Tag: enough said

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Enough said

Two Muslims, two stories

One was a liberal academic, the other was a feted Hindi film actor, but their lives were really quite similar.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

The passing away of Dr Asghar Ali Engineer recently saddened me, to say the least. Though I had met the scholar and academic several times in New Delhi and also in Sringar, I had met him just once in Mumbai. I was determined to catch up with him in Mumbai, because I have been to that city just once in my life and I wanted to meet him during that visit.

This was in the winter of 2006. From Colaba, I made my way to Dr Engineer’s Santacruz office, and it was lunch time when I got there. We spoke over lunch; his lunch, he said, was home-cooked and prepared by his daughter-in-law, who is a Maharashtrian. It was a simple spread – not the expected kormas or kababs or biryani, but two plain rotis, curd, curry, aloo gobi sabzi and some khichdi.

He spoke frankly of present-day realities. “Today, the government has to prioritise justice and security. I must emphasise that no Muslim group or individual wants to take revenge, even after the Gujarat pogrom. I have been talking to people, and everyone realises and knows that confrontation policies do not work, only healthy co-existence does. I have been going to Gujarat and talking to Muslims. They have been saying that all they want is security, so that they can live in peace. They’re worried about their lives, their livelihood, their children…”

He also said, “Our focus should be on how to clear those myths about Muslims. I’m trying my best to clear these myths by holding asghar ali engineerworkshops for the police, for college and school students. It’s only through dialogue that many misconceptions about Muslims can be cleared.”

I have read some really excellent research he had done on the communal riots. That afternoon, as he detailed and traced the history and potential of communal politics, it became apparent that it had peaked in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid’s razing.

Dr Asghar Ali Engineer always spoke calmly, with all the facts at hand. Probably this was what helped him reach out to so many people.

nargis and sanjay duttWith Sanjay Dutt going to prison, I have been reading this essay by writer Khushwant Singh on Nargis Dutt, Sanjay’s mother. I quote, “Nargis Dutt was introduced to me through the then editor of Femina, Gulshan Ewing. I’d seen her film Mother India, and I had met her when they (the Dutts) were not doing too well, and she had almost retired from films. She told me that two of her children were studying at the Sanawar School, not far from my home in Kasauli, and she asked if she could stay at my Kasauli cottage during the Sanawar Founders’ Week. With that I’d quipped, ‘Only on one condition, and the condition is that I have your permission to tell everyone that Nargis slept in my bed!’

She had a great sense of humour and laughed heartily on hearing this. Years later, when we were both nominated to the Rajya Sabha and given seats next to each other and whenever anyone tried to introduce us, she would say, ‘You don’t have to introduce us. I have slept in his bed.’

“…One thing that intrigued me was her (Nargis Dutt’s faith. Was she a Muslim or Hindu or both or nothing? She wore a bindi on her forehead, married a Brahmin, gave her children Hindu names and was often seen at Swami Muktanand’s ashram at Ganeshpuri. Nevertheless, she was buried with Muslim rites in a Muslim graveyard with her husband reciting the fateha. I can’t think of any Indian family which better exemplified the principle of Sarva Dharma Samabhav.”

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

(Pictures courtesy www.news24online.com, sitagita.com, www.hindu.com)

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Enough said

Two public statements on Modi

As General Elections 2014 approach, the heat seems to be well and truly on the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.
by Humra Quraishi

I simply marvel at Jesuit Father Cedric Prakash. I admire his courage and his confidence to take on the political might of his home State, Gujarat. This priest runs a human rights centre, ‘Prashant’ in Ahmedabad, and right from 2002, I’ve heard him speak at various meets. Recently, he lashed out at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi once again.

“It is more than just a rotten tooth!” he thundered. As the poll results of the Karnataka Assembly elections trickled in on Wednesday, May 8, the one person who was in the eye of the storm was Narendra Modi. Over the years, the BJP in Karnataka had done everything possible to make certain their defeat: the terrorising of the minorities, the bashing up of youth who didn’t conform to their cultural ‘traditions’; the bringing in of a legislation that was directed at harming minority communities, the support to right-wing Hindu fundamentalism and much more; this was besides the corruption and scams of immense proportion.

However, the BJP party workers were confident that Narendra Modi would campaign in Karnataka, wave his magic wand and cast a spell over the State to ensure that the BJP would come back to power! Modi himself is a seemingly ‘safe’, somewhat frightened campaigner in places such as Karnataka; from his track record, it is obvious that Modi goes to places where he can either win or is confident of fooling the people. In Karnataka, he did become the BJP star campaigner, making forays to three areas -Bangalore, Mangalore andBelgaum. When he did so, he was able to attract crowds and throw barbs at the Congress party and the UPA.

In the rally he addressed in Mangalore, he struck the Hindutva chord and tried to rake up the “cattle slaughter” issue clearly targeting not merely the UPA but also the Muslim minorities. However, all his rhetoric did not pay dividends. The BJP has lost miserably in the places where he campaigned and where he was considered to be the main vote-getter!

Father Prakash (in pic on left) said, “After the election results were out, Modi developed a ‘sudden toothache’ and neither his many spokespersons nor his highly-paid public relations agencies were at hand to give his point of view on the defeat. One does not have to be very intelligent to know that Modi, like a little school boy, easily ‘falls sick’ when the going gets tough.  Even if he did have a toothache, why did his spokespersons not speak up on behalf of him? And how did this “very painful toothache” suddenly disappear when he addressed the Gujarati diaspora in the US through a video conference on Sunday, May 12?

“Yes one can surely, fool some of the people some of the time, but NEVER all of the people all of the time!”

I have just recently returned from an interactive meet with Zakia Jafri and her son Tanveer, apart from several political activists, who have been detailing the horrifying carnage of 2002 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. This meet was held on May 7, after Zakia Jafri filed a Protest Petition before the Magistrate on April 15 “ to get a fair and transparent investigation against a Chief Minister, his Cabinet colleagues, senior administrators, policemen and front men and women of the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal.”

Several politicians also spoke at this meet, and two of them came up with some startling facts. DP Tripathi of the NCP said that way back in the mid-80s, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Madhav Singh Solanki, had told Tripathi that there are “international forces”   which are working in the State to whip up communal frenzy and strengthen Hindutva brigades. But when probed further on Modi, Tripathi beat a hasty retreat and said he had to go to another function.

Then Sitaram Yechury of the CPI (M) said that when he got the news of the carnage in Gujarat he decided to go to Ahmedabad, and he went there with Raj Babbar, Amar Singh and Shabana Azmi. They were in Ahmedabad on March 1, 2002. He described the atmosphere prevalent in the city. “The Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad was not to be seen the entire day and night, not even in the Police Headquarters. And the same day, that is on March 1, 2002, when I got in touch with the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi and asked him about the mass killings of the Muslims and the uncontrolled rioting, he said, ‘In logon ko sabak sikhana tha, aisa sabak jo woh zindagi bhar yaad rakhenge! (I wanted to teach these people a lesson, a lesson they’d remember all their lives!)

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.

(Pictures courtesy www.religiousindia.org, www.outlookindia.com, ibnlive.in.com)

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Enough said

Saluting a mother on Mother’s Day

Parveena Ahangar’s son was picked up for ‘questioning’ by Kashmir police in 1990. She’s still waiting for him to return.
by Humra Quraishi

In between several scams being unearthed in this country daily, the more unfortunate among us have already geared up for Mother’s Day. Oh yes, it’s a big day to tell your mother how you feel! No matter how contrived this entire exercise might sound, there are several givers and takers for this day.

This Day brings to mind several unsettling questions. Where are those chiddren who are missing from their homes? Where are our young boys, who were picked up various security agencies for ‘interrogation’, never to return? What is the fate that befell their mothers? What kind of days do these mothers lead?

During my journalistic journeys to various parts of the country, I have met families who have had horrifying stories to recount of how their young children went missing, or were picked up for interrogation and either detained, or who have had time behind bars choke the life out of their fragile forms. There are children missing for these reasons in every part of this land, but the Government still does not seem to care enough to find them.

This is an ongoing reality in the Kashmir Valley – of teenaged boys being picked up for interrogation by various security agencies, never to return. They are declared missing, and their story seemingly ends there.

When I first met Parveena Ahangar (see pic on left and feature image), the Srinagar-based woman who heads APDP (Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons), she told me about her young ‘missing’ son, Javed. Listening to her, I felt emotionally drained, wondering at the extent of the brutality of today’s governance, where the State does not even stop at snatching away our young. It has been an ongoing fight since 1990 for this now middle-aged Kashmiri mother; it was in 1990 that her school-going son was picked up from their home in Srinagar’s Batmaloo locality and taken away for interrogation. Javed never returned and there has been no official news of his whereabouts at all.

“My son, Javed, was picked by security agencies in 1990. Security men came to our home to pick him up, saying they were taking him for interrogation. We pleaded with them, saying he couldn’t have done anything wrong, that he had just passed his matriculation. But they didn’t listen and took him to the interrogation centre at Pari Mahal. We never saw him again,” Parveena recounts.

That incident shattered the life of the entire family. Ahangar’s husband fell ill because of the trauma, and gave up working. He remains in poor health to this day. The other three children in the family were too young to realise the implications of their brother’s disappearance at that point, but the ongoing trauma has left its impact on them, too.

Today, Parveena heads the APDP, the longest ongoing non-violent movement of parents whose children have been taken for interrogation and never come home. Hundreds of families have been ruined by their loss as they try to cope with the trauma, but Ahangar is one of the steely few who will not give up the search. She says, “All these years we have been living in sorrow. I keep very unwell. We have exhausted all our resources trying to locate Javed in the various jails of this country, appealed to every possible government authority, to politicians across party lines…but there have only been disappointments.

I’m not giving up, and I will fight for as long as I’m alive. Ours is a peaceful, non- violent struggle, but the State and these politicians don’t bother. I am determined to carry on with the struggle.”

But not many mothers have her grit. Many have already given up hope. Their words echo in my ears: “To bury your dead son is one thing, but to go travelling from jail to jail and from police station to police station, looking for your son, is another sorrow.”

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, who has authored Everyone Lives in Fear, a report on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir, said to me in  an earlier interview on the missing young men of the Kashmir Valley, “The family members of those that ‘disappeared’ have been campaigning for years. Parents have died waiting for a lost son to come home. Wives live with the label of a half-widow. These disappearances are a lasting wound inKashmir, and we hope that families will finally have some answers and receive justice.

“Disappearances are among the most heinous of human rights violations because families are left without answers, caught between hope and despair. I have met numerous families that are still waiting for news of their loved ones. Some keep hoping for a magical reunion. Others say that they want at least to be able to weep at the grave of their lost one.”

Noted academic Uma Chakravarti, who formed a support group for APDP in Delhi, had told me during an earlier interview, “We need a judicial commission to probe J&K disappearances. No one wants to address the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the immunity it gives to the security forces, and that rapes, custodial killings and forced disappearances that will continue unless there is legal redress for violations of people’s rights. The easiest thing seems to be to not react or to pick up an item for a little while and then drop it.  The Government keeps talking about dialogue and confidence-building measures but has done little in terms of action.

The first thing it should do is to set up an independent judicial commission into disappearances so that the average Kashmiri and the individual families that have been pursuing the cases of the disappeared can have a sense of closure. This has been done in Sri Lanka to investigate the large number of disappearances in the 1980s. It will be the first step in pursuing State accountability. It will have a tremendous impact in Kashmir. It will demonstrate the Government’s commitment to a rule of law.”

(Pictures courtesy inshallahkashmir.com, githahariharan.com, freepresskashmir.com)

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Enough said

No nation for poor mothers

A recent report indicates that despite the best healthcare services, mothers from marginalised sections of society receive very little attention.
by Humra Quraishi

Earlier this month, the Population Foundation of India, an NGO working in the field of  heath and population, organised a consultation on Maternal Health on April 3 and 4, 2013  with support from the United Nations Population Fund, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Maternal Health Taskforce of the Harvard School of Public Health.

I quote Poonam Mutterja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India  on the current scenario:  “We all know that maternal mortality has declined significantly over the last decade. InIndia, the figures dropped from 301 per 100,000 births in 2003 to 212 in 2009. Yet, these reductions have not reached the most marginalised and disadvantaged communities and groups in society; tribal communities, schedule castes, and those belonging to the poorest quintile.”

According to the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006, scheduled tribe mothers are least likely to have received any antenatal care or care from a doctor. Moreover, only 23 per cent of mothers in the lowest wealth quintile received antenatal care from a doctor as against 86 per cent of mothers in the highest wealth quintile.

Mutterja continues, “I refer to the case of the 26 maternal deaths that took place at Barwani district hospital in Madhya Pradesh over a period of eight months in 2010. 21 of these 26 women belonged to scheduled tribes. The Population Foundation of India, which is the secretariat for community monitoring conducted an enquiry at the government’s request, and found that each of the 26 maternal deaths was avoidable.”

The Foundation has also released some more findings on maternal health:

– India’s current MMR (Maternal Mortality Rate) levels still remain unacceptably high and by many estimates account for nearly one-quarter of all such deaths worldwide.  Expressed in sheer numbers between 78,000-100,000 women die annually in India as a result of childbirth and pregnancy.

– Moreover, for each woman who dies, another estimated 20 more suffer from infection, injury and disability connected to pregnancy and childbirth.

– Only 50 per cent of women in India receive three or more antenatal check-ups, leaving the other half deprived of adequate care (DLHS-3, 2007-08).  The situation is worse when we look at data by caste/tribe.

– The likelihood of having received any antenatal care and care from a doctor is lowest for scheduled tribe mothers (25 per cent) and highest for mothers who do not belong to a scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, or other backward class.

– Among mothers in households with the lowest wealth quintile, 59 per cent received antenatal care and only 23 per cent received antenatal care from a doctor. By contrast, among mothers in households in the highest wealth quintile, 97 per cent received antenatal care and 86 per cent received antenatal care from doctors.

– In India, the unmet need for contraceptives remains high, it is over 30 per cent in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, and over 20 per cent in Orissa and Uttarakhand. This unmet need reflects the gap between a woman’s desired fertility and her access to family planning services.

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 abcnews.go.com)

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Enough said

One final goodbye…

Humra Quraishi revisits death through an unsaid goodbye to her own little brother Farid, whom she lost in early childhood.

Each time I’m at a graveyard, I’m reminded of what Khushwant Singh has been saying – words to the effect that in his younger days, he made it a point to visit cremation grounds, for they had a certain effect on him. To quote him, “Earlier, I visited cremation grounds; it had a certain cleansing effect on me. Today, close to 99 years of age, I think of death, think of it very often. I think of all my friends gone, and wonder where have they gone?

“My contemporaries here or in Pakistan or in the UK are all dead. I wonder why we don’t discuss death in our homes. After all, death is one of those realities that none can escape – khuda mein shak ho to ho, maut mein nahin koi shak (You may doubt the existence of God, but you can’t doubt the very certainty of death.)” He added, “There’s this particular verse written by Asadullah Khan Ghalib: Rau  mein hai raksh-e-umarkahaan deykheeye thammey?/ Nahin haath baag par hai na pa hai rakaab mein (Age travels at a galloping pace/ who knows where it will stop/ we do not have the reins in our hands/ we do not have our feet in the stirrups).”

And there’s this Persian couplet by Allama Iqbal, which says that when the time comes to depart, a man should go without any bitterness or regret, or carry grievances.

A few years ago, Khushwant penned his own epitaph thus:

“Here lies one who spared neither man nor God /

Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod/

Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun/

Thank the Lord he is dead, this son of a gun.”

Last month, my cousin Obaid Wajid got crushed under an oil tanker in our ancestral qasba, Aonla in Uttar Pradesh. I have been reflecting and introspecting on this reality – the reality of death. For me, the first connection with death and graveyards was forged when one of my younger brothers, Farid, died as a baby. From that day, I started trying to grasp the deadly reality of that final parting.

For me, visiting graveyards could be one of the ways of lessening my own pain. One of those earliest painful memories which lies tucked tightly in my mind is that of my baby brother Farid’s fragile form wrapped in a white cotton sheet, being taken to the graveyard. He’d died a baby, and though years have passed, even as I write these words, that particular afternoon stands still. I can see it clearly through my moist eyes…it was the mid-1960s, Farid was born in Jhansi. He lived for just a few months. That afternoon, I’d come back from school, but before I could enter the outer verandah, I saw a big crowd gathered on the lawns. After I elbowed my way in, I stood still. My little brother Farid was no longer lying in his cot, but his body was all wrapped in a cotton sheet.

My parents and relatives carried his little body towards the cars for his last rites. The next minute, the house stood vacant. The maid told my dazed younger sisters and me, “Farid baba has gone towards the skies.”

I wanted to run towards the graveyard, but hadn’t a clue on locating it. Our cook sabotaged any such ideas by narrating scary stories of qabristans. My sisters and I sat lost and forlorn. On the one hand we’d kept staring at the sky, certain we could spot our brother. And then we waited desperately for our parents to return.

When they returned, their sobs and cries came afresh, agonising. All I did was gaze at his empty cot, crying that entire night. In the morning, instead of walking down to school, I walked around Jhansi town, trying to locate my baby brother’s grave. I wanted to give him one final hug, kissing his little nose and holding his hand tight in mine…when I finally reached that graveyard, the caretakers were baffled to see me, a young girl of ten, asking to see the grave of her brother. Within minutes they shooed me out, saying that children were not allowed inside the graveyard.

I waited for adulthood to arrive. And I revisited Jhansi. That nagging quest had to be completed. Once again I looked for my brother’s grave, but I drew a blank. The keepers of the place exclaimed, “A child’s kutccha grave! There are hundreds of graves here. More qabristans have come up!”

I gave up, sad and forlorn, for I couldn’t say that I had finally bidden good bye to my little brother Farid.

(Picture courtesy thejakartapost.com. Image is used for representational purpose only)

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Rahul for PM?

Humra Quraishi wonders why Rahul Gandhi does not grasp the several opportunities thrown his way at the best of times.

New Delhi is no longer just the rape capital of the country, but it is also the battleground for those desperate to grab much more than the proverbial pound of flesh. New Delhi is where one experiences the rush for unlimited power that comes with the two magic words – Prime Minister.

Of course, Mamata didi proved another again that she has no chance at this post, or indeed advance in Delhi’s political circles. Once again, she played her cards in her usual hysterical fashion, and brought down any aspirations she may have had of making inroads in Delhi. The latest killing in her State’s capital, of student leader Sudipto Gupte, can be seen as the very start of her political downfall. The rule of absolute power does not hold for long, and with this latest incident, Mamata hopefully has seen the light.

And then there’s Narendra Modi, who currently seems to be more interested in giving speeches to a select few in Delhi, than doing something for the semi-parched parts of his State. It seems his hosts double-checked the invite list for his speech venues, which included the movers and shakers in business and several rightwingers, but which curiously did not have a single name from the capital’s ‘outspoken’ lot.

For surely, if any of this group was present, there would have been uncomfortable questions on why his men had Ishrat Jehan and several others killed in fake encounters, why women were raped and killed in his State, and why a great majority of Muslims of Ahmedabad are forced to live in one big cluster in Juhapura, an underdeveloped ghetto.

And therein lies the question: why are we, as a collective lot, being swayed and fooled by our politicians? Why are we wilfully blind to the bigger picture?

If you are unable to go beyond politicians’ babble, I would suggest you watch the film Hotel Rwanda, to see what happens if two communities/tribes are pitted against each other. Civil war breaks out, with all possible crimes committed against all sections of society, cutting across all power structures, ultimately affected all citizens.

Unfortunately, those who have the mettle to take on these politicians are steadfastly refusing to bite the bait. Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who possesses all those attributes to take on Modi, refused even to be Vice President, much before the nomination stage! Also, it’s a complete no-no on the Yadav front – Akhilesh  Yadav seems incapable of running his own State, Uttar Pradesh, where even children are raped and jailed, so making any moves in Delhi’s direction would be furthest from his mind at the moment.

Do you see what this means? It so turns out that the only man who can probably take on   Modi at the moment is Rahul Gandhi. He isn’t much of a speech giver, nor does he cash in on any strong points – his own or his party’s – but he is earnest.

To quote N Ram, from the foreword this veteran journalist has written to the last book on  Rahul Gandhi, Decoding Rahul Gandhi, by Aarthi Ramachandran, “We learn that Rahul  Gandhi is an obsessive organisation man, who believes in applying business management strategies and methods, including the ‘Toyota Way’, to grassroots political organisation. He espouses meritocratic notions of seeking and nurturing talent and opening up opportunity for career advancement in Congress politics.

“While he has not been above playing the dynastic card, he has been candid about how he got to where he is today, declaring himself to be ‘a symptom of this problem’, which he wished to change. He does not seem to be good at building coalitions or dealing with existing or potential allies. He favours going it alone, but unlike, say BSP leader Mayawati, he has no core social constituency. In the heat of campaigning, he has made his share of political gaffes and over-the-top allegations against opponents. He has been an indifferent Parliamentarian, whose sporadic interventions on issues, including corruption, have impressed no one, except the political faithful. His secular credentials are not in question; in fact, he holds no known religious faith and has gone so far as to declare the national flag to be his religion.”

To me, Rahul’s earnestness is his strong point. But he seems to be surrounded by a bunch of advisors that is coming in the way of his connectivity with the people. It isn’t enough to spend an evening or eat a meal at a poor man’s dwelling, there has to be an ongoing, sincere connect daily, which does not seem contrived.

Dear Rahul, why can’t people visit your office and tell you their grievances?

Why can’t you see the right-wing nuts in your own party and have them thrown out?

Why can’t you focus only on communalism and corruption issues, and tackle them first?

Why can’t you use the whistle-blower cops of Gujarat – who had taken on Modi – to your advantage?

When will stop looking like you’re still waiting in the wings, and take centrestage?

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

 (Pictures courtesy adilmohdblog.com, travelindia-guide.com, mid-day.com)

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