Multiculturalism and the Court of Zafar

Reading William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal, I was struck by how much more complex the events of 1857 were than is taught in school. The common impression that it was a Mughal/Muslim rebellion against the aggressively expansionary British with little or no Hindu involvement is firmly routed by Dalrymple's more nuanced picture.

He describes 1857 as "a very odd sort of religious war, where a Muslim emperor [Zafar] was pushed into rebellion against his Christian oppressors [the British] by a mutinous army of overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys, who came to him of their own free will (and initially against his) to ask for the barakat of a Muslim blessing and the leadership of the Mughal they regarded as their legitimate ruler."

The book highlights the disconnectedness of our modern, religiously and ideologically-monolithic reinterpretation of 1857. The fact that the army raised to suppress the uprising in Delhi, comprised mostly of Pathan and Punjabi Muslims further drives home how little the pan-Islamic creed, so popular today, applied to the subcontinent of 1857.

In fact, Zafar and his court were exemplars of tolerance and multiculturalism. He celebrated Holi, Dussera and Diwali along with the Muslim festivals. His court diaries mention how Zafar refused to see a Hindu who wanted to convert to Islam as he thought it improper. And when his physician, Dr Chaman Lal, converted to Christianity and the city's ulema clamored for Lal's dismissal from the Emperor's service, "Zafar had replied that the doctor's faith was his own private matter and 'there was no cause for shame in what he had done.'"

When on 19 May, eight days after the rebellion started in Delhi, Orthodox Delhi mullahs tried to turn the rebellion into an exclusively Muslim holy war by putting up a declaration of jihad on the Jama Masjid, "Zafar immediately ordered it to be taken down 'because such a  display of fanaticism would only tend to exasperate the Hindus.'"

It was the arrival of hardcore Wahabi jihadis from outside Delhi that threatened the communal harmony so crucial to Delhi and the rebellion itself. On Eidul Azha, the jihadis quite impertinently decided to sacrifice not sheep or goats but cows, to deliberately offend the Hindu population. They planned to do so in the open grounds in front of the Jama Masjid. The threat, however, of imminent civil war because of such an incendiary action was staved off by Zafar who immediately and decisively banned cow slaughter.

Admission is the First Step

Zardari was very impressive in his address at the UN Interfaith Conference. Despite spending half the speech effusively praising the Saudi King, he did admit – though very briefly – that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are both serious problems that need to be dealt with. His exact words were:

"Bigotry manifested in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism must be combatted."

Yes, he mentioned anti-Semitism only once, but implicit in the lumping together of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism was the idea that they are two sides of the same coin. The West's Islamophobia and the Muslim world's anti-Semitism are both a result of grievously mishandled geopolitics in the absence of meaningful people to people interaction.

Muslim anti-Semitism is based solely on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Muslims never had anything against the Jewish faith. In fact, while anti-Semitism raged in Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Muslim world gave protection to Jews. Now, however, Jew is a dirty word in places like Pakistan. Synagogues have been burnt down in Karachi, the old Jewish cemetery desecrated and Jews – South Asian Jews mind you – have been run out of the country. Pakistani hatred of Jews is blind and overwhelming and rests on the false premise that Israel and individual Jews are the same.

The West's Islamophobia rests on the same misconception: the Muslim terrorists and the rest of the Muslim world are the same. Hate crimes against Muslims in America and Europe have been on the increase. In the US presidential elections, the label of Muslim was used almost as a slur on Obama, and the most revealing thing about it was that his Muslim middle name, Hussein, was a big concern for Americans.

Yet Americans acknowledge their problem and many in the liberal media try to fight Islamophobia. But in Pakistan, anti-Semitism has never been challenged by the media, intellectuals or politicians. Zardari's admission of the problem is a first step. His proposed solution, which followed the admission also seems to be in the right direction:

"Dialogue, and not discord, between civilizations and faiths must be encouraged... Let us not isolate people, let us engage people."

It is vague but it is something. Of course it would have been infinitely better if Zardari had said this to the Pakistani people and not a bunch of diplomats and world leaders and talked a little more specifically and extensively about anti-Semitism. There is a rumor that he might meet Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at one of the dinners. I for one hope he does. I hope that Pakistanis are allowed to go to Israel and Israelis allowed to come to Pakistan. Getting to know each other as human beings as opposed to demonic caricatures will only further the mission for tolerance for which all these distinguished persons have gathered at the UN this week.