Being the Other: The Muslim in India

by Saeed Naqvi

In December 1991, a decade after the Meenakshipuram conversions, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, who was the president of the BJP at the time, embarked on a high profile Ekta Yatra (or National Unity March) across the country. When Dr Joshi’s Ekta Yatra was announced, I teased him by coming up with an itinerary of my own. I said I would persuade friends to join his Ekta Yatra if he accepted alterations in his travel plan. I accepted his starting point—Kanyakumari, symbolically India’s southern tip, which neighbours Kerala, the first state he was to travel through for any length of time. And, after all, it was in Kerala that Adi Shankaracharya began his epic journey, and there is nothing wrong with political leaders imitating great men. I then suggested that Joshi should dwell a little longer in this marvellous stretch of land between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea because I cannot think of any place in the world which has accorded hospitality to more religions than Kerala. Christianity flourished here when our cousins in Europe were still rather behind by any measure. It was and continues to be Christianity in an Indian mould—marriages cannot be solemnized without the bride wearing the traditional thali. Why, even that new theology of our times—communism—was given entry into Kerala for the first time in the world through the ballot box, in 1957. The rest of my suggested itinerary for Dr Joshi went something like this: Once you have soaked in the Catholicism of this wonderfu...