On January 26, the day we celebrate the birth of the Republic, a Hindu gym owner in Kotdwar, Uttarakhand, stepped up to confront a Bajrang Dal posse who were ordering Vakil Ahmed, owner of the Baba Cloth Shop, to remove the appellation “Baba” from his shop name.
It was their contention that Baba is a kosher Sanatan denomination, and that he was cannily misusing the same to hoodwink customers.
They might have paused to reflect that one of the most revered Sufi saints of medieval India was Baba Farid whose teachings are inscribed in the sacred book of the Sikhs, The Guru Granth Sahib, to which Hindus too pay obeisance.
In a cultural initiative of bold empathy and true spiritual content, this outstanding Gym owner, named Deepak Kumar, presented himself to the vigilantes of the sectarian Hindutva brigade as “Mohammad Deepak” – thus in symbolism of the highest moral order, foregrounding a syncretism of identity which has for centuries been the bedrock of our civilisation.
As a Kashmiri, I am tempted to speculate how Deepak Kumar may in his so humanist projection of himself been thinking of how in Kashmir, Muslims and Pandits across a broad swath of nomenclatures have common surnames – a fact which the late Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah was to point out to the veteran journalist and writer Prem Shankar Jha in an extensive interview in 1968.
Abdullah was to adduce names like Bakshi and Wattal as belonging to both religious communities – to which we may add Dhar, Raina, Mattoo and a number of other surnames as well .
However the current right-wing may seek to communalise the polity in Kashmir, Abdullah was underscoring a cardinal feature of Kashmiri society, its ethnicity which has been through history a bulwark against the sort of ready-to-hand sectarian strife and schism witnessed in parts of the republic.
(Two Muslim academic dons from Delhi University who once found professorships in two different departments in Kashmir University returned to Delhi within a year; when I asked them why they had so deserted their posts, their answer was, “You did not tell us it is not enough to be Muslim in Kashmir; it is important to be Kashmiri.”
As a result of the red line defined by Deepak Kumar on the subject of communal hate mongering, his gym has lost most of the members, who included young women as well, leaving him with only a dozen or so devoted subscribers.
Considering the venomised cultural zeitgeist of our day, thanks to a majoritarianism gone lawless, it is most heartening that more than a dozen advocates of the Supreme Court have come forward to take membership of Mohammad Deepak’s gym, and some have also offered to represent him legally pro bono.
What makes this initiative of great value is the fact that such gestures, especially from the urban elite, have thus far been scant in coming to refute this lawlessness openly.
It is indeed desirable that the many millions who silently repudiate the turn that the constitutional republic has been taking at the behest of oppressions inflicted by sectarian posses on secular citizens, with increasing conviction come forth to be counted if the realm is to be retrieved from the totalitarian brink.
Mohammad Deepak has shown how this may be done, and those that have come forth to support his cardinal stand are indeed the vanguard the republic has been seeking in some despair.
Deepak Kumar’s feat of humanist outreach recalls a supremely inspiring instance from a beleaguered Kashmir in 1947:
When the Pashtun raiders from the new dominion of Pakistan reached Baramulla, wanting quickly to occupy the airport at Srinagar, a 19-year old National Conference worker named Sherwani waylaid them for three whole days, allowing time for the Patiala regiment to land.
On being discovered, the young Sherwani was nailed to a cross in the town square and asked to say “Pakistan zindabad”. Refusing to comply, Sherwani raised the slogan, “Victory to Hindu-Muslim unity.”
He was shot multiple times.
Let all sane citizens of the republic draw a bridge from Shaheed Sherwani to Deepak Kumar, and never stint to emulate the deeds of the two noble and brave exemplars of secular India.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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