Every state has had an uneasy relationship with its minorities. This is true for India as well. Neyaz Farooquee’s memoir, An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism: Growing up Muslim in India, is an account of one such turbulent relationship between the Indian Muslims and the Indian state — at one moment this relationship is accommodating; at others, exclusionary. Building on these lines, the young author shares his experiences of living as a Muslim minority in Hindu-majority India. The book covers a span of more than 30 years, starting with Farooquee’s childhood and moving on to his adulthood. In reading about the author’s journey, the book comes across as a work that is shocking and familiar at the same time, depending on the vantage point of the reader.

Revolving around the theme of Muslim vulnerabilities in India, Farooquee’s book opens up a Pandora’s Box, raising questions on crucial issues of power and class, identity and suspicion, nationality and citizenship and, importantly, the rhetoric of political ‘appeasement’ and actual deliverance. Growing up in the land of the mystical poets Kabir and Rahim, Farooquee candidly shares anecdotes that show the religious syncretism that came to define the early decades of independent India. Unfortunately, with increasing religious polarisation, the culture of unison was brutally sabotaged, leaving behind imprints of riots after riots that scarred lives forever.

While the book throws up these issues, it is essentially written against the backdrop of the police ‘encounter’ of Sept 19, 2008, of two Muslim youth in the congested by-lanes of a popular Muslim ghetto in the Jamia Nagar locality of New Delhi. Farooquee describes this area as “a small ghetto, packed with people like sticks in a matchbox. That the world for most of us in Jamia Nagar revolves around a few hangouts, a few masjids, a university and about half-a-dozen haphazard colonies...”

Exploring what it means to be a Muslim in today’s India through the lens of a vilified Delhi neighbourhood

This incident, popularly known as the Batla House encounter and believed to be a fake encounter, defined the psyche of the targeted community belonging to a particular social class, and also created and popularised the narrative of a neighbouring Muslim ‘suspect’. Beginning with his story as a young boy from an ordinary Muslim family hailing from rural Bihar who migrates to Delhi to pursue education and eventually finds permanent accommodation in this ghetto, the author shows how a poorly executed operation endangered the entire community that, thenceforth, came to be seen in simplistic binaries of ‘good’ Muslim and ‘bad’ Muslim.

While narrating the arduous tale of the ‘encounter’, Farooquee unravels the insecurities that come with one’s identity — in this case, the insecurities of being a Muslim in India. Following the 2008 Batla House fake encounter, there was fear among the locality’s residents. Farooquee and his friends stopped venturing out after sunset. Several of Farooquee’s friends went back to their semi-urban hometowns, carrying with them this persistent feeling of insecurity that had come to grip them in the metropolitan city of Delhi. Sharing his extreme paranoia about his own identity and that of his Muslim friends, neighbours and well-wishers, he writes: “I was scared that night, too scared to really sleep. This was true, I am sure, of people across Jamia Nagar ... I wanted to erase traces of every connection that could even remotely cause suspicion to fall on me. I un-joined all the communities — sort of like Facebook pages — that might cast me as a Terrorist disguised as a Normal Human Being. I un-joined every community that I thought might even remotely appear like a jihadi influence: Islam, Quran, Urdu poetry ... It kills me to admit to this, but I had even become suspicious of close friends.”

“The encounter shadow has not left Jamia [Millia Islami],” writes Farooquee, revealing the attitude of outsiders who would refer to it as “that terrorist university!” This warped sense of seeing an educational institution from the outside was one development that was apparently brutal in a post-encounter environment in the city. Internally, the obsession with identity cards grew to no measure. Impinging upon the psychological impact of the encounter and its repercussions on identity, Farooquee narrates an incident about his friend Reyaz, who was advised by his father to carry an ‘authentic’ ID card, not that of the Jamia, but his passport. On this advice from his father, writes Farooquee: “Reyaz laughed. His passport was the scariest ID he possessed. Just a few months ago, he had been to Pakistan on a college trip, representing India at a cultural festival. The first visa stamped on his passport was that of Pakistan!”

With nobody wanting “to be seen with anything that could be construed as anti-India,” he writes, “students avoided issuing books from the library on terror, extremism, Islam or riots, even for research purposes.” A sense of alienation seeped in with complete silence across the political spectrum. Exposing the initial dilemma of the left liberal, Farooquee writes: “The left often claimed to represent minorities, Muslims included, but there was no voice of political leaders worth recalling, at least not in the beginning, when we were scared even to speak aloud.”

His passport was the scariest ID he possessed. Just a few months ago, he had been to Pakistan on a college trip, representing India at a cultural festival. The first visa stamped on his passport was that of Pakistan!”

However, the resilience from within the community has been both daunting and unflinching. The vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islami, Mushirul Hasan — who was earlier detested by Farooquee and his fellow-students — suddenly became their hero after he promised to stand by his students unconditionally, emphatically telling the student community that they did not have to prove their loyalty to anyone. Apart from the vice chancellor, other university authorities, too, were determined in the face of police encroachment on false basis. “One night, not long after the encounter,” the author recollects, “police arrived at the gates of the university hostel asking about some students. The authorities wouldn’t let them in unless they produced a warrant from the court, or at least presented some credible evidence. They went away and didn’t come back.”

This kind of surveillance and random raids in the university was unsettling for the entire Jamia community and came to dominate the political manifestos during local elections. During the municipality elections two and a half years after the ‘encounter’, when the rest of the capital city was fighting for water supply and cleanliness, “candidates in Jamia Nagar debated the issue of young Muslim men being picked up by the police from the locality”, thus endangering their humble existence in the small ghetto and making them conscious of their identity.

It is through this personal narrative that Farooquee argues succinctly about the highly political connotations that one’s identity carries. With this burden of identity that one cannot do away with, the Muslim in India has led a life of estrangement (from without) and resilience (from within).

As the situation for minorities, specifically Muslims, worsens in the current climate — not only projected as ‘outsiders’, but also subject to violence at the hands of right-wing Hindu fanatics — the choice for India, the book subtly suggests, lies between being secular or Hindutva. With a compelling title and cover image, An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism: Growing up Muslim in India, the book, unfortunately, doesn’t live up to the title, leaving the reader to revisit the cover to establish the continuity of argument that the title suggests.

The reviewer is a Delhi-based journalist specialising in Pakistan-India relations and Kashmir

An Ordinary Man’s
Guide to Radicalism:
Growing Up Muslim
in India
By Neyaz Farooquee
Context, India
ISBN: 978-9386850515
307pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 8th, 2018