Ek Kathat Ki Katha: A Maulvi's Unique Story
(As Narrated to Yoginder Sikand)
The almost million-strong Cheeta-Kathat community,
which lives mainly in Rajasthan's Ajmer district, and
in parts of neighbouring Rajsamand, Bhilwara and Pali,
are a unique people. The Cheetas and the Kathats
(also known as Merats or Mehrats) are two related
clans. Most of them follow a mix of both Hindu and
Muslim customs and many identify themselves as both
Hindu and Muslim at the same time. Probably more of
them identify themselves as Muslims than as Hindus.
Yet, many of the former worship in temples, celebrate
Diwali and Holi (in addition to Eid), keep 'Hindu'
names and are not familiar with even the basic tenets
of Islam. Likewise, almost all Cheeta-Kathats who call
themselves 'Hindus' practice male circumcision, bury
their dead, eat halal meat, slaughtered in the Muslim
fashion, and engage maulvis to solemnize their nikahs
in the Islamic way.
Today, both Hindu as well as Islamic groups are active
among these people, seeking to bring them into their
respective folds. Not surprisingly, this is producing
new challenges for the ways in which the
Cheeta-Kathats define themselves.
34 year-old Maulana Qasim Rasul Falahi is one of the
only two fazils or senior madrasa graduates from the
Cheeta-Merat community. He is also the community's
only Ph.D. holder. He is presently the head of the
Religious Education Committee of the Cheeta- Merat
Kathat Mahasabha, a representative body of the
Cheeta-Kathats. In telling his story (as narrated to
Yoginder Sikand) he reflects on his little-known
community and his own plans to engage with it.
I was born in Lalpura, a vilage near Beawar in Ajmer
district, in 1974. As a child I did not go to school.
Like many other Kathat boys of my age, I used to spend
my time grazing goats. Then, in 1982, a large number
of Dalits converted to Islam in a small village called
Meenaskhipuram in Tamil Nadu. This single event
galvanized the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) all over
India. It began operating on a massive scale in the
Cheeta and Kathat areas, seeking to convert our people
to Hinduism and to get them to abandon the Muslim
customs that they had been following for centuries.
One day, a group of VHP activists came to Lalpura.
They asked us if Tablighi Jamaat volunteers visited
our area to preach Islam. When we said that some
Jamaats had indeed come, they insisted that we should
henceforth not allow them to enter our village. They
told us, 'Your ancestors were Hindus. They were
Rajputs. So, you, too, should become Hindus'.
At that time, although Lalpura was an entirely
populated by Kathats, and many Kathats called
themselves Muslims, there were six small temples in
the village, but not a single mosque. The only person
who actually followed Islamic practices strictly was
my elder brother, Ahmad Bhai. Listening to what the
VHP activists had said, I wondered who actually our
people were. Were they Hindu or Muslim or neither or a
bit of both? We followed both the Muslim practice of
nikah and the Hindu practice of phera in our weddings.
We celebrate both Diwali and Eid. Who, then, are we, I
thought? This question kept revolving in my mind
Many people in our village, as in several other Kathat
and Cheeta villages, fell prey to the VHP's false
propaganda. The VHP later claimed to have converted
several thousands of our people to Hinduism, although
these numbers were exaggerated. But still, even today,
I would say that a fourth of the Kathats have become
Hindu, a fourth are now somewhat Islamised, and the
rest remain as they earlier were.
The VHP's claim that it had converted or 'purified'
several thousand Muslim Kathats and Cheetas was widely
reported in the press. This caused considerable
consternation in Muslim religious circles. Till then,
they had heard of Hindus converting to Islam but never
of Muslims converting to Hinduism. So, some Muslim
groups, such as the Jamaat-e Islami, the Jamiat
ul-Ulema-e Hind , the Tablighi Jamaat and the Kul Hind
Majlis Tamir-e Millat, sent their people here to see
what could be done. They started setting up schools
and maktabs to impart basic Islamic knowledge to our
people.
In a sense, then, the VHP has to be thanked for making
our people increasingly turn towards Islam. If it had
not started its so-called 'purification' or shuddhi
drive among the Cheeta-Kathats, Muslim organizations
would probably have not even heard of us or would have
continued to neglect us.
One of the pioneers who played a key role in spreading
Islamic awareness among our people in the wake of the
VHP's massive entry into our region was Syed Azam Ali
Saheb, who works with the Rajasthan Dini Talimi Trust
in Beawar. He would travel from village to village on
his bicycle, interacting with the villagers and,
despite sometimes facing considerable opposition,
carrying on his preaching work patiently. He set up
centres in some villages where children would gather
in the evenings to learn about Islam. I used to graze
animals during the day and at night would attend these
classes.
Sayyed Azam Sahib thought that I was a keen student,
although till then I was completely illiterate. One
day he asked me if I wanted to study. I was delighted.
'Yes', I said, 'but who will take care of the
animals?'. He said he would send me to an institution
in Uttar Pradesh. I did not know where that was. 'Very
far from here', he explained.
In 1984, Sayyed Azam Saheb arranged for me to join the
Jamiat ul-Falah, a well-known madrasa in Azamgarh, in
Uttar Pradesh. There I began learning about Islam, as
well as studying basic English and Hindi and some
other 'modern' subjects. Eight years later, in 1992, I
passed the alimiyat stage and two years after that I
became a fazil. I am, as far as I know, one of the
only two fazils and one of the only four alims from
the Cheeta-Kathat community, which numbers almost a
million.
While at the Jamiat ul-Falah, I joined the Students
Islamic Organisation (SIO), the youth wing of the
Jamaat-e Islami. In 1996, I was appointed as the
Secretary of the SIO's Rajasthan wing. After this,
from 1999 onwards, I served as the President of the
SIO's Rajasthan unit for three terms. This gave me the
chance to travel around Rajasthan, and to learn about
the pathetic economic and educational conditions of
Muslims in most parts of the state. Through the SIO,
besides our regular Islamic awareness programmes, we
also sought to help out by organizing career guidance
camps and encouraging Muslim youth to do some sort of
social service in their localities. However, the
problems are so immense and there are so few people in
Rajasthan doing this sort of work with the state's
Muslims. So much more needs to be done!
After finishing my fazilat, I took admission in the
Arabic Department at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New
Delhi, as a private candidate. I then did my MA,
M.Phil. and, finally, late last year, my Ph.D. in Urdu
from Jaipur University. I don't wish to brag, but I am
the only Ph.D. from the entire Cheeta-Kathat
community.
Our community is economically and educationally very
deprived. Most of our people are marginal farmers or
landless labourers. Many of them survive by breaking
stones, cutting and selling firewood and labouring in
the asbestos mines, which abound in our region. Then,
from the Islamic point of view, the level of religious
consciousness is very low. For instance, even now in
many villages Kathats who call themselves Muslims ask
maulvis to slaughter goats for them at the altar of
local deities such as Bhairon Baba, or call Brahmins
to solemnize their marriages or worship idols in
village shrines.
Yet, Cheeta-Kathats, no matter what religion they
claim to follow or what religious community they
identify themselves with, Hindu or Muslim, generally
enjoy good relations. In the same family one can find
people who call themselves Hindus and others who say
they are Muslims. Most people in my wife's natal
family have Hindu names and follow Hindu customs. Yet,
I have very good relations with them and they respect
me a lot. In our community, owing to widespread
illiteracy and poverty, child marriage is very common,
although consummation of the marriage happens later.
There are also cases of parents pledging to marry
their yet-to-be born children to the children of
another couple. I was engaged to a girl, who later
became my wife, when I was seven and she was three.
Later, when I became a maulvi, her parents were
shocked. They thought I had become a fakir, because at
that time there was a general misconception among our
people that maulvis go from house to house asking for
money and food like fakirs do. They probably did not
like the fact that I had become an Islamic scholar,
had grown a beard and so on. But, my would-be wife
insisted she would marry me alone, because in our
community the custom is that once it has been decided
that a particular boy and girl should marry, this must
generally happen. So, the marriage went ahead. As I
said, many of my wife's relatives identify themselves
as Hindus and know little or nothing at all about
Islam, but we get along very well.
I recently returned to my community after staying many
years outside. The Jamaat-e Islami wanted to appoint
me as Secretary of their Rajasthan state unit, but I
declined, because I want to devote my time to working
particularly for the Cheeta-Kathats. However, I am
still a member of the central committee (majlis-e
shura) of the Rajasthan unit of the Jamaat-e Islami,
the youngest member, in fact.
Now that I have a doctoral degree I don't want to
apply for a government job or to work as a lecturer,
although I possibly could. Meanwhile, I have recently
been elected as the head of the Dini Talim or
Religious Education Committee of the Cheeta-Merat
Kathat Mahasabha, which is the representative body of
our community. Through this Committee, we want to
focus on promoting both religious as well as 'modern'
education in our community. The functional literacy
rate among the Cheeta-Kathats is probably less than 5
per cent, making our people one of the most
educationally deprived communities in the entire
country. Girls' education should be a top priority. I
don't suppose more than 2 per cent of our girls can
read and write. Our girls and women do domestic
chores, besides which they labour in the fields and in
the jungles to help their families survive. Life is
really tough for them.
I have sent two young daughters of mine, Ayesha, aged
twelve, and Bushra, aged ten, to a girls' boarding
school in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where they learn both
Islamic as well as 'modern' subjects. No other
Cheeta-Kathat family has sent its girls to such
schools. When they finish their studies I want my
daughters to come back and work for promoting
education among the girls of our community.
Through the Dini Talimi Committee we want to work with
the few other organizations active in our area who are
seeking to promote Islamic and 'modern' education
among our people. We don't have the resources to
launch large institutions of our own. And then, it is
also the case that often efforts to set up such
institutions are stiffly resisted by VHP activists.
There have been so many cases in our area of innocent
maulvis being harassed, construction of mosques or
announcing of azan on loudspeakers being prevented and
so on. Some years ago, a Muslim philanthropist from
Bombay wanted to start a school in a Kathat village
near Beawar. The land was purchased and registered for
this purpose, but VHP leaders and activists lodged an
FIR and managed to prevent this, claiming, absolutely
falsely of course, that the proposed school would
train 'extremists'. And so, three years have lapsed
and the land is still lying like that. Likewise, when
the Cheeta-Merat Kathat Mahasabha sought to construct
a students' hostel in Beawar, VHP activists vehemently
protested and made all sorts of wrong allegations
about it.
Our community is extremely poor, and in terms of
education, both Islamic and 'modern', we are really
deprived. There is so much that needs to be done. Few
people outside our area know even about our existence.
That is one of the tragedies of this unique community
of ours.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
*****************************************
MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
*****************************************
Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm
****************************************************
VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/
****************************************************
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:mukto-mona-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:mukto-mona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
mukto-mona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: