The Muslim Vanishes: A Play in Three Acts Saeed Naqvi Penguin, 2022
The Muslim Vanishes:A Play in Three Acts
Saeed Naqvi / Penguin, 2022
Reviewed by Arshad Shaikh
The Muslim Vanishes by Saeed Naqvi is a thought-provoking play and a timely fable about the dangers of communalism and the importance of empathy.
The play is set in a dystopian future where 200 million Muslims have suddenly disappeared from India, along with their cultural heritage. The remaining population is left to grapple with the consequences of this mass vanishing and to try to understand what happened and why.
The play is told from the perspective of a diverse cast of characters, including a TV news anchor, a Hindu nationalist leader, a Muslim woman, and a Dalit activist. Each character has their unique perspective on the events that have taken place, and their struggles to come to terms with them.
Naqvi’s writing is sharp and insightful, and he uses the play to explore a range of complex issues, including the nature of national identity, the role of religion in society, and the dangers of prejudice and discrimination.
The play is also a powerful plea for empathy, tolerance, and understanding. It challenges us to confront the realities of communalism and intolerance in our world.
The Muslim Vanishes is a must-read for anyone who is interested in contemporary Indian politics and society, or who is concerned about the rise of communalism and intolerance around the world. The play will stay with you long after you finish reading it.
The play is a creative way of exploring the key themes that India is currently grappling with and trying to come to terms with. The play is a powerful critique of communalism, which is a form of ideology that divides people along religious lines.
Naqvi shows how communalism can lead to violence, hatred, and even genocide. The play also makes a case for empathy, tolerance, and understanding. Naqvi challenges us to see the world from the perspective of others, even those who are different from us. He shows how empathy and tolerance can help us to build bridges and to create a more just and inclusive society.
Naqvi explores the complex nature of national identity. He asks us to question what it means to be Indian, and who owns India. He shows how national identity can be manipulated to exclude and marginalize certain groups of people.
The Muslim Vanishes is a powerful and thought-provoking play that is relevant to our times. It is highly recommended to add it to your bookshelf.
source: http://www.radianceweekly.com / Radiance Viewsweekly / Home> Book Review / by Arshad Shaikh / September 26th, 2023
Only a comprehensive, all-encompassing dialogue can resolve this situation and that is best-presented in a fast-paced drama.
Cover Image of the book ‘The Muslim Vanishes: A Play’ by Saeed Naqvi. (By arrangement)
“If we take the Muslim out of India, what becomes of the country?” This is the central question that veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi’s recent three-act play The Muslim Vanishes seeks to answer.
In a crisp preface he first explains the premise of his plot and then the choice of “play” as his genre: Politicians hold two interlocking triangles in their hands, both feeding on each other. The first is the caste pyramid, the second has three intrinsically intertwined sides — “India-Pakistan, New Delhi-Srinagar, Hindu Muslim”. Without the second, the Hindu Right will not be able to manage the first. Combine the two triangles with the deliberately misunderstood complications of Partition and you have the perfect recipe for hate. Only a comprehensive, all-encompassing dialogue can resolve this situation and that is best-presented in a fast-paced drama. Standing on this brief but compelling introduction, Naqvi dives straight into Act 1, Scene 1: a distraught and excited junior journalist rushes into a busy news studio telling two primetime anchors that all Muslims have vanished from India overnight and, along with them, has vanished the Qutab Minar. It seems they have “taken it back”. Much as this opening seems to lay the ground for what the reader can expect later, not one of the next 150 pages is monotonous.
As the scene progresses, the characters debate among themselves — What else did, or can, the Muslims take back? Writings of great poets — Mir, Ghalib, Josh. But what about Hindu poets of the ghazal — Brij Narain Chakbast, Raghupati Sahai Firaq? Can they take them back, too? And those exquisite terms used in our courts — munsif, farraash — will they also disappear? And what about our great musical repertoire, the gharanas? And food? Can they also reclaim nihari and kabab and the rista and gushtaba? Perhaps Hussain’s paintings will also magically vanish. But for those who think that the Muslim vanishing will only be about the loss of literature, art and culture, Naqvi has news. It will have far deeper socio-political consequences. It will change the power equation in a way few realise. In an early scene, a dalit, who had never dared to enter the main gate of a Hindu Brahmin leader’s house without being summoned, not only enters uninvited but also sits on the sofa without permission. The leader’s son, one of the two primetime anchors to whom the news of the vanishing Muslims was first broken, explains. “Today, without the Muslims, the battlelines have been redrawn. It is Savarnas versus Avarnas, upper castes versus lower castes”.
The problem has become so serious that a special court has been set up on the issue of the Muslim vanishing. And, this is where Naqvi shows his prowess as an eclectic thinker. To assist the court, an 11-member jury has been constituted. On the recommendation of the great Sufi saint of Barabanki, Shah Abdul Razaq, who has a deep mystical link with the Hindu court at Maihar, the jury is chaired by Urdu poet and Constituent Assembly member, Maulana Hasrat Mohani. Best known as the author of the romantic ghazal “chupke chupke raat din aansu bahaana yaad hai”, it was the Maulana who coined the slogan ‘Inquilab zindabad’. He is accompanied by the social activist Mahatma Phule, poets Raskhan, Salbeg, Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, Mohsin Kakorvi and Chunnalal Dilgeer, Classical singer Alladiya Khan, Kabir, Tulsi Das, an anonymous nominee of Guru Nanak and Amir Khusro.
The lawyer in me applauds Naqvi’s jury-selection skills — four Muslim poets who are devotees of Hindu dieties (Maulana and Raskhan of Krishna, Salbeg of Jagannath and Khan-e-Khana of Ram), one Muslim Urdu poet who uses Hindu imagery in praise of the Prophet (Kakorvi), one Muslim proponent of Marathi Natya sangeet (Alladiya), one Hindu poet known for his poetry on Karbala (Dilgeer), two mystic poets whose philosophy cuts across religion (Kabir and Tulsidas) and one anti-caste reformer (Phule).
The jury chooses Amir Khusrau as its spokesperson. Again, an incredible choice. Khusrau is one of the most influential figures in the cultural history of the subcontinent and perhaps the most transformational part of the “long tradition of eclectic liberalism” that Naqvi alludes to. Who better than him, then, to speak for a composite India?
The judicial proceedings that follow through an entangled web of examination and cross-examination, unravel the rich and diverse history of the Hindustan that was. From complexities of the partition to the making of the Constitution, from mystic syncretism to the politics of conversion, from the special status of Kashmir to urban Naxalism and from cultural renaissance to quelling free speech, Naqvi steers through Hindustan’s intricate landscape with a masterly hand. Riding on his vast knowledge of politics, society, history, literature, art and culture, he moves between time and space with tremendous poise. I wish he had occasionally interspersed his scenes with some Mir and Ghalib, like he does when he speaks, but this wish arises more out of my constant greed for ‘Saeed Naqviesque’ narratives than by any insufficiency in the script.
The expression “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb” must be one of the most misused ones in recent times. In their bid to buy an imprimatur of approval from the majority, Muslim apologists have abused the idea to such an extent that it has now entered the realm of the ridculous: “Oh, but we are secular Muslims. We celebrate Raksha Bandhan and participate in Diwali puja.” Though the very foundation on which Naqvi’s play stands is “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb”, he does not tom-tom it as a saleble commodity to barter acceptance with. Instead, he forcefully situates the followers of this tehzeeb as equal participants in the making of a secular, democratic republic, demanding their indispensability in all decision-making processes in the present. This, to me, is his biggest win.
Sociopolitical writing has immense potential to exhaust the reader. But Naqvi’s satirical tone and terrific sense of humour compel the reader to go on, and expect something exciting every now and then. To quote Asghar Gondvi: Sunta hoon bade ghaur se afsaana-e-hasti Kuchh khvaab hai, kuchh asl hai, kuchh tarz e ada hai.
[Intently I listen to his life-story. It’s part dream, part reality and part style.] The play has immense potential to be performed on stage and I hope that, when it is performed, none other than its author is persuaded to direct.
source: http://www.asianage.com / The Asian Age / Home> Books / by Saif Mahmood, The Asian Age / Februrary 13th, 2022
Saeed Naqvi’s book is vital in understanding forces that have shaped the Hindu-Muslim divide, says Iftikhar Gilani
Book: Being the Other—The Muslim in India
Author: Saeed Naqvi
Publisher: Aleph
239 pages
Rs 599
A decade ago, a Hindu friend booked a vacation in Kashmir. Before leaving, he hesitantly asked if his 14-year-old son could spend time with a Muslim family. “He isn’t familiar with a Muslim family,” he confided. I arranged their stay with a government official in Srinagar who had children of the same age. The interaction, my friend told me later, had helped clear cobwebs not only from his son’s mind, but from his as well.
In Being the other…, Saaed Naqvi recounts a similar experience. In Allahabad University, he asked the audience whether the Hindus among them had visited a Muslim home. No one had, even as a few murmured about their fathers knowing Urdu or Persian or that their mothers cooked chicken or mutton. The book is a memoir and exploration of various deliberate and inadvertent acts that have contributed to this ‘othering’ of the Muslims in India.
The author, a senior journalist, blames both the Congress and the BJP for this yawning gulf between the Hindu-Muslim communities. “Partition, in a way, was the gift the Congress gave to the Hindu right, which in the fullness of time, is today’s Hindutva,” Naqvi says. From then on, it has been a slow and steady decline for India’s 180 million Muslims.
Why has this happened?
Islam’s experience of Hindu civilisation dates back 14 centuries. But to understand Muslims and Islam, Indian scholars rely on Americans whose exposure doesn’t go beyond half a century.
And security agencies make it worse when they pick up innocent Muslims on dubious charges, forcing the community to retreat into a shell. “With every such arrest, more members of the community turn against the State and may even be persuaded to join militant groups or take to arms. If injustice becomes the law, resistance becomes duty,” the author says.
But in some places, Naqvi falls in with the ill-informed discourse of some scholars. He mentions, for instance, that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan set up the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University), for ashraf (upper caste) Muslims alone, but fails to explain how a Hindu, Ishwari Prasad, was the first graduate of this college. He also joins the chorus to heap scorn on Wahhabism, but doesn’t mention that India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whom he praises, belonged to this school of thought.
Though there is room for improvement, this book is an essential read for those interested in understanding the forces that have shaped the Hindu-Muslim divide and its consequences.
source: http://www.dnaindia.com / DNA / Home> News> Lifestyle News / by Iftikhar Gilani / DNA, Mumbai – Sunday October 16th, 2016
