My most vivid childhood memories pertaining to religion are of Ramzan, the month of fasting which culminates in the biggest festival of Muslims—Eid. For several years (from the time I was seven to eleven), Ramzan, or at least part of it, used to fall during my summer holidays. As kids, while we were not allowed to fast, we were instructed to be good. ‘This is the month when all good deeds are multiplied,’ my mother used to tell me and my brothers. ‘If you behave well, help others, and remain truthful it will be as good as fasting.’

The preparation for the fast would start in the evening, when my mother and aunts began to cook the meal which would be eaten during sehri at dawn. Usually, it was some mutton curry cooked with a seasonal vegetable accompanied by dal and a vegetable preparation. Sometimes the mutton curry was replaced with mince cooked either with potatoes or peas or even bitter gourd. The flour was kneaded and kept ready, so that fresh rotis could be made quickly in the morning.

Nearly two hours before the time for sehri expired, sehri-criers, a set of small drums tied to their waists, would walk down the lanes waking people up. Some sang devotional songs and some simply repeated a wake-up call, ‘Haazareen sehri ka waqt ho chuka hai’ (Gentle people, it is time for sehri) in a sing-song voice. The women of the family were the first to rise. It was their job to heat the food and make rotis for everyone. The kids were not woken up but with so much activity in the house, most of us usually got up, and were not forced back to bed because of the summer break. Honouring the commitment to help, I and some of my cousins used to help lay out the sehri spread—first we put down a thick dhurrie and then a white sheet on top. Across the middle would go the saffron, red, and brown printed dastarkhwan (a sort of table runner) on which we placed the plates and serving bowls. The adults would gather and eat the sehri meal.

About ten minutes before sehri ended, the criers would be back in the street, counting down. Finally, the azaan would crackle through the night from the mosque, announcing the end of feasting and the beginning of fasting.

The same routine was repeated when the day came to a close. In the late afternoon, all the women would start preparing for iftar (the evening meal). Kids were assigned small jobs like stirring the sugar in icy water used to make huge jugs of lemonade or crushing the ice added to the water or stirring the lemonade to make sure all the ingredients were properly blended. Special trays of iftar were prepared to be sent to the mosque so that travellers and those who couldn’t afford a meal were also able to break their fast with good food. Delivery of these trays to the mosque was one of the duties entrusted to the kids. Carrying the trays to the mosque, we used to feel a sense of importance and pride. Not only were we carrying food for the less fortunate, our trays had more delectable offerings compared to the small plates which would come from the neighbouring houses.

My pride, however, was short-lived. When I mentioned this casually to my grandfather over iftar, thinking he would be pleased by my observation, he surprised me by saying, ‘Now all your sawaab (the reward that Allah is meant to bestow for good deeds) is gone. When you do something good, it is not for you to decide it is good. It is for Allah mian to judge whether it is good. When you speak for him, he gets upset.’

My grandfather was the mildest and kindest person I remember. Amongst my fondest memories of him was watching him distribute clothes to the poor during Ramzan. In the last fortnight of Ramzan, every afternoon, my grandfather, Abba to me, would seat himself on a rickety wooden chair in the small passage that connected the main door facing the lane with the central courtyard of the house. This passage was almost like a room, the most public part of the house where visitors waited until invited inside. My grandfather would sit here, not only to keep the doorway unobstructed, but also to maintain a distance from the lane outside. Next to him, stacked neatly on a coarse white sheet laid out on the floor, would be bolts and bolts of fabric. Stiff white cotton meant for pyjamas to one side, colour block pastels in mulmul for kurtas next to them. On the other side were cheerful prints for women. Next to the white sheet was a plastic basket with faux georgette scarves or dupattas to complete the ensemble for women.

This was the zakat (charity) spread my grandfather used to lay out during Ramzan. It was not just the money spent (roughly 2.5 per cent of one’s annual assets according to Quranic stipulation, though my illiterate grandfather had no way of doing the math), but the effort that made it noble, as he used to personally visit the market to select the fabric, including the prints for women. Everyone in the market knew him and the fabric used to be delivered home for distribution during the holy month. According to Abba, he was giving the poor a chance to wear new clothes on Eid.

Since he had been doing this for years, people knew about it and thronged our home; there was no signage outside and my grandfather always sat inside the house. He didn’t want to make a public display of his charity. His elderly man Friday, who had been with him for years, would double up as a tailoring assistant, measuring the material according to the requirement and cutting it up. Most of the time my grandfather never questioned the supplicant; he believed her, whether she asked for clothes for two or five family members. Only in the cases of well-known offenders would he restrict the number.

For kids in the family, this was just one more reason to enjoy Ramzan. Stacked-up bolts of fabric were a new arena for play and once the distribution started in the late afternoon, watching the whole exercise was like a live entertainment show. Often, we would offer help by trying to match the dupattas with the suits.

Many years later, one of my flashier uncles assumed this responsibility after my grandfather’s stroke; but with a difference. He crossed the threshold. With a skullcap perched on his head, he used to place his chair outside the house in the lane, frequently engaging passers-by in conversation so that nobody could fail to notice what he was doing. For good measure, he exhorted the receivers of zakat to pray for the family which was making their Eid joyous; the louder the expression of gratitude, the happier he was. All in public view.

After Abba’s death, the practice was stopped, because good intentions had been replaced by ‘exhibitionism’. Thereafter, like most Muslim families, we started sending zakat money to madrassas. It was both convenient and soul-satisfying because we believed that the money was being spent on poor children. Also, there was a feeling that since these children would be getting an Islamic education, they would grow up to serve the faith. Service to the faith was considered a noble job, something that ordinary Muslims, engaged in worldly pursuits, were not able to do.

I discovered these nuances much later in life. As a child, Islam came to me gently, and in driblets. There was no structured imparting of religious education at home. Learning to read namaz and the Quran was not considered necessary for children, though at my mother’s insistence some half-hearted efforts were made to teach us the Quran—a few tutors were hired and fired. No maulana or hafiz5 was ever recruited for the job, neither were we sent to the mosque as the neighbourhood kids were. This was another way of keeping us insulated from the larger Muslim community of our mohalla. I started to learn about Islam through proverbs and the stories that my mother and sometimes my father narrated to me.

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About the book

Who are the Indian Muslims?

Are they a monolithic community practising a faith alien to India? Or are they a diverse people, geographically rooted in the cultural ethos of the land? Is there an ‘Indian Islam’, a religion that grew out of Arabia but was nurtured in India and influenced by local traditions and customs? Has the power of Islam declined over the centuries because the faithful have forgotten the spirit of the religion, and are sticking to dogma and rigid rules instead? Born a Muslim: Some Truths about Islam in India attempts to answer these questions by taking a hard look at how the world’s second largest religion is practised in the country.

The book tracks the history of the religion from its revelation in Arabia in the seventh century to its spread through many parts of the world. It arrived in India by multiple routes—in the south, in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, with traders from Arabia, and in the north, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, with invaders, rulers, and mystics, largely from Central Asia. Once it was established in India, it morphed and evolved through the centuries until it took on the distinctive contours of the religion that is practised here at present. The author takes a clear-eyed look at every aspect of Islam in India today. She examines the factors that have stalled the socio-economic and intellectual growth of Indian Muslims and attributes both internal factors—such as a disproportionate reliance on the ulema—as well as external ones that have contributed to the backwardness of the community. She shows at length, and with great empathy and understanding, what it is like to live as a Muslim in India and offers suggestions on how their lot might be improved. Weaving together personal memoir, history, reportage, scholarship, and interviews with a wide variety of people, the author highlights how an apathetic and sometimes hostile government attitude and prejudice at all levels of society have contributed to Muslim vulnerability and insecurity.

Ghazala Wahab’s Born a Muslim goes beyond stereotypes and news headlines to present an extraordinarily compelling and illuminating portrait of one of the largest and most diverse communities in India.

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