On the morning of January 29, 2022, Juzar S. Bandukwala, 77, passed away at his residence in Vadodara’s Pratapgunj locality following various co-morbidities and ailments.
Even as he aged rapidly, with which came dementia exacerbated by a bout of COVID-19, Bandukwala remembered two stories vividly.
In the first, he was at the receiving end of words that changed his life from a nun at a church in the United States circa 1972. By then, he had earned a PhD in nuclear physics and was all set to get the tag of an assistant professor. But, the nun’s words hit him hard: “Go back to your country.”
At first, it seemed like a racist remark. But the nun added: “Serve your people.”
The sentimentalist that he was, he pondered deeply over these words and soon threw away his green card. Much to his family’s displeasure, he returned to India to take up a position in the Physics department at Vadodara’s Maharaja Sayajirao University.
The second story is from the more recent past. The year was 2002. He was defeated and torn apart by two events: his wife’s death some months before and the burning down of his house at the hands of a Hindu supremacist mob.
A television channel asked him to join their show to speak about his trauma in front of a renowned guest.
As Bandukwala was introduced as a speaker from Mumbai, where he had shifted temporarily after the vandalisation of his house, the guest pounced back: “So now he has fled away from Gujarat.”
The man speaking these words was Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat.
Bandukwala’s quick reflex led to an appropriate reply: “What have you left for my community [in Gujarat]?”
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Above all, Bandukwala was a reformist at heart. Several facets of his thinking stand out.
Firstly, he wanted more Muslim women to be the prominent voices of the community. Indeed, back in the mid-1980s, he supported Shah Bano’s demand for alimony from her estranged husband and earned great ire from Muslim fundamentalists. It was only after the Mumbai-based gangster Haji Mastan arrived in Baroda and spoke at length in support of Bandukwala that his larger social boycott ended amongst Muslims.
Also read: Rights Activist J.S. Bandukwala, Who Fought Against Ghettoisation in Gujarat, Passes Away
Secondly, he was perhaps the first voice in the Gujarati Muslim community to speak of not merely solidarity with Hindu Dalits but also the concerns of backward castes amongst Muslims. In fact, in 1983, Kanshi Ram arrived in Baroda to meet him. Later, in 1989, Prof. Bandukwala fought an election on the agenda of Dalit-Muslim solidarity. More recently, in an article for the Indian Express, he re-highlighted the classification on caste lines amongst Muslims and condemned the “inability to break the caste rigidity” amongst Muslims.
Finally, he genuinely urged Muslims to shun the path of vehement religiosity. For instance, in 2020, he wrote that “religiosity […] is not conducive to good citizenship”. He requested his fellow Muslims to focus on “quality education, business and industry, and most importantly, gender equality”. In his later years, he achieved these intertwined aims through educational scholarships via his Zidni Ilma Trust to thousands of students in Gujarat.
Towards the end of his life, Bandukwala detached himself from politics and focused all his energies on the cause of Muslim education. He even urged Muslims to take a backseat from electoral politics for, in his view, it helped the cause of the Hindu right-wing to polarise society. At a personal level, I was not a fan of this discourse, but I soon realised where this concern of his came from: a deep sense of compassion and kindness.
After the burning down of his house in 2002, Bandukwala had done the unthinkable. He had forgiven the perpetrators in order to be able to move on with his life. Through the very act of forgiving the people who had come to kill him and his daughter, Bandukwala allowed the participants in that mob to reconsider their position.
It was not merely an act of courage but more importantly of resilience in the face of crisis and adversity. As people remember and commemorate the indomitable Bandukwala, we need to move beyond the man who was helpless against the mighty powers of the state – for example, in that one-on-one with CM Modi in 2002 – and remember the person who made connections with, inspired and continually worried about countless Muslims, especially youngsters and women, to educate and organise for rights.
Remember the Bandukwala, the face of resilience of Gujarati Muslim society, that has grown despite unprecedented physical and symbolic violence, living in substandard ghettoes.
Sharik Laliwala is a researcher who is interested in studying ethnicity/religion and caste in India.