The mauzzin calls the faithful to prayer from a minaret that vies for height with the Ghanta Ghar next door and the tower of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace a little further on. It is Friday, and the faithful gather from the far comers of Kathmandu to offer Khutabah at the Nepali Jame Masjid.The crowd bottles up the traffic emerging from the city´s exclusive Durbar Marg plaza.
In itself, the setting is not out of ordinary. The mauzzin has been calling from this spot for a long time, perhaps since the reign of King Pratap Malla in the early 17th century. What has changed over the last year is that the modest historic edifice has been demolished and a spanking new marble-sided, petro-dollar-financed structure, many times larger, has been erected in its placa Meanwhile, the number of Muslim adherents who turn up for prayer has increased more than ten fold over the last decade.
To those seeking communal conspiracies in the "Hindu state" of Nepal, the Friday crowd at Durbar Marg would seem to provide ample visible proof that the Musalman´s strength is on the rise in the kingdom. For those in the plains media seeking to unearth geopolitical intrigues in the aftermath of the Ayodhya disaster and the Bombay bomb blasts, this manifest Muslim presence in a downtown thoroughfare is proof enough that the infamous Pakistani spook agency, the ISI, is up to something nasty in Nepal. Indeed, Indian journalists and academics have been no laggards these past few months in issuing dire warnings of a Pakistani offensive against the Indian state, using Nepal´s Muslims as cover.
This is the first time in history that the Muslims of Nepal have made news, but of a kind that they could do without. As a tiny minority, Muslims have preferred to keep a low profile and make little noise: The forced ´exposure´ of the past few months have brought misplaced notoriety to a community about which little has been written in contrast to the detailed social scientific research and writing that has beendone on other Nepali communities. As a political scientist at Tribhuvan University says, "Theonly way to counter the simplistic coverage of Nepali Muslims by Indian media, which is not merely unpleasant for the Muslim but politically dangerous for Nepal, is to describe the community and to make them human."
The political scientists and others like him believe that it is important that the escalating Hindu-Muslim animosities in South Asia not be imported north of the border. Thus far, the fact that violent post-Ayodhya episodes have not impacted within Nepal indicates that the otherwise open border between Nepal and India does serve as an effective socio-political barrier which prevents the direct transfer of fundamentalism and fanaticism. It does seem to matter that Nepal is a sepa¬rate country.