I usually shy away from sharing very personal experiences publicly. But as India is in the throes of perhaps its most difficult election, I have a tragic but nonetheless heart-warming story to share with people who have been polarised and badly divided on communal lines over the past few years.
Our former housemaid recently went missing from her home on the outskirts of the town where she was living alone. It took days for her children to discover the fact and by the time they got to the police station to lodge a missing person complaint, it was too late.
However, the policemen recognised her from her photograph instantly. It turned out that she had been knocked down by a vehicle on the highway and taken to hospital in critical condition. The doctors could not save her life and the police could not track down any matching missing person complaint in her name. So they waited for the mandated five days and disposed of her body.
Now it is here that the story gets even more tragic but heart-warming nonetheless. The maid was Hindu but in later life had taken to visiting the local dargah where the police had spotted her on many an occasion, sometimes giving her a lift back home. The maid was Hindu and widowed, so she did not have the obvious tell-tale symbols on her person—like sindoor, kumkum, bindi, toe rings, bangles, mangalsutra, etc. Since she had been such a frequent dargah visitor, the cops presumed she was Muslim and gave her a burial.
When her daughter discovered that fact, she was shocked. She should have been sent to the other world with the chanting of some mantras, she insisted. It is here that we decided to jump in to her aid and applied to the authorities to exhume her mother’s body. But the magistrate and collector flatly refused to allow that—bodies are exhumed only in instances of suspicion of foul play, we were told. She would have to stay buried. But her traumatised daughter quickly reconciled to that fact. Can I at least do some mantras at her grave side, she asked.
This is when I realised that despite the lynching of Muslims for eating meat or just being the ‘other’ and the attempt to create hatred and distrust between communities, at the basic level, out of sight of the polarising politicians, India has remained united and harmonious. The maid, in spite of her dargah visits, had remained a vegetarian and no one tried to convert her to another religion or non-vegetarianism.
The maid’s daughter was granted permission to perform Hindu rites at the grave side under the supervision of wary cops. But barring a few token objections there were no hassles. Her family chanted the mantras at her grave, sprinkled kumkum and flowers and left a saree and bangles to see her through to the other world. A kabristan (cemetery) briefly turned into a shamshaan (crematorium) and no one even murmured. They came home without incident though immensely saddened. But there was none of the feeling of the “other” associated with her mother’s burial. Even in life, her daughter had accepted with equanimity that for some reason her mother was attracted to the dargah but not enough to convert. Both religions had eventually called her to her end.
When I was over the shock of the manner in which it had all happened, I sat up to take notice of how behind the heat of politics, in places that most don’t know of, people continue to be human beings, undivided by faith and customs and willing to absorb and assimilate the differences. When I asked the maid’s daughter why her mother had taken to visiting a dargah, she said she did not know but thought the place gave her mother some kind of comfort that her own family could not. There was a complete lack of questioning of her mother’s motives and acceptance of what was best for her.
In more than a billion people in this country, this is merely one individual or family. But I would like to think that common people across the nation remain untouched by the divisive forces and hate and remain decent human beings.
This also reminded me of stories of refugees from Pakistan, many of them sheltered and hidden by neighbours of the other faith in their homes from violent mobs rampaging the countryside
until they could be delivered to safe havens. That happened more on the Pakistani side, for India was far more resilient and less violent. But now we are hell-bent on converting our country into another Pakistan—within our own borders.
When our former maid took to visiting the dargah, none of her neighbours, Hindu or Muslim, asked her to go to Pakistan. Her unlettered family proved more liberal and secular than any of the highly educated individuals we encounter in our daily lives or on social media who are routinely intolerant. Amid renewed slogans of mandir wahin banayenge, I do not think most people care about anything but the business of living—in harmony and peace—and seek out their own path to salvation, whether through a temple or a mosque whichever faith one may belong to. I fervently hope this is how India remains by and large and defeats all those forces that are contributing to a second break-up of India.
Sujata Anandan
Senior journalist and political commentator
Email: sujata.anandan@gmail.com