims do in their holy month of Ramzan every year. This was the fourteenth consecutive year of my parents undergoing this month-long fast.

Few days before the month of Ramzan in the year 2001, my father's close friend (a Muslim) and his family had spoken to my parents about the varied benefits of undergoing this fast, and had kindled the idea of trying to observe the fast in my parents' mind. However, to be frank, the factor that most influenced my parents to try it was the anticipated reduction in body weight which would most probably result, for both of them were, and continue to be, fat.

But what began as a mere attempt to reduce weight went further. Right from the first year they started feeling physically and mentally relieved after few days of fasting, and when thirty days of the fast was coming to a close they felt the need to also perform charity, something on the lines of Zakat al-Fitr, which, under Islamic tradition, is a compulsory charity that needs to be done by every Muslim to provide means for the poor to celebrate the opening of fast every day. Every Muslim was bound to do this, and the Prophet Muhammad said, "The fasting of the month of fasting will be hanging between earth and heavens and it will not be raised up to the Divine Presence without paying the Zakat al-Fitr." The mandatory charity entwined with holy Ramzan was thus, to my understanding, a deliberate attempt by the great Prophet to evanesce class divisions in the Islamic society. Right from time immemorial religions have linked man's social responsibilities to God(s), and the fear of God makes him to shoulder them, seeing it as a moral duty, which otherwise he would have probably neglected. My parents did this charity for few years, though it was discontinued after few years since we shifted our residence.

However, what has not stopped is the month-long fasting. And because this was the fourteenth year that my parents were fasting the incident got reported in a Malayalam daily in Kerala, on July 16, three days before the last day of Ramzan. Since then, my parents say, there have been few changes, which I feel are profound. 

My mother talks of how her non-Muslim colleagues express wonder upon her observing such a strict fast, as Hindus and Christians have comparatively very liberal means of religious fasting. But what is remarkable is not this. She talks of her Muslim colleagues showing great happiness in the fact that a Hindu couple is observing a Muslim religious practice, of a Muslim colleague of hers who had hitherto not spoken to her congratulating her for observing the fast. My father talks of how a Muslim shopkeeper in the neighbourhood invited him to his home as a mark of respect. My father was also told by a Muslim friend that the Mullah in a neighbourhood mosque, in the course of his sermon, spoke of my parents to show how people from other religions were showing an interest in Islamic religious practices. It seems the Mullah also asked the gathering to support my parents if they were in some need. 

I was not at home when all this had happened. When I returned home from Madras, I got to hear of all these developments. During my evening walk in my hometown, I always pass by a Muslim man's home who by profession is a painter of bill boards and number plates of automobiles. I see him working every time I walk that road. On seeing the report in the newspaper he delightedly showed it to a friend of mine and my father's, which my friend told me when I met him few days back. During my walk the next day I met the man. He was sitting on a concrete slab and eating fried groundnuts. He immediately rose, smiled at me, and walked to me saying that he had seen the report about my parents fasting. He immediately offered to me the groundnuts that he was having in his hand. Here was a man who I was seeing for over eight years, who hardly even smiled because we did not know each other (though we lived quite close by), but now was walking up to me and speaking jovially. I think it was something great. 

A small act of observing a religious fast of one religion by people belonging to another religion has evoked this sort of a response. I was wondering how it would be if we all did such small acts. During British Raj we have known about instances where Muslims used to celebrate Hindu religious festivals and vice versa, of Muslims not having beef and Hindus not having pork to honour each others religious beliefs and sentiments. The other day I was hearing a lecture of Senior Advocate and Member of Parliament Mr. Ram Jethmalani saying how in his childhood days in Sind, his birthplace, which was then, before partition, a part of India, Hindu families would buy new clothes for the year during Ramzan and Muslims would do so during Diwali. And that by doing so as children they all learnt to see people from other religions as one. He also spoke of how, during the communal riots that took place during partition, Muslims in his neighbourhood protected Hindu families by telling the rioters that there were no Hindus in the houses of that area, which made many Hindus, including him escape death.

For quite some time now religion has been used only, or at any rate primarily, as a means for dividing people. We are walking a path were divisions based on religion and caste are being made more and more conspicuous. Few lay the dangerous trap and most of us unwittingly fall into it. The attempt to polarize the hanging of Mr. Yakub Memon is the latest and perfect case in point. Of all that was happening I was amazed by the demand made by a "leader" of the Samajwadi Party in Maharashtra that Mr. Memon's wife should be made a Member of Parliament.   

"Everybody is agreed about the necessity of this (communal) unity. But everybody does not know that unity does not mean political unity which may be imposed. It means an unbreakable heart unity... We shall both (Hindus & Muslims) be voted irreligious savages by posterity if we continue to make a futile attempt to compel one another to respect our religious wishes." - Mahatma Gandhi. (p.244, Communal Unity, India of My Dreams)

Let us all respect every man without looking at his religion. Let us take that extra effort to learn the goodness in other religions, and also talk about those when we do about ours. Let us put to practice the good of all religions. Let religions remain but divisions made using them fade.