Category: Enough said

Categories
Enough said

As the New Year begins…

We bid adieu to a horrifying year of hate and violence, and say a fond farewell to two trailblazing Indians.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

I bid adieu to 2014 with a shudder and a prayer on my lips. The year started well enough, but soon spiralled out of control, with killings and violence in India and all over the world.

I am also saddened by the loss of two prominent personalities in Delhi who recently passed away. One was Saiyad Hamid, a retired civil servant of the UP cadre, and the other was journalist and writer BG Verghese.

Speaking of Saiyad – he was unlike other sarkari Mussalmaans. He will always be remembered for his extensive work and the effort he took for the betterment of minority communities, conducting exhaustive surveys and research on the reasons for the decline of the Muslim community in education and economic spheres.

I had interviewed him on several occasions, and also met him when he wrote a detailed volume on the dismal educational framework in Bihar’s Muslim mohallas. He had detailed a basic observation – in a majority of these mohallas, police thanas and chowkies had be set up in the very plots of land allotted for schools. “So where could the Muslim children study? And why did these mohallas need extra policing?” he had asked.

Another person to remember is BG Verghese, especially for the several important books that he authored. I had attended the launch of his last book, Post Haste: Quintessential India, which was released the last summer and was a truly offbeat book.

In the book, he narrated Indian history in the rather unusual technique of using postage stamps to take the narrative forward. These stamps added essential inputs and acted like ‘fragments of history’ to the book. When asked why he had written the book, Verghese simply said, “Today there is a sort of ‘intellectual illiteracy’ about our country’s history and geography. I worry about the fact that even the political leaders of the day mix up vital historical facts.”

To  the  why   to  this  book  ,  Verghese  had   quite   simply   put  across that today  there  seems to  be  some  sort of  a  “intellectual  illiteracy”     about  our  country’s  geography and   history  ,  and   he  worries  about  this    trend when  even the   political  leaders of   day    mix  up     vital    historical  facts  .

Verghese’s book can do a great service to the young, as it talks about India’s diversity in a very interactive way, and delves into details of the country’s tribes and their traditions. It also addresses little-known figments of history and clears religious misconceptions – books like this one lessen the divide among men and help shrink regional and religious gaps. More importantly, this book reflects the very idea and true spirit of India.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Featured image courtesy www.bbc.com)

Categories
Enough said

As Christmas nears…

Why are Christians in several parts of the country being persecuted? Is this trend a coincidence or a systematic design?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Recently, I got in touch with a prominent Christian leader, John Dayal, for his reaction on the destruction of St. Sebastian’s Church in East Delhi. He was very upset by the manner in which the Church was found burnt and destroyed.

He also said that for the last few months (from the summer of 2014, to be precise), there had been systematic attempts to attack the Christian community in the country. “In Madhya Pradesh, on November 30, two house churches in Annupur district were attacked,” he said. “Chhattisgarh has particularly witnessed regular and repeated attacks on the fundamental rights of the minority Christian community.

“Most recently, local politico organisation such as the VHP are pressurizing local Catholic missionaries to put up pictures of Goddess Saraswati in their educational institutions. Catholic schools are under pressure to rename the principals in their schools, as ‘Pracharya’, or ‘Up-pracharya’, instead of the term ‘Father’, which is usually used,” he said.

Dayal added that the entry and propaganda by Christian missionaries is banned in more than 50 villages of Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region by the local gram panchayats since late May. Elsewhere, in Odisha’s Deggarh district, several tribal Christian families were excommunicated on April 28 allegedly at the behest of religious extremists. “Three Christian families were excommunicated and deprived from enjoying common facilities of the village road, water and forest land because of their faith in Christ. The well commonly used by the Christians was polluted by adding filth to it. And the Christians have been forbidden to mix or talk to anybody, to take part in any social functions or walk on the main road,” Dayal explained.

Reportedly, extremist elements have also threatened to snatch away the Government land allotted to the Christians, cancel their BPL Cards and demolish their houses if they do not renounce Christ. “In Chhattisgarh’s Jagdalpur, about 100 Christians who were denied rations for two months for their faith in Christ were beaten up by a mob,” Dayal went on to add.

Madhya Pradesh fares no better, apparently, with reports of local religious political groups threatening to harm Pastor Bhikanlal Dhurvey several times for conducting prayer meetings in Bhopal. However, the pastor continued to conduct worship services and later started to build a prayer hall in his land. Subsequently, the extremists filed a police complaint against the pastor for illegal construction. The construction has since been stopped and prayers are now being conducted in the homes of local Christians.

Two churches in Kundupur, Karnataka and three chapels in Irinjalakuda diocese were also damaged by miscreants.

I can’t help but wonder, coupled with extremely inappropriate utterances by ministers in Modi’s Cabinet, which way will the tide turn for the religious minorities in the country?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy www.lapidomedia.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Enough said

Are we looking at new realities in Kashmir?

An already battered Kashmir Valley is about to set the stage for a political battleground in the days to come.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

How many more will be shot dead in the Kashmir Valley before the powers that be decide to take some firm action? Within two days of the Macchil verdict, where five Army men were sentenced for killing civilians in a fake encounter, comes the news of yet more killings – a teenager in Kulgam and a carpenter in Handwara.

Last fortnight’s killing of two young men by the Army in Chattergam is still haunting the locals. How brute and barbaric one must have to be to open fire on a car full of defenceless youths. I often wonder: would these same Army men kill commuters and car drivers in Mumbai or New Delhi if they didn’t halt or brake when signalled to? How is the administration still allowing these murders done in the name of ‘security’ and upkeep of law and order?

Is this some new form of governance, where you demand subservience by force? After all, it is easy to implement. Plus, you can show your ‘concern’ later by announcing monetary compensations for the victims’ families.

I wonder what lies ahead for Kashmir. In the coming days, the political rulers of the day will descend on the Valley in droves. Naturally, any normalcy in the region will be shattered by endless traffic regulations, more curfews and lockouts, and lengthy speeches that promise a lot but say nothing at all.

The Kashmir Valley was never in the grip of a communally-tainted Government, and there hasn’t been a Hindu-Muslim divide as much as anyone would want us to believe. But with Fascist forces spreading all over the country, it is just a matter of time before such a divide is actively created and deepened.

And all this, while the region still limps back from the brink of hell after being ravaged by floods.

What will happen to Kashmir in the coming days, I wonder…

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesykashmirvoice.org. Image used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Enough said

Why Delhi hasn’t had communal clashes for years

The recent communal tensions came as a shock to one and all, given the illusion about the ‘peaceful’ years in between.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

There have been no incidents of major communal violence in and around Delhi for years now, especially after the Babri Masjid demoltion. After the demolition, several Muslim-dominated areas like Seelampuri and adjoining places were affected, with large numbers of Muslim youth being rounded up by the police.

Thereafter, there haven’t been any riots in Delhi, and there are some significant reasons for this. For one, a large percentage of the Muslim populations resides in its own mohallas and bastis – these include Old Delhi, Okhla, Jamia Nagar, Zakir Bagh, and West Nizamuddin. Also, they do not have the grit to speak out if any wrongdoing does take place, given the fact that they are systematically, increasingly sidelined on the political, business and education fronts. They must think it is just safer, for survival, to adopt a second-class positioning. After all, who really got punished after the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar? The victims actually lost their homes and everything else dear to them, but the culprits were later ‘honoured’ by the establishment.

Another disturbing truth to emerge in recent months is that several Muslim families have been made to ‘exit’ their ancestral villages, in several villages in and around the national capital, and in particular where there have been only a dozen or so Muslim families – which have then been persuaded to ‘leave peacefully’.

Despite knowing about these undercurrents, last week’s communal clashes in Delhi’s Trilokpuri came as a big shock. Thinking about it later, I wondered why I was so stunned – going by how the BJP and the RSS normally stress their dominance by manufacturing riots and then pretending to control them, it was an incident that would have come sooner or later, especially with the Right Wing becoming stronger by the day. Who will the affected people complain to?

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy firstpost.com)

Categories
Enough said

If Begum Akhtar had turned 100…

October 7 would have been legendary singer Begum Akhtar’s 100th birthday. A fascinating woman, her marriage had caused much furore in Lucknow circles.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Legendary singer Begum Akhtar would have turned 100 on October 7. The interesting thing about the woman, to me, is that a lot of information is available about her professional life and her remarkable voice, but not much about her personal life.

Years before I heard her live in concert, I had heard about her from an unlikely source. In my parents’ home in Lucknow, an aged man would come selling lemons, cucumbers, ginger and garlic. Before placing his basket on the floor, he would loudly announced, “Akhtaria ke bagh ke hain!”

It was a popular story during that time that this old man had originally belonged to a wealthy family, but had lost his mental balance after Begum Akhtar ditched him. Unable to bear with the strain, he had been reduced to selling lemons and the like.

In fact, several rich men of Avadh had fallen in love with her, with her voice, with her andaaz. One of them was the man she eventually married. He was a Lucknow-based barrister, Ishtiaq Ahmad Abbasi. His first wife had died and after a couple of years, he had married Begum Akhtar. It is said that he’d fallen in love with her after hearing her perform at one of the local mehfils. Apparently, his family had revolted against the match – after all, she was a courtesan and he belonged to Lucknow’s aristocracy.

The marriage finally took place and the couple started living in Lucknow but Abbasi sahib had imposed a condition – that she would no longer sing or hold concerts. She had agreed to this initially, but the no-singing clause took a toll on her health a few months later and she fell ill. Abbasi, besotted with his talented wife, relented and took away the condition, with the rider that she could sing anywhere but in Lucknow.

If you were to ask her relatives details of her everyday life, her marriage and the adjustments she had to make, they will tell you several things not many people know about the late singer. In an earlier interview, Rafia Hussain, Abbasi’s niece had told me, “Begum Akhtar was a person with strong likes and dislikes. She lived much beyond her means, wearing heavy jewellery and expensive saris. She loved food, especially bhuna kheema and roghini tikkiya. Her marriage was smooth, but the credit for that must go to her husband.

“He sacrificed a lot for her. He could not even become a Judge because of his marriage to a courtesan. Also, when she travelled to Lucknow, she would not allow him to accompany her, so he would stay back. He was extremely lonely and yearned children – he did not have children from his first marriage, nor from his second.”

Rafia further went on to say that he was so much in love with his wife that his entire clan had to accept her. “But once they accepted her, the bonding was good,” Rafia said. “She gave the family a lot of respect. But she brought along so many of her relatives to stay with her, they stayed on even after her death, even after the death of my uncle!”

Lucknow would often buzz with talks of her being depressed and in pain, and there were rumours that she would inject herself with morphine. “It was a well-adjusted marriage,” Rafia repeated. “Even I had heard of the injections, but I can’t comment on that because I never saw her injecting herself. I remember she was addicted to tea and smoking. She would smoke one cigarette after another, may be that caused her death. When she died, her husband was shattered and even more lonely. He died ten years later, a broken man.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy hindubusinessline.com)

Categories
Enough said

At last, a proper analysis of 100 ‘achche din’

An independent people’s report on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 100 days in Government by a US-based raises some uncomfortable questions.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

I have been wondering how America will react to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival on US shores. Amidst the hype surrounding his visit, came the news that the Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational watchdog coalition created by concerned citizens in the wake of the recent BJP victory, is releasing a report on September 26.

The report is touted as a comprehensive 100-day report evaluating the performance of the Modi Government’s first 100 days in office. Titled Fast Track To Troubled Times, the report is reportedly the first independent people’s report to be published since Modi came into office, and it identifies the economy, religious extremism and human rights as grave areas of concern.

“We have been very careful and meticulous in collecting data only from public sources to build an evidence-based and fully data-driven report,” said Raja Swamy, economic anthropologist and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes to the economy, our report shows that the new administration wants to eliminate all democratic protections in favor of corporate giveaways and ripoffs.

One example of this are the amendments that the Modi regime has proposed to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, that do away with meaningful safeguards for those losing land, especially for India’s poor, marginal peasantry and indigenous peoples. The proposed amendments accept in toto all corporate demands and eliminate existing safeguards. From the evidence available, can we not conclude that the minimal protections for ordinary people are being wiped out to favor corporations?” he asked.

The report is replete with such detail as it compares the Modi Budget with the previous United Progressive Alliance budget, and points to such facts as the BJP government’s plan to raise four times more money through the ‘sale of State assets’ than the previous government did. The report highlights the ‘empowerment of violent gangs of the supremacist Hindu Right under the Modi dispensation’. In the three months since Modi took charge, there have been over 600 cases of anti-minority violence in one single state, Uttar Pradesh, and several cases of forced ‘reconversion’ of Dalits (India’s so-called untouchable castes) to Hinduism.

“If there is one thing that is clear already, it is that under Modi, Hindu supremacist gangs will virtually rule the streets. There is a palpable sense of insecurity today among minorities, Dalits and women as non-State actors have turned hyper-aggressive, and Modi, through his consistent silence and refusal to hold offenders accountable, has given tacit approval,” said Anu Mandavilli of the San Jose Peace and Justice Center and a co-founder of the Ghadar Alliance.

“The privileging of economic growth as the primary goal functions to dictate an amnesia about Modi’s Gujarat record with US investors eager to capitalise on the Indian market,” added Professor Snehal Shingavi, also a co-founder of the Alliance. “And for many of us born and raised in a racialised US context, the targeting of minorities in India by Hindu reactionaries uncomfortably corresponds to our own experiences with anti-immigrant racism here.”

The report also compares the first 100 days of the new government with Modi’s 12 years of rule in Gujarat. “Examining Modi’s first 100 days in the context of his record in Gujarat reveals a number of disturbing parallels, and these parallels legitimise the report’s predictive capacity,” said Mandavilli.

The report is the first in a series of actions that the Ghadar Alliance is initiating to keep a consistent and critical focus on the BJP/RSS from outside India. The Founding Committee of the Alliance is intergenerational, of multiple faiths, of diverse professions and geography. “We represent the true diversity of India rather than the narrow homogeneity of Modi supporters lining up to welcome him here in the US,” said Dr Swamy.

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. ‘Enough Said’ looks at current social, political and literary trends in the country.

Exit mobile version