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Recently an old friend of mine came home for dinner. We’ve been friends for long as our fathers were friends but have met only occasionally. She is a Gujarati Jain (it upsets me to state the faith of a friend for a friend is beyond such definitions-however in this case it is important to confine her in such fashion). This probably was a couple of days prior to 15th of August. After some usual chatter, the state of current politics was unanimously elected as the subject for conversation which nowadays appears to be the chief medium for release of supressed anger. In any case, as anticipated, the recent bombs in the U.K. flights and Mumbai blasts were discussed. Although I was probably unaware of the dynamics of the conversation when it occurred, in retrospection certain facts hit me.
My father appeared to me to be on a justifying spree. Justifying the innocence of the regular Muslim, condemning the blasts as non-Islamic, talking of the larger powers that were responsible for what is conveniently called “Islamic terrorism�. I guess he was trying his best to see that she went back with a belief that Muslims are sensible and essentially non-communal.
What hit me when thinking back was the extent to which the above state of affairs was “sad�. I am limited in my vocabulary perhaps in describing it any better.
Here is this friend who has been friends with your family for years. Who knows your family. And yet you need to justify your stand? You need to come clean?
To come clean after 59 years of living as an Indian? To have to emphatically reiterate that you are patriotic and against every force that works against the system? To have to prove that with resounding claims of loyalty? What is it but a sad plight?
And yet if you cease to do it, then feel guilty about not speaking up. Of fueling the “Secular-Muslims-don’t-speak-up� propaganda. Of watching quietly as you get labeled a terrorism supporting community?
I find myself in the centre of a dilemma, characterized by a lacuna devoid of simple solutions. A dilemma between shouting wearily from the rooftops of my conscience and hiding in the quiet burrow fed by my despair.
