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onto the Muslim Other. Muslim hypersexuality is ascribed to religion, diet, culture, physicality, living pattern, and morality. Most of the views about Muslim sexuality (see also Kakar 1996) here have been gleaned from personal conversations and interviews I conducted during my fieldwork in 2005–2006—these came up in our discussion on the supposed high fertility and its explanations. Hypersexuality was presented as the obvious explanation for Muslim overpopulation. RD (name withheld), a male photographer in his twenties from a provincial north Indian town and a Hindu nationalist activist with the VHP, explained to me how he was an expert in identifying Muslim men just by looking at their eyes since there was an essential untrustworthiness and (“vehshiyat”/savage) lust in their eyes (Personal Interview 2005a). In an almost lyrical Hindi, he explained that Muslims engage in rampant open sex since they are children—“Bachpan mein chuppan chuppai khelte samay, chudam chudai ho jaati hai” (“While playing hide and seek during childhood itself, fucking takes place”). A small admiring crowd consisting of young male activists, a few older volunteers, and half a dozen policemen gathered around us to see an awakened Hindu man (RD) enlightening a naïve Hindu man (myself). Their smiles turned into laughter as RD narrated a joke about a typical Muslim family—“Ek baap ne apni ladki ko akele paa kar pakad liya aur kahaa jo mazaa tujhme hai woh theri maa mein nahin. Ladki ne kahaa, haan bhaiya bhi yah kehte hain” (“A father, finding his daughter alone, catches her and says, ‘you give more pleasure than your mother.’ The daughter replies, ‘yes, elder brother says the same’”). When I suggested that the common view of Muslim families in India is of sexual repression as symbolized by Muslim women in burqa/veil and not hypersexuality, RD brushed it aside as my ignorance. His repartee played upon the pronunciation of word “burqa”. This is veil in Urdu and Hindi; but when spoken aloud, it can sound similar to a pejorative expression for “of cunt” or “cunt’s”— “kehne ko moohn ka parda, kehlo to bur/qa” (“Supposedly a veil for the face, can be called of cunt’s”). Incest, sexual permissiveness and indiscretion, perversion—all these are imagined onto the Muslim bodies. The overwhelming discourse here is
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