Operation Shackle for The Idiot Muslim Woman
By
Farah Naqvi
19 Aug 2020
Muslim
women in India have been shackled and then saved so many times, it is hard to
keep up. For the longest time they were oppressed, repressed and perennially
depressed. Squashed into complete human rights misery – by their religion, by their
primitive men, and by medieval personal laws.
Voters stand in a queue as they wait to cast their vote outside a
polling booth during the state assembly election, in Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi,
India, February 8, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Anushre Fadnavis
-----
Two
principle acts of ‘saving’ ensued. First the triple talaq law, through which
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself rescued his Muslim sisters from the
pincer-grip of their ever-talaq-ing patriarchal husbands. So firm and
unyielding was this rescue operation that the poor sods now face jail time for
saying the T word three times at a single go, even in their sleep, even though
the Supreme Court judgment of 2017 emptied the utterance of all legal meaning.
It has no legal consequence – said three times or 10. And does not amount to a
legal divorce.
Yet, there
was such mystifying celebration in the corridors of powers that most people
imagined something dramatic had happened. Sweets were distributed, press
statements issued. Photo ops of delighted Muslim women, in the rakhi format
presence of leaders, graced our papers. The second rescue operation was
Kashmir. Saving the Kashmiri women from the terrible laws of Muslim-land was a
crucial narrative accompanying the August 5, 2019 take-over.
One would
assume that these two seminal acts of rescue – and disproportionate usage of
the nation’s resources and eyeballs – for just one community of oppressed women
would be enough to last for a while. The rest of the nation could now go its
merry way, and leaders could deal with important business like the COVID-19
crisis, the economic downturn, the Chinese intrusion and so on.
But, Muslim
women, full marks to them, had taken the exhortation to ‘go forth and be free’
literally, and decided to lead, not just one or two, but an estimated 200+
protests against the CAA-NRC-NPR across India. It was quite breath-taking. Any
believer in democracy would have been wonderstruck at the silenced and
oppressed coming out to proclaim their existence, and demanding their place in
the national story.
One must
respectfully assume that the women knew what they were doing. Anyone who
respects the agency of women must acknowledge that so many women, in so many
cities and towns, understood the CAA and all its implications. They decided in
their wisdom that it was neither in theirs’ nor their nation’s health to allow
such a biased law to go unchallenged. They decided for themselves that the
threat was grave enough for them to sit night after night in the most bitter
winter Delhi had seen in over a century. You read right – coldest in 119 years!
As
individuals, citizens, women, and a community – and they are rightfully all of
these – they were fearful that their rights to their country were being
insidiously diluted, and they felt they must fight unitedly under the one
banner that guaranteed complete equality and freedom – the Constitution of
India. Turns out that this much exercise of female freedom of spirit, body and
intellect was not what their erstwhile saviours had in mind.
To now it
seems a third round of attention on Muslim women – Operation Shackle – is
underway. This one is markedly different from the first two. The triple talaq
thing was less about saving Muslim women than about legally whacking Muslim men
down to their lowly place in the social pecking order of new India. The Kashmir
one was about showing the entire Indian Muslim community that nothing and no
place, especially Kashmir, can ever be controlled by large numbers of Muslims.
This one is about the idiot Muslim woman, whose best bet for survival it seems
is just to stay at home.
This newest
narrative is being constructed via the Delhi riots investigation. A bare
reading of some of these salacious, leaked ‘confessions’ on Zee News, reveals a
spin deeply offensive to all women. For in this, Muslim women are feeble-minded
morons.
In the
newest ‘idiot’ avatar, Muslim women of Northeast Delhi were apparently being
led around the nose like moronic flock of sheep by a retinue of pied pipers.
Sample this gem from the Zee News stable on Aug 11, 2020:
“In her
confessions, Gulfisha told Delhi Police Professor Apurvananda of Delhi
University was also part of the conspiracy. He was in fact at the forefront of
the planning being hatched for the riots. Gulfisha has confessed that Professor
Apoorvananda also praised her after the riots for doing a good job.”
Local residents break their day-long fast as they attend a protest
against a new citizenship law, New Delhi, December 21, 2019. Photo:
Reuters/Anushree Fadnavis
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Never mind
that this gentleman is variously spelled Apurvananda, Apoorvananda, Apoorvanand
and Apurvanand in the same story (indicating to me the undue
‘no-time-to-even-do-spell-check’ haste with which it was put out), the
description of his praise-showering for acts of gruesome violence is truly
creepy. It has shades of the charismatic ‘Daddy’ of a Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh
Insaan type cult. In which the young Muslim woman is a ‘hungry for praise’
fawning acolyte. The Delhi Police needs to seriously review its playbook.
Because this is a sick-making, anti-woman fantasy tale, and must never be
allowed to take wings. More of the same:
“Gulfisha
told police about the planning of these riots in which burqa-clad women
were prepared to incite the riot so that no one could be identified. The women
were also asked to bring chili powder, which could be poured into the eyes.”
The Hindi
version of the same story adds stones, empty bottles, acid and knives to the
list of things to be brought.
To project
Muslim women or their choice of a burqa as an act of evil strategy,
should offend people of all faiths. It offends me. It offends all women. Many
Muslim women will experience their faith and the dignity of their attire being
abused in this narrative. The narrative builds on a core of discomfort, even
subliminal fear of this garment. This has nothing to do with debates on women’s
emancipation or on what is the appropriate sartorial signifier of female
freedom. Fact is the burqa evokes an instinctive negative reaction far
more than say a full-on Ghoonghat.
The
reaction is not merely to something you may not like, but it is equally to
something you do not trust. And the suspicion comes not from the folds of the burqa
as garment per se, for such mistrust does not attach to the Pope’s far more
voluminous robes. It comes from a suspicion of the Muslim wearer. It comes from
hate assiduously cultivated over decades, worldwide. When the mind and heart
are attuned to an instinctive othering, all accoutrements of ‘the other’ can
become fodder for deepening fear and suspicion. The Burqa is thus
weaponised, and becomes something sinister. A criminal cloak, not a cultural
choice. (‘Fear the Muslim. Fear women who don burqas even more. For they
hide dark evil beneath their robes, including Mirchi powder to be poured into innocent
eyes.’) The subliminal image
construction of lurking female evil is an attack on all women, burqa-clad
or not. And, yet there is more:
“Gulfisha
used to visit different streets to mobilise women to incite them to stage
protests against the Citizenship Law and NRC. The motive behind bringing burqa-clad
women to the protest site was that the police would not use force against them,
and the same was witnessed in Shaheen Bagh. If the police tried to use force,
then the atmosphere will deteriorate and it will ultimately benefit the
planners of the riots, she added.”
To this I
take offence on more counts than can be counted. Let me just make two points.
One, why is it that Muslim women, in Burqa or hijab or neither, are so
‘incitable’? Is it that all Muslim women are potential rioters or Muslim women
in burqa are specially privileged because they are both rioters and
shields? What is going on? There is apparently this large population of
seemingly dumbass people easily herded, yet who so cleverly and quickly morph
into a strategic, armed formation.
Second, the
man the story calls Professor ‘Apurvananda’ – is actually Apoorvanand, a
respected academic, Hindi literature professor, and public commentator of
dignified visage and insightful speech. It insults my sense of decency that he
is portrayed as the cult leader of burqa-clad sheep. Picture it in your
mind’s eye. And the image of a flock of brainwashed burqa-clad Muslim
women following this male, Hindu, academic around, to commit arson, murder, and
other unimaginable acts of horrific violence, will either anger or make you
laugh out loud. You would have to be feeble minded or a very determined
consumer of psychotropic drugs to believe this misogynistic tale.
To end,
reading this ludicrous fiction has left me offended, disrespected and outraged.
The story being created demeans all women, all Muslim women, and indeed all
good people, of all faiths. I hope that all of India will stand up to this
nonsense of projecting Indian women’s peaceful protests as a sinister act of
conspiracy to commit riot, and vilifying anyone who stood with them, spoke with
them, and for them, as their ‘criminal mastermind’. This is how they always try
and bring women down.
World
history and contemporary global reality tells us this – when women, especially
subaltern women stand up, come out and lead, they bring peace, they further
democracy, they deepen love for equality in the family, community and nation.
India will
be disgraced if its most historic women-led protest of contemporary times is
allowed to be sullied, demeaned and perverted by spin doctoring into a riot
conspiracy. For this is how patriarchy and communalism combine. The women of
India, the Muslim women of India, and all who supported, inspired, encouraged,
cheered and sang with them, Hindu, Muslim, male, female and transgender, did
not cause the Delhi riots. Indian women certainly know that. I truly hope the
police figures it out pretty soon. Let the world not see the great Indian
state, the world’s largest democracy, trying so hard to bring its own empowered
women citizens to their knees.
Farah
Naqvi is an activist and writer who lives and works in Delhi.
Original
Headline: The Idiot Muslim Woman
Source: The Wire
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/operation-shackle-idiot-muslim-woman/d/122676