As a child and while pursuing graduation, I must have filled in innumerable applications… Most of those forms were a questionnaire in themselves… In some way or the other, most of them had an interesting question which didn’t sound worth a notice then… “Religion?”… It was ofcourse disguised in some of them as Caste, Creed, Faith, Ethnicity, but was always there…All of my friends did also fill in such forms… I would and was told to fill in ‘Hindu’ whenever such a situation would confront me… So would Vallabh, Hrishi, Aditya, Abhishek, Tejas and Rahul… My friends Zoeb, Ozefa, Iqbal, Matin, Ismail, Tausif would all fill in ‘Muslim’…
As far as I remember, that was the only difference that we bothered about because we all feared if our applications would be rejected… It did not matter to any of us if we were monotheistic or polytheistic, if we said the Kalama or the Gayatri Mantra, if we fasted in the Ramadan or during the Navaratas… If I ask myself today why I am a Hindu, the only probable answer I get is because I was born to a Hindu family…
As I grew up, the visions and horizons of the society also did and their thinking broadened (well so called)… By now it was a given that I am a Hindu… Now we started exploring newer ideas and tried fitting ourselves into another frames of faith… We started to ask ourselves if we are fundamentalists, extremists, moderates or liberals??? It needs a lot of belief and intelligence to fit into either fundamentalist or liberal frames… Mediocre or ignorant like me fall into moderates by default… Neither have I stopped worshipping my 33 crore gods nor is it that I have not read Gita, Ramayan and some others… But the irony is I cannot name even half of the 33 crore gods nor can I understand what is written into these great books… So for my convenience, I am a moderate… And I also know many other Hindus who belong to the same criteria for more or less the same reasons…
Just wonder for a while, do my so many other Muslim friends have an option of choosing on of these entities??? Does any of us think that there could be moderate or liberal Muslims??? With the recent happenings deeply and vividly engraved in our memories, we have branded all Muslims as fundamentalists, very generally… If every Muslim is an extremist, what about hundreds of my friends who are Muslims but drink alcohol, smoke, do not observe rozas??? Not that this is highly appreciated but nevertheless, it does happen that inspite of these unislamic things, they still offer namaz on all possible Fridays, still celebrate Id, aspire to go to Haj someday and are proud Muslims… Like all of us, they do not approve of the insane acts done by some of the Muslim terrorists… Killing non believers is not their idea of attaining heaven…
When I am ignorant about my culture, I eat meat on certain auspicious days, do not visit temples on the prescribed days, question certain beliefs that do not synchronize with my logic; I conveniently call myself a moderate Hindu… But every Muslim is fundamentalist… Now isn’t that like having double standards – one for yourself and one for others?
