A senseless article by a male taxi passenger

I read the article titled “Conversations with a lady taxi driver” in The Hindu by Mr. Omar Rashid. Coming in the wake of the recent rape of a lady passenger by a cab driver in New Delhi (Of course!), I was intrigued by the “reversal or roles” and clicked on the article. On the face of it, this is about a man’s early morning ride to the New Delhi airport in a lady-driven taxi. But it is hard to miss the undertones of religions and their values present. The narrative has been colored, in my opinion, by the author’s religious identity which sees him take liberal pot shots at one and pedal soft on the other. Here is my take on what can be described as the tragedy of a successful love story.

A Brahmin lady in her purdah behind the wheels of a taxi in Mumbai. It may be a challenge to paint a more incongruent image. At the outset, I must salute the courage of the lady. In what must have been a decision taken in a haze of blind love and youthful rebellion, she had eloped with her love. She, a Brahmin and him, a Muslim. Love, especially the inter-religious flavor, has been overly romanticized and glamorized in movies and books. It is easy for young, impressionable minds in the grip of raging hormones to gloss over the challenges that may crop up. The man who, I’m sure, she must have counted upon as her pillar of support in life, had deserted her for another woman. In two years flat. After bouncing around for a bit doing odd jobs, she has taken up driving a taxi for a living. May not be the safest of jobs for a lady to undertake but let us hope that the male passengers are better behaved than the drivers.Let us also hope that her family is sensible enough to take her back into the fold. 

Robbed of her life (antagonized family and divorced with an alimony of a grand sum of Rs. 3,000), her religion (she had, of course, converted to Islam) and her kids (there was more than one kid in 2 years!) the lady is yet another statistic of a Hindu girl-Muslim boy marriage gone wrong. (I’m personally aware of three other marriages of this flavor ending bad for the Hindu girl.) Whether love jihad, which Mr. Rashid is quick to pooh-pooh as “a myth spread by Hindutva groups”, is real may be open to debate. But what is not is the fact that the lady has fallen victim to the unchecked polygamous tendencies of the practitioners of Islam. Her marriage to someone from her own religion/caste could have gone wrong just as easily given the circumstances of the marriage. But according to the article, her ex-husband has allegedly moved on to wife number three along with two kids from his first marriage.

Love jihad, as I have mentioned earlier, may be real or not. But what is real is any parent’s concern that their children, particularly girls, aren’t misled into the wrong marriage. Unfortunately, it is often the woman that ends up getting the short end of the stick in a bad marriage. This only gets more pronounced in an inter-religious marriage given the obvious strong emotions and opposition usually involved in one.

The fact that The Hindu has deemed it fit to be published was a giveaway about how the article would end up sounding. And my instincts have not let me down. First off, the quick punches that Mr. Rashid liberally throws at VHP and Hindutva groups. “love jihad is a myth spread by Hindutva groups”, “right wing Hindutva groups could manipulate her story (italics mine) to include it within the template of love jihad” and “VHP’s disregard for individual choices”. What is strikingly loud is Mr. Rashid's silence on the Islamic practices of polygamy, the triple talak or the need for the non-Muslim to always convert to Islam in a marriage of “individual choice”. And related to the context of this article, I would be curious to know where the author stands on the implementation of a uniform civil code and this arcane concept of family planning in Islam. If there was even so much as a murmur of protest against the erring Muslim in this story, it would be difficult to question his motives. But even after a second reading, there is not a mention of neither the author’s pity for the state of the lady nor a word of reprimand at her husband’s behavior. The only question critical of Islam comes from the taxi driver herself and is met by silence. However, there is ample relief that “her story” didn’t get picked up by the evil right wing Hindutva groups to be fit it into the myth of love jihad. Wow.

Perhaps I’m dense but I couldn’t see the point of this article other than piggy backing on a recent unfortunate incident. This would have been a good article if not for the one-sided political color given to it. This would have been a sensible article if only it had been neutral. Instead it is a meandering piece of Hindutva-groups-bashing prose masquerading behind a clever title. Mr. Omar Rashid, what a waste of words. And The Hindu, what a waste of space.