BLASPHEAR by Sohail Rauf: Religion, Fear, and the Cost of Silence
Set against a backdrop of religious abuse and suffocating intolerance, Sohali Rauf’s Blasphear is a sharp commentary on the ideas of nationhood, and how its intangible forces act as blind shepherds, leading the masses down paths they cannot question.
In a scene from the Sohail Rauf’s Blasphear (Penguin Random House India, 2024), two Pakistani boys Furqan and Hassan visit their new classmate Ram’s house. Ram is from a Hindu family, and after an innocent discussion about playing cricket in the cramped space of their rooftop, Hasan spontaneously asks, “‘Which side do you cheer for when you watch a Pakistan-India match?’” Rauf writes, “Ram pondered for a while, perhaps wondering for the first time in his life why he should not cheer for Pakistan.”
For Indian readers, Blasphear is filled with such moments of déjà vu. Familiar equations (discrimination against Muslims through political and social othering, public lynchings, and ghettoization) are turned upside down, the minority switches religions, and a universal truth is proven yet again. The fundamentals of fundamentalism remain the same.
Many Indians of the current generation have grown up with our society’s intrinsic contradictions: claims of tolerance stacked against acts of intolerance, proclamations of greatness pitted against the undeniable facts of insufficiencies, and lessons on compassion overshadowed by the stark realities of riots and violence. We grow as accustomed to the chasm between the portrayal and the facts as we are to the wobbly leg of our office chair; thus, the world continues rotating while the chair doesn’t. We hold the idea of India tight in our tongues, and the facts shut under our eyes.
It brings upon a queasy feeling, then, when one finds those contradictions—unique yet so similar—placed in our neighbouring country and society. It’s a feeling that is difficult to shake off throughout Blasphear, as the story serves as both a mirror and prophecy ball for this side of the man-made border.
Blasphear is the story of Waqas Mahmood, a sub-inspector assigned to a suicide case of a 17-year-old boy. On the surface it seems like a regular day of work, but something foul swims underneath. A Hindu art teacher was lynched for blasphemy just months earlier, and this boy’s suicide seems to be linked.
Waqas is haunted by his own childhood and the ghosts of his father’s lynching for a cause that, in hindsight, seems less than a slight. He struggles—often unsuccessfully—to maintain his fear of that which is called the civilized society and the fair system. His family and peers, acting as the voice of society, constantly remind him to be quick, quiet, and unintrusive, to keep the scales as they are, and to not look or ask beyond what is necessary.
Characters often discuss Meeraji’s poetry, which allows Rauf to pose eternal doubts: whether the journey to divinity is only linear (as the preachers claim), whether obscenity lies in the art or the eyes of the beholder, or whether there’s nothing to learn from religions other than one’s own.
The battle is as external as it is internal, the system’s persistent demand for conformity as heavy as the intricacies of the suicide case, highlighting why it’s nigh impossible (and thus perhaps necessary) to challenge the conventions of the day.
Though set against a backdrop of abuse of religion and in an environment of suffocating intolerance, the book is also a sharp commentary on the broader structures of the state and the very idea of nationhood, and how its intangible forces act as blind shepherds, leading the masses down paths they cannot question.
At a juncture, Waqas, still plagued by doubt and the ambiguities of the “suicide” case, discusses the same with ASI Ashraf, who, naturally, isn’t very keen on pursuing the dangerous trail. “The other day, while I was helping my child with his homework, I came across Newton’s Laws of Motion again. It’s been a long time since I studied them in school. Our society is in inertia. It doesn’t like change.”
Is there a difference between the religious and the religiously affiliated? Rauf answers as well as asks of the reader. The novel critiques and highlights the modus operandi of the organised religious factions that have mushroomed and how they thrive and perpetuate the atmosphere of distrust of ‘the other’. These parallel and parasitic power centres, working in collaboration and often puppeteering the political and civil authorities, enjoy a vine-like grip on society.
Through the verses of Meeraji (an early 20th-century Urdu poet), Rauf fleshes out the original question of difference further while opening many subsets of philosophical quandaries.
Characters often discuss Meeraji’s poetry, which allows Rauf to pose eternal doubts: whether the journey to divinity is only linear (as the preachers claim), whether obscenity lies in the art or the eyes of the beholder, or whether there’s nothing to learn from religions other than one’s own. The subtext is perhaps not whether it is possible to answer these questions with a yes or no, but whether we are permitted the freedom for the questions to even be considered.
Dibakar Banerjee’s remarkable segment in Netflix’s Ghost Stories uses allegories to describe the modern Hindutva state and the growing fascist tendencies in the state, the transformation of a common, sensible person into a hateful entity bent on revenge shown through a delightful treatment of a common horror creation. Sohail Rauf’s descriptions of mob justice following blasphemy accusations are reminiscent of that treatment, when he writes of a procession arriving to serve justice to a central character in the novel: “There’s a crowd, seething, surging, changing shape, growing limbs… now here, then there… like a slithering, crawling prehistoric protozoa in a sci-fi film, approaching him. He stands firm, dressed in white. He does not budge, and the organism absorbs him… eats him up.”
And later: “I felt as if we were in a zombie land—similar to those I had seen in Hollywood movies, in which humans turned into zombies one by one and you couldn’t be sure whether another person was a normal human being or a zombie.”
The sci-fi tropes flesh out the ludicrousness of it all, the lack of humanity, the mindless nature in which public lynchings are carried out, as if the executioners aren’t humans anymore, as if humanity has found a new postal address, as it’s certainly not within this zombieland.
Inherited from the colonial masters, blasphemy laws had little use for Pakistan till the 1970s, after which they proved to be a useful tool to Islamize the state. Sections 295 to 298 of the Pakistan Penal Code—which was parallel to the Indian Penal Code until some recent changes –deal with offences against religion and religious sentiments, systemically. They are sufficiently vague, giving the broad leeway to the state and its underbellies the magnificent right to be offended: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.” (Section 295-C)
The situation is bound to get worse as Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill on the 17th of January 2023 to make the already controversial law harsher and more expansive.
For Indians, these changes surely ring a bill closer to home, what with the controversy around the word secular, the persistent and ever-increasing demand for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, the passing of the Constitution Amendment Act [CAA] and the proposed National Register of Citizens, ‘bulldozer justice’ and the extensive abuse of UAPA or Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
These ambiguities and expansiveness have on-ground, real-life consequences in Pakistan, with over 2100 accused of blasphemy since 1987 and at least 89 killed by mobs, according to a 2023 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. A mere slight—often imagined—can cost one their freedoms, or even their life. Safety is a fragile glass object hanging by a weak thread of suspicion on a volatile ceiling of vague definitions of blasphemy. The question is no longer of whether it shall break—it’s when.
At times, it’s hard to imagine that Blasphear is Rauf’s debut. The author—originally from Pakistan and now settled in Houston—switches deftly between narratives, juxtaposing multiple themes and questions, presenting nuanced issues from his homeland. Here is a hope with criticism not divorced from reason, hope not married to delusion.
There’s a mature tenderness to the author’s critique of his homeland, the wish for what ought to be dominating the sentiments of what is the present state of the nation. And like the best of books, Blasphear leave readers with more questions than answers. Will we have the courage to ask them?
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Amritesh Mukherjee is a writer and editor. He is a content writer at a marketing agency and the long-form lead at Purple Pencil Project, a platform to promote Indian literature (and languages). You can find him on Instagram: @the_bookish_maniac and Twitter: @bookish_maniac.
