On April 3, actor-cum-activist Swara Bhasker lashed out at Modi supporters and called them ‘Jaahil’. She wrote, “Unending jahaalat in this country! Vote for jaahils, make every institution as jaahil as you are, produce more jaahils… it’s an endless cycle!”
Bhasker seemed miffed with the voters for electing the Modi government at the centre after NCERT removed chapters on Mughals from the Class 12th textbook. Quoting India Today’s report, Bhasker vented out her frustration on micro-blogging website Twitter.
Unending jahaalat in this country!
— Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) April 3, 2023
Vote for jaahils, make every institution as jaahil as you are, produce more jaahils…
it’s an endless cycle! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 https://t.co/oP8tqKYLn3
Interestingly, Bhasker seems to love the word way too much and has used it several times in the past. In 2021, she published a screenshot of Priti Gandhi and called her “jaahil” for pointing out that Covid-19 was an unprecedented event and that it would have been impossible for anyone to manage it more responsibly and compassionately compared to PM Modi.
Again, in 2021, she got irked by a tweet from a now-deleted Twitter handle and claimed India is governed by jahaalat.
Sickening to witness puerile men & idiot giggly girl all Hindus gang up & bully the lone Muslim in this chat @Clubhouse @rohanseth Timely reminder that 1. this utter jahaalat governs #India 2. that #Hindutva at its core is petty insecure & just so small 3. Sanghis r just SO TACKY https://t.co/P9CkRUzq1w
— Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) May 19, 2021
In August 2018, she called two people who allegedly attacked Umar Khalid in JNU ‘jaahil’ and ‘gadhey’.
The origin of the words ‘jaahil’ and ‘jahaalat’
With so much “love” for this Arabic word, it is essential to know its origin. The words’ jaahil’ and ‘jahaalat’ find their roots in the Arabic word jāhiliyyah. According to Britannica, jāhiliyyah in Islam refers to the pre-Islamic period or before the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Mohammad.
In Arabic, the word means ‘ignorance’ and ‘barbarism’. It is often used by Arabic and Urdu speakers to demean people as uncultured and pagan, primarily for those who were nom Muslims. The word also finds a mention at several places in the Quran, chiefly referring it as ‘ignorance’ and the ‘age of barbarism’, which was essentially the time period before the founding of Islam.
The Al-Islam website talks about Jahiliyah in detail. According to Al-Islam, the word specifically refers to the lifestyle found in the land of the Arabs before the ‘Islamic Mission’ began. It also referred to the customs and beliefs of pagan Arabs and claimed they lived in a perverse and decadent manner.
When the word is used with the capital ‘J’, it refers to a specific time period of pre-Islam Arabs. However, when used with the small letter ‘j’, it refers to the ignorance of a man at any point of evolution, including post-‘Islamic Mission’.
In light of the meaning of the word ‘jaahil’ and its interpretation from Islamic scriptures, it is not entirely surprising that Swara Bhasker, who has often stood in support of Islamists and communal bigots, most notably in the 2020 Delhi Riots case, where she had and continues to back prime accused Umar Khalid, or her routine support to STSJ instigator Mohammed Zubair, chose the said word to vent out her frustration over the Centre’s attempt at decolonising Indian history that continues to be influenced by western and middle-eastern coloniality.
