I have been reading AAVARAN- the veil by S.L Bhyrappa since the last few days and without any ambiguity I will recommend it to everyone. The more I read it the more deeper I delved down.
It starts with the story of a progressive, rebellious, feminist girl Laxmi who marries a boy Amir and converts to Islam and changes her name to Razia. But things fell apart when she realised it just veil under the garb of progressiveness and hence she embarks a journey to find truth.
Instead of focusing on the actual subject of the quest. Things like the goal of history is asked and it is defined as the forward march to progressiveness by the arrogants.
History is a quest of truth.
The past reveals itself through symbols, texts, books, mutilated relics and yet we insist on seeing a twisted version of it because our eyes are jaundiced or else you will be labelled as communal.
India’s political leaders constitutionally sanctified the policy which made us impossible to get our temples back by introducing places of worship act. Be it in Banaras or Mathura or many other such places where mosques are built over using the structure, marble and pillars of razed temples. What kind of true harmony we will achieve unless the mindset which asserts its superiority to the exclusion of everything else is rejected, a mindset which preaches conversion or death of those who hold a different view is rejected.
It exposes the flawed and handicapped mindset of so called progressives. As myths are hard to create but far harder to destroy. We have been celebrating Tipu Jayanti and he is hailed as a national hero, son of Kannada. Kannada was the official language of State when Wodeyar dynasty ruled Mysore, when Tipu took over, administrative language was change to Farsi. He who embarked on a journey to Coorg and Malabar, leaving behind a trail of brutal forcible conversion.
Tipu’s dreams : a bunch of papers, all typewritten were found in his toilet in his palace in which he addressed Hindus as KAFIRS and British as Christians. In his dreams he saw Maulvis and Prophet Mohammad telling him he won’t go to heaven without Tipu. Then what gave the audacity to call him a National hero – perhaps anyone who fought against Britishers irrespective of the personal interests was called a patriot but then why they remain mute about MARATHAS ? Marathas who fought the same British. British by their own admission has identified Marathas as a bigger threat to their imperial ambitions.
What about the flawed and hypocritical approach of feminists that doesn’t reveal the fact of direct consequence of sex slavery by Muslim invaders led to the rapid and sudden increase in the Sati practice, which later on developed into full fledged tradition in Punjab, Rajasthan and most of the north India as Indian women were sold in the slave markets in Kabul, Iran and Turan. Why doesn’t these feminists tell why marriages in north India are still conducted during the night ? May be that will topple the secular fabric they have.
Realisation comes when the mistakes of the past are honestly accepted. You will better succeed at achieving national integration and brotherhood if they’re built on the foundation of truth and not on fiction stories glorifying the atrocities committed.
Already filled with a motley of feelings after I related to such things. Felt like crying, seethed with rage, angst welled up in me and felt proud even.
AAVARAN serves the best things to expose the radicals, pseudo progressives, crypto feminists, liberals around us. It is appropriate to call them as the the sentimental descendants of Aurangzeb and other such tyrants.
Mansi Tripathi, Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi
