Taj Mahal

   
   

 
      The tender grief that Shah Jahan felt after the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal during the birth of their fourteenth child emanates from the Taj Mahal.  The faces of those visitors who emerge from the darkness of the main gate reflect the delicate beauty and peaceful longing of the Taj.

Mumtaz Mahal 1612-1631

Shah Jahan 1594-1666, 5th Mughal Emperor of India

   





















   
     The small rectangular stone that marks the remains of  Mumtaz Mahal is carefully guarded by a marble lattice work and lies under the center of the massive marble dome.

     The relationship in India with  Mughal rulers is complicated.  Over the centuries Muslims have ruled various parts of India.  Muslims migrated from Arabia to the southern coast as early as the 1100s and later Mughals came from Central Asia (Afghanistan and Persia) and conquered areas of India. These Sultanates, Nizams, Mughal kingdoms and princely states contributed to a certain merging of Hindu and Muslim elements especially in Indo-Islamic architecture.

     In the 1970s, due to economic conditions,  many Muslims left India to work in the Gulf Coast.  While that cross migration has abated somewhat with India's growing prosperity the influence of the Middle East can be felt in Hyderabad.
   
       While many Muslims in India today are converts from Hinduism, particularly from the lower castes, the history of invasion and rulership colors communal attitudes toward India's largest minority.

Poverty

Informal laborer.

Poverty

Poverty is a deceptively light powder 

That dusts skin and rims nostrils like burning trash

Drifts into cracks in knees and ankles

Coats unshod feet while it's
Shoveled into a plastic tub and 

Hoisted

Upon a twisted head rag above a slender neck where

Heavy and wide, it forces its weight into

Hollow eyes and hollow belly born by 

Movement

Of dusty unshod feet carrying 

Lightweight bone and flesh and skin and,
In a plastic tub on a slender neck,

Deceptively light powder that becomes a
Highway or a Corporate Office or a Place of Learning 

About poverty.

Informal construction laborers commonly carry cement on their heads in plastic tubs.  According to Dipanka Gupta, pre-eminent sociologist, in his lecture "The Hollowed Village and the Hopeful Slum" these informal workers have a 70% literacy rate and live in the hope of a better life having escaped rural impoverishment. 

See his lecture here:

Dipankar Gupta:  The Hollowed Village and the Hopeful Slum.

School of Excellence . . . India Style

     Upon visiting the private K-12 CHIREC school in Hyderabad, I was eerily reminding of my days at another school of excellence,  Cherry Creek High School in Colorado.  The same generous optimism, dedication, competition, and opportunity breezed across campus.

     While I was teaching at Cherry Creek, the expression 'Creek-style'  was thrown about by parents as well as administrators, and eventually I came to interpret it as "winning with grace."  Not that Creek displayed a hard-edged competitiveness, but I saw the style rather as a natural ease coming out on top in academics, sports, and the arts--with integrity and good sportsmanship.

     The same style was evident  at CHIREC in Archana Ajmera's tenth grade Cambridge math class.  Ms. Ajmera reviewed the formulas for coordinate geometry and within minutes every student was leaning forward, working problems, comparing graphs, listening for solutions while Ms. Ajmera projected hints through a projected computer screen.   The intensity was punctuated by jests, laughter, and "ah-ha" moments.

     The firm and friendly English teacher for the ninth-grade group in the Cambridge wing commanded the same attention.  With exams coming up, the summary review begin with a succinct list of summary skills, followed by group practice, sharing out, and then a quick evaluation of each group's writing.  Bright sun filled the air conditioned room.  All fifteen students were engaged.

 
      The same thorough teaching, self discipline, and respect for learning were on display in the CBSE (Government of India's secondary education system) in an eighth grade English class reviewing Frost's "The Road Less Travelled."
     Shooting hoops with students at lunch, visiting the crafts, music, and dance rooms where teachers and students were preparing for Parent Day, reminded me of Creek's commitment to educating the entire student, and many of these students had been in CHIREC since elementary days.  The school has become a community that leads other top schools and supports a school in need with student volunteers and resources.

     The school doesn't keep statistics on religious affiliation, but tries to create an inclusive international student body.

     The tuition?  Steep, but the school is ranked among the top twenty-five schools in India and includes students from around the world. When founder and director Mrs. Ratna Reddy opened the school twenty-five years ago, she set forth a vision that has given Hyderabad a unique foothold in developing twenty-first century learners in a setting of excellence.  In this inner-connected world, we can only imagine the synergy when Creek meets CHIREC to address the world's problems.

 

CHIREC Campus

Primary students practice for parent program.   

We Can't Laugh and We Can't Cry

     In spite of his precise English, personal integrity, and literary sensibilities,  Shuja is tasting despair.  With a graduate degree in English literature, he, like many highly educated youth in India, cannot find employment.  For him the 10% unemployment rate among college graduates is compounded by his religion

     Shuja never felt discrimination as a young Muslim student.  He attended school with a largely Hindu student population and performed routine rituals like everyone else.  However, out of 10,000 families in his village near Mumbai, he is one of the only ones who has attained a university education.  His people are largely informal laborers.

  This is not the source of bitterness though.  The taste comes from the fear that right-wing Hindu movement is targeting Muslims while ignoring social injustices and even atrocities committed against them. Killings and rapes impacting 2000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, initial false reports of Muslim perpetrators causing a deadly blast in Hyderabad, death by burning of an eleven-year-old Muslim boy in the army compound and subsequent suicide of an Army guard--these events combined with the lack of public awareness or outcry erode hope.

Reminder of atrocities committed against Muslim innocents

     The Prevention of Terrorism Act can be used to search and detain individuals seemingly for no other reason than that they are Muslim.  Even on campus, which seems to be a safe haven from "outside" forces, a place where freedom of thought and exploration of viewpoints is encouraged, members of the Ambedekhar Student Association (a social rights group) and others may come under surveillance by authorities searching for terrorist activity.  The forced detention of a friend (actually Hindu) by local police because he appeared to be Muslim brings this reality home.  When Shuja and his friends went to the authorities to ask why the friend had been detained, they received no satisfactory answer.  

Learn about Gujarat 2002.

    The discrimination weighs most heavily when Shuja considers the future.  A doctoral student with an emphasis on the Muslim diaspora, he wonders if his education will ever lead to employment, and if it doesn't, what value does it have?  When Shuja applied for a teaching position, he was asked if he had completed his studies in translated Urdu rather than in  English.  The assumption was that he must have received an inferior education and with his Muslim name, would have been educated only in Urdu.  Although Urdu is historically associated with Islam, the question is preposterous--what English major studies Shakespeare in another language?

     One question for Shuja and socially aware men like him, is how to evince change.  Extremist acts of violence  are unpalatable for followers of Islam, but the weight of discrimination, lack of opportunity, and acts of hate are nearly intolerable.  "We can't laugh and we can't cry.  We can only keep going."

Campus Grafitti

   

Young, Brilliant, and Muslim

     As soon as Raoff started talking, I knew I was in over my head--cultural references, media portrayals, history, philosophy. . .  I felt like a farmer in the presence of a scientific seed researcher.

     I'd scheduled an interview with three members of a student Muslim group to gain a perspective on the call for social justice under Indian law.  What I came away with was a respect for three men with varying personal views about their faith traversing a narrow path between righting social wrongs and being labeled extremist.

Learned men

          So what are these social wrongs?  The findings of the Sachar Report commissioned by the government of India in 2005 give some indication:

• Nearly 25% of Muslim children have never attended school
• Only 17 % of Muslim children of the age of 17 have completed tenth grade compared to national average of 26%
• Participation in higher education is 4%
• 31% of Muslims are below the poverty line.  They are the poorest group in nation outside Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
• Overrepresentation in prison population.  In Maharashtra, Muslims represent 32% of jail inmates and only 10% of the population
• Inflated claims of Islamic terrorism, in which young Muslims are falsely accused and detained for violence resulting from other sources.

 Each deplores the irresponsible and inflammatory portrayal of Muslim people by the likes of Bill Maher in his interview with ben Affleck, Samuel Huntington's ill-substantiated and polarizing theory "Clash of Civilizations," and Richard Dawkins' much publicized anti Muslim statements.  The "axis of evil" statements and their collateral damage ignore the realities and demonize populations for political expediency. 

     The point is that politicians, talking heads, and uninformed citizens have placed civilization on a path that can only be reversed by true knowledge, fact-based understanding, and communication.  And in today's interconnected global world there is no excuse to allow those in power to do the thinking for the average man.

    The portrayal of Islam as a threat is compounded in Kashmir, a conflict-torn Indian state near Pakistan with a 74% Muslim population.   Control of the region continues to be disputed by Pakistan and India and the desire for self-rule.   These three friends were among the first generation to receive an education in the 1980s after years of struggle and subjugation.  Their school was founded by the resistance movement.  They received a secular and Islamic education and during secondary school, more focus on scientific education.  

     The actions of the Indian army in allegedly massacring 36 Sikhs to coincide with Bill Clinton's visit in 2000 and then blaming Pakistani Islamic groups  to build anti Islamic sentiment is the subject of a film, Adharm (Chittisinghpura Massacre).  The subsequent disappearance of Muslim men is echoed in Raoof's family history   This politicized religious history along with Indian military police acts of violence against Kashmiri women and young men to squelch protest forms the base of their collective personal history.  

     What solutions, then, are posed by these socially aware men who found their way from a simple education in Kashmir, with its history of subjugation, to post graduate work in one of the best central universities in India to the tensions I feel in Fort Morgan, Colorado?

     

     Bust Stereotypes:  Negotiate space to alleviate tensions caused by Islamic phobia.

     Invest legitimate Muslim religious institutions with political agency

     Re-socialize and restore normalcy:  Religion is only one aspect of an individual's identity. 

     

     At the end of the interview is the afternoon breeze, we found common ground.  Maybe a scientific seed researcher needs to ride a tractor and maybe the farmer can spend a little time in the lab.

     Talking and sharing personal histories allows for mutual understanding--for finding solutions.

Namaste

     The majority of the Indian  population are Hindu.  Before we get into a more scholarly discussion of the belief system, check out this webpage about henna, bindi, sun salutations, and toe rings.

20 Amazing Scientific Reasons behind Hindu Traditions

Let's Talk

The incredible diversity of India with 22 official languages, numerous religions, more than 4,000 castes works because of discourse.  People argue, share, disagree, socialize . . . much of the time.

According to German sociologist Georg Simmel, conflict contributes to order, stability, and equilibrium in a society.

So with that in mind, let me share two things I read today:

A poster about the Charlie Hebdo attack:

And an opinion piece in The Hindu (click it, it's a link):

The Invisible Face of Terror

Want to contribute to the conflict?  Hit "Comment" and hit it!

"I Have Ambitions" -- Hafsa

     After this twenty-first century student with cell-phone, earbuds, and a laptop helped me decipher a handwritten email address, I asked her if I could interview her about her educational experiences as a Muslim female.  "Of course," she laughed.

     Naturally, I had to get the hijab question out of the way.  She wore a colorful pink head scarf and was covered wrist to ankles with clothing one might see on any college campus in the US--a long top, leggings, and casual shoes.  Hafsa chose to start veiling about three years ago.

     Her reasoning?  When she's covered she's merely a person.  Her looks and physique aren't being "checked out" and so she can be known for her conversation, actions, and character.  She uncovers when with Mehram (family members or others that she could not marry), but generally Islam prohibits touching or gazing upon eligible men.  Hafsa says Islam also proscribes a dress code for men:  they are to be covered from the navel to the ankles.  These practices vary though based upon culture.

I didn't snap a pic of Hafsa, but this looks like her style.  

Mariam Sobh is the founder of Hijabtrendz, a fashion site for Muslim girls.

    

     Hafsa was educated in a Seventh Day Adventist school in this city through grade 10.  A Kashmiri transplant, her father, a banker, moved the family to Hyderabad when he was transferred.  At the Christian school, children of varying backgrounds were treated equally.  Only Government holidays, along with Christmas, were celebrated in school instead of Hindu or Muslim holidays.   After graduation Hafsa tested into an all-girl Intermediate College in biophysics for grades 11 and 12.  Students were grouped according to their marks and the best education was awarded the best students.

     Hafsa reports no major discrimination at the Intermediate College although India's affirmative action policy (known as Reservations) did not apply to Muslim students.  She notes that governmental practices on a larger scale may discriminate against Muslims in terms of limited funding for the maintenance of Muslim monuments, lack of enforcement for equal spending in Kashmir, a largely Muslim state.  She feels that socially Muslims are included in the life of the city.  

     Since her parents are fairly liberal, Hafsa never attended the Madrasa--an educational system that traditionally emphasized Muslin teachings.  The Madrasa, she says, is about the rules and restrictions of the religion rather than the beliefs.  

     Hafsa is studying psychology and has researched Martin Seligman's theories of happiness. She is currently investigating the neurological impact of diet.

Veiling: Nada's View

     Her name isn't really Nada, but since she's chosen to veil with the niqap (the face cloth that exposes only the eyes), I've offered to withhold her name from this post.

     When I first noticed women in Hyderabad in burqas, I was reminded of the nuns of my childhood.  We would drive to Sterling to attend mass at a time when there was both a convent and a K-12 Catholic school, and I remember my mother greeting the sisters in black habits and clunky black shoes.  Seeing the flowing burqas of these Muslim women takes me back to those days when Catholicism was something I could see, hear, smell, and taste with a sort of mysterious reverence.  Mass was said in Latin by a priest facing the altar and I carried a small leather-bound red missal to church.

      So when I saw Nada waiting for the campus bus and felt that same sort of spiritual calm radiating from her, I asked for an interview.  Her dorm room reminded me of a room in the convent in Sterling where I had been taken after becoming ill during a high school Catholic retreat.  I lay alone in a neat, unadorned room in the convent with a single bed and a desk and fell asleep in peace.  Nada's room had the same, simple silence.  

     As an international student from the Middle East, Nada chose Hyderabad, India for her post graduate studies for several reasons:  the proximity to her own region, the reputation for solid education, and the acceptance of veiling.  

     Nada wears the niqap because of the protection it affords:  both from the harassment and the interested glances of men.  She feels comfortable under the burqa because it is an expression of her devotion to God.  These concepts seem a bit foreign, but most of us don't travel in crowded public transport in a city packed with strangers, and while Christianity encourages modesty,  Catholic women haven't covered their heads in church since we used to pin the lace mantilla in our hair--or bobby pin a kleenex on if we forgot it. 

     So how is veiling an expression of devotion?   In about 600,  after the death of Mohammad's monogamous relationship of twenty-five years with his wife Khadija, he married nine different women.  These marriages were, according to Reza Aslan in his book No God but God, largely political alliances when polygamy was the norm.  Aslan states that because Mohammad's house in Messina was also the mosque and because delegations from other tribes would literally camp in the courtyard, he imposed hijab (veiling and seclusion) for the protection of his wives.  Over time and throughout different cultures this has been interpreted in a variety of ways, but some women now choose to practice hijab.

World Hijab Day - February 1

     Nada talked about the media portrayal of extremists who are not Muslim--only pretending to be for political gain.  This harms relationships and creates stereotypes.   The political unrest in her own country has resulted in many people, including her own mother, living now without car and electricity.  

     As the desperation of the situation took shape in my mind, Nada stated, "I am happy.  I am devoted to God."   

Save Us All--Tracy Chapman