Hyderabad Inter-Faith Killing: Why Muslim Condemnation is Not Enough
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
6 May 2022
They Must
Start An Honest Conversation On Conversion And Casteism
Main
Points:
1. Both
religion and caste are at play in the killing of Dalit Nagaraju in Hyderabad by
Muslim family.
2. Muslims have
always denied the presence of caste within their communities despite evidence.
3. They have
indulged in Islamic supremacy by forcing the other party to convert at the time
of marriage.
4. Insistence
on conversion must stop; presence of casteism must be acknowledged.
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Nagaraju and Fathima had married
against the wishes of her family.
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The
gruesome murder of B Nagaraju in Hyderabad once again underlines the fraught
lives of inter-faith couples. Nagaraju, a Dalit Hindu and Ashrin Sulthana, a
Syed Muslim had got married recently against the wishes of the girl’s family.
This was too much to digest for the Ashrin’s brothers and they killed Nagaraju
in full public view. Nagaraju was stabbed multiple times, clobbered to death
while the onlookers just made videos of the gruesome incident. Having witnessed
her husband die in such a grisly fashion, Ashrin lost consciousness multiple
times when narrating the incident before the press.
This is
both a religious and a caste issue. There are Muslims who are always in denial
of caste within their society and they want to see it simply as a Hindu-Muslim
issue. But of late, there has emerged a group amongst Muslims who privilege
caste over everything and they are arguing that this is primarily a caste
issue; that Nagaraju was killed simply because he was a Dalit. It is wrong to
privilege one over the other; religion and caste are so enmeshed that it is
often difficult to separate one from the other.
The incident
underscores the fact that sections of Muslims have as much of a problem with
inter-faith marriages as amongst a section of Hindus. But may be the problem is
much deeper within the Muslim society as these things are not discussed as
openly as it is within the Hindu society. Just like Hindus would not like their
wards to marry outside the community, Muslims also are completely opposed to
such a practice. It is not surprising therefore that some Muslims came out in
support of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister when he brought a legislation which
made it very difficult for inter-faith couples to get married.
In fact,
the Muslim insistence on converting the boy or the girl before marriage makes a
mockery of the very term inter-faith alliances. What is left of inter-faith
when one partner has to necessarily convert in order to get married? Muslims
cannot leave this insistence because in their reading of Islam, conversion is a
must. If people are really getting married because they love each other, what
is the point of abandoning once faith then? Till the time Muslims insist on
conversion, there cannot be any genuine exchange of boys and girls between
Hindus and Muslims. The Hindus will always feel that their numbers are being
depleted and one cannot fault them since the doctrinal position on Islamic
marriage insists on conversion.
Syed Ashrin Sulthana, valiantly
fought off his attackers, in a horrific killing in public caught on camera
Wednesday evening.
---
Muslims or
Hindus do not have so much of an issue over inter-faith when the woman comes
into their faith. In this case, Ashrin exited the community by marrying a Hindu
boy thus making violence a foregone conclusion. In such an understanding, women
are simply commodities who have no agency of their own. She must always be told
what to do and policed all the time, more so in matters of choosing life
partners. Muslims who proudly proclaim that women have a lot of freedom in
Islam need to tell us why Ashrin was not free to choose a life of her own.
Ashrin told
the press that Nagaraju had consented to convert to Islam still he was killed.
The killing therefore can also be explained if we understand that Nagaraju was
a Dalit whose intended conversion even was not acceptable to this upper caste
Muslim family. Dalits are ex-untouchables, a very hard-working community, some
of whom have risen through centuries of caste oppression and discrimination.
Their upward mobility fractures the established social hierarchy and those who
want to maintain the status quo react violently to maintain their position and
privilege. Similar process was/is at work in places like Haryana and Punjab
where upwardly mobile Dalit boys were getting into relationships with dominant
Jat community girls. The consequences were similarly grisly in many of such
cases. Something similar seems to be at work in the Hyderabad incident where
the Syeds, through sheer violence, are hell bent to maintain the status quo.
The remorseless face of Ashrin’s brother tells us he killed Nagaraju as a
matter of duty: any transgression by lower caste had to be punished in this
fashion.
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Read: Honour Killing In Egypt: Tribal Mentality Persists Among
Muslims Even In Modern Times
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We also
need to understand the Pratiloma (unacceptable marriage) which is
working in this case. In the traditional Hindu social order, taking a girl from
lower caste is an acceptable form of patriarchy but the reverse is not
possible. The man cannot take a girl from a caste higher than his own. Similar
sentiments prevail in Muslim society also. Nagaraju was killed not just because
he was a Dalit but also because despite him being so, he dared to marry a girl
from high caste.
Muslims are
loathe to accept the presence of casteism within their communities despite
documented evidence. They keep harping on the received wisdom that Islam is an
egalitarian religion without any distinction of caste or class. They also argue
that whatever casteism exists within Muslims is the result of ‘contamination’
with Hindu society. This is an a-historical understanding of Islam. Much before
Islam came to India, it had already developed a complex stratification system.
The Turks and Central Asians who came to India had come with the principle of
hierarchy which dictated that Muslims of foreign descent were always superior
to other Muslims, forget about Hindus. Scholars like Masud Alam Falahi have
categorically demonstrated how such notions even became part of the Indian
Islamic theology. Lest we forget, hierarchy became encoded in Islam the very
minute it was argued that only a Qureish can become the leader of the
community. This happened when the Prophet of Islam had not even been buried.
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The killing
of Nagaraju is a rude reminder to all Muslims that they should first put their
house in order. Firstly, they should confront the menace of casteism within
their own society. Ambedkar was right to observe that Muslims have all the ills
of Hindu society plus something more. And that something more is the rigidity
that comes with Islamic theology. What is the need of conversion when two
people simply want to be together?
Muslims
across all walks of have overwhelmingly condemned the incident. However, such
condemnations have no meaning if there is no introspection as to why such an
incident happened in the first place. For a start, Muslims have to do some soul
searching and come out of their supremacist notion that only their religion is
the ultimate truth and all others are false or astray. If they are really
serious about putting the best face of Islam, then the insistence on conversion
must be dropped forthwith. Secondly, they need to start an honest conversation
about caste and untouchability within their midst.
-----
A
regular columnist with NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher
on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/hyderabad-inter-faith-killing-muslim/d/126943
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