As per the report
in a section of media recently (November 2009) UK based Muslim
charities have warned the Muslims living in the relief colonies set
up in the wake of Gujarat carnage, that they must abide with a code
of conduct, no TV, no music, education only in Madrassa, particular
type of cap and beard for men, hijab for women, etc. If these are
not adhered to the Charity threatened that they will stop supporting
the relief work. At the same time the members of Tablighi Jamat
insisted on the similar lines, ‘Islamic Behavior’ or else! The
Muslims living in these colonies are living a wretched life, totally
bereft of any support from state and boycotted by the society at
large.
There are cases
where the residents of this ‘lesser world’ have opposed such
dictates coming through local Maulanas, but they have been beaten to
silence. The society at large is not permitting them to come out of
the emotional and physical walls erected by the state and civil
society around them. The orthodox elements, clerical etc., are not
permitting them to live as they like, to endeavor for modern
education and jobs, a life matching with our times. One recalls that
in the aftermath of Godhra train burning and the riots engineered on
the pretext of taking revenge of Godhra, took a heavy toll of the
life of Muslim minorities. As the refugee camps were to be set up by
the state, it reluctantly did part of the job and soon enough, even
before the tears of trauma dried up and scars of the violence were
healed, the state supported camps were wound up. The Gujarat Chief
Mininster Narendra Modi said that there is no need to keep these
‘Child producing factories to go on’.
Other charities
enlarged their scope of work and stepped up their activities to fill
the vacuum left by the action of heartless state administration and
a largely hostile civic society. The mosques which gave them shelter
also imposed a version of Islam, a type of life style on them, which
was alien to most of the Gujarat Muslims. The compensation by the
state did not come up to the necessary and mandatory level. Once the
total rehabilitation fell under the control of orthodox Muslim
charities, they started imposing the retrograde norms on the
community. The most glaring example of this was manifest in the
housing pattern which came up in due course. One noticed that the
dwellings were comparatively smaller while the mosques were bigger.
One also noticed that the presence of Maulanas became more dominant
in these communities. The Madrassas were the only type of schools
available for these ‘children of the other God’.
One knows very
well that prior to violence in Gujarat the Muslim community there
was going more for trade, modern education and the like. The process
has been reversed by the physical insecurity created by carnage and
this has been topped with the total neglect of the plight of Muslims
by the state. One is witnessing a very interesting sociological
phenomenon in Gujarat. On one side the planned carnage left the
minority community helpless and gripped by insecurity. On the other,
since the state controlled by right wing politics bypasses the
legal, social and moral norms, it left the victims to fend for
themselves.
The popular
perceptions accuse the Muslim minority of being conservative etc.,
but it never goes beyond this level of perception to understand as
to why it is so. One concedes that what is going on so intensely in
Gujarat today vis a vis Muslim community has been a widespread
phenomenon in different Muslim majority areas, more so those areas
which have seen communal violence. One also knows that in communal
violence the percentage of Muslim victims is over 80%, while their
percentage in population is 13.4%. The insecurity this creates is
the root of conservatism in this community. One also knows that
Muslim community is no uniform monolith. There are types and types
of pattern of living. Till 1990 large sections of Muslims girls and
boys were trying to come up and take to Modern vocations, teachers,
professionals of various types and what not. 1992-93 Mumbai carnage
came as a big damper and the Muslim youth got a big setback,
economic deprivation on the top of insecurity. For sometime the
large section of community could not recover from the trauma of the
violence. As they began to recover, there was Gujarat baying at
them.
A chicken and egg
situation! The insecurity ghettoizes them and retards their path;
the same is then used by the propaganda mills to demonize them. On
one hand the myth is spread that Madrassas are a breeding ground for
terrorists, on the other a situation is created where Madrassas
remain the only option for Muslim children. While this Madrassa and
terrorism is a total lie, barring of course those Madrassas which
were set up with US-CIA link in Pakistan, where Muslim youth were
indoctrinated to take the path of violence against Russian army. One
can confidently say that the Indian Madrassas are just teaching
Koran and not terrorism.
The condition of
large section of Muslims can only be compared to the Shudras in
Ancient India, where the society treated them as slaves and codified
their slavery as their Dharma, Shudra Dharma. They were also
ghettoized. The other example is the African Americans of US, where
the Whites committed atrocities on them and pushed them to the
ghettoes, depriving them of dignity and civic rights. The rise of
Right wing communal politics in India from last three decades in
particular, politics in the name of religion, which is seeping
through different pores of state apparatus and social thinking, is
achieving the same purpose, to create a set of second class beings
at the mercy and service of the elites trying to impose retrograde
politics on the society at large.
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