Who am I to talk?
Syeda Hameed
Tags : syeda hameed, columnist indian express, indian express oped, Who am I to talk?
I feel it is only reasonable that I be expected to explain the rather unlikely subtitle of my piece. The fact is that the issue of Muslim concerns in contemporary India always reminds me of the first British census in India.
As a member of the Planning Commission, I strive to respond to the “developmental” concerns of certain segments of the population. “Muslims” form one such segment. However, to capture their concerns — let alone even begin to respond to them — is not an easy task. Who is the representative Muslim, I ask myself. Each seems as authentic as the next and yet they display such different concerns. In my immediate vicinity, there are Muslims whose primary concerns, at the moment, include: their daughter’s admission into a good nursery school; managing their work and personal lives, both of which veer off into unexpected directions; finishing a project, funding for which is running out; worrying about medical insurance; hoping that they will be “regularised” at work.
I realise, however, that authentic as these concerns are, they may not be “Muslim” concerns. “Muslim” concerns are those that emerge only/primarily because one is Muslim. They are not anchored in the fact of the Muslim’s many other identities: where she is also a parent, or a young person in a crisis of modernity, or a worker etc. This realisation brings to mind the first British census in India.
Early British administrators, earnest as they were, could not “govern” properly because they were unable to capture the concerns of the “native” population. Who were these people? How did they behave? How could one work toward their social-cultural uplift? The census of 1872 was an exercise in exactly such social management. It sought to “understand” the “native” demographics: this entailed counting but also “categorising” every person. The state assigned each person an identity, “Mohammedan”, for instance.
Earlier, before such categorisation of people into neat religious and caste brackets, communal identities must still have existed; individual and communitarian aspirations must still have been articulated. However, I believe that since these articulations/representations were not made before a newly bureaucratised state, they were perhaps allowed to be less deliberate, more transient. Perhaps, identities too were more “free-flowing”. Post-census — at least for the purposes of the state — a person’s aspirations were assessed mostly in terms of her primary identity.
Thus, to this day, Muslim representations to the state (and to the Planning Commission) are focused on generalities associated with the idea of being Muslim in India today. Sometimes, this results — counterintuitively — in Muslims declaring that they are second-class citizens in India. Unbelievable as this may sound, it is a logical corollary of the collapsing all other identities (of class, caste, gender and “historical privilege”), the overarching state categorisation of “Muslim”. In such circumstances, such declarations may appear to be fair assessments of one’s status.
One could argue that these are projected/ abstracted representations of being Muslim, for in actual life, the secondary identities that the state seems to ignore are much more real. On the other hand, there are perhaps several crucial issues where the delineations between general concerns of being Muslim (or Dalit, or a woman) and those that flow from having many other identities do collapse. One among them is finding an apartment to rent: it seems that in this endeavour, at least, class, caste, education and urbanity all collapse into the fact of being Muslim (or Dalit, or non-vegetarian, or South Indian).
“Formal” concerns of Muslims (or the representations before the state) focus mostly on the Sachar committee report and its non-implementation, on the status of the prime minister’s 15-point programme, on education (and scholarships) for Muslim children, on the hunger for education in the community, on livelihoods and issues of development and integration.
These efforts are supported by civil society and in the media by a host of committed organisations that monitor some of these programmes. There are several Muslim news portals (like twocircles.net) that report on the development/discrimination binary.
However, the broad categorisation of people into set identities is constantly being challenged. New sub-groups form and express concerns that are different from those of the larger community. This is a process of democratisation: thus, for example, the pasmanda has its own concerns, that of having been sidelined in the “developmental” processes of the larger Muslim community. The demand for inclusion of Muslim Dalits within the SC category consumes them at the moment. Similarly, Muslim women sometimes project differentiated claims (women-only mosques as articulated in Tamil Nadu, for example) as do class movements within Indian Muslims.
Outside of Muslim representations to the state, internally, other debates take place. Here, the idea of being “Muslim” is contested. The controversy around Vastanvi and his new plans for Deoband typifies this: what constitutes the Muslim self is a question that is being debated between the traditionalists and the reformists. I should state that these are both loose categories in the tradition of the colonial census but refer, in this case, to groups that want to retain the experiential way of learning, and to those that believe in bringing a scientific methodology to the study of Islam.
As part of the ummah, there is interest in the stirrings in the Arab world: the modernist sees it as an enlightened move toward democracy, vindicating their stand that Islam can indeed be secular and democratic and anti-fundamentalist. Others see in this a move away from Wahhabi towards newer forms of “moderate Islam”. Some also think it is a good thing.
The Muslim youth, like other young people, have also taken to social networking sites. When discussing Muslim issues they discuss Islam, Kashmir, the Zionist antecedents of Julian Assange and Mohamed ElBaradei’s links with the CIA. They also worry about “encounter deaths”, Batla House, terrorism and issues related to the security of Muslims. Incidentally, most are also very passionate about the market and the opportunities therein.
In conclusion, I wonder sometimes if I can only be a silent listener to Muslim concerns or whether I am authentic enough to represent them. Sometimes, we are told that being a mere observer in religious rituals, or being from a particular class, or from Delhi makes my experiences of being Muslim somewhat vicarious. I should not presume to represent. And then I think that while my experiences are admittedly different from other Muslim experiences, we cannot let any one set hegemonise all the others. There should be room for a plurality of concerns and worldviews even within the Muslims.
So let me see: yesterday I felt that Maulana Azad’s death anniversary was more or less neglected in the English media, reflected on the Godhra verdict, worried about unfinished work at the Commission, got annoyed because my friend’s flight from Canada was delayed and wondered why some people do not make enough of an effort with Urdu names. These were my concerns for the day, then.
The writer is a member of the Planning Commission
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Irony of Gujarat.
The Muslim as BJP supporter in Gujarat
RAHEEL DHATTIWALA
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The Hindu Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi greeted by party's Muslim workers during an election meeting. File photo
In a patronage democracy where resource distribution depends on the discretion of elected officials, it pays to stay close to the power centres in government.
Ahmadbhai Shaikh is a muezzin in a mosque in the Behrampura area of Ahmedabad. If not reciting the ‘azaan,' he is busy helping Bharatiya Janata Party workers in his ward to campaign among members of his community. His reason for shifting from the Congress to the BJP is “the hope that our drainage problems will be solved, after all these years.” As one who was lucky to escape the arson and looting in the city in 2002, he merely calls that a “period of misfortune.”
It was nine years ago that Gujarat's biggest wave of Hindu-Muslim violence was triggered in Godhra. The burning of the Sabarmati Express marked the beginning of an anti-Muslim backlash that continued intermittently for the entire year amid allegations of State complicity. That period reinforced existing residential and symbolic segregation of Muslims in cities like Ahmedabad.
Nine years later, the victims of the violence are embracing their perceived perpetrators.
As has been already discussed extensively, Gujarat's Muslims voting for the BJP is an exceptional case compared to, say, Bihar where the BJP was accepted only on the condition of excluding Hindutva (and Narendra Modi), or even other parts of northern India where Sikhs voted for their perceived oppressors, the Congress, only after a public apology the party made to the community. The reasons for the transformation behind the new ‘all-inclusive' BJP have also been discussed widely.
Yet, what is far more exceptional is the kind of Muslims supporting the BJP in Gujarat.
Take Ahmedabad city, for example. The campaign trail of the BJP in the 2010 civic polls here included a patchwork of busybody Muslim clerics and traders: two groups that we would assume to have different voting preferences. The traders have an understandable, rational logic of voting for a party that has emphasised its economic development policies as never before. The voting preference of two significant trader-Muslim communities of Gujarat, the Dawoodi Bohras and the Khojas — both Shias — has always tended to be biased towards the party in power, be it the British in pre-independent India, the Congress in the 1980s to early-1990s, or the BJP later. “The Syedna or the head priest will always seek a cordial relationship with those in power. It is in his interests, and as he sees it, in the interests of the community,” says scholar-activist J.S. Bandukwala.
However, if one looks at the situation five years ago, it is fascinating and almost implausible why religious Sunni Muslims, including clerics, would come out to support the BJP.
In 2006, this writer spoke with Asma Saiyed, a student at St. Xavier's College in Ahmedabad. Enraged by the events of 2002, she had taken a significant decision: to add the burqa to her wardrobe of western wear. For this eloquent young woman, wearing her religion on her sleeve was a “slap in the face” of the BJP, which she viewed as the architect of violence against Muslims in 2002. “All of us friends felt cowed down by a constant anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2002. And we thought whether it made any sense to be scared. We said, okay so you want to hate us? Here are our burqas so we know that you know we are Muslims. Now come, get us.”
Ms Saiyed belonged to that section of Muslims who developed a collective identity in opposition to the majority, most of whom, they believed, endorsed the BJP's Hindutva rhetoric. This was similar to what John Ogbu's work on ‘oppositional culture' among Black American students in the U.S. tells us — that their identities as minorities were developed as a response to White racism, which then led them to oppose conformism in education and all that which would be “good” (White or majority) behaviour.
Religious symbolism became a shield for these Muslims to protect their identities against the threat of rising, rabid Hindutva. Compromise seemed impossible even in the exchange of economic development. So when Congress workers told this writer recently that Muslims were paid by the BJP to support it in the civic elections, it was paradoxical, even if the claim were true. People generally refuse to involve themselves in cost-benefit calculations and reach a self-serving decision on issues of a sacred nature when given material incentives in exchange. Assuming some Muslims did accept money from the BJP in exchange of support, does it mean they are no longer looking at the 2002 post-Godhra violence as an attack on their religious identity? If the Congress is not a favourable alternative and the BJP a lurking ethnic threat, why vote at all?
The answer perhaps lies in the fact that India's is a patronage democracy wherein resource distribution depends on the discretion of elected officials as a form of market good rather than an entitlement. Staying close to the power centres in government is the key to survival. For the traders, survival is synonymous with their occupation. For the cleric, it could mean assimilation to avoid being labelled anything from anti-social to anti-national — no surprise that most Muslim BJP supporters, including religious Muslims, have patriotic songs as their phone caller tune.
“This terrorism taint is too much for the community. As long as the BJP is in power, we have to be part of the mainstream to shun this tag,” says Imranbhai, a fruit vendor in Ahmedabad. He fits the stereotype of the Congress supporter: white kurta-pyjama, skull cap, untrimmed beard and moustache. Only that he swears by the BJP. “There is no shame for a Muslim today to admit he supports the BJP,” he says. Indeed, the indifference of religious Muslims to saffron flags fluttering in the dense Muslim ghettos of Juhapura and Saudagar ni Pol in Ahmedabad — areas that are alien to the local Hindu except in scary stories — was unthinkable earlier.
Moin Khan, once a CPI(M) worker, soon to sign up with the BJP, explains that the power centre for a religious Muslim is the local cleric; for the cleric, it is the people in governance. “The maulvis can mobilise masses because people listen to them. For the maulvis to establish credibility among the people, they have no choice but to get their hands dirtied in their network of influential politicians.” He recalls how a Sunni Muslim cleric who was close to the BJP helped trace a local slum-dweller's daughter who had disappeared. “Some clerics help the Congress, many now [help] the BJP because there is no alternative.”
Moving back again five years ago, as one section of Muslims in Ahmedabad battled issues of identity using religion as a shield, another section had begun to develop a different kind of collective solutions to the discrimination. They were of the view that survival was possible only for the fittest Muslim — one who conforms to the mainstream majority. Prepping up for an existence war of sorts, they began to set up schools and focus on mainstream education for their children. Almost 70 per cent of Muslim-managed educational institutions, for example, were established in Ahmedabad between 1993 and 2005 — after the two waves of Hindu-Muslim violence.
Qutbuddin Ansari, who became the “face of the Gujarat riots,” his pleading picture making news in national and international media in 2002, refused an interview with this writer in 2007. His request: privacy. “I've moved on. Please let me be.”
The movement to “move on” had already started. The recent civic elections took it to a higher level.
Remember that this remains a discussion about a very small section of Muslims — most of whom relatively (that is, not directly) affected by the violence. Moreover, political attitudes in a civic election are based on ground issues. Slum-dwellers in the old city of Ahmedabad are ready to switch left, right and centre (the CPI (M) to the RSS to the BJP) as long as they get their local corporator to provide their daily quota of drinking water. Whether the BJP will continue to embrace Muslims at the cost of upsetting its majority target voters in Gujarat in the Assembly elections, will be seen in the future.
“The BJP will always be anti-Muslim, that is its identity. But the benefits it has given to Hindus, say in the Sarkhej ward, have indirectly reached Muslims,” says Shahid Ali, a Muslim entrepreneur. A Congress supporter, he is open to the BJP if it continues to welcome Muslim candidates. Speaking of former top cop Al Saiyed, who contested on the BJP ticket, he says, “I would not mind having a Muslim candidate like Saiyed. At least I have someone of my own to hold accountable for any sloppy work.” Mr. Saiyed, who managed to get over 13,000 votes in Sarkhej, himself believes that the recent change in political behaviour is driven by educated Muslims and those who have realised the need to be in the mainstream. “If we do not assimilate with other communities, it's the end of us!” he says.
The Hindu, Feb 24th, 2011
(Raheel Dhattiwala is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, who is doing field work in Ahmedabad.)
RAHEEL DHATTIWALA
SHARE · COMMENT (2) · PRINT · T+
The Hindu Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi greeted by party's Muslim workers during an election meeting. File photo
In a patronage democracy where resource distribution depends on the discretion of elected officials, it pays to stay close to the power centres in government.
Ahmadbhai Shaikh is a muezzin in a mosque in the Behrampura area of Ahmedabad. If not reciting the ‘azaan,' he is busy helping Bharatiya Janata Party workers in his ward to campaign among members of his community. His reason for shifting from the Congress to the BJP is “the hope that our drainage problems will be solved, after all these years.” As one who was lucky to escape the arson and looting in the city in 2002, he merely calls that a “period of misfortune.”
It was nine years ago that Gujarat's biggest wave of Hindu-Muslim violence was triggered in Godhra. The burning of the Sabarmati Express marked the beginning of an anti-Muslim backlash that continued intermittently for the entire year amid allegations of State complicity. That period reinforced existing residential and symbolic segregation of Muslims in cities like Ahmedabad.
Nine years later, the victims of the violence are embracing their perceived perpetrators.
As has been already discussed extensively, Gujarat's Muslims voting for the BJP is an exceptional case compared to, say, Bihar where the BJP was accepted only on the condition of excluding Hindutva (and Narendra Modi), or even other parts of northern India where Sikhs voted for their perceived oppressors, the Congress, only after a public apology the party made to the community. The reasons for the transformation behind the new ‘all-inclusive' BJP have also been discussed widely.
Yet, what is far more exceptional is the kind of Muslims supporting the BJP in Gujarat.
Take Ahmedabad city, for example. The campaign trail of the BJP in the 2010 civic polls here included a patchwork of busybody Muslim clerics and traders: two groups that we would assume to have different voting preferences. The traders have an understandable, rational logic of voting for a party that has emphasised its economic development policies as never before. The voting preference of two significant trader-Muslim communities of Gujarat, the Dawoodi Bohras and the Khojas — both Shias — has always tended to be biased towards the party in power, be it the British in pre-independent India, the Congress in the 1980s to early-1990s, or the BJP later. “The Syedna or the head priest will always seek a cordial relationship with those in power. It is in his interests, and as he sees it, in the interests of the community,” says scholar-activist J.S. Bandukwala.
However, if one looks at the situation five years ago, it is fascinating and almost implausible why religious Sunni Muslims, including clerics, would come out to support the BJP.
In 2006, this writer spoke with Asma Saiyed, a student at St. Xavier's College in Ahmedabad. Enraged by the events of 2002, she had taken a significant decision: to add the burqa to her wardrobe of western wear. For this eloquent young woman, wearing her religion on her sleeve was a “slap in the face” of the BJP, which she viewed as the architect of violence against Muslims in 2002. “All of us friends felt cowed down by a constant anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2002. And we thought whether it made any sense to be scared. We said, okay so you want to hate us? Here are our burqas so we know that you know we are Muslims. Now come, get us.”
Ms Saiyed belonged to that section of Muslims who developed a collective identity in opposition to the majority, most of whom, they believed, endorsed the BJP's Hindutva rhetoric. This was similar to what John Ogbu's work on ‘oppositional culture' among Black American students in the U.S. tells us — that their identities as minorities were developed as a response to White racism, which then led them to oppose conformism in education and all that which would be “good” (White or majority) behaviour.
Religious symbolism became a shield for these Muslims to protect their identities against the threat of rising, rabid Hindutva. Compromise seemed impossible even in the exchange of economic development. So when Congress workers told this writer recently that Muslims were paid by the BJP to support it in the civic elections, it was paradoxical, even if the claim were true. People generally refuse to involve themselves in cost-benefit calculations and reach a self-serving decision on issues of a sacred nature when given material incentives in exchange. Assuming some Muslims did accept money from the BJP in exchange of support, does it mean they are no longer looking at the 2002 post-Godhra violence as an attack on their religious identity? If the Congress is not a favourable alternative and the BJP a lurking ethnic threat, why vote at all?
The answer perhaps lies in the fact that India's is a patronage democracy wherein resource distribution depends on the discretion of elected officials as a form of market good rather than an entitlement. Staying close to the power centres in government is the key to survival. For the traders, survival is synonymous with their occupation. For the cleric, it could mean assimilation to avoid being labelled anything from anti-social to anti-national — no surprise that most Muslim BJP supporters, including religious Muslims, have patriotic songs as their phone caller tune.
“This terrorism taint is too much for the community. As long as the BJP is in power, we have to be part of the mainstream to shun this tag,” says Imranbhai, a fruit vendor in Ahmedabad. He fits the stereotype of the Congress supporter: white kurta-pyjama, skull cap, untrimmed beard and moustache. Only that he swears by the BJP. “There is no shame for a Muslim today to admit he supports the BJP,” he says. Indeed, the indifference of religious Muslims to saffron flags fluttering in the dense Muslim ghettos of Juhapura and Saudagar ni Pol in Ahmedabad — areas that are alien to the local Hindu except in scary stories — was unthinkable earlier.
Moin Khan, once a CPI(M) worker, soon to sign up with the BJP, explains that the power centre for a religious Muslim is the local cleric; for the cleric, it is the people in governance. “The maulvis can mobilise masses because people listen to them. For the maulvis to establish credibility among the people, they have no choice but to get their hands dirtied in their network of influential politicians.” He recalls how a Sunni Muslim cleric who was close to the BJP helped trace a local slum-dweller's daughter who had disappeared. “Some clerics help the Congress, many now [help] the BJP because there is no alternative.”
Moving back again five years ago, as one section of Muslims in Ahmedabad battled issues of identity using religion as a shield, another section had begun to develop a different kind of collective solutions to the discrimination. They were of the view that survival was possible only for the fittest Muslim — one who conforms to the mainstream majority. Prepping up for an existence war of sorts, they began to set up schools and focus on mainstream education for their children. Almost 70 per cent of Muslim-managed educational institutions, for example, were established in Ahmedabad between 1993 and 2005 — after the two waves of Hindu-Muslim violence.
Qutbuddin Ansari, who became the “face of the Gujarat riots,” his pleading picture making news in national and international media in 2002, refused an interview with this writer in 2007. His request: privacy. “I've moved on. Please let me be.”
The movement to “move on” had already started. The recent civic elections took it to a higher level.
Remember that this remains a discussion about a very small section of Muslims — most of whom relatively (that is, not directly) affected by the violence. Moreover, political attitudes in a civic election are based on ground issues. Slum-dwellers in the old city of Ahmedabad are ready to switch left, right and centre (the CPI (M) to the RSS to the BJP) as long as they get their local corporator to provide their daily quota of drinking water. Whether the BJP will continue to embrace Muslims at the cost of upsetting its majority target voters in Gujarat in the Assembly elections, will be seen in the future.
“The BJP will always be anti-Muslim, that is its identity. But the benefits it has given to Hindus, say in the Sarkhej ward, have indirectly reached Muslims,” says Shahid Ali, a Muslim entrepreneur. A Congress supporter, he is open to the BJP if it continues to welcome Muslim candidates. Speaking of former top cop Al Saiyed, who contested on the BJP ticket, he says, “I would not mind having a Muslim candidate like Saiyed. At least I have someone of my own to hold accountable for any sloppy work.” Mr. Saiyed, who managed to get over 13,000 votes in Sarkhej, himself believes that the recent change in political behaviour is driven by educated Muslims and those who have realised the need to be in the mainstream. “If we do not assimilate with other communities, it's the end of us!” he says.
The Hindu, Feb 24th, 2011
(Raheel Dhattiwala is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, who is doing field work in Ahmedabad.)
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Vastanvi is the rightful heir of the Deobandi tradition
Tanweer Alam | New Delhi, February 23, 2011 | Updated 08:12 IST
UTILITIES
Darul Uloom Deoband, the leading Islamic seminary of the subcontinent, is in turmoil today. At the heart of the struggle is the issue of who comes to finally control it. The chances are that Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, who has been its rector for a short while, could be forced to make way for someone supported by the powerful Madni clan. Though Vastanvi, a Gujarati, is a relative of the Madnis ( who are from Faizabad near Ayodhya in UP), he is seen as an outsider.
History
The move to oust Vastanvi arose from a stray remark of his which was construed to mean that Muslims have been flourishing in Modi's Gujarat. If he is really forced to quit, it would be against the very spirit of Deoband, which has traditionally chosen to de-emphasise Hindu-Muslim distinctions and communal antagonisms. Its unwritten policy has been not to dwell too long upon the episodes of communal conflict and consistently emphasise the shared ground between Hindus, Muslims and communities of every other faith. This legacy, by the way, could go a long way in saving him at the crucial hour.
When the time came to choose between the Hindu Gandhi and Nehru, and the Muslim Jinnah and Liaqat Ali, Deoband clearly and unequivocally chose the former. When a fierce debate was raging on Indian nationalism versus "Islamic nationalism", Deoband's stalwarts publicly declared that Islam was a faith, not a nation.
When Deoband firmly rejected Pakistan, the towering scholar and freedom fighter from this seat of learning Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni came forward to explain to Muslims why. He said wataniyat (nationalism) came from watan (motherland), not from deen (religious faith). Deen could not be made the basis of nationalism. For that, the poet Iqbal lampooned him in his poetry.
Let us link Maulana Vastanvi's remarks to that old Deobandi tradition of putting watan first and ignoring the differences between the ahle-watan (people of motherland). Let us not look at what he said as an attempt to take away the heat from Modi. Generosity of spirit shown by a victim does not necessarily lead to the exoneration of the aggressor, and Maulana Vastanvi's remarks may not be enough for the law to salvage Modi.
A look at the past would be illustrative. Most Indians believe that Mahatma Gandhi would never have wanted any harm to come to his killer Nathuram Godse. Yet, Godse was awarded the death sentence. When the Turk Mehmet Ali Agca shot at and critically wounded Pope John Paul II, the large-hearted Pope forgave him and went to see him in jail. Agca, who had no rhyme or reason to do what he did (and thus could be mentally unstable), got a long jail sentence. The wife of Father Graham Staines has forgiven Dara Singh for the brutal murder of her husband and two sons, yet that did not prevent the Orissa High Court from awarding him a life term.
Sonia Gandhi and her children have forgiven Rajiv's killers, yet they languish behind bars.
It is interesting to note that the founder of Darul Uloom, Maulana Qasim Nanautavi, believed in, and preached a noncompetitive relationship with Hindus, a relationship that emphasised the shared ground rather than the religious distinctions.
The first generation of his disciples like Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi continued the struggle against the British Raj. Maulana Nanautavi himself was among the resistance fighters of 1857. However, when his disciples declared a " Government of India in Exile" in Pashtun territory, the president was not a Muslim, but a Hindu, Raja Mahendra Pratap. That tradition has survived in Deoband.
Secular
So has the staunch disavowal of confusing Islam with nationalism. Nation and faith, to these people, are two different categories. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who did not come from Deoband, but had remarkable identity of ideas with these people, predicted in 1947 that Pakistan would break under the weight of its own contradictions. Maulana Madni said at that time East and West Pakistan would separate within 25 years.
Their argument was that ethnic identities could not be wished away at the spur of the moment. The Deoband ulema warned Indian Muslims that there was more in common between Hindus and Muslims of Bihar or UP than between Muslims of these states and Muslims of Balochistan, Punjab and the Frontier. " You are afraid of Hindu nationalism, but you will find Baloch and Pashtun nationalism more difficult to deal with", they reasoned.
In Islam, the heirs of prophets are not necessarily their sons and grandsons, but those who carry the tradition faithfully. We know well who the real heir of Deoband's stalwarts is and their legacy of healing the wounds of fratricidal conflicts.
Is it a sacrilege to try to get Gujarat to cool down and allow the fratricidal rage brewing in people's hearts to cool off? Does the holy Quran not say that people who have been wronged have the moral right to avenge it, but Allah loves those who would rather not take revenge and forgive, for Allah is forgiving? Let's be clear. No society can afford to be perpetually at war with itself. This holds good for Gujarati society as well. For a while it looked and felt good for the Hindu right to announce that the " Gujarat lab experiment" was highly successful. But it does not work that way in life. Still, Islam and Mussalmans are there, like there are influential Jews in today's Germany despite Hitler and the Holocaust. Gujarat and its Muslims have got to move on, as everybody else does.
That is all Maulana Vastanvi suggested. He knows that whosoever was behind the 2002 bloodbath will have to deal with the law of the land, irrespective of what the maulanas or anyone else says.
The law will do what it is supposed to be doing, while the society will try to heal itself through reconciliation at different levels.
Nobody forefeits his/ her right to make a conciliatory gesture merely by becoming the head of an organisation. The claim that as Deoband V- C Maulana Vastanvi cannot talk of love and reconciliation is absurd. There is no copyright on love.
When Syed Shahabuddin and Maulana Ali Mian Nadwi visited the Kanchi Shankaracharya at his mutt , the seer treated them like brothers. Among the many gestures of kindness made by him was the provision of a quiet space for the visiting Muslims at the mutt to offer namaz . This is how a religious leader acts.
Example
Another example of transdenominational religiosity in our times was Guru Virsa Singh ji of Govind Sadan on the outskirts of Delhi. This Sikh guru was equally accessible to and trusted by Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. He had an international following and most of the white men and women at the ashram were from Christian and Jewish backgrounds.
Baba Virsa Singh ji 's ashram was thronged by a large number of Muslims on Muslim festival days. Similarly, people of other faiths used to gather on days of religious festivals. The Baba, who passed away in 2001, used to preach the love of God as described in different scriptures.
He was particularly close to the Muslim sufi tradition. Baba Farid, a Muslim sufi, is part of the Sikh lore. Nobody has an exclusive right on air, water, sun and the earth. Mother Teresa is not patented by Christians. There is no patent on love. Maulana Vastanvi belongs to all of us, and is the right heir to the stalwarts of Deoband who believed that Hindus and Muslims were the children of the same earth. Let Maulana Vastanvi be.
The author is a Delhi-based social activist
Tanweer Alam | New Delhi, February 23, 2011 | Updated 08:12 IST
UTILITIES
Darul Uloom Deoband, the leading Islamic seminary of the subcontinent, is in turmoil today. At the heart of the struggle is the issue of who comes to finally control it. The chances are that Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, who has been its rector for a short while, could be forced to make way for someone supported by the powerful Madni clan. Though Vastanvi, a Gujarati, is a relative of the Madnis ( who are from Faizabad near Ayodhya in UP), he is seen as an outsider.
History
The move to oust Vastanvi arose from a stray remark of his which was construed to mean that Muslims have been flourishing in Modi's Gujarat. If he is really forced to quit, it would be against the very spirit of Deoband, which has traditionally chosen to de-emphasise Hindu-Muslim distinctions and communal antagonisms. Its unwritten policy has been not to dwell too long upon the episodes of communal conflict and consistently emphasise the shared ground between Hindus, Muslims and communities of every other faith. This legacy, by the way, could go a long way in saving him at the crucial hour.
When the time came to choose between the Hindu Gandhi and Nehru, and the Muslim Jinnah and Liaqat Ali, Deoband clearly and unequivocally chose the former. When a fierce debate was raging on Indian nationalism versus "Islamic nationalism", Deoband's stalwarts publicly declared that Islam was a faith, not a nation.
When Deoband firmly rejected Pakistan, the towering scholar and freedom fighter from this seat of learning Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni came forward to explain to Muslims why. He said wataniyat (nationalism) came from watan (motherland), not from deen (religious faith). Deen could not be made the basis of nationalism. For that, the poet Iqbal lampooned him in his poetry.
Let us link Maulana Vastanvi's remarks to that old Deobandi tradition of putting watan first and ignoring the differences between the ahle-watan (people of motherland). Let us not look at what he said as an attempt to take away the heat from Modi. Generosity of spirit shown by a victim does not necessarily lead to the exoneration of the aggressor, and Maulana Vastanvi's remarks may not be enough for the law to salvage Modi.
A look at the past would be illustrative. Most Indians believe that Mahatma Gandhi would never have wanted any harm to come to his killer Nathuram Godse. Yet, Godse was awarded the death sentence. When the Turk Mehmet Ali Agca shot at and critically wounded Pope John Paul II, the large-hearted Pope forgave him and went to see him in jail. Agca, who had no rhyme or reason to do what he did (and thus could be mentally unstable), got a long jail sentence. The wife of Father Graham Staines has forgiven Dara Singh for the brutal murder of her husband and two sons, yet that did not prevent the Orissa High Court from awarding him a life term.
Sonia Gandhi and her children have forgiven Rajiv's killers, yet they languish behind bars.
It is interesting to note that the founder of Darul Uloom, Maulana Qasim Nanautavi, believed in, and preached a noncompetitive relationship with Hindus, a relationship that emphasised the shared ground rather than the religious distinctions.
The first generation of his disciples like Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi continued the struggle against the British Raj. Maulana Nanautavi himself was among the resistance fighters of 1857. However, when his disciples declared a " Government of India in Exile" in Pashtun territory, the president was not a Muslim, but a Hindu, Raja Mahendra Pratap. That tradition has survived in Deoband.
Secular
So has the staunch disavowal of confusing Islam with nationalism. Nation and faith, to these people, are two different categories. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who did not come from Deoband, but had remarkable identity of ideas with these people, predicted in 1947 that Pakistan would break under the weight of its own contradictions. Maulana Madni said at that time East and West Pakistan would separate within 25 years.
Their argument was that ethnic identities could not be wished away at the spur of the moment. The Deoband ulema warned Indian Muslims that there was more in common between Hindus and Muslims of Bihar or UP than between Muslims of these states and Muslims of Balochistan, Punjab and the Frontier. " You are afraid of Hindu nationalism, but you will find Baloch and Pashtun nationalism more difficult to deal with", they reasoned.
In Islam, the heirs of prophets are not necessarily their sons and grandsons, but those who carry the tradition faithfully. We know well who the real heir of Deoband's stalwarts is and their legacy of healing the wounds of fratricidal conflicts.
Is it a sacrilege to try to get Gujarat to cool down and allow the fratricidal rage brewing in people's hearts to cool off? Does the holy Quran not say that people who have been wronged have the moral right to avenge it, but Allah loves those who would rather not take revenge and forgive, for Allah is forgiving? Let's be clear. No society can afford to be perpetually at war with itself. This holds good for Gujarati society as well. For a while it looked and felt good for the Hindu right to announce that the " Gujarat lab experiment" was highly successful. But it does not work that way in life. Still, Islam and Mussalmans are there, like there are influential Jews in today's Germany despite Hitler and the Holocaust. Gujarat and its Muslims have got to move on, as everybody else does.
That is all Maulana Vastanvi suggested. He knows that whosoever was behind the 2002 bloodbath will have to deal with the law of the land, irrespective of what the maulanas or anyone else says.
The law will do what it is supposed to be doing, while the society will try to heal itself through reconciliation at different levels.
Nobody forefeits his/ her right to make a conciliatory gesture merely by becoming the head of an organisation. The claim that as Deoband V- C Maulana Vastanvi cannot talk of love and reconciliation is absurd. There is no copyright on love.
When Syed Shahabuddin and Maulana Ali Mian Nadwi visited the Kanchi Shankaracharya at his mutt , the seer treated them like brothers. Among the many gestures of kindness made by him was the provision of a quiet space for the visiting Muslims at the mutt to offer namaz . This is how a religious leader acts.
Example
Another example of transdenominational religiosity in our times was Guru Virsa Singh ji of Govind Sadan on the outskirts of Delhi. This Sikh guru was equally accessible to and trusted by Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. He had an international following and most of the white men and women at the ashram were from Christian and Jewish backgrounds.
Baba Virsa Singh ji 's ashram was thronged by a large number of Muslims on Muslim festival days. Similarly, people of other faiths used to gather on days of religious festivals. The Baba, who passed away in 2001, used to preach the love of God as described in different scriptures.
He was particularly close to the Muslim sufi tradition. Baba Farid, a Muslim sufi, is part of the Sikh lore. Nobody has an exclusive right on air, water, sun and the earth. Mother Teresa is not patented by Christians. There is no patent on love. Maulana Vastanvi belongs to all of us, and is the right heir to the stalwarts of Deoband who believed that Hindus and Muslims were the children of the same earth. Let Maulana Vastanvi be.
The author is a Delhi-based social activist
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Important Decision related to Muslim Dalit's Reservation
High-level meet to discuss quota for dalit minorities
Arvind Singh Bisht, TNN, Feb 17, 2011, 04.02am IST
Article
Comments
Tags:Muslim Dalit Association|Congress-Led UPA Government|Abdul Naseer Nasir
LUCKNOW: The Congress-led UPA government has come under sharp criticism from minorities for ignoring their demand for reservation by refusing to scrap clause three of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950, which excludes Muslim and Christian dalits from reservation.
While the Samajwadi Party has taken the cause of minorities on the issue, the Congress has been forced into a damage-control exercise. A high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to discuss the matter in New Delhi on Thursday.
Criticising the Congress for its ambiguous stand, the UP Muslim Dalit Association (UPMDA) on Wednesday said that the above clause of the Constitution was discriminatory against minorities and the Congress was allowing it to continue.
When asked to comment, Abdul Naseer Nasir, a founder member and general secretary of the UPMDA, said: " Fed up with the Congress's ambiguous stand on the issue, minorities are now left with no option, but to mobilise people's support for its demand." Towards this end, he said, UPDMA had sought meetings with Union ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Salman Khurshid, Farooq Abdullah and Mamata Banerjee in New Delhi.
The issue has hogged the limelight as the Supreme Court, hearing a petition in this regard, has asked the Centre to file an affidavit by February 24. The petition, filed by Franklin Caesar Thomas and others in 2004, sought to challenge the clause of the Constitution and pleaded that it was was discriminatory against Muslims and Christians. Despite Supreme Court's repeated reminders, the Centre has been evading filing affidavit on the issue, predictably fearing a backlash from dalits. Now, the apex court has set a deadline.
In 2006, the Centre didn't file the affidavit on the ground that the matter had been referred to the Ranganath Mishra Commission for its opinion. Again it delayed the matter by referring the issue to the Sachar Commission. Set up by the Congress-led Central government, both these commissions in their reports had held the demand justifiable within the preamble of the Constitution and also recommended to do away with the contentious clause three of the Constitution.
But, now the Centre has pressed the panic button following the Supreme Court's deadline. Also, addressing the issue urgently is crucial to the Congress, which is trying to make a comeback in the 2012 assembly elections.
The demand to scrap clause 3 of the Constitution finds favour with all sections of Muslims, irrespective of their status and political leanings. Prominent cleric Khalid Rasheed Friangi Mahali said: "The Congress should come out with clarity on the issue, if at all it is honest to stop religious discrimination."
In the same vein, president of the UPMDA, retired IAS officer Anees Ansari
said the above clause of the Constitution was plainly arbitrary, unconstitutional and unfair. "The Congress government should have no hitch in doing away with it, as this had already been recommended by the Commissions set up by its governments," Ansari, who is also the vice-chancellor of Urdu Farsi University, said.
The biggest disadvantage of this clause, he said, was that it extends the benefit of reservation only to those declared as scheduled castes of Hindu, Sikh and Buddhism religions and not to dalit Muslims and Christians, even though they were engaged in the same job. "For instance, Muslim butchers, weavers, sweepers, vegetable seller etc were not treated at par with those of the same groups from Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities," he said.
Pleading that reservation should be extended only to socially and educationally backward classes of Muslims and Christians, Ansari said that a large number of minority problems would be solved, if the above clause was removed from the Constitution. This would not only increase the representation of Muslims in political institutions, but also make them eligible to get the quota benefit given to Scheduled Castes.
Read more: High-level meet to discuss quota for dalit minorities - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/High-level-meet-to-discuss-quota-for-dalit-minorities-/articleshow/7511774.cms#ixzz1EBxIC1Ey
Arvind Singh Bisht, TNN, Feb 17, 2011, 04.02am IST
Article
Comments
Tags:Muslim Dalit Association|Congress-Led UPA Government|Abdul Naseer Nasir
LUCKNOW: The Congress-led UPA government has come under sharp criticism from minorities for ignoring their demand for reservation by refusing to scrap clause three of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950, which excludes Muslim and Christian dalits from reservation.
While the Samajwadi Party has taken the cause of minorities on the issue, the Congress has been forced into a damage-control exercise. A high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to discuss the matter in New Delhi on Thursday.
Criticising the Congress for its ambiguous stand, the UP Muslim Dalit Association (UPMDA) on Wednesday said that the above clause of the Constitution was discriminatory against minorities and the Congress was allowing it to continue.
When asked to comment, Abdul Naseer Nasir, a founder member and general secretary of the UPMDA, said: " Fed up with the Congress's ambiguous stand on the issue, minorities are now left with no option, but to mobilise people's support for its demand." Towards this end, he said, UPDMA had sought meetings with Union ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Salman Khurshid, Farooq Abdullah and Mamata Banerjee in New Delhi.
The issue has hogged the limelight as the Supreme Court, hearing a petition in this regard, has asked the Centre to file an affidavit by February 24. The petition, filed by Franklin Caesar Thomas and others in 2004, sought to challenge the clause of the Constitution and pleaded that it was was discriminatory against Muslims and Christians. Despite Supreme Court's repeated reminders, the Centre has been evading filing affidavit on the issue, predictably fearing a backlash from dalits. Now, the apex court has set a deadline.
In 2006, the Centre didn't file the affidavit on the ground that the matter had been referred to the Ranganath Mishra Commission for its opinion. Again it delayed the matter by referring the issue to the Sachar Commission. Set up by the Congress-led Central government, both these commissions in their reports had held the demand justifiable within the preamble of the Constitution and also recommended to do away with the contentious clause three of the Constitution.
But, now the Centre has pressed the panic button following the Supreme Court's deadline. Also, addressing the issue urgently is crucial to the Congress, which is trying to make a comeback in the 2012 assembly elections.
The demand to scrap clause 3 of the Constitution finds favour with all sections of Muslims, irrespective of their status and political leanings. Prominent cleric Khalid Rasheed Friangi Mahali said: "The Congress should come out with clarity on the issue, if at all it is honest to stop religious discrimination."
In the same vein, president of the UPMDA, retired IAS officer Anees Ansari
said the above clause of the Constitution was plainly arbitrary, unconstitutional and unfair. "The Congress government should have no hitch in doing away with it, as this had already been recommended by the Commissions set up by its governments," Ansari, who is also the vice-chancellor of Urdu Farsi University, said.
The biggest disadvantage of this clause, he said, was that it extends the benefit of reservation only to those declared as scheduled castes of Hindu, Sikh and Buddhism religions and not to dalit Muslims and Christians, even though they were engaged in the same job. "For instance, Muslim butchers, weavers, sweepers, vegetable seller etc were not treated at par with those of the same groups from Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities," he said.
Pleading that reservation should be extended only to socially and educationally backward classes of Muslims and Christians, Ansari said that a large number of minority problems would be solved, if the above clause was removed from the Constitution. This would not only increase the representation of Muslims in political institutions, but also make them eligible to get the quota benefit given to Scheduled Castes.
Read more: High-level meet to discuss quota for dalit minorities - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/High-level-meet-to-discuss-quota-for-dalit-minorities-/articleshow/7511774.cms#ixzz1EBxIC1Ey
Sunday, February 13, 2011
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 6, Dated February 12, 2011
A hundred years after his birth, revolutionary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz is still a pebble creating ever-widening ripples
BY JAVED AKHTAR
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
GROWING up in a family of poets, I was surrounded by poetry. But to me, it is Faiz who was the brightest star of the brightest literary movements in undivided India. My first memory of Faiz is a package that came in the mail. It was an autographed copy of his first collection of poems — Dast-e-Sabha. I was nine years old at the time and staying with my maternal uncle, the poet Majaz Lakhnavi, who like Faiz was part of the Progressive Writer’s Association. By the time I was in school in Aligarh, Faiz’s words were very much a part of my life.
There was something extraordinary about Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He was more than a big poet. He was a big man with a tremendous amount of humility.
The word mein, me, never made an appearance in his poems. Poetry was to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is not to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this. To him art was for life and not just for art’s sake.
Loud and clear Faiz addresses trade union workers. He was president of the Postal Workers Union in 1949
There have been other poets who wrote about politics but somehow they were prosaic and violent in a way that Faiz never was. His work is an unbelievable synthesis of art with social and political values. Of course, Faiz also was phenomenally popular. In this age, artists can cater to the lowest common denominator and be assured that they will become a celebrity. Faiz maintained a standard and still was so hugely followed.
Faiz was like a pebble tied to a string and thrown in the water to create larger and larger circles. Faiz kept tradition intact but he pulled it to modernity. He didn’t break from poetic conventions and maintained an extreme literary aesthetic, a painterly one. Faiz could infuse an evening in prison with a heady beauty. Take these images, (from a version of Zindan Ki Ek Shaam translated by Agha Shahid Ali) where he describes each star as a rung in the spiral staircase of a descending night. The poem continues...
Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai/ Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal/ Zulm ka zahar gholnewale/ Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal/Jalvagahevisaal ki shamayein / Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya/ Chand ko gul karen, to hum jaane.
To be a poet is not to be didactic or dry to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this
(This thought keeps consoling me/though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed/in rooms where lovers are destined to meet/they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,/nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed/ no poison of torture make me bitter/ if just one evening in prison/can be so strangely sweet/if just one moment anywhere on this earth.)
Talking heads Faiz with journalist Asaf Jilani and thespian Zia Mohyiuddin during an interview with BBC Urdu Service, London
I first met Faiz in the 1960s when he had come to India after a long absence. He read in our house to a gathering of poets and Bollywood stars. Amitabh Bachchan was there as were many major poets of the time. When people read their poetry, they usually read it with energy. They take care of the intonation, rhythm, of the whole performance. Not Faiz. He read his poems with no special enthusiasm; as if it was a mildly tedious duty he had to perform. That day, a cheeky poet asked why he didn’t read his poetry as well as he wrote. Faiz replied that he couldn’t possibly do everything well and asked the poet to read instead.
Faiz has definitely influenced an entire generation. He has added to the aesthetics of Urdu poetry. Today, Urdu is in a strange situation. The language has been politicised for the past 100 years and sacrificed at the altar of the two-nation theory. In India, it is constantly given step-motherly treatment. On one hand, there are a growing number of people who appreciate Urdu poetry but the language is also becoming nostalgia. By its very nature, it is secular, anti-fundamentalist and embraces anti-archaic values but we are denying it its place in our heritage. The birth centenary of one of its greatest poets is occasion to reflect on this. I want to end with quoting my favourite lines of Faiz.
Dil na umeed toh nahin , nakaam hi toh hain/ Lambi hain gham ki sham magar sham hi to hain. (I haven’t lost hope, but just a fight, that is all/ The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all).
--
A hundred years after his birth, revolutionary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz is still a pebble creating ever-widening ripples
BY JAVED AKHTAR
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
GROWING up in a family of poets, I was surrounded by poetry. But to me, it is Faiz who was the brightest star of the brightest literary movements in undivided India. My first memory of Faiz is a package that came in the mail. It was an autographed copy of his first collection of poems — Dast-e-Sabha. I was nine years old at the time and staying with my maternal uncle, the poet Majaz Lakhnavi, who like Faiz was part of the Progressive Writer’s Association. By the time I was in school in Aligarh, Faiz’s words were very much a part of my life.
There was something extraordinary about Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He was more than a big poet. He was a big man with a tremendous amount of humility.
The word mein, me, never made an appearance in his poems. Poetry was to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is not to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this. To him art was for life and not just for art’s sake.
Loud and clear Faiz addresses trade union workers. He was president of the Postal Workers Union in 1949
There have been other poets who wrote about politics but somehow they were prosaic and violent in a way that Faiz never was. His work is an unbelievable synthesis of art with social and political values. Of course, Faiz also was phenomenally popular. In this age, artists can cater to the lowest common denominator and be assured that they will become a celebrity. Faiz maintained a standard and still was so hugely followed.
Faiz was like a pebble tied to a string and thrown in the water to create larger and larger circles. Faiz kept tradition intact but he pulled it to modernity. He didn’t break from poetic conventions and maintained an extreme literary aesthetic, a painterly one. Faiz could infuse an evening in prison with a heady beauty. Take these images, (from a version of Zindan Ki Ek Shaam translated by Agha Shahid Ali) where he describes each star as a rung in the spiral staircase of a descending night. The poem continues...
Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai/ Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal/ Zulm ka zahar gholnewale/ Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal/Jalvagahevisaal ki shamayein / Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya/ Chand ko gul karen, to hum jaane.
To be a poet is not to be didactic or dry to make a large statement at the expense of beauty. To be a poet is not to be holier than thou. Faiz understood this
(This thought keeps consoling me/though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed/in rooms where lovers are destined to meet/they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,/nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed/ no poison of torture make me bitter/ if just one evening in prison/can be so strangely sweet/if just one moment anywhere on this earth.)
Talking heads Faiz with journalist Asaf Jilani and thespian Zia Mohyiuddin during an interview with BBC Urdu Service, London
I first met Faiz in the 1960s when he had come to India after a long absence. He read in our house to a gathering of poets and Bollywood stars. Amitabh Bachchan was there as were many major poets of the time. When people read their poetry, they usually read it with energy. They take care of the intonation, rhythm, of the whole performance. Not Faiz. He read his poems with no special enthusiasm; as if it was a mildly tedious duty he had to perform. That day, a cheeky poet asked why he didn’t read his poetry as well as he wrote. Faiz replied that he couldn’t possibly do everything well and asked the poet to read instead.
Faiz has definitely influenced an entire generation. He has added to the aesthetics of Urdu poetry. Today, Urdu is in a strange situation. The language has been politicised for the past 100 years and sacrificed at the altar of the two-nation theory. In India, it is constantly given step-motherly treatment. On one hand, there are a growing number of people who appreciate Urdu poetry but the language is also becoming nostalgia. By its very nature, it is secular, anti-fundamentalist and embraces anti-archaic values but we are denying it its place in our heritage. The birth centenary of one of its greatest poets is occasion to reflect on this. I want to end with quoting my favourite lines of Faiz.
Dil na umeed toh nahin , nakaam hi toh hain/ Lambi hain gham ki sham magar sham hi to hain. (I haven’t lost hope, but just a fight, that is all/ The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all).
--
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