[Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'

[taraprakash]

Hi Naeem and all.
I don't think I will stop caring about India if I get a scholarship to 
Australia. I am in  the US for sometime and the incidents in the 
subcontinent still interest as much, if not more, as they would if I was in 
India. I also agree that Asra has as much right to talk about India, even if 
exclusively about Muslims as has anyone else. You don't have to belong to 
that country to have an interest in that country, so many people are 
interested in Pakistan from other countries. That interest is negative in 
nature and that same negative interest reflects in Asra's writ-up.
It is not apartheid like situation in India. Muslims are not treated the way 
Dalits still are in some places. So they are not untouchables in any sense. 
A Muslim Bengali is more likely to get a job in a Hindu Bengali's place than 
a Hindu Bihari. Raj Thakure in Bombay is not bothered by Muslims if they 
speak Marathi as he is bothered by Hindus who don't speak Marathi. Bihari 
ministers do prefer Bihari, even if Muslims, than they would a Tamilian. I 
really dislike the way the current discourse monolithicize Hindus and 
Muslims in India.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Naeem Mohaiemen" <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
Cc: "taraprakash" <taraprakash at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'


> Taraprakash
> It's a fair point that perhaps these gruesome attacks are not the best
> context to talk about Sacchar Commission. By the way I have been long
> advocating a Saccar style report on condition of Bangladeshi Hindus, I
> suspect we will see similar results (although the absolute number of
> Hindu population is lower).
>
> But, one question: Is it fair to debunk Asra by pinching her about
> living in the US. Also, is it fair to say, she should only focus on US
> issues? People have multiple homes, and multiple locales of caring. If
> tomorrow you got a scholarship to Australia, would you stop caring
> about India?
>
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:30 AM, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Oh yes this is the season for the sale of such publicity seeking 
>> articles.
>> And those settled in the US are going to get so much more publicity for
>> writing what looks different. Isn't this author suggesting that this
>> gruesome incidents can be avoided if the Muslims in India are educated,
>> brought out of Madrasas to "mainstream" schools, given employment?
>> Such comments will actually hurt the Muslims in India more than it will 
>> do
>> any good anywhere. Majority of Muslims know that this incident has 
>> nothing
>> to do with how Muslmis are treated/mistreated in India. The Hindu
>> fundmentalists will use such articles to spread more hatred against 
>> Muslims.
>> it is fashionable to abuse ones own country in the US. Recently a Sikh 
>> woman
>> contesting for the Senate for Republican party said, "I belong to India. 
>> I
>> was a minority and you know minorities cannot go out of their houses 
>> without
>> being given an ugly look" And this woman had seen nothing of 1984. She 
>> had
>> left India in late 60's.
>>
>> Sacchar committee's report deserves serious attention and affirmative
>> action. But is fair to talk about it in the light of this gruesome 
>> attack?
>> My answer, even that of the majority Muslims, is no. They might actually
>> tell her, hey miss. It may be fun in the US; and you may not like in 
>> India
>> anymore but to us it isn't that bad. Even if it is, we have our own 
>> voices.
>> If you really want to improve the lot of Muslims throughout the world, 
>> try
>> to influence the country which is yours now. Muslims are much more
>> comfortable in India than they are in the US. They are happier with India
>> much more than they are with the US.
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Naeem Mohaiemen"
>> <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
>> To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
>> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 9:25 PM
>> Subject: [Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
>>
>>
>>> Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
>>> The condition of the country's Muslims has deteriorated, and the world
>>> has overlooked the nation's problems.
>>>
>>> By Asra Q. Nomani
>>> December 1, 2008
>>>
>>> The news of the attacks in Mumbai eerily took me back to a quiet
>>> morning two years ago when I sat in Room 721 of the Taj Mahal Palace &
>>> Tower hotel, reading the morning newspaper, fearing just the kind of
>>> violence that has now exploded in the city of my birth. The headlines
>>> recounted how the socioeconomic condition of the people of my
>>> ancestry, Muslims in India, had fallen below that of the Hindu caste
>>> traditionally called "untouchables," according to a government report.
>>>
>>> "Muslims are India's new untouchables," I said sadly to my mother, in
>>> the room with me. "India is going to explode if it doesn't take care
>>> of them." Now, indeed, alas it has. And shattered in the process is
>>> the myth of India's thriving secular democracy.
>>>
>>> Mumbai police said over the weekend that the only gunman they'd
>>> captured during the attacks -- which left nearly 200 dead and more
>>> than 300 wounded -- claimed to belong to a Pakistani militant group.
>>> But even if the trouble was imported, the violence will most certainly
>>> turn a spotlight of suspicion on Muslims in India. Already, my
>>> relatives are hunkered down for a sectarian backlash they expect from
>>> anti-terrorism agencies, police and angry Hindu fundamentalists.
>>>
>>> India, long championed as a model of pluralism, used to be an example
>>> of how Muslims can coexist and thrive even as a minority population.
>>> My extended family prospered as part of an educated, middle class. My
>>> parents, who settled in the United States in the 1960s when my father
>>> pursued a doctorate at Rutgers University, were part of India's
>>> successful diaspora. I love India, and on that trip, I wanted to show
>>> it off to my son, Shibli, then age 4.
>>>
>>> But on that visit, across India from Mumbai to the southern state of
>>> Tamil Nadu and north to Lucknow, the hub of Muslim culture, I was
>>> deeply saddened. Talking to vegetable vendors, artisans and
>>> businessmen, I heard about how the condition of Muslims had
>>> deteriorated. They had become largely disenfranchised, poor, jobless
>>> and uneducated. Their tales echoed those I'd heard on previous trips,
>>> when my extended family recounted their humiliating experiences with
>>> bureaucratic, housing, job and educational discrimination.
>>>
>>> Indeed, the government report I read about in the newspapers two years
>>> ago acknowledged that Muslims in India had become "backward." "Fearing
>>> for their security," the report said, "Muslims are increasingly
>>> resorting to living in ghettos around the country." Branding of
>>> Muslims as anti-national, terrorists and agents of Pakistan "has a
>>> depressing effect on their p syche," the report said, noting Muslims
>>> live in "a sense of despair and suspicion."
>>>
>>> According to the report, produced by a committee led by a former
>>> Indian chief justice, Rajender Sachar, Muslims were now worse off than
>>> the Dalit caste, or those called untouchables.
>>>
>>> Some 52% of Muslim men were unemployed, compared with 47% of Dalit men.
>>>
>>> Among Muslim women, 91% were unemployed, compared with 77% of Dalit 
>>> women.
>>>
>>> Almost half of Muslims over the age of 46 couldn't read or write.
>>>
>>> While making up 11% of the population, Muslims accounted for 40% of
>>> India's prison population.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, they held less than 5% of government jobs.
>>>
>>> The Sachar committee report recommended creating a commission to
>>> remedy the systemic discrimination and promote affirmative-action
>>> programs. So far, very few of the recommendations have been put in
>>> place.
>>>
>>> Since reading the report, I have feared that Islamic militancy would
>>> be born out of such despair. Even if last week's terrorist plot was
>>> hatched outside India, a cycle of sectarian violence could break out
>>> in the country and push some disenfranchised Muslim youth to join
>>> militant groups using hot-button issues like Israel and Kashmir as
>>> inspiration.
>>>
>>> What has irked me these last years is how the world has glossed over
>>> India's problems. In 2006, for instance, former U.S. Defense Secretary
>>> William Cohen, whose Cohen Group invests heavily in India, said the
>>> U.S. and India were "perfect partners" because of their "multiethnic
>>> and secular democracies." When I asked to interview Cohen about the
>>> socioeconomic condition of Muslims, his public relations staffer said
>>> that conversation was too "in the weeds." But, to me, the condition of
>>> Muslims needs frank and open discussion if there is to be any hope of
>>> stemming Islamic radicalism and realizing true secular democracy in
>>> the country.
>>>
>>> India's 150 million Muslims represent the second-largest Muslim
>>> population in the world, smaller only than Indonesia's 190 million
>>> Muslims. That is just bigger than Pakistan's 140 million Muslims or
>>> the entire population of Arab Muslims, which numbers about 140
>>> million. U.S. intelligence reports continually warn that economic,
>>> social and political discontent are catalysts for radicalism, so we
>>> would be naive to continue to ignore this potential threat to the
>>> national security of not just India but the United States.
>>>
>>> Throughout my 2006 journey, I found the idea of India's potential for
>>> danger unavoidable. On one leg, my son tucked safely in bed with my
>>> mother in our Taj hotel room, I went out to watch the filming of "A
>>> Mighty Heart," the movie about the murder of Wall Street Journal
>>> reporter Daniel Pearl by Muslim militants in Pakistan. When the
>>> location scouts needed to replicate the treacherous streets of
>>> Karachi's militant Islamist culture, they didn't have to go far. They
>>> found the perfect spot in a poor Muslim neighborhood of Mumbai.
>>>
>>> Asra Q. Nomani is the author of "Standing Alone: An American Woman's
>>> Struggle for the Soul of Islam."
>>>
>>>
>>> Please click the following link and read the comments on above article:
>>>
>>> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oew-nom1-2008dec01,0,2169717.graffitiboard
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