Planet Bohra: A 2nd Visit

I visited Planet Bohra today, for the first time in a long time, and I feel obliged to put a few words out there about my sense of disappointment.

Planet Bohra has gone wrong.

When it first launched, I blogged about Planet Bohra – how there was something unique in the way it brought together people by religious affiliation. How it created a much broader voice for the daily concerns, lives and realities of mumineen world wide.

My concern all those many months ago was – as one of the very erudite comments on my post expressed it – that things are out of context on Planet Bohra. When you read something on any blog, you have the benefit of knowing something about the author, or learning about the author from other posts or the context in which the post you read is situated. There are many things from which you can learn something about the writer.

Since those words were written that problem has been magnified beyond all reckoning. Planet Bohra now includes feeds from Malumaat, Mumineen.org, ZenInfosys and official Jamaat feeds for a variety of locations (Singapore and Malunga are on the front page at the time of writing). The prodigious Aziz Poonawala manages to hold his own, but even he’s not able to much diminish this monopoly.

These feeds dominate for a variety of reasons. They’re the big centralised news portals that we turn to for news both of Maula and about what is going on in the rest of the world. These centralised resources have a great deal of journalistic pull as centres for the collation of information – and they are great resources. These sites are full of information and pictures of religious events, major religious festivals and visits by the great and good.

I have two reasons for my feeling of disappointment. My first concern as a reader is that Planet Bohra reflects a very narrow slice of the lives – our lives –  as lived. It reflect only a very partial selection – the image of unyielding cookie cutter hierarchical orthodoxy. As if every person spent every day attending religious events, every evening welcoming dignitaries and every night in communal prayer.

In a sense these sites are about the party line and how we’re meant to live. They are focused only – solely – on our public religious lives. What I’m curious about, what I feel is being lost in all the orthodox, is the feeling of the real Bohra pulse. How do we actually live our lives? Where are the things that make each person unique?

There are no voices on those sites talk about the every day things – how rewarding it was to get through Ramadan, how tough it is to keep kids awake entertained during the summer vacation or how curious it is that HSBC has decided to ban a browser that apparently works fine with its i-banking system. It was these voices that I wanted to hear most on Planet Bohra.

I find their silence heartbreaking.

My second concern is as a writer. I feel that context, critical context,  so essential when writing about the personal on a religious Planet is now thoroughly in peril.  Sandwiched between akhbar, with not a normal post in sight,  there’s no margin of appreciation for a post that doesn’t strictly reflect the demands of orthodoxy. Its destiny is to be out of place – an unwanted ripple of discontent in a placid lake soon to be swamped by the reassertion of orthodoxy.

This creates a sort of self-censoring feedback. I wonder now if my blog belongs on Planet Bohra – because it makes me believe that to affirm my religious identity is to simultaneously deny my freedom of speech and thought. I wonder if this post ought to be written because it too will appear on Planet Bohra and cause that momentary ripple. During that ripple, perhaps it will be misunderstood, and misinterpreted as a challenge to the orthodoxy. Perhaps others will presume to judge the quality of my faith. Lord knows I don’t need that kind of extra hassle.

A perverse form of self-censorship.

The long term solution to me appears simple. If I’m going to return to my blog – and if I wish to feel free to be myself here– then I need to keep an eye on Planet Bohra. If it must stay as the new beast it has become, then I should remove my blog of its rosters.

For the moment though, I feel disengagement is the easy way out. I like the idea of Planet Bohra, and I like the world it tries to reflect. I would like it to be broader –and to reflect more real people. I don’t believe that’s too much to ask.