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Some Positive Signs

After partition of India condition of Muslims here has constantly deteriorated economically, socially, politically. Needless to mention that Muslims are aware of that but half a decade ago government of India constituted a committee to look into this problem and the truth came out in open for all to see. This was the Sachar Committee report. Obviously some people made noise about remedial measures and the government constituted another committee to do the needful. This was called Fatmi committee. And the things cooled down. There is a street called Marris Road, from Center Point to Kela Nagar, that used to be the posh avenue in Aligarh. It still is but every old Kothi (mansion) in sprawling area, belonging to Muslims, has got a grotesque feature by now. Some have got schools in the compound, some marriage halls, nurseries and the type. Clear cut reduction of the high Muslim society to a few grades lower. Same is true for middle class. Urdu has been reduced to a language of poetic meets only, or a language used by the sundry ghazal singers. Politically there have been many presidents of India who bore Muslim names but no one is fooled and everyone knows that these have been mere decorations. There have been a long list of communal riots which by now have been identified as pogroms against Muslims. Last big ones were in Gujrat a decade ago before that all over India but most severe in Mumbai, further one decade ago. These ones were more scary than the 1947 partition riots. Even at the moment of writing we are still in the aftermath of Assam riots that have officially killed 80 Muslims and displaced more than six hundred thousand people to relief camps.

In this background some positive developments, some silver lines, have appeared. Barelwi Raza Avademy took out a protest march in Mumbai. This was sort of record because Muslims usually go into a state of shock and fear in the post riot period. The march ended in a debacle because two people were killed in police firing, allegedly because some protestors teased the media, manhandled a female constable and set a police vehicle on fire. Wallahualam. In spite of the debacle the demonstration sent signal across the country. BJP leader L.K.Advani sang the usual Bangladeshi infiltrator song - if any one is listening. And MNS, Maharashtra Navnirmana Sena, took out a counter protest in Mumbai but the police commissioner was tough on the issue, even if he ended up in getting transferred.

Further more every Muslim organization spoke against the Assam riots as well as the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar. All individuals who keep a public profile also made public statements about both Assam and Myanmar riots. The coverage was mainly in Urdu media but Muslims showed qualitative improvement in expression of their opinion.

One fact has been noticed long back about these riots, actually pogroms against Muslims, that these always occurred in those town that had Muslim business. This time too Assam had shown a trend that was not visible for more than sixty years in independent India - Maulana Badruddin Ajmal Qasmi sent a noticeable number of Muslim candidates to the state assembly as well as parliament. This fact was perhaps not lost on those people who are somehow adversely disposed towards Muslims.

Even officially India has about 15 percent Muslims. This amounts to more Muslims then any other country save Indonesia. In reality the number is even larger. This means that Muslims should be sending, on the average, 15 percent elected members to the state and central legislature. That has not taken place and detractors would like to nip any progress in the bud.

And the helper is Allah (SWT).