In memoriam Asghar Ali Engineer (1939-2013) Asghar Ali Engineer, 74 years old, passed away on the morning of May 14. But for his numerous comrade-in-arms, friends, followers and admirers there’s lots he has left behind to remind them of him: Scholar and promoter of a gender-just Islam, leader of a reform movement who repeatedly risked his life challenging the tyranny of the head priest of global Dawoodi Bohras, Syed Mohammed Burhanuddin, untiring crusader for communal harmony, global ambassador of inter-faith dialogue, civil liberties activist. Over three decades, through his writings (more than 50 books), innumerable seminars and workshops across India, Asghar Saheb chronicled and analyzed riots after communal riots, promoted a gender-just Islam as gentle as he himself was. He risked his life challenging the Syedna and gave birth to a reform movement among the Dawoodi Bohras, trotted the globe as an ardent ambassador of inter-faith dialogue. Add to this his long years as an office bearer of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the Mumbai-based Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR). All this is eloquent testimony of the impressive contribution of this one-man army. Enough, you might say, for him to rest on his laurels in his autumn years. Not for Asghar Saheb. To frequent advice from family and friends in recent years that he must slow down a bit, the response was always his trademark smile: ‘Kya karen, kaam bahut hai.’ (What to do, there’s so much to be done.) Even as the body was beginning to pack up, his spirit egged him on. That was till 13 February, when he collapsed in Amritsar, was flown back to Mumbai and rushed to intensive care. In early March, he telephoned a fellow activist he greatly respected and ‘cried like a baby’, agonizing over his languishing in bed when there was so much to be done and so few to do it. When more, many more are needed, there’s one less soldier now in the depleting ranks of Indians keeping up the fight for justice and peace. Asghar Saheb’s journey is all the more remarkable considering where it all began. He was born in Mandsaur, a not so well-known town in Madhya Pradesh, in an orthodox family of priests. Call it his good fortune that though his father, Qurban Hussain, earned a living as an amil (local priest) in the Bohra religious establishment, he was deeply disturbed by the practices and policies of the holy high command: da’I (head), Syedna Tahir Saifuddin. Living the life of servitude, Asghar’s father had resolved that his son must chart an independent course, breathe freedom. Perhaps the seeds of his rebellion against the autocracy of the Bohra religious establishment in later years were sown in young Asghar’s mind at an early age by his father. Give credit to his father for one more thing. Though an orthodox Muslim, his was a live and let live Islam: he had no difficulty in accepting and relating to Hindus equally orthodox in their beliefs. In other words, religion for him was a matter of personal conscience and conviction, not something to quarrel and kill over. This lesson in tolerance that Asghar Saheb learnt early in life would stand him in good stead in his later years. It is because of this upbringing that he found it so difficult to accept communal politics, conflict and violence and which spurred him towards life-long activism, combating communalism, promoting communal harmony. If he learnt tolerance towards other religions and a distaste for the Syedna’s ways from his otherwise orthodox father, secular education too played a major role in shaping his destiny. It was during his college years that he realized that knowledge is acquired not through accepting but questioning. And then there was Karl Marx. Young Asghar found Marx’s emancipatory ideology resonating with the egalitarian teachings of Islam, but the atheism bit he could not buy. Over time he found his answer in ‘liberation theology’ evolved by radical Christians from Latin America. Call it osmosis between Marxian ideology and Christian/Islamic theology. Having acquired the appropriate degree, Asghar Ali Mandsouri turned Asghar Ali ‘Engineer’, moved to Mumbai and found employment in the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1963, only to soon discover that he was the right man in the wrong place. The ordeal ended with his voluntary retirement in 1983 and thus was born the scholar, the reformist and the impassioned activist for communal harmony. Asghar Saheb’s absence will no doubt be felt among fellow activists in India fighting the fascist forces masquerading in the garb of Hindu nationalism. But we need to pay more attention to the not so easy to fill the huge vacuum his departure has created within his own Bohra community in particular and the world of Indian Islam in general. Those who know anything about the Bohra religious establishment are well aware that with his band of fanatic followers the Syedna runs a totalitarian dictatorship within a democracy. There’s little that most Bohri men or women can do without the prior consent and blessing of the Syedna. For just about everything there is a ‘fee’ to be paid. Leave alone rebellion or defiance, for even mere minor slip-ups the consequences are severe: excommunication and a savagely imposed social boycott, including by close family members – father, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter. It needed the courage of a gentle but fearless Asghar Saheb with his ‘how can we give up’ approach to life, living in the lion’s den (Bombay/Mumbai), not challenging the spiritual status of the Syedna, yet pursuing his relentless demand for an end to his extra-religious extortion and tyranny. Asghar Saheb launched his call for reform through an article in the Times of India in 1973. The response was almost instantaneous. While he was excommunicated, faced with an irate mob outside its office, the Old Lady of Bori Bunder capitulated. The episode more or less marked the end of the freedom of expression chanting media’s support to Asghar Saheb and his reform movement. No Indian politician, however tall, whether sworn in to protect the Indian Constitution or otherwise – Morarji Desai, Indira Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, George Fernandes, V.P. Singh included – had the guts to respond to his repeated pleas for ensuring that the law of the land also applied to the Syedna and his ardent followers. The social boycott apart, Asghar Saheb was physically targeted repeatedly and viciously. He was lucky to survive on two such occasions. Ask any maulvi or maulana and he is sure to tell that a Muslim is strictly prohibited from prostrating himself or herself before anyone except Allah. Yet, I do not recall any of them having ever raised their voice against the prevailing practice of Bohris having to do precisely that before the Syedna. The Syedna, it has often been alleged, has enough in his treasury to keep all political and religious leaders who matter on his side. But there is another reason too for the shameful and silent complicity of Muslim religious leaders outside the Dawoodi Bohra sect. To India’s ulema, still stuck with a medieval mindset and patriarchs to the core when it comes to gender relations, Asghar Saheb’s Islam was simply unacceptable. He was perhaps among the very few, if not the only Islamic scholar, who could cite the Quran and Hadith in Arabic, to publicly support the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shahbano case in the mid-1980s. The overwhelming majority of the ulema in contrast had virtually threatened a civil war unless the law of the land was changed to undo the verdict of the apex court. Ironic as it might seem, thanks to the blatantly anti-women, inhuman, unjust, uncoded Muslim Personal Law in the country, the plight of Muslim women in secular-democratic India continues to be far worse than that of their counterparts even in many ‘Islamic’ countries. Not surprisingly, therefore, for Muslim women and men striving for radical reforms, Asghar Saheb stood out as a beacon amidst the all-pervasive darkness around. Through numerous writings, meetings, workshops, seminars across the country, citing surah (chapter) and ayats (verse) from the Quran, he demonstrated that the Muslim clergy had snatched away from women the rights guaranteed to them by Allah. Not surprisingly, while maulvis and their ilk were in short supply at his funeral, a significant number of Muslim and non-Muslim women were there to say their last farewell to a progressive believer at the Sunni (not Bohri) kabrastan in Santa Cruz, Mumbai, on the morning of 15 May. Finally, if Asghar Saheb’s Islam was too radical for the ulema, it was not good enough for progressive Muslim men and women demanding change, here and now. His last contribution, for example, was his recent draft for the codification of Muslim Personal Law in India. It’s a draft that’s unlikely to pass muster with the male supremists sitting in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board; it’s a draft that has also left most pro-change Muslim men and women quite disappointed. No one who was there at the kabrastan on May 15, this writer included, had any other thought in their mind except to say their last farewell to a man they deeply respected and admired. Later we will need to give some thought to the question: Was it naiveté, misplaced optimism, or the yearning of a lonely man (our man) to belong that he sought to engage with incorrigible mullahs in his last years? But then, how much can you ask from one life? Javed Anand General Secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:44:45 +0000
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