Delhi’s Meatscapes author Zarin Ahmad on meat, myths, popular culture and the Qureshis

Zarin Ahmad’s new book, Delhi’s Meatscapes: Muslim Butchers in a Transforming Mega City_, traces the journey of meat from the farm to the meat shop and other workspaces of the butcher within the multi-sited margins in Delhi. She addresses the tensions that meat throws up in a bristling society whose stakes are now more than ever intense._ Firstpost recently sat down with the author to discuss the diversity among Muslims in India, the myths around meat, the Qureshis, Gangs of Wasseypur_, among other things._ In the introduction you mention how scholarly engagement with Islam and Muslims has peaked after 9/11, and during cases of communal violence in India. What would you say has been the direct consequence – positive or negative — of this contextual interest? It is important to study violence and marginalisation, and it is essential to document these critical issues and ideally, ways to address them as well. However, it is also important to understand the diverse occupations in which Muslim communities work and which are located within these broader concerns of security, identity, and marginalisation. There is no dearth of diversity among Muslims in India, you write in the book. How much has the popular culture – tv and cinema – contributed to the narrow vision of this diverse culture? Can you give examples? Popular culture (TV and cinema) has contributed to this narrow vision of Muslims. In the days gone there was this genre called the ‘Muslim social’ which depicted Muslims in the framework of adab and tehzeeb shown in films like Mere Mehboob, Mehboob Ki Mehndi and in later years the TV serial Heena. The lead characters wore gharara-sharara, shervani all the time, spoke chaste Urdu and spouted shayari at any given opportunity. While these films often depicted only elite Muslim life (with a courtesan connection in the sub-text), they were not deeply divisive or biased. [caption id=“attachment_4952051” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Delhi’s Meatscapes: Muslim Butchers in a Transforming Mega City, by Zarin Ahmad[/caption] What is happening in recent cinema is more disturbing. In a large number of films, Muslim characters are violent terrorists, drug lords or mafia dons which I am sure helps in shaping the popular narrative. This is depicted in a bunch of recent movies from Rauf Lala in Agneepath where Rishi Kapoor is a butcher and gangster, Tere Naam where the brothel owner is Muslim and Sarfarosh, where the suave singer played by Naseeruddin shah, is a terrorist. However, there are exceptions — one film that comes to my mind is 3 Idiots where Farhan (Madhavan’s character) is struggling with his parents’ aspiration of being an engineer and his own passion for wildlife photography. Sultan also stepped out of the victim/perpetrator framework – it is the story of a couple who are wrestlers and happen to be Muslim. Meat has always been a contentious issue between Hindu and Muslim communities, but there is as much myth around the issue as there is fact. How has this happened? What role has literature, film and other cultural avenues played? Meat has been considered as violent, polluting, un-clean across time and space and also a deeply divisive issue in the Indian context. When society itself marginalises a section of its people – literature and film may just convey this reality. And yes, it is a myth that only Muslims eat meat. The Delhi abattoir is shut on Tuesdays because a large number of Hindus observe Tuesday as meatless day which goes to show that the meat market has a sizeable Hindu clientele as well. Why is it crucial to study meat in its different aspects to understand the Muslim community in Delhi? How has it changed over the last few decades? Because meat touches our lives in multiple ways — from our plates to our politics. Yet there is so little we know about it except for marginalising and demonising butchers and meat-sector workers. It is important to document the story of meat. There have been profound changes in the meat sector over the years, technological: from manual to mechanized work, geographical: shifting abattoirs to the periphery of the city, and economic: due to a dynamic meat market. Meat as a product has moved from the back lanes to the supermarket: the supply chain, the administrative rules, the actors, the product and its presentation have all been undergoing substantial changes in recent years. The Qureshis, as you mention, first appeared in popular culture through Gangs of Wasseypur, but it is still some way off from understanding the community and its role in Delhi’s meatscape. How has this community evolved over the years, and how is their history essential to understanding Delhi itself? As I mentioned in the introduction to the book, in the film Gangs of Wasseypur one of the main antagonists, Sultan, is Qureshi, a butcher. This piqued peoples’ interest in Qureshis. Gangs is a revenge drama set in possibly Jharkhand, and a feature film is not expected to document the history of a community. Scholars and researchers, on the other hand, are entrusted with the task of documenting histories based on facts and events. Coming to Delhi, an eminent historian of Delhi, Narayani Gupta said, ‘Delhi’s history and its architecture are well-documented, its landscape and inhabitants less so’. This book is an attempt to study the life of a fraction of its working population within the changing landscape of the dynamic city. The story of meat is intimately linked to the history of Delhi. The Qureshi community has evolved along with the city and its fortunes have also changed along with the city. When the capital shifted from Calcutta to Delhi, in 1911, a new abattoir was constructed to meet the growing demand for meat for the colonial army and bureaucracy. During partition violence in 1947, the abattoir was shut down for six months. When the city expanded in the 1970s the demand for meat also grew and many butchers were able to set shops and expand their businesses. The most critical shift that has happened in recent history is the closure of the 95-year-old Idgah abattoir in 2009 and its relocation to the eastern fringes of Delhi. Perhaps one of the ironies of present-day India would be the upper caste Hindu who eats meat ordered from outlets but cannot acknowledge the presence of Muslim communities built around it. Can literature, or writers for that matter, help bridge that gap? What can be done to improve the situation? Yes, this is an irony indeed. Meat is not an isolated sector in the Indian economy as is commonly perceived. It is linked to the dairy and agriculture sector and there is long supply chain beyond meat which includes, leather, surgical products, sports goods, even musical instruments like the tabla are strung with buffalo hide. So the livestock sector provides livelihood to a whole range of people in the Indian economy from diverse castes and religions. Cinema and literature can certainly help by presenting the nuanced reality of meat and meat sector workers.