The Hindu Business Line : Will New Year usher in equality among Indians ?

The clock struck 12 and 2007 was born in a confusion of noise at Yoginagar in Borivili. My friend Hakimuddin sat quietly on a half-broken steel chair in front of his hair-cutting saloon. He was waiting for the hoots and whistles of wild, party folks to turn mute before unrolling a torn mat on the footpath for some rest.

He has been doing it for years on the instructions of his boss who wants someone from the saloon to keep the watch. If anyone seriously mounts an attack on the saloon, Hakimuddin will never be able to defend the shop. But then none raids a barber's work place. Fed up of the din, one was walking down Yoginagar Road when a few drunks shook my hand and wished me a Happy New Year.

One young lady took out a bottle of whisky from her kit bag and offered me a sip, which was the only sip one had for New Year. "Uncle, thank you," she said and walked away with her friends. In turn one offered them some cigarettes, which were accepted. One went up to Hakim, offered him a smoke and got into the chat mode.

He has been my barber from the times when my baldness did not show and continues to attend to me when my baldness shows up comically. When Hakim is busy with a customer, one waits and the owner of the saloon knows. Hakim knows all about my head and one does not have to give any instructions.

The road was clear of the New Year crowds and Hakim told me a bit about himself. He is slightly over 20 and comes from a village, half an hour bus ride from Allahabad. His parents, a sister and a brother live there and Hakim will be leaving towards the end of January to attend the marriage of his sister and also get married.

His sister has passed Class 8 and will be marrying an illiterate boy, working at a saloon in Allahabad. Hakim is a Class 10 pass while the girl whom he will bring home has finished Class 8. "Shaadi mein bahut kharcha hota hai (Marriages are costly)," Hakim remarked and he will be spending about Rs 90,000 on his sister's marriage. He did not tell me whether his wedding would cost the same and one did not press further. In Yoginagar, Hakim earns Rs 2,000 per month plus some tips though that is rare. "Main, bibi ko chodke awoonga. Kya karen (I will leave my wife with my parents. What to do)," he told me as on Rs 2,000 it is hard to hold a family in Mumbai. Sensex, cheap home loans, malls, even a film at one of the multiplexes make no sense to him. The most he can afford is a cutting tea from the bhaiya nearby.

He wished me a "Saal mubarak (Happy New Year)" as one started for home. Yoginagar had gone to sleep as one went home, switched on the lights and finished reading the English translation of the Hindi book, "Sukha Bargad (A dying banyan)" by Manzoor Ahtesham. It is the story of a Muslim family. The father is an advocate and an atheist while the mother believes in god.

Suhail starts off a secular human being and then loses way trying to dig himself in the milieu into which he was born while his sister Rashida prefers to stay back in India rather than get married to someone living in Pakistan. The last lines of the book run: "Did you see the paper? A distracted Suhail asks drily. "Jamshedpur has become a Karbala — a killing field.

Muslims are being singled out and slain. Even that Urdu writer who all alone wrote on the Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai theme has been bumped off. There's a small photograph of his in it." Kuldip Singh, the translator, in his note writes: "All the uncomfortable questions are squarely faced. Ostensibly, it is a story of Muslim concerns lifted from day-to-day life — about their `roots', about their `very survival' — but by the time the reader turns the last page he or she can empathise with Suhail. ... You can recognise in the protagonist's father your own idealist father, in his mother your own God-fearing mother, in his sister your own star-crossed sister — despite the outward tags of their Muslim identity.

It makes you turn around to look at the man in the street, again, lingeringly, in a different light." Perhaps, the only times and the only city where the Hindus and Muslims got along were that of the Last Mughal in Delhi before the 1857 rebellion. That's the impression one gets after reading The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple.

The book is neither Left nor Right. It is a statement of events. The Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar comes up a weakling having no say on the events leading to 1857. But that is not sufficient reason to dismiss him with a shrug. Being a poet and a calligrapher, he could only be a liberal in the manner of Akbar, minus his stature.

Explains William Dalrymple: "Above all, Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together.

Throughout the Uprising, his refusal to alienate his Hindu subjects was probably his single most consistent policy." Since Independence, Muslims, or for that matter the Dalits and the poor in general, have not had a decent deal. Their lives do not go beyond being ballot papers. They say the banyan never dies. Will it in India 2007?

P. Devarajan