Why a Muslim Can Never Be a Leftist

Why Can a Muslim Never Be a Leftist?

In the winter of 2004, I had the occasion to attend the SFI’s Parliament March. Two days and two nights had to be spent at a camp near Humayun's Tomb. A large hall was reserved for the comrades from Bihar, Kerala, and Karnataka. Among all the leftists present from Bihar, barely ten percent would have known the full form of SFI. And out of that ten percent, perhaps barely ten percent knew the difference between the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Students' Federation of India. All of them had merely come along for a free sightseeing tour of Delhi; so when evening fell, all the Biharis (the comrades for those three days) began bantering amongst themselves about chasing women and other trivialities.

As we sat shivering in the tent, someone came and informed us that a fire had been lit outside, so we too walked over to warm ourselves. An enthusiastic youth with us began singing a chaupai (four-line verse) from the Ramcharitmanas. Right then, a half-deranged leftist youth, a prominent SFI leader from Delhi University, came rushing over and began screaming violently at the singer, barking epithets like illiterate, communal, orthodox, fool, and Sanghi donkey. Then he yelled, "Have you no shame? Look over there at those comrades recounting tales of the Cuban Revolution; look at those from Kerala singing anthems of Che Guevara; look at those girls discussing Das Kapital; and here you are, chanting the Ramcharitmanas like Bajrang Dal goons and boorish Shiv Sainiks!"

Once he departed after all that ranting and raving, I walked over to the Kerala comrades' camp to verify his words. There I saw a youth named Rehan, sporting a neatly trimmed beard and a Turkish cap, clutching slim tracts titled 'The Truth of Ayodhya', 'Rajaram’s Fake Harappan Horse', and Irfan Habib’s 'The Destruction of Archaeology', straining every nerve to prove that there was never any temple at that disputed site in Ayodhya. The following afternoon, I saw the very same Comrade Rehan offering namaz in the camp. To buy everyday groceries, this Comrade Rehan deliberately bypassed the shops just outside the camp and preferred to go to shops in his own community's quarter around Nizamuddin railway station. At night, we would go to Gurdwara Damdama Sahib for the langar, but he preferred the halal kebabs at "Karim's Dhaba".

This incident is recounted merely to illustrate that a Muslim comrade, even while ensconced in the leftist camp, never forgets to don his Turkish cap; he accepts Eid felicitations from his comrade peers, and he is treated to Iftar banquets by those very people who proclaim dharma (righteous order, loosely rendered as religion) to be an opium; when shopping, the nearby Hindu shopkeepers remain invisible to him; he is granted leave from leftist meetings for the Friday namaz, and a dedicated space is even arranged for him at the venue to pray. He is never stopped from chanting slogans of Inshallah-Inshallah; he is joyfully inducted into abusing Ma Durga and celebrating the Mahishasur festival; and the Beef Festival is, of course, his outright favourite.

That day, 14 years ago, it was a Rehan in the SFI camp; today it is Umar Khalid—the son of a SIMI founder, chanting Inshallah and setting out Iftar tables. Back then it was that leftist from Delhi University reviling someone chanting the Ramcharitmanas; today it is Kanhaiya Kumar heaping abuse upon patriots.

In other words, everything in that camp remains exactly as we witnessed it in the winter of 2004; nothing has changed. The comrade who berated the singer of the Ramcharitmanas did not possess the courage back then to question Rehan when he abandoned the meeting to offer namaz, nor does he possess it today.

When Suranjan Datta, the leftist protagonist of Taslima Nasrin’s timeless novel *Lajja*, finally grasped this duplicity of the Left and the lifelong folly of his convictions, it was, by good fortune, not yet too late. After burning Karl Marx and Engels’ *Das Kapital* and Maxim Gorky’s *Mother*, he at least retained the option to forsake his ‘Sonar Bangladesh’ and come to ‘India’. But the question now is: what option of retreat do Kanhaiya Kumar, Anirban, and Droupadi have?

I want every Hindu leftist to ask this of their inner conscience: why is it that Umar Khalid, despite belonging to the Communist Party, never forgets to chant Inshallah-Inshallah, yet from the throats of Kanhaiya, Anirban, and Droupadi, nothing ever rises except Inquilab Zindabad, never Vande Mataram? Why is it that to the three generations of protagonists in Taslima’s *Lajja*—Sukumar Datta, Sudhamoy Datta, and Suranjan Datta—dharma alone appears to be an opium, while to their friends Haider and Bilal, their mazhab (faith) never seems an opium? Why is it only the Kanhaiya Kumars and Anirbans who lust for a taste of beef, while that very appetite for pork never awakens among the Khalids and the Shehlas? Why does the idea of celebrating Mahishasur Day dawn only upon the Kanhaiyas? Why does no such impulse ever stir in the Shehlas?

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