Travelure
By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
Once again, the netas of our Government have let down the people of Uttarakhand. If our highlanders gave up their lives to break away from the suffocating grit of the lowlanders, what right have our netas to follow the diktats of UP? Why have our Movers and Shakers decided to demand that dhabas and other food providers along yatra routes indicate the name of the owner of the eatery. Does a surname, necessarily indicate the sect, state or religion of the owner? When we asked that question, we recall an incident that happened in Ethiopia.
INS Rajput was on a Flag-showing visit to the former kingdom of Ethiopia. It was ruled by Haile Selassie I, the last Emperor of that kingdom. One of the states or provinces of Ethiopia was Eritrea which extended from the highlands down to the sea. We in INS Rajput arrived at the Eritrean Red Sea Port of Massawa. There when one of our naval cooks went ashore, his watch was stolen. We reported it to the police and thought nothing more about it. But when it was time for us to leave the port, the authorities refused to give us permission to depart. Then we heard the wail of police sirens coming closer and closer. We were told the Governor of the local province of Eritrea was coming aboard. We hurriedly organised the required ceremonial and, when he arrived, he demanded to meet the cook whose watch had been stolen. He then apologised to the bewildered man and presented him a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Watch specially manufactured for Emperor Haile Selassie.
We did not know then that we had got involved in geo-politics.
The port of Massawa was in the Ethiopian province of Eritrea. It was, at that time, fighting for its independence which it got years later. The Ethiopian Intelligence Officer who was helping us told us, informally, that the authorities could not reconcile the name of the cook with his identity. His name was Gujarati, but he claimed that he was a Maharashtrian. The bewildered Ethiopian Intelligence Officer could not understand how a Maharashtrian could call himself Gujarati.
Years later, Eretria became independent of Ethiopia as Gujarat became independent of Maharashtra.
Our second tale also comes from the Indian Navy. The last ship on which one of us served was INS Khukri. It was the only ship of our Navy sunk in hostilities. We lost many of our colleagues including the Commanding Officer. As the ship sank its few survivors saw their Commanding Officer sitting on his high chair, lighting his last cigarette and going down with his ship. His name was Captain Mulla. Mullah is a honorific title for Muslim clergy and mosque leaders. Captain Mahendra Nath Mulla was not a Muslim: he was a Kashmiri Pandit. If any of his family had run a restaurant on the Yatra route, would it have been shunned by pilgrims because it was run by a Mulla?
Similarly, Iran was once ruled by the Shah. Shah is a Muslim title for a King. Does it follow that a restaurant owned by a person named Shah should be avoided by Yatris because they must presume that all people with the surname Shah are deceitful and would serve non-veg food described as Vegetarian? Would not such a stupid assumption be grossly unfair?
Traditionally, the term HINDU applied to everyone living beyond the Indus. It was a geographical identity the way we call people Brits, Americans, Australians and French. It did not imply a religious identity. That came only in 1816-17 when it was used by Raja Rammohan Roy. Those who attempt to circumscribe a way of life which range from the practices of the Aghori sadhus to scientific concepts that embrace the BigBang, the universal sound of gravity waves, we don’t pre-date and expand Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and even provide the bedrock of modern concern to preserve the web of life expressed so brilliantly in the legend of the Descent of the Ganga.
The bottom line is if our right-wing netas wish to deprive certain communities from making an honest living, why don’t they come out and express their prejudices openly? You can’t fool all the people all the time. Our recent Election Result has proved the truth of this phrase.
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.) (The opinions and thoughts expressed here reflect only the authors’ views!).
