From Azad

An open letter from someone who has something to say.

I am an Indian Muslim. Apparently, some of my self-proclaimed leaders were some of the people to have appealed against the Delhi High Court judgement.

But I just wanted to tell you that the distance between us is not as much as they think it is. The distance between us, in fact, often is the jail cell. The distance between us, is the distance between S. 125 and S. 377. In fact, we are closer than even we want to believe. For a lot of you, and for a lot of us, the policeman does not represent security. He represents the spectre of state violence, he represents for us, the “colonial legislation”, but he represents the very reality of our lives: that we are marginalized, that our living and dying in this country is based on premises of obedience, on some “ancient traditions” that are summoned whenever uncomfortable questions of identity are raised. Words like assimilation and integration and unity are thrown at us, and we are expected to suspend our lived realities and live in the margins.

We are also living in these miserable times when our friends are openly the greatest supporters of this discourse of development and growth and other things like those. That, for them, their privilege makes them easy purchasers of dreams that our tormentors sell. Our friends maybe attending protest rallies in the evenings today, but each morning, they are subscribing to narratives (and to political forces) that would push us farther away from this mirage of a mainstream. Our suffering is, in a very convoluted fate, now linked. And I hope our resistance too, is.

So while I attend a pride parade here, oppose colonial legislations wherever I can. I expect, as part of millions who suffer, for you to reciprocate. 377 wasn’t the sole British vestige of oppression left in this land. AFSPA exists. Freedom of Religion Acts exist. So does a legislation that criminalises the lives of transgendered persons in Andhra Pradesh.

Our oppressors seemed to have united – the All India Muslim Personal Law Board could not spare money for hundreds of young men who became victims to this narrative of war on terror, but appealed zealously against the Naz Foundation judgment. The Board does not find time enough to reform oppressive provisions in Indian Muslim Law (that even Pakistan has), but it has found time to go after your freedoms. In it, it has found a wonderful ally in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has never, otherwise, lost a chance to spew venom against India’s marginalized.

In our tormentors’ vision: we are all the same. Dalit, Women, Muslim, Trans, Homosexual. But we have identities that have been suppressed. And I wish to assert my own. And maybe you would too. I am protesting against the Supreme Court verdict. Are you attending the protest for the rights of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians – which, by the way, was also at Jantar Mantar?

Their fear after all, is that, one day all of us will be attending each others’ protests. Let us make their fear a little real.

-Azad.