In the concluding part of her book, This Land We Call Home, we find its young author, Nusrat Jafri, living in domestic bliss and basking in professional success as a filmmaker of repute and a writer but one who is deeply disturbed by developments in the country since 2014 when the BJP first came to power nationally. Among such developments alarming the country’s minority communities Jafri covers, her take on the CAA and the NRC stand out.
As a member of a minority community - and even more so as an Indian - Jafri argues convincingly against these moves, which she believes are polarising an India which since Independence has been accommodating even as it overcame multiple traumas, among them partition, the death of Nehru, the Emergency, the mass killing of Sikhs following the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the demolition of Babri Masjid and the mayhem that followed.
Unusual for a Shia Muslim, Jafri is a vegetarian married to a person of her choice but not of her faith or place or dietary habits. But how did she get here? Part autobiography, part history, her book traces the story of her family on her mother’s side to a nomadic Hindu tribe of hunter- pastoralists from Rajasthan, the Bhantus, one of several stigmatised as criminal under then prevailing laws enacted by the British such as the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 and Criminal Tribes Settlement Act of 1908.
Changing faith
Her account of the daring risk her maternal great-grandparents took to alter the circumstances of their lives by not only changing their faith but also migrating to Uttar Pradesh to start on an evangelical life as members of the Methodist Church is movingly told with a wealth of detail of old tribal values giving way to new ones through education and their new-found Christian faith.
Jafri’s book doubles up as a fascinating history of western missionary activity in India especially that of the Methodist church. Proselytisation apart, Jafri brings out how dedicated the missionaries were making them extraordinary educators and caregivers. The sincerity and passion with which they set up and ran schools and hospitals were of such a high order that to this day they are places of choice for Christians and non-Christians to study or be treated.
Jafri’s account of her Christian mother, Meera’s courtship and marriage to a Shia Muslim physics teacher, and her subsequent voluntary conversion to Islam, a faith she took to earnestly, is told in detail as also are her efforts to introduce her children to the practices of her new found faith. Through Jafri’s book we get a comprehensive idea of North Indian Shia Muslim life, its history, customs, and ceremonies, all from a sensitive female perspective.
Jafri’s mother comes across as a zealous convert to a different faith, one who was “resolute in imparting Shia customs even arranging to send her children “to spend several summers in the older parts of Lucknow to learn these customs from our parental aunts and their families.” This was unlike her father who had very little to say on religion and lot on the academic performance of his children. As she observes, “For my father education was everything; it was the primary stepping stone towards upward social and economic mobility.” He was forward looking enough to tell his children that “if you want to accomplish something in life, you must venture beyond Lucknow.” This was something that Jafri took to heart in ways that transformed her life.
Families shrinking
Jafri goes to great lengths to establish that Muslim families in India are, contrary to mischievous narratives, not adding vastly to their numbers but are shrinking, with the total fertility rates falling from 3.6 in in 1998-99 to 2.36 in the latest Family Health Survey. While giving enough supporting data to prove her point Jafri personalises it convincingly when she states that “even from their seven children, my parents have only a total of four grandchildren in the new generation.” This fall in births she correctly observes “reflects increasing levels of education and decreasing opposition to family welfare initiatives.”
Jafri is unsparing of the caste system that persists among converts to Christianity and Islam. “Sadly,” she notes, “caste continues to play a role in almost every religion in India. Not just Indian Christians but Indian Muslims have retained a caste-like order. Even though caste is not recognised in Islamic theology, social stratification based on historical factors has led to the development of social groups that can be called castes in a sociological sense.”
Jafri’s is a rare book that covers family history, touchy issues like conversions and societal prejudices along with major contemporary developments in India with great candour making it an exceptionally interesting read.
(The reviewer taught public policy & contemporary history at IISc Bengaluru)
You can find the book on Amazon here.
