DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI comments on the malicious profiling of Muslims in India and calls upon the authorities concerned to listen to the voice of reason.
These days the plural nation is being inundated with the news of smashing of “Islamic terrorist” modules. A hectic search is in top gear to find out “Islamic sleeping” cells. There is special focus on Azamgarh, which, the nation is being asked to believe, is the main supplier of “Islamic terrorists”. As Abu Salem, a gangster and some of the “D Company” personnel, happen to belong to the much talked of city, a subtle effort, through suggestive reportages, is also on to connect illicit trade with Islam. In brief, Islam is on evil tongues and its adherents on evil days.
UNEQUAL BATTLE
The Muslim battle is unequal (mostly) because they have no powerful media, either electronic or print. The Muslim case is strong. But it has no powerful advocates or defenders. That, because of ideological degeneration or lack of appropriate orientation, poor percentage of literacy and poverty, they have no deviated youths in their ranks is no body’s case. But it is each and every Muslim’s case that on that unhelpful account, the principal minority of the country and their ideology should not be tarred and demonised.
Since independence, of course for historic reasons, the Saffron parties as well as media have played a partisan role in this regard. What was left undone by them, was completed, and is being completed, by the sections of the partially blind executive.
LATEST EXAMPLE
The latest example of the innate bias and prejudice on the part of some of our radical police officers is covering the heads of three Muslim accused in the Delhi blasts with the scarves used by Imams and Islamic theologians all over the Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia. To the Muslim leadership, it was yet another essay in defaming Islam and Muslims. This less-than-fair strategy to deal with a self-respecting community passes our commonsense. In the eyes of our Supreme Court, even an accused of say murder, rape, embezzlement, etc. does not cease to enjoy fundamental or human right. And even a convict enjoys those rights. But our arrogant, trigger-happy sections of Police have no idea about these provisions.
SILVER LINING
In this depressing backdrop, it is a matter of great satisfaction that the otherwise secular Bharat has also downright honest, straightforward, and sincere Hindu brethren who have never disappointed Muslims. They have stood like a rock with the aggrieved and vigorously pleaded their case at various fora. They are a silver-lining in the otherwise dark clouds. The current hoo-ha on the so-called “Islamic Terrorism” is a case in point.
In a 1,400-word article, Mr. Harsh Mander writes in The Hindu (September 21): “Millions of men and women, merely because they happen to be born into Muslim homes – believers and non-believers, students, working people, home makers and the aged, the wealthy and the impoverished – are all, with each blast, dragged into the dock of the hearts and minds of people of other religious persuasions. Here they are charged with guilt at least of solidarity if not active complicity for the horrible crimes that the overwhelming majority of them intensely abhor. They find their eyes lowered, their spirit crushed, for heinous offences which they oppose no less than their neighbours. This labelling and blanket condemnation of people merely because of their Muslim identities – now a global phenomenon – is not confined to lay people. It extends more dangerously to how States respond to terror attacks, in effect holding the entire Muslim community guilty unless they can prove their innocence.”
MEDIA & COURTS
How the media and magistracy work in such circumstances? The eminent social activist and political commentator avers: The media usually accepts the police version uncritically, and broadcasts it with shrill sensational overtones which affirm the guilt of the accused persons to the general public aggravating their stigmatisation.
What about the courts of law? Mr. Mander adds: The courts are also usually more than willing to go along with the police version, extending remand, denying bail, often responding with little urgency even in habeas corpus petitions, and most gravely, wilfully failing to act on even visible signs of torture on the body of the young men produced before them, refusing to act and take on record their complaints to torture, let alone actively confirming from them that they were not tortured. They also allow criminal proceedings to persist against minors. Sardar was 17 when he was charged with complicity in the Coimbatore blasts. He was 27 when he was acquitted, but only after nearly a decade of harrowing incarceration.
QUESTIONS
Whenever a Muslim student or professional is killed in a stage-managed “encounter” a question invariably surfaces in every Muslim mind: The police is supposed to incapacitate a suspect or an offender or kill him on the spot? Is the presence of a Magistrate or any judicial authority not necessary to “permit” firing in case the situation demands so? And if police is transgressing its legal limits in the so-called encounters, can the breakers of law in uniform not be hauled up in courts to face law and justice?
The Coordination Committee of Indian Muslims has rightly said on November 23: “We fail to understand why the alleged (Delhi) terrorists were not caught alive. Such killings show the police’s unwillingness to face courts of law… The Muslim community in general and the Muslim youths in particular are being targeted in the name of fighting terrorism. While security agencies should go abut their work to secure the country from terror, make inquiries and arrest the accused as well as suspects, these must not take place in an intimidating and insensitive manner. We are opposed to the insensitive style of police functioning that creates terror and panic in Muslim localities. We condemn the security and intelligence agencies rushing to the media after any such incident with theories and conclusions before any real and proper investigation.”
There are some un-answered questions with regard to the September 19 police encounter with the Muslim youth. The locals assert: (1) There was no cross-firing and only police fired all the shouts. (2) The place of occurrence has only one entrance. It would not have been possible for two to escape. (3) If those killed in the police firing had a hand in the blasts, why did they not flee after the crime?
WIDER ANGLE
Coomi Kapur raises the question from a wider angle in The Indian Express (September 25) : “Many Muslims, as also those who are at the forefront in fighting communalism and protecting human rights, perceive this as yet another fake encounter concocted by the police to hide its incompetence and save the home minister’s job. Just one more instance of poor, innocent Muslim youths being targeted and falsely implicated, they tell you… It is argued on several web-sites that the perpetrators could just as easily have been members of the Bajrang Dal as of SIMI. After all, two Bajrang Dal men were blown up recently in Kanpur while manufacturing bombs.”
Coomi Kapoor delves deep into the subject: …Even today one comes across academicians, lawyers, journalists and activists in Delhi, committed to fighting communalism, who are genuinely convinced that the 2001 attack on Parliament was conspiracy by the Vajpayee government and that the Godhra fire was probably the handiwork of Sangh Parivar insiders. (They recall that Hitler set fire to the Reichstag.) A recent survey of the Islamic world indicated that 60 per cent believed that the United States and Israel conspired to foist 9/11 on the Muslim world.
PEOPLES TRIBUNAL
A Peoples Tribunal, comprising judges, human rights activists, lawyers, academies and press-persons had deliberation on the Muslim persecution, in Hyderabad from August 22 to 24. The Tribunal organized by Anhad and the Human Rights’ Law Network confirmed: “A large number of innocent young Muslims have been and are being victimised by the police on the charge of being involved in various terrorist acts across the country. This is particularly so in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, though not limited to these States”. It concluded that “this victimisation and demonisation of Muslims in the guise of investigation of terror offences, is having a very serious psychological impact on the minds of not only the families of the victims but also other members of the community. It is leading to a very strong sense of insecurity and alienation…”
Mrs Pratibha Patil, Mr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Shivraj Patil: Are you listening?