The Hindu Business Line : Brand vada-pav best for secularism

Every morning at 7, 20-year old Afzal cycles into our society with soft and hard (kadak) pavs stuffed in three white cloth bags slung from hooks welded to the rear of the cycle. He clinks the cycle bell to catch the ears of potential buyers and one usually buys three kadak pavs costing a rupee each to be taken with a slab of Amul butter and strong coffee.

On Sunday mornings, Afzal does brisk business, unloading the entire stock of pav to the owner of the popular vada-pav centre near Vazira Naka.

The owner's son gets busy deep frying the vada in dark coloured oil, while the public lines up to pick up their vada pavs. Often one has seen Afzal dipping his own kadak pav in a cup of tea from the U.P. bhaiya on Lokmanya Tilak Road to make his breakfast.

After the tea and pav, Afzal shares a beedi with the bhaiya and engages in a refreshing Sunday chat. This writer has eaten vada pav from every vendor in the office district of Mumbai. More than the local trains, vada pav keeps the city going, being available any time of the day till way past midnight.

My good friend Paul tells me, pav (the soft, fluffy and hard variety) is made from maida and yeast and only the Muslims can make it, none else.

Like the Muslims are the finest weavers of cloth, the yummiest cooks to serve up mutton or chicken biryani, the best designers of gardens (after Mughals, India has had only dirty municipal gardens) and some like Ustad Amir Khan are the greats of Hindustani classical music. For me, the vada-pav is the finest and most popular, secular icon of modern India: the vada made by a Hindu and the pav by a Muslim. Brand vada pav is the best ad for secularism.

One hopes, the Hindutva crowd does not take objection and forces the public to eat the vada and not the pav; then my good friend Afzal will be out of job. Afzal comes from Azamgarh in U.P., has never been to school but has a way making pav.

Times are tough for Muslims like Afzal. Hindu India does not want to offer bench space to Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others; it is worse in Hindu Gujarat.

Geeta Doctor writing on Chennai's Kalakshetra Foundation in Mint says: "The recent attack on the director arose when a group of Vinayaka (Ganesh) images that had been kept on the path close to a dining room and worshipped in a more overt manner were removed and placed on pedestals close to where the students lived. This was seen as anti-Hindu plot. Leela Samson has wisely refused to comment on such allegations, only saying that Ganesha himself would laugh at the baseness of such a mindset."

Maqbool Fida Hussain at 91 cannot live in India. There may be more of celebrity and less of painting left in Husaain but that is not sufficient reason for Hindutvas to rip his canvases.

West Bengal under Jyoti Basu and now Buddha, is the one State where Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others can live without looking back. Thanks be to Jyoti Basu.

Only in West Bengal is a Muslim not a button in a voting machine. Not so in Kerala, where the proud and literate Malayali men and women have yet to offer Yesduas, their greatest film songster, entry into the Lord Gurvayoor temple. And Yesudas has cut the most records on Lord Krishna and Ayyappa and every Malayali listens to him in the morning.

Is India only for Hindus? Surprisingly (this writer has not been able to figure it out) only a baniya born in Gujarat, going by the moniker Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, said a firm no and stuck to it with his life.

Politics is ghettoed; economics is more so with the poor denied even the hope of a life. To get a sequential look into the current let-down of ideals, the Indian public has been served two fine books: Mohandas: A true story of a man, his people and an empire by Rajmohan Gandhi; India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha (one has not finished with Guha). The two books are seeing good sales, going by the demand for them at Strand Book Stall.

Rajmohan Gandhi inspires, writing (in plain English) of his rejected grandfather. Rejected by all and yet daring to walk alone to bring to earth the reality of an India where the Hindu will live with a Muslim, if not in love, at least with a bit of tolerance.

Rajmohan writes: "Aside from the fact that along with Quit India his generalship in the Congress had expired, he correctly sensed that Nehru, Patel, Azad and company would henceforth, want to act on their own."

After 1944, Gandhi was adrift. At one time, the Old Man proposed the name of Jinnah as the chief executive of an united India to avoid partition. There were no takers.

Nehru and Patel wanted power at any cost. At no cost Gandhi agreed to a tearing up of the Indian map. He made his way to Rama, suggests Rajmohan. Living did not offer him an alternative.

When his friends in Congress failed to bring peace to a Delhi swarming with refugees, Gandhi went on a fast. Many tried to pull him away except C. Rajagopalachari who remarked: " I have wrangled with Gandhiji on several occasions in the past. But this time I confess I am not inclined to wrangle. The only sane man today is Gandhiji."

Arthur Moore, former editor of The Statesman, started a fast on his own. Informing Gandhi of his gesture, the Briton wrote: "You did much in Calcutta. But far more is needed here; you are the only hope."

We took out our dislike for the Muslims by killing Gandhi. For Afzal, vending his pavs to make a marginal living, Gandhi alone is relevant. Hey, Gandhi alone makes sense in today's India.

P. Devarajan

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