COMMENTS: ALL RELIGIONS SHOULD BE PROTECTED AND ANY MILITANCY FROM ANY RELIGION /COMMUNITY /CASTE SHOULD BE CURBED. DIVIDE AND RULE POLICY SHOULD BE AVOIDED. WHO KNOWS WHERE WE GO AFTER DEATH. ITS FOR POWER WERE ARE EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITIES TO GARNERING THE VOTES.
THE SWINE FLU IN UTTARPRADESH BY SMOOTH SINGH AND MARRIAGE SINGH. THE LONG LIVE SINGH AKA CHOTE USTAD HAS PLANNED THE DOWN FALL OF SOCIETY WALA PARTY. THE LAMP AND MUGHAL - E AZAM OF UP THINK VOTERS ARE LALLUS IN INDIA.
Gujarat Muslims the 'living dead' | ||
Meraz Ahmad Jalaluddin Ansari lost everything in the riots. Pics: Soutik Biswas
Muslims in India's Gujarat state who bore the brunt of religious riots in 2002 say they have been abandoned by the political parties. The BBC's Soutik Biswas met some riot victims ahead of the general election in the state. The acrid smell of burning oil singes your nose and eyes as you walk into Bombay Hotel, a sprawling ghetto of Muslim-owned homes on the eastern flank of Ahmedabad, the main city in western Gujarat state. A pall of black factory smoke hangs over this untidy patchwork of squat, ugly houses. Residents pay 150 rupees ($3) a month to a private contractor who supplies yellow-coloured drinking water through dirty garden pipes. Sewage flows out into the street. Bombay Hotel, which takes it name after a local roadside eatery, is one of the places where many Muslims displaced by the 2002 Gujarat riots moved to. Over the past seven years, it has transformed from a remote industrial colony to become a busy refugee settlement. The anti-Muslim riots, sparked off by the death of Hindu pilgrims in the firebombing of a train, led to the death of 1,392 people in five districts, according to official records. NGOs say the toll is closer to 2,000. Shambolic The riots also left some 140,000 people homeless. They were put up in camps and given 2,500 rupees by the government - the majority of the displaced were in Ahmedabad city. Thirty-six-year-old Meraz Ahmad Jalaluddin Ansari is one of them. Bombay Hotel is a Muslim ghetto which lacks basic amenities
He was lucky that he did not lose any relatives in the riots. He and his family fled their home in the Chamanpura area after Hindu neighbours warned them that the rioters were closing in. But he did lose his home and livelihood. He had hired a dozen workers and owned 15 sewing machines. He would make, he says, 15,000 to 20,000 rupees a month from embroidery work. After fleeing the riots and panic-selling his house to a local Hindu neighbour for 275,000 rupees, Mr Ansari moved into Bombay Hotel. His living standards are shambolic, the markets where he can sell his wares are now 10-12km away, and his children are soon going to lose their neighbourhood municipal school. It will be scrapped to make way for a bus lane. Mr Ansari has picked up the pieces again, built a new home and managed to buy about five sewing machines to start work. He can no longer afford to employ people. The government, he says, gave him compensation of 300 rupees for the damage to his house in Chamanpura. "Once I was fairly well to do. Now I work a lot more and just manage," he says. "Life can't come to a halt. But sometimes I feel we are the living dead."
The riots do not find any echo in the general elections in Gujarat. Seven years after the incident, both the ruling BJP and Congress party remain silent on the shoddy rehabilitation of the victims or the delay in bringing the culprits to justice. "We cannot vote for the BJP and the Congress almost has a fixed deposit on our votes. So it's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea," says Mr Ansari. There is little talk of the impending polls at Bombay Hotel. When you raise the subject, the residents turn their faces away in disgust. "Before the 2002 riots, there were just a few houses here. Now there are 15,000 houses and 80,000 people. Muslims have moved in from all over. They feel relatively safe here," says Shabit Ali Ansari, 32, who owns a sweets shop. "But no party does anything for Muslims. The authorities do nothing for people here unless we raise a storm," he says. Cynical Barber shops, groceries, sweets shops and even a photo studio that have sprung up in the grubby lanes do brisk business. But residents work on pitifully low wages. Riot victims like Noor Banu, 45, and her husband, Ashik Ali Badar Ali, 50, who moved here after their house was attacked in the Saraspur area, are struggling to make ends meet.
Mr Ali used to drive an auto rickshaw and bring home up to 150 rupees a day. Now he earns barely 1,800 rupees a month working as a security guard. Their three daughters chip in making lacquered bangles to help pay back a loan of 70,000 rupees the family borrowed for the two-room hovel in which they live. Next door, Asiyana Ahmed Sheikh, 12, makes kites. And Zarin Aslambhai Ghanchi gets less than one US cent for cutting and stitching together a campaign banner for a political party. "Even the political parties exploit us when giving us jobs. This is the state of affairs here," says Zarin. Ashik Ali Badar Ali says he is going to vote for the Hindu nationalist BJP, which was blamed for inaction during the rioting. "The BJP is an open enemy of the Muslims, and the Congress is a hidden enemy. I'd rather vote for the open enemy, so I can go to them for protection." Muslims comprise barely 10% of the population in Gujarat. "Despite the riots and the headlines, the political parties here feel that they can ignore them, because they don't comprise a decisive vote bank," says analyst Achyut Yagnik. | ||
A right can sometimes become a wrong
Posted: 2009-04-04 05:38:41 UTC-07:00
Byline by M J Akbar : A right can sometimes become a wrong I don't suppose the Christian principal of Nirmala Convent Higher Secondary School has looked at a picture of Jesus Christ lately, although it should be on more than one wall of the institution. If he had, he would have noticed that Jesus had a beard. The iconic prophets of the Old Testament certainly wore beards, at least according to the version of Moses popularised for the world by Cecil B. De Mille and Hollywood: Charlton Heston was given one as he brought the laws of God carved on stone from Mount Sinai. Not all prophets had beards; Solomon had one, but David seems to have shaved regularly.
There is nothing specifically religious about a beard in Judaism, Christianity or Islam. A beard is not a Quranic injunction, or a fundamental commandment of the faith. But some Muslims wear it out of admiration for, and in imitation of, their prophet, whom they adore as the true exemplar of humanity. There are those who keep it as a mark of identity, or even an assertion. Other Muslims keep their chins hirsute out of personal preference; perhaps the jawline is worth hiding from public view. Out of the six great Mughal emperors, Babar had a nicely cut beard; Humayun's was more wispy (if the vague image I have of him is right); Akbar staked his visual reputation on the luxury of his moustache, as did his son Jehangir; Shahjehan had an immaculate beard which was clearly dressed by a superb royal barber; and only Aurangzeb had a beard that seemed straight out of a need for piety.
When the principal of Nirmala Convent forbade a student, Mohammad Salim, from coming to school in a beard, he was clearly objecting to what he considered was Salim's aggressive assertion of a Muslim identity in a Christian school. He was, as the Supreme Court judgment confirmed, within the law. Article 30 of the Constitution gives a minority institution the right to determine the culture of its institutions.
Would this decision have become news if Justice Markandeya Katju had said nothing while dismissing the special leave petition in the case of Mohammad Salim versus Principal, Nirmala Convent Higher Secondary School? Salim's appeal was framed around Article 25, the right to practice his faith. Justice Katju justified the decision by saying, "We don't want to have Talibans in the country. Tomorrow a girl student may come and say she wants to wear a burqa — can we allow it?"
It was not a jocular aside made in an unguarded moment. It indicated the thinking behind the judgment. It is a bit of a mystery why he equated a beard with the Taliban: every Taliban might have a beard, but every Muslim with a beard is not a Taliban. Indeed, every terrorist does not appear with a beard attached, as the incidents in Mumbai last year indicated.
The judgment opens up an interesting can of minority rights. A large number of medressas in Bengal have Hindu students. Would the maulvis in the medressas be within their rights to demand that every girl come in a veil and every boy wear a beard? Should they make it compulsory for non-Muslim students to fast during Ramadan?
I would hope not. Hindu children in Muslim-run institutions come for an education in the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic, not in the fourth R, religion. Does the Supreme Court verdict mean that a Sikh child can be forced to shave if he joins a Catholic school?
It is curious how the most intelligent, balanced and learned among us succumb to stereotypes when faced with another's faith. Perhaps this story of a lecture I gave at the Warsaw University might be instructive. It was around the time when the French government had stirred a huge controversy by banning the headscarf in state schools on the grounds that France was a secular nation and no symbol of religious identity could be permitted in a state school. The ban, incidentally, did not extend to wearing "small" crosses on a chain on the rather specious excuse that they were symbols of tradition rather than faith.
There are no mosques in Warsaw for the good reason that there are hardly any indigenous Muslims in Poland. There was surprise, therefore, when I mentioned that I had seen a woman wearing a hijab on my way to the University. Who? I had seen a Catholic nun, I explained. No one had ever viewed the nun's dress as a form of hijab and abaya. The amazement widened to disbelief when I pointed out that the Virgin Mary, Jesus' mother, would never have got admission in France's state schools. There is no image, statue or painting, in which she does not have her head covered.
India's definition of secularism is very different from Europe's. Between Voltaire and Karl Marx, a huge swathe of Eurasia from the shores of the Atlantic to the edge of the Pacific, has separated state from faith. Indians are not obliged to set aside their faith identities when they go to a government office or a state school. A Sikh can wear his turban, a Muslim may fast during Ramadan, a Brahmin wear his caste thread. Religion is private space. The only requirement is that no religion can impose its will on another. Indian secularism gives a Hindu the right to be pro-Hindu, but not the liberty to be anti-Muslim. And vice versa.
Denial can be counter-productive. Common sense suggests where limits can be drawn. Where an individual's identity is not intrusive, or an assault on the social good, there is little harm in permitting leeway. One of the more welcome facts about South India is the rising number of quality educational institutions financed with charity donations by Muslims. They stress vocational skills and are therefore in demand. A sizeable percentage of the students are non-Muslim, which is an extremely positive development. But it would take just one incident of a principal of a Muslim institution objecting to a Brahmin's sacred thread or sandal paste on the forehead for a positive to become a negative. He would be within his legal right to do so; but he would not be in his right mind. Postscript: As I finished this column the story of a girl being lashed mercilessly by fundamentalists in Pakistan appeared on television. I could not bear to watch or hear the screams of the young woman, who was being held down by her elder relatives while the punishment was being administered: is this brutality, this atrocity, this barbarism the final fate of Pakistan?
Hindu outfits should be militarized: Ananth Kumar Hegde
