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'The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will stay covered with dense clouds so long as there exists Krishna in Braj.' These lines were composed by Mohsin Kakorvi, an Urdu poet, to remember not Lord Krishna's birthday but that of the Prophet Muhammad. Awadh, the author's birthplace, was steeped in this beautiful confluence of ethnicities. Unfortunately, this glorious custom has been systematically destroyed within the last century. In lots of ways, Awadh stood for everything that impartial India could have become, a land where people of different faiths co-existed peacefully and created a culture that drew upon the best that all community had to provide. Instead, what we've today is a pale shadow of the harmony that once been around. Everywhere there are occurrences of sectarian murder, communal propaganda and divisive politics. And there seems to be no stopping the causes that are destroying the united states. In this impressive book, which is partially a memoir and partially an exploration of the various deliberate and inadvertent functions that have added to the othering of the 180 million Muslims in India, Saeed Naqvi talks about how the divisions between Muslims and Hindus commenced in the present day era. The English were the first ever to exploit these divisions between the neighborhoods in the 19th and 20th generations. Inside the run-up to Self-reliance, and its own immediate aftermath, some of India's greatest leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel while others, only served to operate a vehicle the neighborhoods further apart. Successive governments, whether formed by the Congress or BJP, compounded the condition by failing to prevent (if not positively assisting) tragic occasions like communal riots in Gujarat (1969 and 2002), Bombay (1992, 1993), Muzaffarnagar (2013), the breaking of the Babri Masjid (1992) and so forth. To be a reporter, and editor, Naqvi covered all these occasions (apart from Partition), and in the book he shows us, with acuity and understanding, how each of these resulted in the shaping of the discontent of the Muslim in India. Thought-provoking and troubling, Being the Other is vital listening for all people interested in understanding the causes that have shaped contemporary Indian world.
