Ramblings on the human heart:
I've been meeting and talking to lots of people in Delhi and around
the country this past week. There is a tremendous amount of anger and
distress about the massacre in Gujrat, and yet its not translating
into effective action which can actually make a difference to the VHP
juggernaut. I realised yesterday for the first time in all these
years that most of us actually believe that we can do nothing to stop
it. It came as a cold shock. Is this true? Have we accepted defeat in
our hearts because we have been steadily losing ground to the Hindu
Right?

But how is it that the BJP's steadily declining electoral fortunes
have done nothing to energise our flagging spirits? Why is it that we
are not fortified by their desperate response to their political
decline. They have always said that the Kashmiri's took to the gun to
wrest power by force when they could not do so by the ballot. Same
principle, then, operating in Gujrat and Ayodhya.

Muzzafar Ali's show on tonight at Arab ki Sarai right in front of my
home. The generators thudding noisily to provide for the lighting ,
and yet Abida Parveen's clear voice soars out into the sky. She sings
Khusrau and Bulleh Shah. I step out onto my terrace. On the other
side is Humayun's tomb, lit up, perfect. Thinking about the human
heart, I thought of the love which fills Abida's heart, and I thought
it is only when it fills to the brim and overflows can it pour out in
song like this. And then, thinking of the hundred's of thousands of
soldiers amassed on the borders, their guns and missiles pointing to
each other, and the great efforts of the two governments- no trains,
no planes, no buses- to prevent the people of India and Pakistan from
meeting each other, and yet here is this woman from Pakistan who has
made the journey because of the love in her heart. And here she is
singing, and here I am listening- in spite of the generators! Bless
her and bless this spirit which pervades this land. This is what we
are fighting for. At least this is what I am fighting for. The right
to live even if my surname is Jabbar and the freedom to listen to
Abida Parveen singing Bulleh Shah, for instance.

What else? Conversly I actually started feeling sorry for the
fanatics. Their hearts are so full of hatred and suspicion that there
is no room to experience this. They will never fully experience the
power and joy and wisdom of Bulleh Shah or Khusrau or Shah Hussain or
Baba Farid. They will never fully experience the beauty and joy of
beholding Humayun's tomb, because, like the Babri Masjid, it is
nothing more than an Islamic structure. Such poverty, such terrible
poverty. And is it this poverty which we are awed by because it
manifests in aggression? We make a mistake by attributing it power.
Know it for what it truly is and it loses its power.

warmest regards sj