Skip to main content

Lessons in Secularism for India


Lesson No. 1

Firoze Mohomed Shakir (left)
Firoze Mohomed Shakir lives in Mumbai.  I have been haunting him like a ghost in some vague quest for quite a time in the virtual places I was permitted access.  His photographs, for example.  What drew me to him initially was his poetry which I used to read via indiblogger.in.  The poems were entirely different from the ones I had ever come across.  They looked initially like prose broken into arbitrary lines.  As I focused more I realized that secularism has as much hope in India as Sufism. Below is his latest poem that I have copy-pasted from his status update in Facebook.  The postscript also belongs to him.

[Dear Firoze, I hope you don’t mind my using you as a lesson. Personally, I’d rather be a Hindu (to use your words) than be religious!]

I Would Rather Be a Hindu Than Be a Wahhabi
yes 
i would rather be called a kafir 
than be a wahabbi 
i would rather be a hindu 
than be a wahhabi 
both options 
close to humanity 
one with 
my cultural inheritance 
of peace and brotherhood 
mutual tolerance sanity 
no i distance myself 
from your hate filled 
religiosity 
a shia pandit 
i am 
hussain 
is enough for me 
these are my thoughts 
you dont have to agree 
at least here in india 
my lord is not 
held in captivity

I say this with pride I am a good Muslim simply because my parentage , my country my friends made me so.. I distance myself from those adherents that allow one Muslim to kill another Muslim.. yes I am a Hindu Shia.. A kafir and proud of what I am.....

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Roohi BhatnagarMay 23, 2015 at 6:38 PM

    Even I am fond of Shakir sir's photography, his prose and poems. He's off Indiblogger now and I tried catching up with his work on Flickr. Thanks for sharing this one. He is a gem as a human.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2015 at 7:07 PM

      Roohi, you are my lesson no.2 ...
      I don't know why Shakir Saab chose to leave indiblgger. But I have managed to extract a permit to visit him when i'm in Mumbai :)
      Cheers to Harmony

      Delete
    2. Firoze Shakir Photographer No1May 23, 2015 at 7:33 PM

      Thank you Tom you are our teacher too...we love you .. unconditionally .. thank you Roohi and all my Indiblogger friends ,, take care ,, thank you Ranvin Renie

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2015 at 10:12 PM

      I learn from you all. And am grateful.

      Delete
  2. Ravish ManiMay 23, 2015 at 9:44 PM

    Thoughtful & courageous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2015 at 10:14 PM

      You know, Ravish, I would love to have some of our politicians acquiring some of this thoughtfulness.

      Delete
  3. Amit AgarwalMay 24, 2015 at 12:43 PM

    I am a great admirer of Firoz bhai ever since I came to know him some five years back. And I'm not talking here of his photography alone, it's more about the grand person that he is! Wish there were more like him in India, on second thoughts why only India? People like him are a need of the hour the whole world over! My love, regards and gratitude...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amit AgarwalMay 24, 2015 at 12:46 PM

    Thank you Tom sir, for presenting him here alongside that wonderful poem of his!
    A great tribute indeed!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Vinay NagarajuMay 28, 2015 at 4:21 PM

    A wonderful poem Matheikal and a very deep thought too ..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...
6 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more