“Muslim youths with no criminal records are picked up by illegally by the policemen in plainclothes and taken to farmhouse etc. and kept for days on end and tortured brutally…,” – Harsh Mander, a former Indian bureaucrat – reported by India’s daily The Hindu.
ANHAD (meaning ‘without limits’) is an Indian activist group dedicated for a ‘Secular India’ – whose members have been beaten-up by Hindutva hoodlums several times. ANHAD organized a National Meet on the ‘Status of Muslims’ on October 3-5 in New Delhi – to document the continuing ways of discrimination, exclusion, persecution of Muslims (over 140 million) in India today. The panel of the moot consisted of 21 Hindu-Muslim-Christian secular intellectuals and anti-communalism activists. More than three dozen speakers, representing India’s diverse religious communities, address the three-day conference.
The jury members after studying the submissions, which include complaints like discrimination in matters of renting houses in non-Muslim dominated areas, prejudices and biases of public institutions against Muslims and reinforcing stereotypes by the media also recommended the enactment of the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill with changes suggested by the civil society groups.
“Strong action should be taken under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code against organisations which indulge in hate campaigns and communal propaganda. The requirement of prior sanction of the State government before a complaint is registered under this Act should be waived,” the recommendations state.
At the end of the conference, the panelists demanded that “Indian government appoint a high-powered judicial commission headed by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to examine all cases of terror across the country”.
Ram Puniyani, one of the panelists, reviewed the conference under the heading Is it A Crime To Be Born A Muslim In India?:
“The myths and stereotypes in the media and social space are very much there. The large section of school text-books reinforce the stereotypes and myths about the community. So where this all lead us? In a democracy, in a secular state the minorities should be provided safety and dignity irrespective of their religion. The present condition of Muslims in India is nothing but abysmal from the point of view of security, econonmic condition and social life. A large section has started feeling the deprivations in a very painful manner.
One recalls under the domination of Brahamanical values, caste based exclusionary social-political-solution, the caste of Shudras was systematically denied the life of dignity and made to live in subjugation and ghettoization. The efforts of ‘Brahmanical ideology based politics’, the one of RSS and its progeny, is achieving the same pattern with some difference. Now Muslims are being reduced to second class citizen. This precisely what RSS wants, this what is coming to be practised at all the levels in the country. RSS progeny being in power or out of it doesn’t matter as far as the life of Muslim community is concerned. The RSS and its ideology have infiltrated the ’social common sense’ through media and education. It has infiltrated the state machinery. The limit of this can be seen that RSS controlled Bhonsla Military School in Nasik is supplying large number of recruits for Indian Army, one of them being Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit (with Mossad links), an accomplice of Pragya Singh Thakur, alleged culprits of Malegaon blast. If RSS, a fascist organization wrapping its politics in the cloak of Hindu religion, swaymsevaks can infiltrate army which institution in this society is safe from slow communal fascist infiltration? Which institution can be trusted for upholding Indian Constitution?
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