Poor sanitation kills 1,600 children daily in India: Report

: More than 1,600 children under the age of five die daily in India due to diarrhoea caused by lack of sanitation, a report revealed on Friday.

'Squatting Rights', a research by philanthropic foundation Dasra, said that every year 30 per cent of marginalised women who travel long distances to access public facilities were physically and sexually assaulted.

"In Delhi slums, upto 70 per cent of girls experience humiliation every day in terms of verbal harassment and half of them have been victims of grave physical assaults," said the report.

"Lack of sanitation is detrimental not only to women's health and their dignity but also to their education, with one in four girls dropping out of schools as there are no facilities that they can safely access," the report added.

With around seven million people migrating to urban India every year, owing to the lack of proper sanitation, over 50 million men, women and children are forced to defecate in the open.

The poor bear the worst consequences of inadequate sanitation in the form of ailing children, uneducated girls and unproductive people, in turn costing India 6.4 per cent of its GDP, said the report.

The slums also face an acute shortage of water. While most localities in Indian cities receive three 

to five hours of water each day, certain communities receive as little as 30 minutes of water per week.

GODHRA :THE DIABOLIC LIE

Godhra: The Diabolic Lie

Overview: The Anatomy Of Manufactured Lies

What really happened at Godhra can only be known by sifting fact from fiction. TEHELKA exposes the police’s case in Godhra 

THE STORY AT A GLANCE
For five years, Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government in Gujarat have evoked the Sabarmati Express tragedy at Godhra as a justification for the cataclysmic pogrom of Muslims that followed. They claim the arson was not just the horrible result of mob fury spinning out of control, but a premeditated communal conspiracy. TEHELKA’s painstaking six-month long investigation exposed a disturbing trail of lies and subversion through force and bribery. This, in brief, is the story of its findings.

THE POLICE VERSION
The broadstrokes of the police’s claims are as follows:

 Several religious and political Muslim leaders of Godhra — Maulvi Umarji; two Muslim corporators, Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana; a guesthouse owner, Rajjak Kurkur; and a hawker, Salim Paanwala conspired to burn coach S-6 (not just any coach but, for some unexplained reason, coach S-6 in particular) of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002.

 Mohammad Hussain Kalota Shaikh, then president of the Godhra Municipal Council, and two Muslim corporators, Salim Shaikh and Abdur Rahman Dhantiya were among the mob, inciting people to burn the train. However, the police do not claim to know if these men were also involved in the conspiracy.

 The police claim coach S-6 was set on fire after a large quantity of petrol was poured on its floor. They say 140 litres of this petrol was bought on February 26, 2002 from Kalabhai’s petrol pump, owned by a Muslim. The petrol was carried the next morning by nine Muslim hawkers, and inexplicably, one reluctant Hindu hawker, to Cabin A, where the Sabarmati Express had stalled.

 The Sabarmati Express halted at Cabin A, not because of chainpulling by karsevaks but by three Muslim hawkers who scaled three different coaches of the moving train and turned the discs. (It is important the police prove this or their conspiracy theory falls flat. After all, had the train not halted outside Cabin A, how could the hawkers have set fire to S-6?)

 The police claim that some hawkers cut the 6-inch thick vestibule connecting coaches S-6 and S-7 with ordinary scissors and entered S-6. They then poured petrol on the floor of the coach. Some petrol was also thrown inside through a broken window.

POLICE EVIDENCE TO BACK THEIR THEORY

 The police’s case rests chiefly on statements by nine BJP party members who claim to be eyewitnesses. Between them they have identified and accused 41 Godhra Muslims. (Dileep Dasadiya, one the nine BJP men, has since completely retracted his statement.)

 The case also rests on statements by karsevaks travelling in S-6 and other coaches. Their claim: the mob was throwing petrol and kerosene, acid bulbs, petrol bulbs and mashaals through broken windows and sprinkling inflammable liquid on the coach.

 Three karsevaks first clai med they’d fainted due to the smoke and not seen anything. Two months later, they changed their stand and said they’d seen some liquid being poured on the floor of the coach. These new statements were recorded on May 7, 2002 — 15 days before the first charge sheet — and became the main thrust of the police case.

 Though it discounted that S-6 was set on fire by inflammable liquid thrown through the window or sprinkled on the exterior of the coach, the forensic report claimed “60 litres of petrol may have been thrown along the floor of the coach from the southern direction...” This became the accepted theory.

 A month and a half after the first chargesheet, the police produced a “know-all witness” — Ajay Baria, a Hindu tea vendor, who inexplicably claimed he’d been forcibly taken along by nine Muslim hawkers to load petrol and set S-6 on fire. Baria, the cornerstone of their case, now lives under close police vigil.

 Two weeks after arresting them, the police produced two Muslim hawkers — Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar — who said they had scaled the train and turned the discs to stop it. Both have since retracted through affidavits in the Supreme Court.

 A Muslim hawker, Jabir Binyamin Bahera, confessed he was part of the group of hawkers that had cut the vestibule and poured the petrol along the floor of the coach. He said two Muslim corporators — Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana — had told him coach S-6 had to be burnt as Maulvi Umarji had instructed. Bahera has since retracted his statement through an affidavit in court.

 A year after the incident, the police produced two Hindu salesmen — Prabhatsingh Patel and Ranjitsingh Patel — employed by Kalabhai petrol pump, who claimed they’d sold 140 litres of petrol to the accused on the evening of February 26, 2002. Significantly, the two had first said they’d not sold any loose petrol to anybody on that day or the evening before. They now have 24 hour police protection.

 Sikandar Siddik is another police witness. He clai med he saw Muslim hawkers setting S-6 on fire and that Maulvi Umarji told him he was paying Rs 1,500 to the accused. He also said he’d seen corporators — Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana — near the coach. Additionally, he said he saw Maulvi Yakub Punjabi inciting the mob. (The police detained Punjabi, but had to let him go be c a use Punjabi was not in India but in Saudi Arabia at the time of the incident.)

 The police also used confessions from six other Muslim hawkers who, according to the police, admitted to their role in the burning of coach S-6 at the behest of Maulvi Umarji and the Muslim corporators. All six have since retracted their confessions.

The truth of what really happened in Godhra can only be known by discarding what did not happen. TEHELKA’s investigation uncovered some heinous fictions.

FICTION The two salesmen — Ranjitsingh Patel and Prabhatsingh Patel — who claimed they sold 140 litres of petrol to Muslim hawkers in their statements were actually bribed by the chief investigating officer, Noel Parmar, to say this and falsely identify people. TEHELKA caught Ranjitsingh on camera admitting to this. The amount paid to each was Rs 50,000.

FICTION The nine BJP members who identified 41 Muslims were actually not even present at the station that day. The TEHELKA undercover reporter caught two of them — Kakul Pathak and Murli Mulchandani — on camera, categorically admitting that they were not there that day, and that the police had filed statements in their name without their knowledge and they had colluded to serve Hindutva.
’
FICTION Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar who were arrested by the police and made to claim that they had turned the discs that stopped the train at Cabin A were actually tortured by Noel Parmar and his team into doing so. Illias told the TEHELKA reporter that while they were in custody, Parmar’s men would put a log on his leg and walk on it. Kalandar said they had put electric current on his genitals. A year after their statements to the police, the two had returned from enforced exile and retracted their statements through an affidavit in court.

FICTION Ajay Baria, the inexplicable Hindu vendor whose statement seemed to stitch the police’s theory neatly into place, is no longer allowed to live in Godhra. He is tailed by two policemen round the clock. TEHELKA could not speak to him directly but spoke to his mother. The mother said Baria had become a police witness out of fear.

FICTION Maulvi Umarji, whose alleged role in the conspiracy, is crucial to uphold the police’s theory was not present at the site during the incident. The allegations against him rest on two statements. Significantly, Jabir Bin Bahera, who first named him, later retracted his statement. Sikandar Siddik, the other witness who named Umarji, proved himself unreliable — he had named Maulvi Yakub Punjabi as well as Umarji. It turned out Punjabi wasn’t even in India on the day of the incident.

FICTION The forensic report had effectively demolished the police and State’s contention that S-6 was burnt by inflammable liquid either thrown in through broken windows or sprinkled outside the coach. The new and current theory that S-6 was burnt because of petrol thrown along its floor is based on the statements of three karsevaks who, just three months earlier, had said they had fainted due to the smoke and thus seen nothing

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107OverviewGodhra.asp

CORRUPTION IN BJP AND MODI ,GUJARAT,INDIA

 If Modi is clean and hates corruption, why has not he appointed a Lokayukta till today? Why is he objecting to the appointment of a lokayukta by the governor and why should the BJP make the usual pilgrimages to the rashtrapathi bhavan demanding the recall of the governor? They acted in a similar way demanding the exit of Karnataka governor. Instead, a CM had the ignominy of going to jail and the state had three CMs so far.
Hundreds of complaints against corruption are lying unheard in Gujarat. From the Sujalam Sufalam scam of 1700 crores to the NREGS boribund scam of 109 crores, the fisheries scam of 600 crores, every department is involved in scams worth thousands of crores. The poor and rural people are being sold to Modi's friends, the industrialists. The state is in terrible debt because of his largess to industry while 21 lakh farmers wait for compensation for the land seized from them. This the record of the yet another prime-minister-in-waiting in addition to the blood of 2000 people.

THE STATE OF MUSLIMS IN GUJARAT TODAY

Commentary

Despite the continued ghettoization of Muslims in a polarized Gujarat, the Muslim community in the state has through sheer hard work shown some advances in education and wealth generation. The denial of justice to the victims of the 2002 Gujarat pogroms, despite strenuous efforts by civil society activists and interventions by the higher judiciary, remains a major issue for the community.

The Gujarat Muslim population is around 5.5 million, constituting about 10% of the state’s population. The figures are lower than that of states like Assam (31%), West Bengal and Kerala (25%), Uttar Pradesh (18.5%) and Bihar (17%). Yet the spread of jamaats is most unusual. This is one state where Shia communities, though small in number, have played a vital part in the country. Ithna Ishri Shias are mostly concentrated around Bhavnagar. Though small in number, it was from this community that someone as tall a leader as M­ohammad Ali Jinnah emerged. The numbers of the Aga Khan Khojas are equally small, but Azim Premji, the richest Indian Muslim belongs to this community. Similarly, the Dawoodi ­Bohras number around 0.5 million in Gujarat, but they are highly educated and belong to the upper middle and rich classes. Among the Sunnis, the Memons were the wealthy elite in Saurashtra a hundred years ago. One of them – Dada Abdullah – sponsored the

South Africa trip of a young lawyer, who later came to be known as the ­Mahatma. Similarly another Memon, Abdul Habib Marfani, who had business connections in Rangoon, fin­anced the Indian National Army of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who later, out of gratitude, termed him “Sevak-e-Hind”.

But following Partition these rich and highly educated Muslims migrated from Gujarat, mostly to Pakistan or to western countries. Those who remained were poor and mostly illiterate. The leadership of these communities passed easily into the hands of the Ulema, which only compounded the problems of the community. To add to their plight, being a border state, so close to Karachi in P­akistan, a reverse migration also o­ccurred, sharply increasing the communal consciousness of all people in G­ujarat. Other than those close to G­andhi and his politics, the political leadership within the state was not sympathetic to Gujarati Muslims. The conditions were ripe for the growth of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in the state. It cleverly used this communal polarization to unite a large section of the Hindus against Muslims. Oddly, when the country was celebrating Gandhi’s birth centenary, and Badshah Khan (Khan Abdul Ghafoor Khan) was in Gujarat, there were communal riots in the state. Muslims paid a heavy price, as the police, the media, intellectuals and top businessmen collaborated with the government in the whitewashing of or giving a spin on the rapes, killings and destruction in Muslim localities.

This process of polarization and communalization continued over the next 33 years, with brief interludes of peace and stability. Gujarat became a fortress of the saffron forces. No wonder top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) including Atal Behari Vajpayee and L K Advani preferred to contest parliamentary elections from Gujarat, as the urban seats were very safe for them. Even the Gandhian movement, with a few honourable exceptions, began to tilt towards the RSS.

The year 2002 was a structural break for the Muslims in the state. We, the orphans of Partition, suffered severe brutalities during the pogroms in that year. The brutality on our women, particularly the use of trishuls on their private parts, for rapes and killings will forever remain embedded in our consciousness. Note that these trishuls were blessed by the sants of the Swaminarayan sect in public, before distribution to activists and goons belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal.

It was easy for everyone to see that the BJP government under the leadership of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS were complicit in the p­ogroms. The VHP president Ashok Singhal praised the killings as “the will of lord Ram”. The Gujarat VHP president, K K Shastri remorselessly admitted, “our boys did it”. The irony was that this person also o­ccupied the post of president of the G­ujarat Sahitya Parishad, the highest literary body in the state, a post once presided over by none other than Mahatma Gandhi. This just shows how far Gujarat has fallen as a state. No wonder there is no remorse, no sorrow for the inhuman behaviour that the state experienced during the 2002 pogroms. Rather, every effort has been directed to cover up these gory incidents and prevent justice from being done in Gujarat.

Focus for Muslims

For Gujarat Muslims, the past decade has been difficult, yet extremely fruitful. The Muslim focus has been essentially on four targets: justice for the victims of the 2002 pogroms, quality e­ducation for all Muslims, the growth of business and industry to generate wealth, and a constructive political inter­vention to ensure that Muslims are part of society in Gujarat.

The first purpose has been substantially achieved. For the first time so many non-Muslims have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the killings in 2002. Note that this has not happened in India earlier. Most of the guilty are landed Patels, who have an inexplicable hatred for Muslims. Hopefully these judgments will temper their hatred t­owards Muslims. The Muslims of Gujarat are deeply grateful to social activists like Teesta Setalvad, who have done yeoman service in trying to secure justice for our community. More important is the role of the Supreme Court, without whose keen concerns, justice would have been impossible in the state, as Chief Minister Narendra Modi was very successful in blunting the power of the lower judiciary and even the high court.

I mention here the manner in which the Nanavati Commission was totally compromised. This retired Supreme Court justice was asked to investigate the riots. Simultaneously, his two sons were appointed as special g­overnment prosecutors. This raises the question as to whether Nanavati has done everything possible to protect Modi.

The chances are his final report will never see the light of day, and the commission will last as long as Nanavati lives, and then just fold up. Incidentally the other worthy judge Akshay Mehta won his position by granting bail to the notorious Babu Bajrangi, so that he did not have to spend a single day in jail. This butcher of Naroda Patiya allegedly slashed the pregnant Kausar Banu to death. He was said to then have used a sword to kill and lift the unborn child, proclaiming that he felt like Maharana Pratap. It is to the shame of Narendra Modi and A­kshay Mehta that they are viewed as god­­fathers of Bajrangi.

Progress in the second issue of improvement in the quality of education is remarkable. Until 2002, secular education, particularly for girls, was a low priority for Muslims. Darul Ulooms, the equivalent of a university, were everywhere. South Gujarat had 23 Darul Ulooms, as against just three colleges (that too teaching arts and commerce). Following the incidents of 2002, the community mindset changed totally. Muslims realised that they can never cope with the rise of Hindutva, except with the highest level of education for their children. This decade saw a sharp rise of Muslim schools from 250 to about 700. Zidni Ilma Charitable Trust, a Vadodara-based-body focused on quality education, is currently sponsoring 60 medical and 150 degree engineering students from poor and lower middle class families. These are students who in the pre-2002 period would have never gone to a professional college, due to high costs and also the views of the community. A greater satisfaction is the large increase in girls with excellent academic performance. The community is poised to have a good future. But it pains that the level of education among boys has not risen to the same extent. One needs to question as to why is that the case.

The community has focused on wealth generation. The bias against Muslims is so deep that it is difficult for them to get a government job in Gujarat. At a recent selection of about 980 mamlatdars and equivalent posts, only 24 Mus­lims were selected. Fortunately, this has led Muslims to seek self-employment. The pressure of competition has forced them to be the best in their fields. No wonder the best car or refrigerator mech­anics, electricians or plumbers, fabrication or sofa cover specialists are Muslims. Even in high-skill jobs, Muslims are making a mark. Few know that a defense specialist in radioactive components is a Gujarati Muslim. Nationalized banks have started to open up branches in Muslim areas. Yet the bias persists. While Muslim contribution to bank deposits is about 12% of the total (higher than their proportion in the population), loan disbursals to them are only to the tune of 2.6% of the overall loans. There are no top Gujarati Muslim-led corporates or big companies. Those who have succeeded in industry like Azim Premji or Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt have migrated to other states.

But none can deny the wealth being generated within the community. This is reflected in larger and posher housing societies that were unknown just 10 years ago. Well-structured mosques have also been constructed by the community in many places.

Ghettoization

The flip side is the ghettoization that plagues all Muslim localities in Gujarat. The fear of riots as well as the refusal of non-Muslims to sell real estate to Muslims, has forced the latter into limited areas in e­very city. There is a sharp rise in population, but with no place for expansion of living spaces. To make matters ugly, the Modi government has deliberately d­ivided Muslim areas into different m­unicipal constituencies, so that a city like Vadodara does not have the possibility of a corporator being elected from the Muslim community. This has resulted in the absence of a voice in the civic bodies that can articulate necessities in the supply of water, road maintenance, g­arbage removal or street lighting in Muslim-dominated areas. It is sad that once we drive from a Hindu area to a Muslim area, suddenly even the air appears to stink, the roads are bad, and lighting is poor. Water supply per capita has gone down sharply in these areas. No wonder all Muslim areas are ghettos. Yet I am confident that with the increasing wealth distribution, Muslims will convert these ghettos into liveable places.

Finally we cannot ignore political factors. I have believed that Muslims should avoid contesting in elections, as communal polarization makes it difficult for their respective parties or outfits to win. But Muslims must vote. They must join political parties and express their views as honestly and fearlessly as possible. At the same time let there be no illusions. The sight of mullahs offering their caps to Narendra Modi, or in one case even touching his feet, were plainly disgusting. I wish I could persuade the Bohra jamaat leaders to move away from such close identification with Modi. After all, the Bohra Syedna claims spiritual d­escent from Hazrat Ali and Hazrat H­usain. Both gave their lives fighting the forces of evil. They never compromised with the truth. (J S Bandukwala (drbandukwala@yahoo.co.in) had taught physics at MS University, Baroda.)

J S Bandukwala (Economic and Political Weekly – V. 47, August 18, 2012)

STRIKE GOOD FOR POLITICS BUT BAD FOR ECONOMICS

written by mousan ali
dated 20.9.12

STRIKE is a very old and bad culture to go backeward. Our young generation should come forward to oppose worthless  strike.we will loss  10,000 crore for one day strike in India, plzthink about it.strike is destructive foolish politics and you can protest another way.who will get benifit from the strike ? do u know it?

its very unfortunate and sad that few peoples support strike.most of the peoples do not like strike.only very few persentage peoples like strike for their own interest.what are the result or output we get from strike?nothing can be solve by strike.only peoples are suffering from strike.it also create violence and agitation in healthy society.

Is strike legal or illegal in India?Answer:As long as the strike is not causing public inconvenience and stoppage of governance and public services and with out absenting to work ,strikes can be said to be legal provided if it is done democratically

but is it practically happen during strike?

Strike in violation of the law. Most public-sector strikes are illegal. Strikes that violate an existing labor contract, are not properly authorized by the union membership, or violate a court order are also illegal

 Strikes cannot be equated with bandhs,hartals: SCTIMES NEWS NETWORKNew Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to equate ‘strike’ calls given by politicalparties and labour unions with ‘bandhs’ and ‘hartals’, the latter two being already bannedsince 1997 by judicial fiats. “Strikes are not prohibited under any law or court order,” said aBench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam refusing toentertain a PIL, which alleged that strike, bandh and hartal all have identical effect on thecommon people deterring them from going about their normal daily work schedule.But, the Bench did not forget to take potshots at media reporting of its observation duringthe last hearing, when the PIL had sought banning of a strike call given by a groupsympathising with the Tamils in Sri Lanka and protesting against the death of innocentTamils caught in the cross-fire between LTTE and Lankan forces.When counsel AjitPudussery had on February 3 said the bandh call given by an umbrella organisation of political parties – Sri Lankan Tamils Protection Movement – would surely breach the apexcourt’s order approving the Kerala HC’s 1997 judgment banning bandhs and hartals, the CJIhad reacted sharply: “What has this court to do with stopping strikes? India is a democraticstate where everyone has a right to express their feelings.” When Puduserry attempted the same argument again on Monday, the petitioner waschided by the Bench for going to the press and trying to get some cheap publicity.Objecting to the manner in which reports were written on the basis of the Bench’sobservations, the CJI said: “Why did you go to the press, which even wrote editorials.” The Kerala HC judgment had said: “No political party or organisation can claim that it isentitled to paralyse industry and commerce in the entire state or nation and is entitled toprevent the citizens not in sympathy with its viewpoint from exercising their fundamentalright or from performing their duties for their own benefits or for the benefit of the state orthe nation.” “Such a claim would be unreasonable and could not be accepted as a legitimate exerciseof a fundamental right by a political party or those comprising it,” the HC had said gettingthunderous applause from millions across the country.Page 1of 1Strikes cannot be equated with bandhs, hartals: 

Labor StrikesA powerful bargaining tool of labor unions is a labor strike. Stopping productivity can be a nightmare for employers. For workers, there is no guarantee that the strike will work to produce the benefits the union is seeking. There is no compensation for the loss of wages while a worker is on strike.

Labor unions cannot guarantee your job if you strike. Your employer is not required by law to hire you back once the strike is over. He can choose instead to retain the worker that he hired to take your place. If this happens, your only hope of retaining your position is to be called back by your employer if that position becomes vacant again. While unions are known for providing job security, you don't enjoy security in the event of a strike.

labor strikes can be difficult for workers. Employers don't always meet the union's demands during strikes, and lost wages during strikes aren't recovered. Once the strike is over, union members have no guarantee that they'll even have a job to go back to because employers aren't required by law to rehire them.

 StrikesAnother potential drawback of joining a union is strikes. When labor unions are unable to achieve the aims of their members, the members may call for a strike. A strike is an intentional work stoppage aimed at stifling production and forcing employers to meet union demands. If you are a union worker, you could be forced to strike and lose income even if you do not agree with the decision to strike.

 Industry body ASSOCHAM said there was no justification for the strike which could have resulted in a national economic loss of about Rs 10,000 crore. It was totally uncalled for that put general public to inconvenience with crippled transport and banking services, said The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).Tuesday, February 28, 2012

 Projected investment friendly state, West Bengal recorded highest number of mandays losses due to frequent bandhs to the tune of 23.75 million in 2007 against 1.25 million in 2006 , whereas other high industrially concentrated states of Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan witnessed mandays losses of only 1.41 million and 0.95 million respectively, said ASSOCHAM.

Apart from economic losses, bandhs have hampered the state's image as an ideal investment destination and these non-economic losses are perhaps more important in long-term perspective.

According to the ASSOCHAM paper, in contrast to West Bengal, states like Tamil Nadu , Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala witnessed man-days losses of only 1.14 million, 0.95 million, 0.34 million and 0.23 million, respectively. The survey further pointed out that there were 132 strikes (center and state) and 33 lock-outs affected the industrial units during January to December 2011.

West Bengal might be experiencing frequent bandhs by political parties and the losses would be certainly very high and the flow of investment may be impacted,” said Mr Rawat.

 Bengal is the state with maximum bandhs in India, where the average number of bandhs per year is 60-80 (ranging from a couple of hours to a maximum of 2 days per bandh).

Bandhs, Strikes and lock-outs result in work-stoppage which, in turn adversely affects production and disrupt the normal life. The loss of production not only reduces the profit-making capacity of a company but it also affects its goodwill.

STRIKE WAS ALMOST A FIRST RIGHT AVAILABLE TO EXPLOITED INDUSTRIAL WORKERS WITH THE START OF IND REVOLUTION. BEFORE THAT THEY WOULD BREAK FACTORY, KILL OWNER.

Expert views on diesel price hike in India

The government raised the price of heavily subsidised diesel on Thursday, in a politically risky move to rein in the fiscal deficit and fight the threat of being the first in the BRICS group of emerging economies to be downgraded to junk.

Here is what the experts have to say about the move:

Anubhuti Sahay, Standard Chartered Bank, Mumbai

"The reduction in excise duty on petrol may negate some of the benefit on the fiscal front of the diesel price increase, but still it is a strong move.
"It [diesel price increase] will send a strong signal to the Reserve Bank of India on the government's efforts at fiscal consolidation.
"A rate cut in September is unlikely, but today's measures will give the central bank room to cut rates in the near future."
Manish Wadhawan, HSBC, Mumbai
"It is the first credible step towards fiscal consolidation that the government has taken, something for which the market has been waiting for long. It also gives some hope for rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India."
"The expectation will get built for a rate cut on Monday. It is too early to talk of an impact on the rating agencies, but it will definitely be positive."
Claudio Bernasconi, AMC Expert India Fund, Switzerland
"That [diesel price increase] could possibly be a good sign... As nothing happened for the last month, and everything was blocked, that could be seen as a good sign that finally the government is doing something."
Shubhada Rao, YES Bank, Mumbai
"I would think that at least this demonstrated some courage, perhaps a small step."
"One would have been happier to see a much larger step, but I think the positive takeaway is, after a very, very long time the government has actually been able to take some measure without dithering."
"One just hopes that there is no back-tracking of this measure, and they continue to move ahead piecemeal fashion, especially in subsidy management."

Why diesel price hike maybe bad politics but is good economics

Gautam Chikermane, Hindustan Times
September 14, 2012                                                                                                               

 

Communication has never been a strong point of the hubris-infested UPA government. Too busy sunning in inertia, it has given the impression that this is a government less interested in ‘governing’, more in ‘ruling’. So, even when it does the right thing and raises diesel prices, it is unable to 

deliver a coherent argument justifying the increase. Can’t blame UPA --- the interrelationships between subsidies, fiscal deficits, inflation, growth and politics are complex and do not fall neatly into the cynical rhetoric that’s vintage UPA.
 
Any government that runs up a huge fiscal deficit has to, at some point, finance that deficit by creating money through borrowings. When the government does that, there’s more money chasing the same number of goods and services in the economy. The result is a hike in prices, or inflation. At 5.1% India’s fiscal deficit is dangerously high, controlling which should be the government’s first priority, as former finance minister Yashwant Sinha said. Raising diesel prices by 14% such that the subsidy bill on the fuel falls, will help bring this deficit under control. To put that issue in perspective, at Rs. 47,800 crore oil subsidies for the first quarter of the current financial year have already exceeded the full year’s budgeted figure of Rs. 43,850 crore.
 
In the short term, the Rs. 5 diesel price hike will push up prices even further, as the transport sector raises tariffs and the impact percolates through the economy. But while transporters pretend to fight for the common man, someone needs to ask them why they have increased their prices in the same proportion as diesel prices. Surely diesel can’t be the only cost they incur. This is nothing but profiteering and feeding off the very citizens they are purporting to serve and fight for. They need to stop this double-speak and get real.
 
For consumers already reeling under a double-digit onslaught of food prices, this will hurt no doubt. Part of this increase can be neutralised, by cutting excise duties on the fuel, for instance. But for successive governments that have been unable to curb spending on vote-buying schemes --- some of them crucial --- or on an inflated and unproductive bureaucracy, the other option is to increase taxes and return to the sky-high tax rates of the coercive 1970s, a regime that is best behind us.
 
Which brings us to the next issue: economic growth. With a high fiscal deficit that keeps inflation high, there is no way the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will cut interest rates. Even though most of the inflationary expectations are coming from goods outside India’s control --- crude oil imports, a falling rupee, and globally-rising food and commodity prices --- RBI’s stance has been to keep policy rates high so that households cut down on discretionary spends. In the process, home loan EMIs have been rising and along with inflation on one side, scissoring household budgets.
 
Complexifying matters further is the fact that today the sovereign has very little control over its finances. Like it or not, India cannot and will not grow at 9% if rest of the world is contracting, thereby closing business opportunities --- there, the UPA government is right. “The political power of the sovereign goes down with every move towards globalisation,” Kaushik Basu said. “Economics has become an instrument of global political and even military strategy.” To illustrate, Indian farmers and businesses get affected by WTO negotiations, Indian workers by ILO regulations, Indian fiscal policy by G20 communiqués, Indian markets by QE3.
 

What’s left is Indian politics. So, we will have the Opposition and UPA allies hitting the street to build political capital. The government will cut excise duties on diesel and ask state government to cut state taxes to control diesel prices. The end result for consumers would be a final hike of Rs. 2-3 per litre. But this would be a good time for UPA spokespersons to get off their high-horses and start engaging with people, explaining that a little pain now would be an investment into the future. Any other option that does not bring the fiscal deficit under control would potentially mean India moving to a junk rating status. At which point, most investors will not be able to buy into the India story (they can only buy investment-grade securities and countries) and the Rupee will hit 70-75 to the dollar. After that: economic chaos.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of foreign direct investments? Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_and_disadvantages_of_foreign_direct_investments

advantages 
- causes a flow of money into the economy which stimulates economic activity 
- employment will increase 
- long run aggregate supply will shift outwards 
- aggregate demand will also shift outwards as investment is a component of aggregate demand 
- it may give domestic producers an incentive to become more efficient 
- the government of the country experiencing increasing levels of FDI will have a greater voice at international summits as their country will have more stakeholders in it 
Disadvantages 
- inflation may increase slightly
- domestic firms may suffer if they are relatively uncompetitive 
- if there is a lot of FDI into one industry e.g. the automotive industry then a country can become too dependent on it and it may turn into a risk that is why countries like the Czech Republic are "seeking to attract high value-added services such as research and development (e.g.) biotechnology)"

Do India's Muslims need to be represented by Muslims?

HILAL AHMED

  ·     

The HinduNOT SO QUIET: The Shahi Imam of Delhi Jama Masjid, Maulana Syed Ahmed Bukhari believes he represents the aspirations of Muslim communities, but not everyone thinks so. Photo: Rajeev Bh

In articulating its social or political demands, the community does not appear to be addressing its own elites.

The serious (and not so-serious) claims and counter-claims made by Azam Khan, a senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and the so-called Shahi Imam of Delhi's historic Jama Masjid, Ahmad Bukhari, on “Muslim representation” in post-election Uttar Pradesh can be interpreted in two possible ways. One may argue, in fact quite justifiably, that these polemical comments simply reflect the post-poll tussle between two rival Muslim elites to secure a wider acceptability in the SP dominated U.P. politics.

However, there could be another plausible approach to interpret this debate. We may problematise these statements to raise a few very significant issues such as: do Muslims actually vote for a particular party because they are “instructed” by religious elites such as the Imam to do so? Or, do Muslims vote for a party because they follow the “advice” given to them by elected Muslim representatives? If we go beyond these first level questions, we might also ask two larger conceptual questions: do Muslims need to be represented by Muslims? If yes, what could be the appropriate relationship between the acts of Muslim representatives and aspirations of Muslim communities? The Bukhari-Khan controversy, in my view, can help us in unpacking these complicated questions. In the first week of April 2012, Bukhari, who had already campaigned for the SP in the U.P. Assembly elections, quite unexpectedly withdrew his son-in-law's candidature for the U.P. Vidhan Parishad. In a much publicised open letter, he accused the SP leadership of not providing “adequate Muslim political representation” at various levels. He said: “The rights of Muslims cannot be satisfied by giving a seat to my son-in-law. If you do not give a fair share to Muslims in administration and power, I turn down the offer made for my son-in-law.”

Two sets of claims

According to Azam Khan, Bukhari actually wanted a Rajya Sabha seat for his younger brother and cabinet slot for his son-in-law. Questioning the political reputation of Bukhari, Khan said: “His son-in-law, Umar Ali Khan, who contested on a SP ticket from the Behat seat of Saharanpur… lost his deposit. This clearly indicates the credibility of Bukhari. He should now realise the status he “enjoys” amongst the Muslims…these peshwas have done little for the betterment of the community. Instead of seeking political favours, clerics should stick to their job.”

One can identify an interesting interplay between two sets of claims here: (a) Muslims of U.P. constitute a political community because they are fully aware of and adhere to a set of issues that could be called “Muslim issues,” and (b) religious/social leaders and representatives of this political community are entitled to take short-term and long-term decisions in favour of Muslims. Azam Khan, it seems, shares the first assumption with Bukhari. He does not make any comment on the Muslim political homogeneity that Bukhari evokes. In fact, his assertions also originate from the premise that the Muslim community is a political entity of a specific kind. However, Khan's criticism of Bukhari's leadership claim is quite significant. Khan, in this sense, makes a clear distinction between the domain of actual politics and the domain of religiosity — a distinction that has dominated modern south Asian Muslim politics for a long time.

Let us look at some concrete evidence to evaluate the first set of arguments that revolves around the notion of Muslim political homogeneity. The recent U.P. election is quite relevant in this regard. According to official figures, 29.15 per cent votes went to the SP. If we deconstruct this official data by comparing it with the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll data based on sample survey, a few very interesting findings come up.

We find that although the SP enjoyed sizeable Muslim support (39 per cent), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also performed well among Muslims. It received around 20 per cent votes. Even the Congress manages to get 18 per cent Muslim votes. These figures demonstrate the fact that the “Muslim vote” was highly diversified. The Muslim caste configuration is also relevant here. Our data shows that around 41 per cent upper-caste Muslim (Ashraf) votes went to the SP. Also significant recipients of Ashraf support were the Congress (26 per cent) and the BSP (12 per cent). Although the SP also got 38 per cent non-Ashraf votes, the performance of the BSP is quite noticeable among non-Ashrafs. It secured 26 per cent non-Ashraf Muslim votes, while the Congress managed to get only 11 per cent non-Ashraf votes. This shows that the inclination of upper-caste Muslims towards the SP and the Congress is higher when compared to lower-caste Muslims. This Muslim political diversity, I suggest, exposes the emptiness of the Muslim homogeneity argument that Bukhari and Azam Khan propose.

The 2006 State of the Nation survey by CSDS-Lokniti on India's Muslims can help us in assessing the second set of issues that the Bukhari-Khan controversy raises. For the sake of clarity, let us look at three kinds of questions: what are the Muslim issues? Who is responsible for the present crisis of Muslims? And, what could be the way out?

We find that poverty and unemployment are identified as the most important Muslim issues (69 per cent). Instead of Hindu communalism or lack of religious freedom, a majority of the respondents (60 per cent) feel that the government is responsible for the present situation of Muslims in India. In fact, 16 per cent Muslims say that Muslims themselves are responsible for the present predicaments of the community. Affirmative action policies are considered as the possible way out to get rid of socio-economic backwardness. A majority of Muslims strongly support the view that Muslims must have some kind of reservation in educational institutions (72 per cent) as well as in Parliament and State Assemblies (82 per cent).

Interestingly, these overtly socio-political demands are not addressed to Muslim elites. In fact, the question of Muslim leadership was not at all given any considerable importance. Only four per cent of respondents find that the “lack of the right kind of Muslim leadership” has been a problem for Muslims in this country. On the basis of these findings, it would suffice to suggest that the question of Muslim leadership is not a fundamental issue for Muslims at all. On the contrary, Muslims, like other deprived and marginalised sections of society, seem to recognise the State as a reference point for making political claims.

Can we, therefore, say that Muslims in India do not want to be represented by Muslim political and/or religious elites? I do not think that this complicated question can be answered merely on the basis of evidence/data we have discussed here. It requires a systematic exploration of a different kind by which we can make sense of the contextual placing of Muslim elites in the socio-cultural universe of Muslim communities. Yet, we can certainly argue that Muslim participation in different forms of politics should be taken seriously to understand the multiplicity of the political representation debates. If we continue to pose the question of Muslim political representation in the present form, it would be very difficult for us to move away from the kind of arguments people like Azam Khan and Bukhari make.

(The writer is an Associate Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.)

Keywords: Muslim political representation, Indian Muslims, U.P. election, Muslim vote bank, U.P. Muslims, Bukhari-Khan controversy

A STUNNING VERDICT [WORTH REJOICING]

(The Hindu, August 30, 2012)

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its various affiliates including governments run by its political wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) have committed many crimes and have been let off many a times. Also so far the murderers of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 are roaming free. The conviction of BJP legislator Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi along with 30 others for their role in the Naroda Patia massacre in a recent court judgment restores some confidence in Indian proclaimed secularism.

The conviction by a Gujarat court of BJP legislator Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi along with 30 others for their role in the Naroda Patia massacre is the strongest judicial affirmation yet that large-scale communal violence is almost always a product of pre-meditated political planning and calculation. An estimated 95 Muslims, many of them hapless women and children, were hacked to death in Naroda, a minority neighbourhood in Ahmedabad targeted by armed mobs under the indulgent gaze of the Gujarat government in the wake of the February 27, 2002 Godhra train carnage. The verdict is a landmark one. It is for the first time that an Indian court has convicted a sitting MLA — Ms Kodnani was also a minister in the Narendra Modi government from 2007 to 2009 — for mob aggression against members of a religious community. Secondly, the court has not only upheld the charge of criminal conspiracy against the 32 individuals convicted, it has also found one of them guilty of rape and sexual harassment.

The establishment of conspiracy augurs well for the future of communal violence prosecutions, where the judicial trend so far has been to uphold murder but not conspiracy. It is a victory particularly for the Special Investigation Team that was brought into the picture by the Supreme Court following the failure of the State police to properly prosecute the post-Godhra riots cases. For the families of the Naroda victims, who identified the aggressors braving threats and intimidation and who were able to come forward to some extent because of the protection offered by the apex court, there cannot be a greater vindication than the trial court finding evidence of rape and molestation. It has been their plaintive cry that the violence was orchestrated and targeted against women, who were subjected to gang rape and worse before being slaughtered. Violence against women is a pattern established over and over in anti-minority pogroms, and the judgment has done yeoman service in foregrounding this fact. Needless to say, the conviction is a huge setback to the Gujarat Chief Minister personally. The fact that Ms Kodnani led the Naroda killings was common knowledge, yet Mr. Modi made her a minister, even putting her in charge of ‘women and child development’ as if to thumb his nose at the victims. A bigger worry for Mr. Modi ought to be the establishment of conspiracy. The Chief Minister has maintained all along that the “riots” were a spontaneous act by crowds enraged by Godhra. It stretches credulity that Ms Kodnani could enter into a conspiracy with her co-accused without the government getting a whiff of the group’s criminal intentions and conduct, before, during and after the killing.

PREVENTING SECTARIAN VIOLENCE: ROLE OF STATE

Ram Puniyani
The horrific violence in Assam has once again brought our attention to the malaise of communal violence in India. In the recent times one has witnessed such a violence in parts of UP, (Kosi Kalan, Barailly, Pratapgarh) and also in Gopalgargh in Rajasthan. In most of these acts of violence one has to confront the reality that there is a lapse on the part of state, the police and civic administration, due to which the violence sustains itself after the initial spark has been thrown by someone. The present spate (July, 2012) of series of acts of violence reconfirms that there is a lack of accountability, there is state complicity and impunity due to which the innocents are done to death and the culprits generally get away.
As such communal violence is a multilayered phenomenon. The foundation of this phenomenon lies in the negative perceptions about the ‘others’, the prevalence of ‘social common sense’ about the minorities in particular. ‘They are invaders, more loyal to Pakistan, beef eaters, they convert by force fraud or allurement, they are infiltrators etc’ are a few from list of perceptions about minorities prevalent in our society and many firmly believe these to be true. These perceptions based on half truth are made to become part of social common sense, through various mechanisms. Noam Chomsky, while talking about such perceptions amongst the people shows how in United States, state gets popular sanction for its aggression on other countries, by ‘manufacturing the consent’ of the people all around. US state does it particularly through media. In case of social common sense in India, it is propagated by the dominant communal forces through the word of mouth, through media and through school books. This negative perception of ‘others’, in turn leads to a sort of hatred for the ‘other community’. The hate for other community is like an inflammable mindset, which gets sparked into communal violence either due to small accidents or due to the agenda of some political forces which get the violence orchestrated for communal polarization which helps them strengthen their political base.
The anatomy of riots in India so for is constituted by a complex mechanism. At the base of this mechanism is ‘hatred for others’. Then come, the communal forces which instigate violence through various mechanisms. At the same time the state looks the other way around or subtly or directly helps the rioters. In the aftermath of violence state, mostly does not do any justice to the victims. The further trajectory of the communal violence is the communal polarization, and ghettoizarion of minorities. All this has been so far been manifest in India, various inquiry commission reports have confirmed this observation time and over again. It is in this light that when the UPA came to power in 2004, one of the promises which it had given was to bring in a communal violence prevention bill to see that these irritants of our system are done away. The focus was that the role of different players in the phenomenon of violence is curtailed. Different players in this game leading to violence are communal organizations-their hate speech, the acts of commission of and omission of political leadership and the state machinery. The aim of the bill was to curb the culprits and to give security to the targeted groups, whatever be their religion. Finally the aim was, to give justice to the victims and to rehabilitate them as a matter of duty not as mere charity.
The UPA I got a bill in this direction, but it seemed that remedy it brought was worse than the disease. The proposed bill which was drafted further empowered that section who had been acting with complicity and impunity. When there was protest against the bill, it was stalled. Two major consultations were held by the civic society groups to press for the demand of a new bill to prevent communal violence. During UPA II, the Government gave the task of drafting the bill to National Advisory Committee, NAC. The NAC group on communal violence held consultations with the social activists working in the area of violence mitigation and in getting justice to the victims and also with the representatives of victim groups. They drafted the bill, ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011. Initially NAC group had asked for declaring the violence hit areas as disturbed areas, but this provision was withdrawn later due to the criticism of this provision. The bill identified the minorities as the targeted groups, and called for the National authority to oversee the proper implementation of the provisions for prevention and control of violence. The national authority was also to look after the justice and rehabilitation of the violence victims.
The draft bill submitted by NAC came under heavy criticism from BJP. The other parties also criticized the draft on the ground that it is one sided favoring the minorities. They also pointed out that the idea of the national authority will go contrary to the federal structure of the state, and provisions of reparations also came to be criticized as being paternalistic; stifling the rights of survivors. Later the UPA II tried to test the response to the bill from various quarters by putting it on the agenda of National Integration Council where again most of the parties criticized it, and only few members of NIC, who are working in the area of social harmony spoke for it. All said and done it seems the Government developed cold feet and seems to have put the draft bill in the deep freezer.
So, what will be the trajectory of communal violence prevention bill? More violence in Assam, UP, Rajasthan has already taken place and other new places may not be far off as the deeper causes of violence persist, the riot mechanism is very much in place and the political leadership is what it is, the bureaucratic and police machinery continues to be operating in the same way. So what’s the way out?
Many a social activists met again and put an appeal to draft and bring in a realistic law, which will address the deep and basic causes of continuing violence. The group felt that it is necessary to ensure establishment of command responsibility and the authorities should not get away for their lapses by pointing the finger to political leaderships instructions. Political leadership cannot escape its responsibility. Accountability of authorities should be non controversial core part of the legislation. Provisions for protection of women and children have to be given priority. After the violence an effective victim and witness protection provisions has to be put in place with activation of a suitable compensation-rehabilitation mechanism in the aftermath of violence. One must add, the violence is sparked off by Hate speech and rumors. Serious provisions are needed to punish hate speech.
So it’s time that UPA II shows its sincerity and revives the efforts to bring a violence prevention law, after the due procedure, letting Parliamentary committee examine it and put the modified draft to the parliament. It’s a mammoth task, but surely we keep facing humanitarian crisis of serious nature regularly due to the violence getting sparked time and over again. It’s time to get the wheels of making a law, moving to prevent-control violence and to give justice to the violence victims, which is overdue.

Muslims in India: Past and Present

Edited from book:
Hindu Chauvinism and Muslims in India
By Murtahin Billah Jasir Fazlie
1995

The Muslim community of India, with its major segment having indigenous Indian origin is more Indian then the descendants of Aryan invaders who had their origin somewhere in the Central Asia.

The Country and the People

India is the seventh largest country in the world, and the second largest in Asia. Before the advent of Muslims, the country was fragmented into small warring states and there was no concept of Indian nationalism. The Muslim rulers, especially the Mughals, unified the country and gave it a central administration. They called the country Hind and Hindustan, i.e. a country of the Hindus (non-Muslims). The name 'India', a distortion of Hind, was given to her by the British rulers. Before the establishment of Muslim rule, there was no history of India. People of particular locality recorded some events of certain rulers vaguely. The Muslims took special care to record historical events and appointed historians to do that job. The British administration reconstructed their accounts and gave the Hindus a history of the distinct past not without their self interest to play one community against the other.

In respect of population, India with about 900 million people, is second only to China. It is a country with people of multireligious, multilingual and multiethnic people. Because of the large variety of the ethnic origin of her people, the country is often called an ethnic museum. The racial groups include the adi vasis (original settlers), the Dravidans, the Aryans, the Semites and the Mongols.[1] There are 845 dialects and 225 distinct languages spoken in the country.[2] Hindi, the language of the cow-belt region of the north, is the official language of the country but there are several others which are recognized as state languages. Sanskrit, though a dead language not spoken by anybody, is also recognized by the Indian Constitution because it is the religious language of the Aryan Hindus.

The main religious communities of India are Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians. These groups are divided into two broad groups: Hindus and non-Hindus. Among the non-Hindu population, the Muslims are 11.19 percent, the Christians 2.16 percent, the Sikhs 1.67 percent and the Buddhists and the Jains 1.14 percent.[3] These non-Hindu communities together make 16.16 percent of the total population. The Muslims are the second largest religious community.

The Hindus are broadly divided into two groups, namely, high caste Hindus- descendants of the Aryan invaders, known as Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas- and low caste Hindus, the original inhabitants of India (Shudras, Dalits, Other Backward Castes and Tribesmen). Among the low caste Hindus, Dalits are 15.05 percent, Backward Castes (including Shudra) 43.70 percent and Tribesmen 7.51 percent. In fact, these groups who together make 66.26 percent of the total population are not Hindus. Only the high caste Hindus (those who are Aryans by race) are Hindus. M.K. Gandhi says, "Hindus (Aryan high caste Hindus) are not considered to be original inhabitants of India."[4] For this very reason, no member of the low caste Hindu is allowed to enter a Hindu temple, join the high caste Hindus in worshipping their gods or even mix with them in social life. The religious activities, rituals, way of social and economic life of the low caste Hindus are completely different from those of the caste Hindus and are permanently determined by the rules and codes prepared by the Brahmins in the name of religion.

Hindu is a Persian word[5] which was first used by the Muslims for all the non-Muslim inhabitants of India. "The Hindus never used it in any Sanskrit writing, that is those which were written before the Mohamedan[6] invasion."[7] Swamy Dharma Theertha says, "The Mohammadans called all the non-Muslim inhabitants, without any discrimination, by the common name 'Hindu', which practically meant non-Muslims and nothing more. This simple fact contributed to the unification of India more than any other single event, but also at the same time, condemned the dumb millions (low caste Hindus) of the country to perpetual subjection to their priestly exploiters. Indians became 'Hindus', their religion became 'Hinduism' and Brahmans their masters."[8]

India was under the rule of different nations from time to time. The Aryan invaders conquered the sub-continent in about 1500 B.C. and remained in power for about one thousand years. This foreign minority subjugated the indigenous peoples through the most barbaric and demoralizing practices. They compelled and conditioned these peoples to ready submission to the ethics and laws of the Hindu caste system and thus, in the name of Dharma (Religion), they made a permanent arrangement for denying the indigenous peoples human dignity. The first revolt against the Aryan tyranny and oppression came about in the form of Buddhism founded by Goutom Buddha. The Buddhist rule was established in 500 B.C. and continued up to 800 A.D. The Muslim rule was initiated by the conquest of Sind in 713 A.D. by Muhammad Ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi and ended in 1858 A.D. when the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah, was deposed by the British colonial power. The British rule came to an end in 1947 A.D., with the partition of the sub-continent which gave way to the emergence of two independent states, namely, India and Pakistan.

The Muslims

The Muslims of India, over 120 million, constitute about 12 percent of the total population and are the second largest religious community in the country. They are about 10 percent of the total Muslim population of the world and are nearly one third of the total Muslim minority population in the world.[9] India has the largest concentration of the Muslims outside the member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the second largest (after Indonesia) in the world.

The Muslim immigrants, mostly Arabs, Turks, Afghans and Mughals, made the sub-continent their own homeland. Scattered in different cities, towns and villages, they became indistinguishable from the original inhabitants of India. The Muslim scholars and religious leaders propagated Islam among the original inhabitants and a large number of them converted to Islam. The vast majority of the present-day Indian Muslims are the descendants of these converts. It is therefore not correct to say that Indian Muslims are not Indian but outsiders as it is wrong to say that they are all descendants of the converted Muslims. As far as the question of Indian origin is concerned, there is no difference between the descendants of the Aryan invaders (Brahmins, Kshatryas, Vaishyas) and the offsprings of the Muslim immigrants. In fact, the Muslim community of India, with its major segment having indigenous Indian origin, is more Indian than the descendants of the Aryan immigrants who had their origin somewhere in the Central Asia.

The Muslim Rule

The invasion of Sind by Muhammad Ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi in 713 A.D. was precipitated by the failure of Dahir, the ruler of Sind, to punish the pirates who had interfered with Muslim shipping near the coast of his province.[10] The Muslim kings and emperors who ruled over India for over one thousand years were not colonial rulers. Those who had gone there from other countries made the sub-continent their own home. They did not make any discrimination between religious communities but gave equal opportunity and ensured social justice to all irrespective of their religious affinity. In fact, the Muslim rulers-the Khaljis, the Lodis, the Syeds and the Mughals- kept the indigenous Muslims, who constituted the bulk of Indian Muslims, at a safe distance from the apparatus of power. In the words of Iqbal Ansari, "It is the greatest travesty of facts to call this period of dynastic rule of Persian and Turkish origin as Muslim rule. Islam did make its presence felt during this period on Indian social and cultural life. But Islam did not play a dominant role in statecraft. The conquest of India by Islam was again not on the agenda of the Muslim kings. Islam and its promotion was not even a major factor in state policies."[11] This is well-established by the fact that although Delhi remained the capital of Muslim rulers for 647 years (1211-1858 A.D.), the Muslims were a small minority there throughout the period. According to the 1971 census, the Muslims of Delhi constituted only 7.8 percent of the total population of the city.[12] The bulk of the indigenous converted Muslims- artisans, craftsmen, and tillers- did not enjoy any privilege under the system of Muslim rule. Rather high caste groups from among Hindus enjoyed greater privileges under the patronage of the Muslim monarchies. In many cases, the most important jobs like those of ministers and chiefs of army were given to non-Muslims, especially Hindus.

During Muslim rule, there was complete social peace and harmony all over the country. This is aptly proved by the fact that history fails to produce even a single instance of communal disturbance which took place during the period of Muslim rule. Communal disturbance is a phenomenon which came to be known in the sub-continent only during the British rule. This menace has emanated from the 'divide and rule' policy of the British colonial power.

The British Rule

The process of colonization of India by the British colonial power began in 1757 AD. with the downfall of Siraj-ud-Dowla, the ruler of Bengal. This was the outcome of a staged drama, known as the Battle of Plassey, where the main actors were the British East India Company, a group of Hindu aristocracy and their stooge, named, Mir Ja'far (commander-in-chief of the government army). The British emperor took up the reign of the sub-continent in 1858 AD. following the abortive revolution of 1857 led by the Muslims against the colonial forces. The new colonial power regarded the Muslims as a potential threat to their political power as it were the. Muslims from whom they had snatched the power. The Muslims, naturally, were hostile to the alien rule and showed their apathy to the new administration. The Hindus, on the other hand, welcomed the new masters, began flirting with them and reoriented themselves with the blessing and sympathy of the ruling class.

From the very beginning therefore the foreign rulers adopted a discriminatory policy, hostile towards the Muslims and sympathetic towards the Hindus. The privileges earlier enjoyed by the Muslims in terms of property rights, etc., were withdrawn, government jobs were denied to them and trade facilities were made restricted for them. They remained backward also in education as they did not like to accept the new education system to the detriment of the traditional one. All these factors combined together relegated them to a lower cadre in the new social order of the country. The pioneer role played by the Muslims in the struggles waged from time to time against the colonial rule made the government more and more anti-Muslim.

The Hindus, especially the Brahmins, readily cooperated with the new rulers and did not fail to seize any opportunity to upgrade their status in every sphere of life. It did not take much time for them to become dominant in various spheres of the society. The spread of education gradually made a new renaissance movement started in the Hindu community who had made a lot of progress in the areas of education, trade and commerce. When the Muslims realized that their noncooperation with the new administration was only adding to their miseries and backwardness, it was too late and they were much behind the conscious Hindu community.

As a part of their 'divide and rule' policy, the colonial power tried to instill communal feelings among the two major communities, Hindus and Muslims. As a result of this, it did not take much time for parochialism and anti-Muslim feelings to overtake the Hindu leaders. Gradually, they became so communal in their attitude and behavior that it became clear to the Muslim leadership that in a united independent India dominated by Hindu majority, the religion and culture of the Muslims would be in jeopardy and socially and economically they would be relegated to a level of second-class citizens. This feeling among the Muslims led to the demand for separate independent states for Muslims constituting the areas where they were in majority. However, a section of Muslim leaders were against the partition of the sub-continent, may be, keeping In view the fate of the Muslims who would remain within Indian territory. Among them was a towering figure like Moulana Abul Kalam Azad who was among the top-ranking leaders of the Congress Party. Another eminent Muslim scholar and freedomfighter, Moulana Husain Ahmad Madani, the then President of Jami'at Ulama Hind, was among them. They decided to throw the lots of the Muslims with the Hindus expecting that in course of time sanity and reason would prevail upon the latter. In apprehension of the far-reaching consequences of the partition of the sub-continent, Moulana Azad put forward his formula of federated India, but it was outrightly rejected by Jawaharlal Nehru (leader of the Indian Congress), although it was acceptable to Muhammad Au Jinnah (leader of the Muslim League).

The Partition

In the wake of the partition of the sub-continent in 1947, which led to the creation of Pakistan an India, hundreds of thousands of Indian Muslims lost their lives and property in the hands of Hindu hooligans. The educated Muslim middle classes migrated in large number to Pakistan. The migration of a major portion of the elite to Pakistan created a large vacuum in the leadership of the Indian Muslims. The vast majority of them who could not forsake their ancestral homes, became weak in the economic, political, social and cultural arenas. Moreover, the Hindu chauvinists made it a fashion not only to question their patriotism and loyalty to the state but also to dub them as agents of Pakistan. The Muslims were constantly under pressure to prove their patriotism, as if they were new settlers in India.

Having developed India for about a millennium side by side with other communities, now the Indian Muslims discovered in agony that they had been made strangers in their own country. In the medieval period, particularly the Mughal era, they forged a united India and made it the biggest world power of the time. They made significant contribution to enrich Indian culture and civilization. They initiated freedom movement, fought the British and made immense sacrifices until the freedom was achieved. Just having won the battle for long-cherished independence they, to their dismay, found themselves in a situation forcing them either to shed their cultural identity or leave the country. It is indeed difficult to conceive such a human tragedy!

Discriminatory Policy of the Government

Since the dawn of independence, the Government of India dominated by the Aryan Brahmins, adopted discriminatory measures against the Muslims. The Constitution of India, drafted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, guarantees fundamental rights to all communities of India. Article 15(1) says, 'The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them." The records of the Central and State Governments during the last half a century of independence aptly prove that the constitutional provisions have been honoured more by their violation than by their observance. That the Hindu leaders were not sincere in giving fundamental rights to the non-Hindus was evident from the fact that no sooner had these and other rights been given than checks and obstacles were created through the Directive Principle added to the Constitution. The Directive Principle says that Government will strive for 'National Integration' and for which a common Civil Code will be adopted. This Civil Code meant only Hindu Code as it became evident from various acts of the Government. In other word, to the non-Hindu communities, the Common Civil Code meant only a measure for Hinduaisation of all the citizens of the country.

It is a well-known fact that the Indian Muslims are being systematically and increasingly marginalized in their own homeland. Soon after the independence, various states and territories were reorganized splitting the minority dominated areas in parts and absorbing them in different states with a view to reducing their influence and making it difficult for them to win in any election. In an effort to further reduce their political strength, the names of Muslims are sometime deleted from the electoral rolls. The names of 138,000 Muslim voters, for example, were deleted from the electoral rolls prepared in Hyderabad and Sekanderabad for the election of December, 1994[13] Deliberate and concerted efforts are being made to change the composition of population in areas where non Hindus, especially Muslims, are in majority. As a result of this policy, the Sikhs in the Punjab have been relegated from absolute to a simple majority status only with a slight margin (52 percent of the total population). In Jammu and Kashmir, the only state where Muslims are in majority, there has been a continuous fall in the Muslim population and simultaneous rise a the non-Muslim population. The percentage of Muslims in that state fell from 70 in 1951 to 62 in 1991.[14] If this trend continues for a few decades more, the Muslims of the State of Jammu and Kashmir may be reduced to a minority community.

India is a vocal advocate of secularism but nowhere else in the world secularism was so blatantly betrayed. It was expected that in an independent India, Hindu fanaticism will completely evaporate. Long before independence, Moulana Azad said, "I firmly hold that it (communal frenzy) will disappear when India assumes the responsibility of her own destiny."[15] In so-called secular India, Azad's hope was not only belied but Hindu fanaticism gained enormous strength and that also under the direct patronage of the government. The Congress party, which ruled India for over four decades, instead of making any effort to contain Hindu fundamentalism, did everything for its nourishment. Just after becoming the first President of independent India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad removed from the Rashtrapati Bhavan (President's House) all the Muslims who were working there. There are thousands of examples which show how secularism is being betrayed in India. Secularism was betrayed by the federal government by covertly becoming a party to the demolition of the Babari Masjid. Secularism was betrayed by the Bombay police by openly participating in the killing of thousands of Muslims in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babari Masjid. The jails of Bombay are still packed with scores of innocent Muslims rounded up in the wake of the blast (12 March, 1993) but not a single brute involved in the massacre of the Muslims was brought to book. Those who are held under the notorious Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) are 90 percent Muslims, although the Muslims constitute only over 12 percent of the total population of the country. The instances of how the Muslims have been made target of all kinds of discrimination and subject of perennial persecution are endless. These all have resulted in a process whereby the Indian Muslims are fast moving towards ruination culturally, educationally, economically, socially and politically.

Socio-Economic Conditions

The socio-economic conditions of the Muslim community of India present a dismal picture. The Muslims are deprived of due representation in public employment even at the lowest level. The Public Service Commission has fixed 200 marks for the viva test. The Muslim candidates who qualify the written tests lose badly in viva. In the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) caamination of 1993, for instance, only 20 out of 789 Muslim candidates were successful. This comes to only 2.5 percent of the total number of candidates who qualified in the examination.[16] In this way, the representation of the Muslims in various Ministries is approaching to zero. The number of Muslims in class I and II jobs in various Ministries of the Central Government was 677 as against a total of 39,375 on 31 March 1971.[17] This comes to only 1.7 percent, although the Muslims constitute 12 per cent of the population of the country. The representation of the Muslims in the Parliament showed a downward trend. While their representation in the Parliament was 9.26 percent (73 among a total of 788) in 1982 election, it came down to 6.20 per cent (49 among a total of 790) in 1991 election. Moreover, the number of states with zero Muslim representation increased from 10 in 1982 to 14 in 1991.[18]

Muslims are also denied equal opportunity in the private sector. Their representation is indeed very poor in the law and order machinery, whether state police, armed constabulary or central para-military and armed forces. Minority educational iutitutions, especially those run by the Muslims, are facing various types of constraints and impediments. Minority concentration areas are neglected by the government in respect of establishing educational institutions. As a result, the literacy level of the Muslim community is much below the average level of India (among men 18 percent against the country's average of 51 percent and among women less than 8 percent). The school enrolment level of the Muslim children is also very low. Because of the hurdles at the lower level of education, the share of Muslim students at higher and professional level is also much below the national level of India.

In 'secular' India, schools and other educational institutions are being systematically Hinduised. Hindu culture incorporating glorification of idol-worship and stories of Hindu mythological characters form part of the syllabus pursued at various schools. References to Hindu gods and goddesses abound in the text books. Books prescribed by the Education Boards contain lessons giving false stories of Muslim atrocities on Hindu women, kidnapping, forced conversion, etc. Children are taught to worship Hindu gods and idols. Recently, the BJP Government of Delhi has issued instructions to the schools to begin daily activity with collective singing of Vande Matram of Bankim Chaterjee. Singing this song is tantamount to worshipping the motherland, and therefore against the basic tenets of Islam.[19] In the name of promoting common culture, the government is pursuing a policy of instilling Hindu idolatry and paganism among the children irrespective of their religion. The Muslims are discouraged and sometime denied to observe their religious duty. The government has recently decided not to allow the Muslim soldiers an hour's absence for observing Friday prayer.[20]

The Muslims have established some educational institutions in an effort to keep their children away from idolatry and paganism. But a condition is imposed on these institutions that 50 percent of the total intake in them shall be permitted to be filled by candidates selected by the agencies of the State Government on the basis of a competitive examination. Urdu is the language of about 62 per cent of the Indian Muslims and has the richest Islamic literature among Indian languages in all fields of learning. As a part of their efforts to obliterate the cultural entity of the Muslims, both the Central Government and the Governments of the States seem to do whatever is possible to strangle this language and deny it all opportunities of existence and growth. It is virtually banished from all the schools run by the Government.

The decennial censuses or the national sample surveys do not generally address themselves to the living conditions of the Muslims. The socio-economic plight of the Indian Muslims therefore remain clouded in mystery. It is, however, never disputed that the Muslims are not better than the Dalits (Harijans) or the OBC (Other Backward Castes). As V.T. Rajshekar observes, the Muslims of India "are in many ways worse than Untouchables and in recent years they are facing dangers of mass annihilation."[21] The National Sample Survey Report of 1988,[22] presents some data about the socio-economic conditions of the Indian Muslims.

• 52.3 percent of Muslims live below poverty line with a monthly income of Indian Rupees 150 (US$ 5) or less.
• 50.5 percent are illiterate.
• Only 4 percent of Indians who receive education up to high school are Muslims.
• Only 1.6 percent of Indian college graduates are Muslims.
• Only 4.4 percent of Indians in government jobs are Muslims.
• Only 3.7 percent of Indians who receive financial assistance from the government for starting business are Muslims.
• Only 5 percent of Indians who receive loan from government-owned banks are Muslims.
• Only 2 percent of Indians who receive institutional loans from the government are Muslims.

Awqaf (endowment) properties worth millions of dollars, dedicated by the Muslim philanthropists for some specific purposes and objectives, are now given to the Waqf Boards which are constituted by the Governments of the States and the Central Government. The members of these boards are nominated on the basis of political consideration. A large portion of these properties is misused by the members and officials of the boards. Moreover, very significant portion of these properties is allowed to be misappropriated and occupied by the Hindus [23]

The Muslims are not only deprived of their legitimate rights in all spheres, whatever they could build up to sustain their lives is also destroyed and plundered during the riots which take place now and then as per the long-term plan of the Hindu communal organizations working for annihilation of the Muslim entity in India.

Communal Riots

Nowhere in the world other than India the life and property of a particular community (Muslims) is so insecure only because of its affinity with a particular religion (Islam). The Indian Muslims are persistently under persecution and harassment only because they are Muslims. Communal riot, which started in India after the establishment of the Rashtriya Swaywak Sangh (RSS) in 1926, has become a regular phenomenon in Indian society. According to the Home Ministry, Government of India, there were 13,356 serious anti-Muslim riots in 39 years between 1954 and 1992; that is almost one riot daily.[24] As J.B. D'Souza observes, "It is a matter of shame that in these 47 years [of independence] we have lost in communal riots many times the number of lives lost in the 150 years when the British ruled us and we accused them of a divide and rule policy." [25]

   

The incidents of communal disturbance flare up sometimes on flimsy grounds and mostly according as the communal forces of Hindu chauvinists wish to organize it in pursuance of their long-term plan deliberately chalked out for annihilation of the Muslims. Communal riot in India is a one-way traffic not only because of a 7:1 Hindu-Muslim ratio, but also because of the active participation of the forces of law and order (almost all non-Muslims) with their co-religionists in accomplishing their heinous act of butchering the innocent and unarmed Muslims and also in plundering their property. This is a unique phenomenon with the Government of India where security forces deployed officially to protect the victims of hooliganism actively cooperate with the hooligans in carrying on their odious aimes and that also very much with the full knowledge and logistic support of the government. It is doubtful if there exists any single example of such an organized hooliganism in the civilized world.

During the riots that took place in Meerut in 1987, UP's Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) exposed its brutality of killing the innocent Muslims in the ugliest form. They picked up the young Muslim boys from their houses, packed them in jeeps and buses, took them outside the city, gunned them down and threw the dead bodies into the nearby river. In Muradabad in 1980, the PAC opened fire on the Muslims who had assembled to celebrate Eid festival and perform their Eid Prayer collectively. During the riots that took place in Ahmadabad more people were burnt alive than died of stabbing. They were burnt not because they were caught in fire. The technique was to set fire to a group of houses belonging to the Muslims and as men, women and children rushed out, they were caught hold of, their hands and feet were tied, then they were thrown into the fere.[26] In these incidents, the leading role was played by the police

The recent major communal riot which resulted in the holocaust of thousands of Muslims took place in Bombay in January 1993 in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babari Masjid on 6 December, 1992. Here are some excerpts from the news papers:

"Bombay: Day after day after day, for nine days and nights beginning on January 6, mobs of Hindus rampaged through this city, killing and burning people only because they were Muslims. No Muslim was safe - not in the slums, not in high-rise apartments, not in the citys bustling offices - in an orgy of violence that left 600 people dead and 2,000 injured... Interviews have suggested, moreover, that the killing, arson and looting were far from random. In fact, they were organized by Hindu gangs, abetted by the Bombay police, and directed at Muslim families and businesses. The extent of police cooperation with the Hindu mobs appears to have spread through the entire police force, excluding only the most senior officers. Transcripts of conversations between the police control room and officers on the street... made available to the New York Times... show that the officers at police headquarters repeatedly told constables in the field to allow Muslim homes to burn and to prevent aid from reaching victims. Throughout the nine days of rioting...neither the Maharashtra authorities nor the central Government in New Delhi made any effort to stanch the flow of blood." (New York Times, Feb. 4, 1993)

"Tragedy has struck Surat (Muslim) women.., for them, it was hell let loose... While men were thrown into bonfires, torched alive or had burning tyres put around their necks, women were stripped of all their clothes and ordered to 'run till they can't. run'. As the naked women ran for their lives, with shivering and shuddering children clinging to them, the ancient game of tripping horses was played out... so that women would trip and fall down, becoming easy prey for the hoodlums. A 20-year old girl married recently.. was also gang-raped. Her husband was slaughtered in front of her. She is now struggling for life following an 'acid attack' on her body... Perhaps the plight of Jamila Banu, who is several months pregnant, is the most tragic of all. Having seen her husband and three children slaughtered in front of her own eyes and their bodies hurled into bonfire, she has lost her mental balance. She was amongst several women who were brought to the camp totally naked... she has not opened her eyes in the last five days." (The Times of India, 22 December, 1992)

In almost all the riots that has taken place in India, the police became a party in the orgy of murder, maiming, torturing, mutilating, raping, destruction, arson and plundering. At every riot, it is customary to surround the Muslim areas and pockets and take away licensed guns and even the appliances used in the kitchen from the Muslims but leave the Hindu areas free to move about. Mass arrest of Muslims follow every riot. Muslim leaders are not allowed to visit the place till the traces of atrocities are removed. Another peculiar policy of the government is that instead of taking the hooligans to book, the innocent youths belonging to the Muslim community are arrested and harassed in an effort to clean (?) the society from hooliganism and terrorism! In the Bhiwandi riot in 1970, for example, 17 Hindus and 59 Muslims were killed. But the police arrested only 21 Hindus and 901 Muslims.[27] For obvious reason, almost all the victims of communal disturbances are Muslims, although the media almost entirely controlled by the Brahminic communal elements present such incidents in a grossly distorted manner. As Iqbal Ansari observes, "The worst aspect of communal violence is that in most cases the victims are absolutely innocent people. They are subjected to violence and cruelty just because they happen to belong to a particular community, and because they are mostly weak and unprotected members of the community. It would be admitted that this is worse than bloodshed in wars between nations, where war objectives are defined and rules of the game are known. Whenever there are violations of the rules, voices are raised asking combatants to adhere to the rules. ...But as in a nuclear war, there are no victors or vanquished after the devastation of a communal carnage."[28]

Indian Muslims, deprived of their democratic rights and social justice, make their own efforts to improve their living conditions but they are often frustrated in these attempts by the brute forces of Hindu fanaticism, who always want to see that Muslims do not cross the barrier of economic and social backwardness. Government machinery, instead of assisting them in their attempts to attain economic progress, often puts snags on their way. The residential houses and commercial establishments built by the Muslims are demolished either by the communal forces or by the government machinery in the name of enforcing law. Obviously the purpose of all these is to retard their progress and development. A recent example of such a nefarious and cruel action was the demolition of 20 multi-storeyed commercial complexes in Miralam at the outskirts of Hyderabad. The buildings constructed by the local Muslims after attaining proper permission from the municipality were reduced to rubble using heavy duty bulldozers even without issuing any notice to their owners. The action was reportedly taken by the municipality on the instruction of the State Government in line with its policy of uprooting the new Muslim settlements in the area.[29]

Question of Survival

Hindu fundamentalism is increasingly widening its influence everywhere and has already established for itself a firm base in every sector of the Indian society including bureaucracy, media, educational institutions, and the like. The hate campaign unleashed by the fundamentalist forces is keeping the Muslims wholly preoccupied with defending their basic human rights and cultural identity, leaving little time for them to work for upliftment of their social status and improvement of their standard of living. Under these circumstances, their social and economic conditions are deteriorating day by day.

During eighties, Hindu chauvinism in the name of Hindutva assumed a dangerous proportion. This ominous development has posed a great threat to the Indian Muslims because so-called Hindutva movement is expressly and singularly directed against their interests, against their religion, against their culture and against their very existence as a distinct community. The demolition of their historic shrine (Babari Masjid) in 1992 did not blunt the edge of Hindu chauvinism. The avowed mission of Hindu chauvinists is to make India an abode for Hindus and only Hindus. All their programmes are geared to annihilate the Muslims, the significant non-Hindu community. They are very systematically working according to a long-term but subtle plan to wipe out every trace of Islam from the body of Indian society as the first step towards establishing what they call 'Hindu Rajya' or 'Ramrajya'.

References:

1. For details, see Khushwant Singh, India. An Introduction, Bombay, 1990, p.14.

2. Ibid.

3. The Economist, London, 8 June, 1991.

4. M.K. Gandhi, Hindu Dharma, Bombay, 1991, p. 33.

5. H.G. Rawlinson, Intercourse Between India and the Western World, Cambridge, 1926, fn. 1, p.20.

6. "There is no such thing as 'Mohamedanism', and no such thing as a 'Mohamedan'. The name is Islam and its followers are Muslims." See Ahmed Deedat, The Choice, Verulam, South Africa, 1993, p.175.

7. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. ed., James Hastings, vol. VI, Edinburgh, 1967, p. 699.

8. Swami Dharma Theertha, History of Hindu Imperialism, Madras, 1992, p. 115.

9. Ausaf Ahmad, Indian Muslims. Issues in Social & Economic Development, New Delhi, 1993, p. 1.

10. Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. VII, Netherlands, 1991, p. 405.

11. Iqbal A. Ansari, The Muslim Situation in India, New Delhi, 1989, p.12.

12. Ausaf Ahmad, op. cit., p. 22.

13. Arab News, 15 November, 1994.

14. Muslim India, March, 1994.

15. Saudi Gazette, 3 November, 1994.

16. News from India, 25 July, 1994.

17. Indian Muslim Relief Committee, Victims of Indian Secularism London, 1981, p.61.

18. Ausaf Ahmad, op. cit., pp. 27-29.

19. A Muslim worships Allah and only Allah, his Creator and Sustainer. Worshipping anything else takes him beyond the limits set by Islam.

20. This decision has been issued in a letter of the Ministry of Defence bearing No. 85347 (R.G.-5(COV)C) dated 25 April, 1994. See Urdu Gazette, Jeddah, 15 June, 1994.

21. V.T, Rajshekar, Indian Muslim Problem, Bangalore, 1993, p.ii.

22. Amrit Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 11 May, 1994 and Muslim India, January, 1994.

23. Indian Muslim Relief Committee, op. cit., p.80.

24. India Human Rights International, Muslims in India, U.S.A., November, 1993.

25. The Times of India, 8 April, 1994.

26. Patriot, 28 August, 1969.

27. The Times of India, 8 April, 1994.

28. Ansari, op. cit., p.187.

29. Saudi Gazette, 8 July, 1994.



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