Mothering A Muslim - Nazia Erum - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Nazia Erum

GENRE: Nonfiction

PUBLICATION DATE: January 7, 2018

RATING: 4.25 stars.

As a member of one of the minority religions in this country, I have experienced my share of religious hooliganism. But I'm a hundred per cent sure that the biggest target of bigoted remarks is the Muslim community. Though the anti-Muslim sentiment has been present to a certain extent since the partition and the Indo-Pak wars, it has definitely worsened in the last few years, especially because of many terrorist groups that identify themselves as Muslims but misinterpret and abuse the laws of the Quran, and certain political leaders who look at themselves as spokespersons of a particular religion instead of as representatives of all citizens of the country.

As a parent, I felt that I could teach my children about respecting every faith and that would take care of their attitude towards everyone. So imagine my surprise one day last year when we were watching PK. After one of the scenes showing a character as a Pakistani, my younger daughter, who was then in grade 2, remarked, "Pakistan is a dangerous place." When I asked her, "Why?", her reply was, "Because it is full of Muslims and they are bad people. They kill others." I was so stunned that I couldn't even react to her for a while. But on questioning a little more about the origin of her statement, she named three of her classmates who had told her the above idea. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't have any Muslim classmates nor do we have any Muslim family in our building. But thanks to Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, two of her favourite actors, I was able to kill that destructive thought from her mind. But this incident got me thinking. What if she had never made that remark? I'd have never found out that such discriminatory opinions were being discussed at that tender age. It was around this time that I discovered the existence of "Mothering a Muslim" by Nazia Erum and put out on my TBR.

This book is an attempt to bring to light the prejudices faced by Muslims, especially by children in schools and colleges. The author interviewed more than a hundred children from across the country and used their responses to build up her case as an educated urban Muslim parent. Her examples are all from urban upper middle-class India, predominantly from the Delhi NCR region.

Reading this book has shown me one main thing. What my daughter experienced wasn't a solitary incident. There are plenty of actual instances in the book that cite the religious bullying faced by Muslim children even in elite schools.

The book is written in a very simple matter-of-fact way. But the content is such that it left me horrified. Disturbing is the only word that came to mind throughout this book. Being a non-Muslim, I felt agitated, frustrated, incapacitated, even ashamed that this is the kind of negative thinking our future generation has imbibed from their close-minded parents. I don't even want to imagine what an Indian Muslim would feel on reading this book. To quote a line from the book, "It is a troubling reality that we are bequeathing to the younger generation."

Every religion has its share of nutcases. It's basic common sense to realise the difference between what a religion says and what a fanatic deduces from it. Mislabelling a religion because of some of its followers' misdeeds is idiotic, and yet so many people do that.

I wouldn't say that the book is well-written. The fact that this is the debut work of the author comes out very clearly. What saddened me a bit was that in certain parts, the book seems to speak against Pakistanis. Maybe the author did that to prove her "Indian-ness", but to me, it felt like she herself was indulging in what she had been advocating against. But if even 50% of what's written in the book is true, it is a sad, sad representation of the ripped cultural fabric of our country.

Is it that only Muslims are facing such an environment? Of course not. Even within the dominant Hindus, there are enough of casteist slurs on those belonging to the supposedly lower castes. The other minorities also face their share of tags. The need of the hour is Sensitising. We are humans first, and we need to start looking at people as humans instead of sticking a hundred labels on their foreheads.

Whether you wish to read this book or not is a decision I leave to you. But no matter what your decision, I'd say, speak to your children indirectly about religious perceptions and clarify any stereotypes they might have built up in their head. If the unity of this country is to stay intact in future, we must ensure that the present generations look at each other only as fellow citizens and by no other tag.