Why I’m inherently anti-muslim

So yes, I consider myself a secularist and all that. I have a number of friends who are from “minority  communities”. I still, however, think that parties like the Congress do go out of their way in order to woo “minority communities”. And (though i’ve never voted so far) unless the BJP majorly goofs up on some other axis, I’m significantly more likely to vote for the BJP than vote for the Congress. There are times when I want to try my hand at politics, and those times I wish I had friends in the BJP through whom I could try get a foothold. At times, however, I don’t care and become willing to join just about any party which will welcome me.

So this is the reason I think I’ve been inherently anti-Muslim. Back in kindergarten, there were two bullies in my class. Two absolute bullies, boys who were bigger than most others, who wouldn’t hesitate to be violent. When I was in second standard, one of them had scratched my leg so hard that there was a septic infection which took a long time to heal. I would see conscious efforts by these guys to be mean to others.

Back in junior school, there were three Muslims in my class. There was one quiet girl who I must admit I didn’t talk much to, but then back then I didn’t talk much to girls at all in general. And then there were two Muslim boys. And they happened to be two bullies.

So here I am, six or seven years old, and seeing a one-to-one correspondence between Muslim boys and bullies. I’m too young to know of stuff like “selection bias”, “small sample bias” and the like. Every day, on TV, I’m hearing anti-Pakistan rhetoric. And this was the period between the Shah Bano case and the Babri Masjid demolition, so most family members were also fairly anti-Muslim. And when India won against Pakistan in Sharjah for the first time (Srinath’s debut; October 1991), it was a victory not against Pakistan but against “those bloody Muslims”. When a week later (in the final league match), we lost narrowly trying to chase down 250 odd in utter darkness, it was because “those bloody Muslims had cheated us”.

You can be a rational person, but it is hard to go against biases that were created fairly early on in life. However hard you try to make rational decisions, it’s hard to go against something that’s been built into your instincts. And as I explained earlier, there was a clear one-to-one correspondence that I noticed that made me form my biases. Yes, I try to be rational and “secular”, but sometimes it takes effort to go against your instincts. So yes, I suffer from “anti-Muslim bias”.