Some Trouble with Cows - Beth Roy

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for their numbers were minute. In the 1881 census, for example, only 0.92 percent of Bengali Muslim workers were listed as professionals, in contrast to 2.09 percent of Hindus. The commercial classes included only 2.55 percent of Muslims, 4.76 percent of Hindus. Fully 90 percent of Muslims were agricultural workers or laborers, compared to 76 percent of Hindus.13 But according to Rafiuddin Ahmed, a historian of Bengali Muslims, “numbers alone do not explain the insignificant role played by the middle income group and…their failure to act as a ‘link.’” The entire consciousness of these people yearned for acceptance by the ashraf Among Hindus, the bhadralok may have shared with their Islamic counterpart a hearty contempt for manual labor. But they could speak with other Hindus, however low-class, in Bengali, a language to which they were all loyal and that was embedded in a mutually understood cultural history. Many socially ambitious Bengali Muslims, however, revered a culture from another land, using a language wholly unknown to their lower-class neighbors. As Ahmed put it, “No effective leadership could be expected from a group striving hard to adopt a class culture totally alien to the common man.”14

      Sitting in Basantibala's front room, however, Altaf-uddin seemed distinctly non-alien, a thoroughly Bengalicized version of Muslim gentry. Here he was, ensconced in powerful but friendly stature amid the beds and clothing of his Hindu neighbors. The scene before me could stand as a metaphor for Hindu-Muslim relations in the modern period: culturally both similar and different, socially both friendly and distant, historically both joined and antagonistic.

       Culture and Community

      When the British conquered India, the Muslim upper classes turned their backs pridefully on English education. Hindus, by contrast, and especially Bengalis, embraced it. Education was the entryway to middle-class life, and education in English, the language of the state, was most important. Before long, therefore, Muslims found themselves excluded from new arenas in which economic power was to be found within colonial power relations.15This principled refusal to accept positions as agents of foreign rule further increased the class divide within the Islamic community. By the close of the nineteenth century, Muslims in Bengal accounted for half of the population, but only for 29 percent of those in schools. Among college students the picture was even more polarized: 93.9 percent were Hindus, only 5.4 percent Muslims.16

      At the same time that the Muslim middle class turned away from British education, they sought to distinguish themselves culturally from their Hindu neighbors. “What is it that makes you as a Muslim different from Hindus?” I asked a religious man. He replied, in English:

      Religious performances are quite different. We go to the mosque, wearing caps, saying prayers there. They go to the puja [ritual celebration] in the Kalibari [temple of the goddess Kali], beating the drums, et cetera, et cetera.

      There are people who are very conservative in both communities.…In general, either a Muslim or a Hindu, they strictly follow the rules, the instructions of the religion, [which makes] differences come up. A Hindu makes water standing, and a Muslim just, what should I say…The Hindu is not wearing [a] cap, the Muslim is wearing a cap. Just see it, that I am wearing a cap.

      Nowadays there is some slackness in the customs. I cannot find a Muslim or a Hindu out by what they wear. Now they are all alike. They are not wearing beards now. They are not wearing caps.

      This man moved quickly from a consideration of religious ritual to very personal habits such as urination. With great seriousness he bemoaned the inclination of youth to blur distinctions of attire. At the turn of the century, those very distinctions had been adopted with great deliberateness by his forefathers:

      Ibn Maazuddin Ahmad…[in 1914] found his Muslim identity totally incompatible with local symbols, dress, and language. He…dismissed dhoti and chadar [a shawl] as explicitly Hindu. To him a Muslim attired in dhoti-chadar was as distasteful as the Sanskritized Bengali of the Hindus. Ironically enough, his own [writing] style was highly Sanskritic whenever he was not watching himself.17

      Rafiuddin Ahmed writes that the change away from such “everyday Bengali wear” happened over a period of two decades. Seventy-five years later, it was still effective. Muslim men quite universally wore lungis, and friends noted in casual commentary that the choice of attire was deliberate and politically motivated. Yet although Muslim men may not wear dhoti, Hindu men-all the men in Basantibala's front room, for instance-do wear lungi for working or lounging. Sartorial differentiation, while significant, is not absolute.

      Often people commented on the importance of being able to tell the affiliation of a stranger. “My identity as a Muslim was quite visible,” Altaf told us. “I wore this long kurta [knee-length shirt] and toupee [cap] and beard.” But identification is often not so easy. “I cannot find a Muslim or a Hindu out by what they wear,” as the religious man quoted above complained.

      Among women, too, distinctions are common but not universal. Some Muslim women observe purdah, wearing the characteristic robes and face masks in public. The veil is limited to Muslim women, so its presence is a clear statement. Its absence, however, is not; many Muslim Bengali women move freely outdoors dressed in sarees. Similarly, a vermilion mark in the part of a woman's hair tells you definitively she is Hindu, but since only married women wear it, its absence does not prove a woman is not Hindu. And some modern married Hindu women eschew the vermilion mark, so its absence is no longer even a conclusive sign of marital status among Hindus. East Bengali women of both communities are likely to wear costumes common among Pakistani women, or women in the western regions of India, where the Moghul Empire was centered in its later years. Kurta, salwar, and kameez, a loose-fitting tunic, baggy pants, and flowing scarf, are common both in the countryside and among modern city women.

      Although in theory costumes identify religious affiliation, in fact dress is often influenced by class and function as well. Peasant women, for instance, often wear sarees without blouses, but Basantibala would not present herself to us blouseless, for it is improper to her station. Some among the younger women working in the Majumdar inner courtyard, however, wore no blouse, for comfort while doing domestic work in hot weather.

      Many details of daily life are more alike across community lines than different. All Bengalis' diet relies on rice, fish, and lentils; preparations may vary slightly, but often don't. But Hindu and Muslim women concoct distinctly different sweets, and they revel in those differences and respect each other's contributions. It is hard to distinguish a Muslim cultivator's homestead from a Hindu's, except by specifically religious signifiers such as altars. Relationships among both Muslim and Hindu family members are characterized by norms of generational and gender hierarchy, with decision-making dominated by elders and with men clearly ascendant.

      Yet on the gender front important differences derive from religious practice, too. Islamic polygamy (now limited to two wives per Muslim man) combines with ease of divorce to disadvantage women decidedly. Muslim women, more influenced by rules of purdah to begin with (although many do not observe it, and some Hindu women, especially upper-class ones, are effectively confined to the home by tradition as well), are vulnerable to abuses from which Hindu women have greater (albeit not adequate) social protection.

      People tend to socialize within religious boundaries. Everyone had stories of inter-religious friendships, yet such relationships were noteworthy as exceptions. Neighborhoods are organized by community. When a Muslim family moved into a Hindu neighborhood recently, their arrival was heartily resented. “They are so loud,” said the Hindu woman next door. “They quarrel and yell at each other, so we get no peace.” It is a stereotype that Muslims are more combative at home, one that would not stand up to detailed investigation, but this woman drew on it to express her social discomfort over her new neighbors' proximity.

      Underlying overt cultures and religious practices are personal habits that give people a meaningful sense of distinction, such practices as standing versus squatting to urinate. Hindus bathe midday before their major meal, Muslims may bathe any time it is convenient. While all Bengalis share many cultural attributes, these matters of personal habit are very influential. They cause people to “feel” their identities on a noncognitive level, and when people have contact within

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