Saturday 7 April 2012

Defining Secularism: Hindu man raising a Muslim Boy


Today, i.e Saturday the 7th April, 2012, at around 19hrs, As I was flipping the channels to kill my leisure time as the weather outside is windy, dark and thundering, my remote paused me at the Sony Entertainment Channel where I was glued with this programme called crime patrol with shock and amazement. Initially, I was for sure that programme would contain full of criminal related incidents but truly happened one somewhere in our country. But as the programme progressed, it was of a crime that reached to the Police and Court though but in different reason then what we usually witness. The story however changed my perception and taught me in many ways about the secularism, and also gave me some hope of peaceful and communal riots free society in the Hindustan that we say our country.
The story was all about a men who earns his bread by selling tea in the street of Lucknow. The year was 2003 where he came across this young abandoned boy of three years hardly at the park near his hut. The boy was Muslim and it did not take much time for this Hindu men to know that boy is a Muslim after enquiring the name of boy and he is been abandoned. He then takes this ailing child to hospital and took care of everything that child needed to recover from his sickness. Next thing he did was to inform police and neighbours about the found child. Days gone to week and week converted to months but still there was no sign of boy’s biological parents. Going against the suggestions of his friends and neighbours, the men decided to adopt a child. The decision was not less than a challenge for this simple Hindu man with limited source of income surrounded by Hindu conservatives as neighbours. He was determined to do anything for the child he found helplessly in the park. So, he admitted the boy to local school and started giving him the best of education that the men himself missed in his childhood. However, even discarding the criticism and odds of his society, he took boy to Imam Sahib in the nearby Masjid. His objective was to give this little boy all the knowledge of Quran and do everything that boy’s Muslim biological parents would have done. Arrival of boy in his life had brought a light of joy in this men’s life filled with laughter and love. Moreover, the boy had started growing well both in academically and spiritually. However, in their five years of living together as a father and son in harmony and love, a fate had brought twist in their story, that they could have hardly imagined. It was television news reporter who happened to sip a tea at men’s stall and heard about the story “Hindu men raising a Muslim boy”. Upon the request of the story hunting reporter both the son and father (boy and men) agreed to give an interview. As one could expect, the story became breaking news and soon it attract lot of other reporters too. Now it is to be said fortunately or unfortunately, a Muslim couple in far off Delhi caught the story on television. The surprised couple rather happily started rejoicing the news that their lost child has been found and is very much alive in Lucknow. Without wasting much of time, the couple took a train ride very next day and reported straight to the police station in Lucknow. The shocked police acted on their report and summoned both the boy and the men (now his father). The police started their investigation upon the claim of biological parents and on the other hands the news put both the father and son in dismay. Made them painful to digest the fact that they have to live separately leaving behind all the loving bonds that they have created over the last five years of living together. The boy on the other hand refused to go with his biological parents which ultimately reached their case to the court, because the parents then had lodged an affidavit before the court upon which the father (men) received a show cause notice from the court asking to appear before the court along with the boy.
The case started, and lawyer representing both the sides started their arguments. Parent’s lawyer made an important and effective arguments pleading court to hand over custody to biologically legal parents. On the other hand, with the support of all the neighbours, including Muslim imam, docter who treated ailing boy at first, clerk at the school who gave admission in school and friends, his lawyer too submitted rather strong objection. Perhaps, for the first time in the judicial history the judge had to justify which was beyond any constitutional limitations. The DNA sample proved as boy’s biological parents and that boy’s father had lost his son while drinking in local liquor shop while drinking, forgetting thus the whereabouts of his son.  Their, major weakness was they had never lodged any complaint against their missing son nor they had published anywhere in newspapers. With crossword questions to the men, enquiring about his motives about keeping this young boy’s identity as Muslim and financial status the strong articulating Lawyer of biological parents, the case was almost to be win by the biological parents, however then came the last but life changing confession from the men’s friend who ironically happened to be Muslim too. The men shared the history that kept everybody in the court including the Judge in dismay.  The story thus reminded of the law of the nature or so called the law of Karma. The men, who earns his bread by selling tea at the roadside, living single in poverty, deciding to adopt a abandoned Muslim boy as his son without letting that little boy to change his religion was none other than the men who himself was found and adopted by the Muslim man keeping thus his faith unchangeably. And the man who confessed that story too was none other than his God-brother who was brought up together under the same roof and tenderness from the same Muslim parents. The man later says ‘I am a Hindu brought up by a kind Muslim man. When I found boy, it was like God telling me that it is time to return the love and care I got from His people. I was never forced to change my religion and, having got that education from my guardian, it was my duty to take care of the child and bring him up as per his own religion,”
Atlast but not the least, after days of melodrama in the court, Judge said ‘India is a secular country where the consideration of caste and creed should not be allowed to prevail. “...If there can be inter-caste marriages... there can also be an inter-caste ‘father and son’ relationship and that need not raise eyebrows,” the judge said.  And the custody of the Child was given to the man.
Laslty, the story thus reminds everybody including myself about the true philosophy of the religion is not just to practice one’s own religion and let others too to practice it but it is all about letting the one to follow the one that he is best suited in. It is all about religious tolerance, respect for other religious sentiments and religious harmony, spreading thus the message of brotherhood and defining us the spirit of secularism, in this huge nation of ours which fortunately is known as country of “SECULARISM”.

Phurba T. Tsechutharpa
Assistant Professor
Department of political science
Namchi Government College
Kamrang, South Sikkim
Ph-9475917770