AbleBodyMuslim

#EditorsPeek: The Indian internet made Helle Lyng a symbol of “courageous journalism” overnight. But the controversy points to a bigger question: what if we gave even a fraction of that support to Indian journalists who report in far riskier situations? @Priyanshi50

#BREAKING: West Bengal Government issues order making Vande Mataram singing compulsory in all Madarsas of the state. Vande Mataram singing already was made compulsory in all schools of West Bengal during morning prayers.

This is equivalent to Muslim countries mandating their Hindu population to smash idols and chant "Allahu Akbar" every morning. This is not just theologically problematic, but the source and author of this song were both explicitly anti-Muslim in nature. (#read) "Vande Mataram" comes from the novel Anand Math, penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. It is an ode to a deified and personified conception of India as Godess Durga, portrayed through explicitly Hindu religious imagery and goddess symbolism. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay treated Muslims as foreigners and identified nationalism or Indianhood or indigenousness with Hindus (Chandra 1984: 142). From the context (of the inclusion of the song) in the novel. "It seems that the Sanyasi's appeal was rather to his mother's land, the land of mother Kali, than to his motherland... The whole agitation was Hindu and was strongly resented by the Muhammadans, who formed the majority and derived substantial and obvious advantages from the new arrangements. But the latter controlled no newspaper of importance, and had few orators to voice their wishes... they lacked the previous stimulus which had prepared the Hindu youth of educated Bengal for a passionate agitation (Lovett 1968: 63). ———— In the literary arena most of the Hindi, Urdu and Bengali fiction often contained plots in which Muslims were portrayed as barbaric, insidious, lecherous and treacherous. The most glaring example of this is the works of Bengali writer-revolutionary Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. His historical fiction such as Anand Math (1882), Debi Choudhurani (1884) and Sitaram (1887) contained plots and characters where Muslims were always assigned negative roles vis-à-vis the heroic protagonist, who as a rule was a Hindu. Moreover, Bankim was known for profound historical thrust in his writing which ultimately aimed at consolidation of Hindu identity. Given the nature of Hindu psyche at the time, this construction easily seeped into the minds of the people and received popular political recognition. Moreover, any attempt to evolve a mainstream unitary literature calling for consolidation against the British, caused Muslims to be ignored, left out or dropped entirely. A case in point is the national song Banga Amar. Composed by D.L. Roy, the song which aimed at unifying the Bengalis did not have even a single word about Muslims even though the latter constituted more than half the Bengali populace. ———— Rabindranath Tagore, the author of Indian national anthem has put this in honest words: "To me the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed in its first portion, the emphasis it gave to the beautiful and beneficent aspects of our motherland made a special appeal, so much so that I found no difficulty in dissociating it from the rest of the poem and from the story with which it was accidentally connected." He further expanded on this in a letter to Subhas Chandra Bose: "No Muslim can be expected patriotically to feel much enthusiasm for a song which deifies the Goddess Durga as the country itself... The local and accidental association of the song with a particular novel [Anandamath] which is bound to irritate Muslim feelings is also a factor to be considered."