The inhospitable terrain on the western front was infested with snakes and scorpions.
There is the absorbing description of days and nights when, he says, he camped in a Pakistani desert in 1971. But Shah’s memoirs contain other offerings than the 10 pages on Gujarat in his 204-page memoirs. This precise detail could certainly help reopen ghastly cases of mayhem and mass murder if and when the political tide turns from India’s slide into state-backed fanaticism. When the police did act, they fired at the windows of the victims’ homes, not at the mobs. He noted that policemen were mostly bystanders as mobs surrounded and raided the homes of innocent men, women and children with petrol bombs and swords. The curious title of the book ‘Sarkari Mussulman’ translates as ‘Uncle Tom’ in the given context. He noted that the local administration delayed by a fateful day the crucial arrangement of logistical support such as vehicles, a mandatory civilian escort and local maps. Much has been said about Shah’s Gujarat expedition where he led army columns to rein in Hindutva mobs amid flames of hatred and blood-thirst. The army chief had personally deputed him to lead the troops to quell the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms under then chief minister Narendra Modi’s watch. And the former army officer, who describes himself as an upright Indian Muslim, was instantly damned by a hostile media as anti-national, not the least for sharing his horrific experiences in violence-wracked Gujarat. His book titled The Sarkari Mussulman was released this month.
Now, retired Lt Gen Zameer Uddin Shah who sprang the question on his unsuspecting movie star brother has expanded his inquiry into other challenges facing India’s 150 million Muslims. I think the actor didn’t have an answer to his brother’s question, and he mumbled something about playing what the script demanded. One such movie was a hit in which Naseer played a nationalist-minded vigilante who incognito helps police track a gang of bomb-exploding Muslims. Why were terrorists almost always shown as Muslims in Mumbai movies?
MOVIE actor Naseeruddin Shah was having a tame chat with an indulgent Delhi audience when one of his two elder brothers seated in the front row rattled him with a troubling question.
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