Dear Ms Seema,
Your article is very extraordinary. The categorization of Indian Muslims into Dr. Kalam and Dawood is though a very much simplification but in realty both are to be treated as exception. Dr. Kalam was a technocrat in the government service but when NDA government was in power he too got involved in anti-congress politics and that paid him dividend. A common man on the street or people below poverty line or farmers or manual labourers or even other profession people cannot be compared with him, as he being technocrat, bureaucrat and willing politician anti congress, he was of different genre. Also he had no family or children to look after or to strive for their education, job, arranging, marriage and ensure success career of children r grandchildren, so philanthropic thoughts were obvious choice for him being free from family affairs, worried etc.
Dawood as media projects is underworld don. He has different agenda perhaps self style king of underworld activities, earn wealth for self through all activities prohibited by law, he has perhaps backing of anti-India forces. Despite all these attributes none of Indian Muslims either favour, support, admires, or follow him as ideal figure.
I reside in Ghaziabad where large number of Muslims reside. What I could notice most or Muslims are neutral to religion based politics. They neither of category of Dr. APJ Kalam nor Dawood. Mostly peace loving and concerned with their own routine activities. Indeed politicians take advantages of their both simplicity and dependent on government's welfare schemes. No peace in the society exist unless people are peace loving and law abiding. Any one if follows extreme path there is likely disturbance in peace loving society. The politicians who try to emotionally exploit religious sentiment always target vulnerable youth not of the quality either of Dr. APJK or Dawood but who are rowdies, rouge, unemployment, can be exploited by paying little money or by assuring some thing they cannot achieve in normal course, etc. Usually those are of different categories of people or creature of their own ambitions or slave of own thinking which may be anti-Hindu and anti-Muslim stub born, etc.
Nevertheless you skill of writing article and expressing thoughts lucidly. Writing has very strong effect and it is said pen is mightier than sword or can easily spark violence, therefore, be careful in selecting words and sentences that appeal peace than exploit already vulnerable situation or add ghee to fire. Best luck, and good wishes!
Dr. Ratnakar Gedam
On Friday, October 2, 2015 9:31 PM, Seema Mustafa <seemamustafa@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you. Of course I know that, and guess thats what gives us some hope.
On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:00 AM, ashok kumar <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:
Seems Mustafa , kudos to you for bringing it all out so lucidly. Like all Muslims in India are not "Dawood " variety , all Hindus aren't hardcore hindutva fundamentalists either. And this I say as a proud , practising Hindu from the heartland , U.P. Please rest assured that I don't represent the minority but the majority amongst Hindus though we may have differing eating preference or praying methodology than yours. So what ? You are as much an Indian as me or any Sikh , Christian or a Parsi etc. Every Dadri or Muzaffar Nagar shames and saddens us as much . It also alarms us as much. I don't have the gift which the Almighty has blessed you with , to express my feelings adequately in words. Hope you understand my pain , anguish and sorrow . Ashok Kumar.
POLITICS- BORDER
- OPINION
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- WORLD
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- YOUNG CITIZEN
- LIFE
- THU, OCT 1, 2015
THE RSS/BJP MESSAGE TO MUSLIMS IN INDIA TODAY
NEW DELHI: It was a systematic communal campaign in Dadri, that precedes acts of violence always. First a calf was reported missing, and a campaign unleashed that basically spread rumours linking the calf to eating beef. When the tension reached prescribed levels, a temple in Dadri announced that a particular family--- Muslims of course--- was eating, after keeping, beef in their home. And barely before the echo of the announcement had subsided, a mob attacked the house of Mohammad Akhlaq, in the village in Dadri, pulled him out and beat him to death with bricks. His 22 year old son was also attacked, and is presently battling for his life in a hospital. The mob attacked their grandmother, and tried to molest the women in the house. The family is completely traumatised, terrified and currently praying for the young son's life.
In terms of numbers, always very important for a statistic obsessed government, only one man has died so far. But in terms of impact, the incident has rung alarm bells across the country being reported in the global media at some length. And as the Muzaffarnagar violence at the time of the last Lok Sabha elections had shown, corroborated by subsequent communal incidents, the new strategy of those seeking to divide India on communal lines is to minimise deaths, but to exaggerate impact. Be it in the form of large scale displacement of the minorities, or widespread fear.
In the Dadri attack the intention was not displacement, but to generate fear, to terrify. Hence the singling out of the one family, and the brutal attack where Akhlaq was killed without mercy. Do not eat beef is the ostensible message. The real message is: you are second class citizens, so you will do what you are told in India.
So what are Muslims being told in India? But before that the stereotype which is fed by an ignorant, complicit media; goes largely unchallenged by the so called regional parties as they neither have the cadres nor the organisation to do little more than listen; and that is slowly being injected as a poisonous venom into society at every available opportunity, borrowing also from the US led campaign against Muslims across the world.
1. Muslims in India are a monolith and hence dangerous;
2. At best they are of two types: the APJ Abdul Kalam variety or the Dawood Ibrahim kind. And the second are in the majority, hence have to be hunted out before they hurt others;
3. They are influenced greatly by the extremist politics of the terror groups in Pakistan and West Asia;
4. They are growing rapidly and pose a challenge to the stability of India;
5. They work against the cultural ethos of India, as they eat beef, take away our daughters, are aggressive in following their religion, and hence a threat to Hinduism;
In this discourse there is no room for the reality. That Muslims are not a monolith, and are as culturally different as all other Indians; that they are largely liberal, even if they are religious as are non-Muslims in India; that they have shunned extremist politics to a point where they vote always for the secular option and not for the kinds of Owaisi, or the Jamaat e Islami in elections; that they have done nothing, repeat nothing, to be branded anti-national; that they too do not eat beef, and are secular and Indian as the last Indian.
And hence through the systematic, crafted, manipulated communal incidents come the many messages. Muslims are being told very deliberately, and through violence:
1. Do not marry outside your religion. The entire 'love jihad' campaign launched in Uttar Pradesh in particular by the RSS affiliates was directed at invoking terror through deliberate attacks on Hindu-Muslim couples, and on the families of the Muslim young people so involved, making it clear that this will not be tolerated;
2. Do not eat meat or beef. The central government itself passed an order against the export of beef. The Maharashtra government has gone many steps further. This should have been a message to all Indians, but through the campaign and now Akhlaq's murder it has been demonstrated that the defaulters are Muslims. Hence Muslims must follow the food code or suffer the consequences, as posts on the social media by self-acknowledged Hindutva acolytes profess in language that is abusive and vitriolic.
3. Do not live in cosmopolitan colonies, move into ghettos. Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi have managed to make this a rule with most of Gujarat covered, and other cities and states following. Muslims do not easily get rented accommodation in these cities, and are also not allowed to buy property easily by the residents associations.
4. Do not become too successful economically. The communal violence has been increasingly targeting Muslim businessmen, with shops being specifically targeted.In fact the Congress government in Maharashtra also fed into this by unleashing a wave of terror against Muslim professionals, many of whom were arrested on suspicion of having "terror links.' While some were released after months and years, there are many languishing in jail for crimes that local lawyers have described as concocted.
5. And speak only when you are asked to, actually not at all. This is the message coming out of a major attack on Muslim writers, academics, intelligentsia on the social media where trolls describing themselves as bhakts of PM Narendra Modi, Hindutva acolytes and carrying profile pictures of angry gods literally abuse and threaten any one writing under a Muslim name, questioning their patriotism, their religion and their identity. In fact Muslims are repeatedly reminded when they share in democratic debate, that they should remember how other countries ---Pakistan for instance---treats its minorities, and should thus follow a path of caution.
The campaign is virulent and relentless. And political parties in states going to the polls in particular are now feeling this pressure and re[The entire original message is not included.]
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Seema Mustafa
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