Noorus Saleheen
Faculty of Humanities, Coimbra University
ISLAM AND THE MUSLIMS IN INDIA
Islam is the second-most practiced religion in India.
The Indian judicial courts have ruled that Shariah law for Muslims holds precedence
over Indian civil law in matters related to marriage, inheritance and wakf
properties. The matters of such jurisdiction are governed by All India Muslim
Personal Law Board.
Historically, there has been significant integration
between the cultures of Hindus and Muslims across India. Muslims have played a
prominent role in India's overall development in terms of economic growth and
cultural influence.
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT: MUSLIM-HINDU CONFLICT
The conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India has a
complex history.
The aftermath of the Partition of India in 1947 saw a
large-scale violence between sections of the Hindu and Muslim communities.
Since its independence, India has always maintained a constitutional commitment
to secularism.
BABRI MASJID DEMOLITION: A BLOT ON SECULARISM IN INDIA
The sense of communal harmony between Hindus and
Muslims was compromised greatly by the demolition of the Babri Mosque in
Ayodhya that took place in 1992 under the supportive banner of a prominent
national political party Bharatiya Janata Party and its allied organizations
like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Shiv Sena, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang
Dal. This evil act ignited the religious sentiments countrywide and was
followed by the communal riots and the 1993 series of bomb blasts in Mumbai.
«There are sharp stones there. The Ground has to be
levelled.» These were the words of former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee on a day before Babri Mosque demolition in Lucknow on 5 December 1992.
GUJARAT RIOTS: A BLOT ON HUMANITY (2002)
According to the sources, there were approximately
2,000 Muslim deaths during Gujarat riots in 2002. The riots were in retaliation
to the Godhra Train Burning. The Bannerjee commission declared that the fire
was an accident.
In widespread communal violence that followed Muslim
communities suffered a lot. In these riots, the role played by chief minister
of Gujarat, and some of his ministers, police officers, and other right wing
Hindu organizations has been criticized. The Chief Minister was even accused of
genocide.
UNITED NATIONS COMMITTEE AND ITS FINDINGS (IHRR,
DEC-OCT, 2010)
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women considered the exceptional report of India at its
960th meeting, on 15 October 2010. The Committee noted with great concern that
the dominating features in the communal violence which took place in 2002 were
acts of violence, including torture, murder, gang rape, forced nudity, parading
women naked, mutilation of breasts and other body parts, insertion of wooden
and metal objects into genital parts and other forms of sexual violence
specifically targeted women and girls.
Many Muslim children’s educational certificates were
destroyed during the Gujarat riot attacks and the government has not replaced
the certificates neither facilitated the resumption of the children’s
education.
While noting that some information has been provided
in the supplementary material on the State party’s resettlement measures in
place, the Committee regrets the lack of disaggregated data on the
approximately 5,000 Muslim families displaced by the violence in Gujarat. It
also notes with great concern that eight years after the Gujarat violence, the
displaced persons are still living in the temporary and makeshift colonies in
remote and abandoned areas with poor access to livelihood and employment.
DISCRIMINATION AND EFFECT ON COMMUNITY
The discrimination carried out against Muslims is
well-planned and is being carried out systematically, be it the case of
recruitment even in government organizations. The after-effects of such
practice have reached to such an extent that in a recent report published on 31st
October 2012, a renowned Australian journalist reported that Indian Muslims
pose as Hindus to get jobs. The woman mentioned in the report is a Muslim
woman, who adopts Hindu identities to avoid discrimination in the workplace.
She says, "For the whole day I shall maintain this Hindu appearance. My
name is Laxmi, you know it's also the name of the Hindu goddess.”
She tried unsuccessfully to find a job for many years
before deciding to hide her Muslim identity. Posing as a Hindu woman, she got
her current job as nursemaid in a private hospital.
SECRET RECRUITMENT POLICIES
Many recruitment agencies help Muslims find menial
jobs in sectors where identity documents are not usually sought, by introducing
them as Hindu. According to an agency manager, out of 95 percent of his clients
who were Hindu seeking domestic helps, as much as 80 per cent of them informed
that they would not employ any Muslims. He affirms that many placement agencies
on mutual interest maintain secret policies to introduce Muslims as Hindus and
help them get jobs.
ANTI-MUSLIM BIAS AND MUSLIMS
AS UNTOUCHABLES
Despite Muslims making up 14-15 percent of India's
population and country's largest minority, the community leaders have long
alleged that an anti-Muslim bias exists in different levels of society. In
2005, the government-appointed Sachar Committee concluded in its report that
the socioeconomic condition of most Muslims was worse than that of the
'untouchables' in Hindu caste system. According to a minority rights activist,
it’s not just in the unorganized sector but even in the government sector where
Muslim jobseekers face the hurdle of discrimination. For example, in the state
of West Bengal where Muslims constitute 27 percent of the population, their
representation in government jobs is as low as four percent.
According to a professor at the North Eastern Hill
University in Meghalaya, many Hindus count Muslims as untouchables. He says
that it is at the root of the anti-Muslim discrimination in India.
Although discriminating against Muslims is illegal, it
is almost impossible for those affected to provide proof. Therefore, such
Muslims are forced to bear with this repressive system- in many cases by
disguising themselves as Hindus, in attempt to seek work and live as equals in
the society.
Asian Centre for Human Rights is an organization dedicated
to promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the
Asian region.
In its quarterly journal June 2011, it observed that Minorities
are continued to face discrimination. The chief economist at National
Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Dr Abusaleh Shariff conducted a
study on “Relative Development of Gujarat and Socio-Religious Differentials”.
His study concluded that in Gujarat among high levels of hunger among its
citizens, Muslims are the worst. Urban poverty among the Muslims is eight times
more than high-caste Hindus. They also face high levels of discrimination and
deprivation in jobs and were not even enrolled under the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which is an Indian job guarantee scheme,
enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005.
There is also indifference in compensating the 2002
riots affected victims. On 3 March 2011, Gujarat’s Revenue Minister (Anandiben
Patel) informed the State Assembly that out of Rs 507.69 crore received from
the Centre to be distributed as compensation to the kin of the 2002 riots
victims, the state government disbursed only Rs 409.61 crore and the remaining
Rs 98 crore was yet to be disbursed.
The Narendra Modi government allegedly even refused to
provide scholarships to the Muslims under Centrally sponsored pre-matric and
post-matric minority scholarships. As a result, more than 52,000 students
belonging to Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh and Buddhist communities have been
deprived of minority scholarships.
According to the report by Sachar Committee
(which was setup by the UPA government on March 9th, 2005 to study the
Socio-Economic and Educational status of the Muslims), it is estimated that as
of 2006 the Muslim population in India must have crossed 150 Million.
(The committee was headed by Justice Rajender Sachar
and had six other members (Shri Sayyid Hamid, Dr T.K. Ooman, Shri M.A. Basith,
Dr Akhtar Majeed, Dr Abu Saleh Shariff and Dr Rakesh Basant.)
The community has the most favourable child sex ratio
among all Socio-religious communities in the country with an average of 986
females to every 1000 males as compared to 927/1000 for the general population.
The majority of the Muslims in India are living in four states UP, Bihar,
West Bengal and Maharashtra which had at least ten million Muslims each.
The muslim share in government employment is 4.9%
(against a population of 14%); among India’s Security Agencies (viz., CRPF,
CISF, BSF, SSB etc.) muslim representation is 3.2%;
Muslims represent only 4 per cent in the total armed
forces in India, out of which 96 per cent belong to lower level jobs. Just 2.7%
are placed among District Judges.
Interestingly, if muslims do outnumber majority hindus
in any statistics, it is predictably as a proportion of the prison population,
much like the blacks in America.
Noting that Muslim participation in electoral bodies
is known to be small, the Sachar Committee report tabled in Lok Sabha in
November 2006, said of the 543 Lok Sabha members, only 33 were Muslims. The
panel made out a strong case to put mechanisms in place to enable Muslims to
engage in democratic processes and governance.
It also noted that the minorities do not have the
necessary influence or the opportunity to either change or even influence
events, which could enable their meaningful and active participation in
development process.
Referring to educational opportunities for Muslims,
the committee recommended mechanisms where madrasa can be linked with a higher
secondary school board so that students wanting to shift to a
regular/mainstream education can do so after having passed from a madrasa.
MUSLIM YOUTH AND TERRORISM
The attitude of police, administration and judiciary
towards Muslim youth, arrested in connection with terror cases, shows the
double standard in the dispensation of justice. Every year, in the name of
terror, hundreds of Muslim youths had been arrested for past some time but the
trend got momentum soon after the blasts in courts in Uttar Pradesh in 2007,
and it is still going on. Some independent investigations by NGOs and other
private organizations of the cases show that the police and administration have
deliberately implicated Muslim youth in scores of cases. In addition to that
the unwanted delay in disposal of court cases, it is more likely that they
perhaps will never be released.
BIASED POLICE INVESTIGATION
The way in which police investigates terror cases
involving Muslims is also questionable. The process of arrest of Muslim youths
implicating involvement in terror cases also gives the impression that it is
all part of a big conspiracy. In most of the disposed cases implicating such
false involvement of Muslim youth, they have been acquitted by the court as the
police could not prove charges.
CONTRADICTION AMONG INVESTIGATING AGENCIES
Mumbai Crime Branch made a 38-year old mechanical
engineer Sadiq Sheikh as main conspirator of all blasts in recent past. There
are 54 cases against Sheikh in Ahmedabad, Surat, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and
Mumbai. He has also been accused, along with his nine friends, for 11 July 2006
Mumbai local train bombings. After being accused of alleged forced confession,
the Mumbai Crime Branch handed over the case to Maharashtra ATS. The ATS gave
clean chit to Sadiq Sheikh and told MCOCA court that he had no role in the July
2006 train bombings.
Another Muslim youth, 23-year old Saif, was doing MA
in History in Delhi. He was also doing courses in English speaking and computer
application. After the controversial Batla House encounter in New Delhi, the
police arrested Saif from that flat. He is accused in 45 cases in Delhi,
Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Surat with charges of planting bombs in these cities.
Interestingly, UP police has claimed his involvement in UP court blasts also.
Then they took him in their custody in connection with the blasts at Sankat
Mochan Mandir and railway station in Varanasi but so far they could not file a
chargesheet against him.
Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy of Pune was arrested for
sending mail in the name of Indian Mujahideen before the blasts. Just one month
before arrest, Peerbhoy had joined Yahoo as principal engineer on an annual
salary package of Rs 19 lakh (1.9 Million). More than 40 cases have been
slapped against him in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Delhi and Hyderabad to blast
conspiracy under cyber crime.
Mufti Abul Bashar was arrested jointly by Gujarat
Police and UP ATS from his Beenapara village in Azamgarh on August 14, 2008 but
police claimed he was arrested from Charbagh Railway Station in Lucknow. He was
declared as the mastermind of Ahmedabad blasts and chief of Indian Mujahideen.
He is facing 40 cases in Ahmedabad, Surat, Hyderabad and Belgam.
STRATEGIC PLAN FOR LIFETIME CONFINEMENT
The 38-year-old Arif Badruddin Sheik of Asroli village
in Azamgarh, according to Mumbai police, is an expert of bomb making. Father of
3, Sheikh has been accused of almost all terror blasts since 2005. Arif's
father, mentally challenged, passed away a couple of months after the arrest of
his son. His mother is blind and is living with her daughter-in-law in a
dilapidated house in the village. Atif is also facing 41 cases in Mumbai,
Delhi, Ahmedabad and Surat.
Saifur Rahman was arrested by Madhya Pradesh ATS from
Jabalpur in April 2009 when he was taking his sister from Azamgarh to her
in-laws in Mumbai. They were travelling in Godan Express. ATS kept his sister
also in custody for 12 hours. Saifur Rahman has been accused of blasts in Jaipur
and Ahmedabad. He confessed his involvement in the blasts before the Magistrate
in Bhopal but retracted before the Jaipur magistrate saying he was under
pressure from Madhya Pradesh ATS. He told the Jaipur magistrate that ATS
tortured him and threatened to rape her sister who was in their custody. Then
Jaipur ATS requested the Jaipur court for narco test on Saifur Rahman but the
court declined.
There was a dramatic turn in the Jaipur blast case
when an accused Shahbaz Hussain pleaded the court to order narco and other test
on him so that he could be proved innocent. This was the first instance in the
history of the country that an accused himself was demanding narco test on him.
Prosecution opposed the demand and thus the court rejected Hussain's appeal.
According to Manisha Sethi, who teaches comparative
study of religions at Central University in New Delhi Jamia Millia Islamia,
“imported concept of War on Terror is being encouraged and it is being used as
a weapon against the Muslims."
The ATS officials were also accused of torturing the
accused of the May 2008 serial blasts in Jaipur, Rajasthan. In April 2010, a
five-member delegation of Muslim groups met Otta Ram Rohin, Superintendent of
Central Jail Jaipur, Rajasthan to register protest against the ill-treatment
being meted out to the blast accused even though their alleged role in the
blasts could not be established and forced to make fresh confession despite the
completion of investigation. One of the accused of the serial blasts complained
that the Anti-Terrorism Squad officials, being given access to the inmates in
the jail, were forcing them to put signatures on plain papers. Further, the
accused were being kept at the Central Jail without basic amenities.
*(Torture in India 2011, Asian Centre for Human
Rights)
Families and relatives of the accused are speechless
seeing the gravity and number of cases. The police have also broken records in
filing charge sheets. The police have filed 60,000-page chargesheets in 35
cases of Ahmedabad and Surat. Mumbai Crime Branch has filed 1800-page
chargesheet. Similarly Jaipur has filed 12,000-page chargesheet in 8 cases. All
charge sheets are in Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi. If case reaches Supreme Court,
translation of these charge sheets will be another expensive and time taking
job.
Advocate Shahid Azmi says charge of conspiracy is a
weapon that police uses to implicate anyone in any case. Talking to
Afkar-e-Milli he revealed: "Afzal Muttalib Usmani whose arrest was shown in
Mumbai on September 24, 2009 was actually arrested on August 27 from Lok Manya
Tilak Terminus. Advocates admit that no trial in these cases will take place
within two years. It will be much longer as several individuals are accused in
different cases at different places.
*****
A MAJORITY OF THE POLICE FORCE IS BIASED
The police investigations into the Ajmer and Mecca
Masjid blast (2007) cases have floundered. The investigation went in one
direction blaming the Harkat-ul-Jihadi for two years and now it is going in
another direction where the right-wing Hindu organizations Abhinav Bharat and
the Sanathan Sanstha are being blamed. Several persons have often wondered why
the police bungled this probe so badly that the courts had to release all those
who were arrested initially and in some cases even ordered the state to pay
compensation.
S R Darapuri, a retired
Inspector General of Police (1972 batch IPS), has been fighting for several
innocents picked up and tortured by the police in several cases of terrorism,
including the Ajmer case. The former top cop says, "Being a part of the
establishment for 25 years, I fail to understand how the police can go so
horribly wrong. The problem is that a majority of the force has a communal bias
towards the minorities."
In this interview with an online web-journal rediff.com,
Darapauri explained how the police force is beset with bias and what needs to
be done to tackle it. For him, it looked like a complete frame up from the
start. The Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and Goa blasts are all interlinked. He
strongly suspected the role of Abhinav Bharat and the Sanathan Sanstha in these
incidents, thanking (former Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad chief) Hemant Karkare
who blew the lid off this phenomenon. The police were under the impression that
it was the Muslims who were involved in all cases of terrorism. However Mr.
Karkare exposed them. He agreed that there was a communal bias in the police
department as majority of the officers had a communal bias towards the
minorities.
Moreover there was no action against those police
personnel who booked innocent people in wrong cases. In Hyderabad case, many
people were let off by the court. He believes that RSS has been infiltrating
the force and also the administration for a long time. Through this
infiltration, they pretty much control a large part of the system.
*****
There are many instances where Police first arrests a
Muslim youth and then tries to implicate him in some terror related cases.
Affirming this trend, SR Darapuri made some sensational revelations that Script
to entrap Muslim youths is written first and then the arrest comes into effect!
(Excerpts from an article from an Urdu daily newspaper INQUILAB published from Mumbai and New Delhi
on 21 June 2012)
During a convention organized on the topic based on
continuous arrests and harassments of Muslim youths in the name of Terrorism
“Communalism and Terrorism of Security Agencies” (20.06.2012), he said that be
it IB or ATS, STF and Special Branch, all follow the same methodology – first
the script is written and then innocent people are fitted in accordingly. A
serious concern was raised against the harassment of Muslim community by
Security Agencies as ATS and STF people harass the Muslim families for months
in the name of interrogation and suddenly they pick one of them in the manner
of abduction. Later on, several charges of non-bailable offences are imposed on
them so that they cannot get bail throughout their entire life.
Being a police officer, he himself had seen how
atrocities were carried out. He said that whatever was done by police or
security agencies had the consent of the government. Senior journalist
Siddharth Kalhans said that media publishes and broadcasts news received by
police and agencies without verifying the facts at its own level. He named this
trend as “Cataract of Media” and appealed that the verification of such news is
necessary considering the fact that most of the time police personnel frame
false allegations against the arrested person in order to justify their act.
Another retired IPS officer S.M. Naseem said that STF,
ATS, and other agency people are allegedly involved in the business of
extortion and when they fail to get the money, they frame false charges against
innocents. He said that the people from intelligence write the script of the
entire story and get applause from the government. There is no control of the
government over the police harassing innocent people. Shadab Ahmad, father of arrested
youth Mohammad Saif during Batla House encounter, said that when a non-Muslim
is caught they say him to be mentally unstable whereas when a Muslim is caught,
he is declared as a mastermind. He alleged that agency people themselves manage
to arrange RDX and AK-47 and RSS people are helping them openly. He said that
at one hand ATS declared Mohammad Taqi and Mohammad Naqi to be their informers;
on the other hand IB framed charges against them.
CONCLUSION
India is very proud to declare that it is one of the
leading developing countries in the world and capable of emerging as the most
developed country after twenty years, surpassing the USA, Japan etc. But how is
it possible when some sections of its population are lagging behind in all
spheres. There is no doubt about the role of government. At the same time the
Sangh Parivar is more responsible for the worst condition of the Muslims.
Indian Muslims are vulnerable to Sangh Parivar ideology of Hindutwa, which
mainly intends to capture power. As a result, they let loose reign of terror in
different parts of India to suppress the Muslims with an eye on majority Hindu
votes. Hence the Muslims were denied justice and were isolated from the
mainstream of Indian polity. There has been no attempt on the part of
government to look after the condition of the Muslims. They were branded as
communalists and terrorists. Those who supported the Muslim’s cause were termed
as appeasing the minority.
Some remarked that the Muslims became backward due to
the backwardness of their religion. Then in the whole world, Muslims would have
been the poor and backward. Islam as a religion promotes all types of modern
development. However, Islam was treated as a religion promoting violence. It is
utter nonsense, as there is no such wording in Quaran. Even the Jihad was
misinterpreted. Jihad was used only as a last resort for protecting one’s
belief. But there is a tendency among some Muslim groups to preach Jihad for
promoting their political interest. It has nothing to do with Islamic faith.
Moreover, many so called Islamic terrorists have no affiliation towards
following the principles of Islam such as, to offer pray five times a day, to
observe fast during the month of Ramdan and pay Zakah to poor. According to
Islam, an Islamic name does not accord the status of Muslim unless and until
one should follow all the norms of Islam. Hence, those who follow these norms
cannot use violence since there is no religious sanction behind it.
Whether we are secular or religious, theist or atheist
or anywhere in between, we are all impacted by what happens in one tiny corner
of the world as every incidental impact now reverberates globally. We must come
forward and act, beyond making any stereotypes, beyond coming to snap
judgments, beyond considering beard and headscarf as the symbols of terror.
