India becoming police state for Muslims By Syed Zubair Ahmad - twocircles.net

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India becoming police state for Muslims

Submitted by admin7 on 15 July 2012 - 11:37am

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• Indian Muslim

By Syed Zubair Ahmad,

Looking at the way Muslim youths are being harassed, terrorized, chased, kidnapped and illegally arrested by the police and intelligence agencies, it seems there is no law, no government, no judiciary, no parliament, and no respect for the human rights at all. It seems that emergency has been imposed on the Muslim community. Lawlessness has become order of the day. Slowly but firmly, anarchy is taking the country into its grip and India is heading towards becoming a police state – at least for Muslims. The government, the administration, the police and the intelligence agencies of this country are suffering from worst kind of Muslim-phobia.

Police and intelligence agencies have got a free hand to do whatever they like the way whatever they like. Implicating Muslim youths in false cases has become their prime job. They are accountable to none.

Sometimes it appears that police and intelligence agencies are running this country. Time and again when the matter reaches the court, the court issues some directions and rebuffs the police and intelligence agencies. But after a short break they resume harassing and kidnapping Muslim youths with more aggression and intensity. Gradually the largest democracy of the world is becoming a country of highest number of custodial deaths, tortures, illegal detentions and killing of innocent people in fake encounters.


Relatives of people arrested outside Sakinaka Police station in Thane on 16th December 2012
Police of several states pounce on every new Muslim terror suspect

A Muslim youth is arrested by Delhi Special Cell then Mumbai ATS comes to catch and interrogate him. After Mumbai ATS finishes its job, Karnataka ATS pounces on him. After Karnataka, comes the turn of Gujarat police. Four years have passed since the serial blasts of Ahmedabad and Delhi and an undisclosed number of Muslim youths have already been arrested in those cases. Yet, when a Muslim youth is picked even today for his suspected role in any new terror case, Police of Delhi, Gujarat and others take his custody and interrogate him for the past cases. Does it mean that the police of those states have little evidence against those youths they arrested four years ago and are still in jails? Does it mean that investigating agencies are still groping in dark in connection with those terror cases?

When Mumbai ATS nabbed an alleged IM operative in January last year, Special Cell of Delhi police cried that the arrested person was their informer. Then arrived Home Minister of India to clear the clouds. There is a professional competition and rivalry among different police and security agencies to catch Muslim youths as terror suspects and claim resolution of the unsolved case.


SDPI activist Zakir Hussain being detained for holding strike for AMU campus in Murshidabad on 11th July 2012

Police and intelligence agencies have got into habit of violating the laws of the land. In many cases they didn’t follow even a single guideline of Supreme Court. Violation of human rights is becoming their hallmark. While making the arrest they do not inform the local police, nor are the parents of the arrested persons informed within mandatory 24 hours.

Impunity for lawbreakers in uniform

It appears that there is impunity for the perpetrators of illegal detention, tortures, custodial deaths and killing of innocent people in fake encounters. Looking at the current state of affairs one may believe that there is a constitutional guarantee for these shameful acts in the ‘Largest Democracy’ of the world. The perpetrators of these shameful acts are not punished. More disgusting is the fact that the culture of impunity for the perpetrators is being nurtured, protected, encouraged and safeguarded by the establishment. The most shameful and disgusting is the fact that perpetrators of these inhuman acts are being promoted and awarded. In short, the culture of impunity for the perpetrators before the law is taking the country towards a very dangerous zone.


Members of Muslim organizations protesting against illegal action of police in Jamia Nagar, New Delhi on 26th February 2012

The poor, deprived and the marginalized segment of the society including the discriminated minorities particularly Muslims are being subjected to these trials and tribulation. In the name of National Interest, the humanity is being stripped of dignity. Human is being treated like sub-human and a large number of deprived citizens of India are being forced to live like third class citizens of this country.

One can imagine what would have been happening to the people of north east region and Kashmir when in the heart of the national capital at midnight the ATS and Special Cell personnel surround the locality of Jamia Nagar to pick workers from Bihar in the name of Bangladeshis. A policeman comes in civil dress and leaves a scooter at the shop of a bike mechanic, then in a few minutes another policeman arrives and tries to arrest the mechanic in connection with the theft of the same scooter. Several such cases are happening in Delhi and in other places also.

In May this year, the Karnataka ATS picked up a youth from Darbhanga in Bihar without informing the local police, took him to Jharkhand and presented him before a local court then took him to unknown destination.

According to law, he should have been presented before a Darbhanga court. Last year, Delhi Special Cell picked up a 55 year old cycle mechanic Kafeel Ahmed from the same Darbhanga in the name of IM. The old man used to repair bicycles at his shop from morning to evening to earn hardly Rs 100 a day. After the Malegaon blast of 2006 a vegetable vendor was arrested. When a Muslim leader reached the house of the arrested vendor, his whole family was hungry and the Theli of the arrested vendor was standing before his dilapidated house. The old and weak father of the arrested boy was unable to stand up properly. The family was unable to bear even the expenses of traveling to meet the boy. An unknown ATS team kidnapped two Kashmiri students from a train at Aligarh Junction in May this year, tortured them for seven days in illegal custody and released them at a Jammu police station only after lots of hue and cry from the media and the educational institution filed a habeas corpus case in Allahabad High Court.


SDPI activists including elder persons being pushed into police van in Murshidabad on 11th July 2012 for holding strike in the city to demand construction of AMU campus

Important Questions

The question is: Does our police, investigating agencies and judiciary depend on a confession of an Aseemanand to save the life of those arrested earlier? For how long would the innocents be languishing behind the bars? For how long will the unchecked witch-hunt of Muslim youths continue? For how long would the police and intelligence agencies keep on framing and implicating Muslim youths in false cases?

Save the country from anarchy

The protectors of law have become lawbreakers. The judiciary is mum. The politicians are enjoying the luxuries while the poor, the deprived and the marginalized segment of the society are suffering. The discriminated Muslim minority is at the receiving end. Our country is gradually heading towards anarchy and complete lawlessness. The civil society should come out to save the country from becoming a police state.

Laws of the land must be respected by all.

(Syed Zubair Ahmad is a Writer & Journalist. He can be reached at smzubairahmad@gmail.com)

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The Sense Of A Community - By Christophe Jaffrelot - OUTLOOK Magazine - New Delhi - INDIA

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281642

	Society  /  Books  /  Essays Magazine | Jul 23, 2012

AP Old Delhi charm Hub of Muslim festivity essay: Muslims in india The Sense Of A Community A team of French and Indian scholars go past the stereotype of the ‘ghettoised’ Muslim and visit 10 Indian cities to document the various patterns in which Muslims gather together in a particular locality Christophe Jaffrelot Indian Muslims entertain a peculiar relation to cities. Historically, many of the subcontinent’s cities—when they have not been colonial creations (like Bombay or Calcutta)—have a Muslim origin, as their names often suggest: Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Agra, Aligarh, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Allahabad, Bhopal...the list is long. Even Delhi, though not founded by Muslims, has been transformed by first the Delhi Sultanate and then the Mughal Empire. This legacy comes from the traditional affinities Islamic civilisation has had with urbanity following its Medina utopia. But it also stems from the larger political role bequeathed to Muslims after they came to power in India in the medieval period and beyond. As rulers, they had to live in the power centre that was the city. While the emperors stayed in Delhi or Agra, the nawabs, nizams and begums established smaller cities that are, today, often state capitals. Along with the rulers came the service gentry and the artisans who worked for the kings and their courtiers—three groups among whom Muslims were over-represented. Today, and largely because of this historical legacy, Muslims constitute the most urbanised community in India—with the exclusion of the Parsis and the Jews. While India’s urbanisation rate, according to the 2001 census, is below 28 per cent, 35.7 per cent of its Muslims live in towns and cities. The gap had been even larger in earlier decades. Interestingly, more than 50 per cent of Indian Muslims live in towns and cities in seven states (whose urbanisation rate is in the range of 20-45 per cent): Tamil Nadu (73 per cent), Maharashtra (70 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (63.5 per cent), Chhattisgarh (63 per cent), Karnataka (59 per cent), Gujarat (59 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (58 per cent). If Muslims are more numerous than any other community in cities—that they have often built or fully refurbished—they are also on the verge of marginalisation in most of them. Theirs is the only community (barring the Sikhs) where the proportion of poor is greater amongst the urban population than in the rural one. Thirty-seven per cent of urban Muslims live below the poverty line against 27 per cent of rural Muslims—as opposed to, respectively, 22 and 28 per cent among Hindus. This state of affairs shares congruence with some of the findings of the Sachar Committee, which showed (among other things) that only eight per cent of urban Muslims were integrated into the formal sector whereas the national average was 21 per cent for city-dwellers. In towns and cities, Muslims make a (usually very modest) living as artisans (mechanics and weavers, among others) or peddlers. They are not as constituent a component of the salariat as are other communities. The decline of the Indian Muslims harks back to the British Raj (when they ceded their power and when Persian and Urdu lost their statuses as languages of the court) and, subsequently, to the abolition of the princely states (Hyderabad, Bhopal, among others) besides Partition, which mangled the community. The rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1980s-90s also contributed to the marginalisation of the community, and not just in socio-economic terms—the representation of Muslims among local businessmen and lawyers is on the decline almost everywhere—but also in spatial terms. Fruit of urbanisation The burqa is no restraint to a workout. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta) Communal violence and ghettoisation In preparation for a book I co-edited with Laurent Gayer this year, Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, a team of 12 Indian and French researchers analysed the situation of the Muslim populations of 10 Indian cities: Ahmedabad, Aligarh, Bangalore, Calicut, Cuttack, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and Mumbai. This analysis was not limited solely among the local elite groups (businessmen, politicians, lawyers...), nor limited in geographical terms. While this ethnographic and statistical exercise by and large vindicated the assessment of the Sachar report insofar as the socio-economic decline of Muslims is concerned, the responses received to our question “Where do Muslims live?” are more nuanced. Many of the elderly we interviewed emphasised the past composite culture of their city in evocative and emotional terms: they kept using formulae such as mili juli/mushtarka/ganga-jamuni tehzeeb. Their nostalgia was, for the most part, misplaced since Indian cities have always been structured along ethnic lines. Neither caste groups nor religious communities traditionally mixed in the same building—or even in the same lane. One of the reasons for this (self-)segregation was deeply rooted in their food habits (and taboos). But the old-timers had a point in the sense that cities formed mosaics in which different communities cohabited in the same neighbourhoods. In the old cities—which were also known as the walled cities—next to a Brahmin or a Jain lane, one could find a Pathan mohalla. Similarly, on the periphery of these urban cores—especially after industrialisation resulted in the creation of new suburbs—low-caste Muslims and Dalits used to coexist in separate, but adjacent settlements. Many of them had a shared culture as part of the labour movement, especially in the cities where unions had fostered a labour culture. Ahmedabad is a case in point: in addition to the mosaic of ‘pols’ (lanes) of the walled city, the ‘challis’ (the dense rows of one room-houses) of the ‘Manchester of India’ developed along these lines in the first decades of the 20th century. This pattern of erosion is put into practice today in many places—and ghettoisation has been the end-result in some extreme cases. And here, we need to formulate a new definition for ghettoisation because the word tends to be used in a rather loose manner today. We must reserve it for designating the gathering together of members of a community (in this case, the Muslims) irrespective of their other social markers (class/caste or ethnic origin, for instance) in a locality insulated from the rest of the city (be it at its centre or at the periphery) where state services (roads, schools, hospitals...) are not maintained properly—if at all present. The main factor of ghettoisation is communal violence. In riots, the most common targets are isolated pockets of the ‘other’ community. Therefore, the minority (whatever its religion) tends to move to safer neighbourhoods where co-religionists are already in large numbers. These safe havens can be in the walled cities—like in Hyderabad, Jaipur or Bhopal—or on the periphery—as with Mumbai or Ahmedabad. In that case, Muslims are often uprooted and dislodged from the city centres. Again, Ahmedabad best illustrates this point. In spite of its rather modest size, compared to Mumbai, for instance, Ahmedabad is the city where Hindu-Muslim violence has been the more devastating over the last six decades. Every 10 years or so, a major access of violence occurs (1969, 1985, 1992, 2002...). After each bout, some Muslims from the walled city and the industrial belt have moved in large numbers to the periphery, and more especially to Juhapura. Here is a ghetto of about four lakh where middle-class people (ias, ips and IFS cadres, lawyers, businessmen) have joined slum-dwellers for the sake of safety. The state has neglected this locality to such an extent that no bus service connects Juhapura to the city. Simultaneously, the Hindus who used to live here have left and those who live in the neighbouring localities have built walls. While walls separating communities are making an appearance everywhere in the world—including in West Asia—few cities (Belfast is a notorious exception) have resorted to such lines of demarcation. Ahmedabad is the only one we found in India. But in many places, railway lines and roads are used as almost invisible borders between India and what is locally known, sometimes, as “little Pakistans”. The uprooted Homes and hearths lost to communal violence. (Photograph by Siddharaj) Muslims = Victims? The combination of spatial concentration and socio-economic decline has resulted in the making of specific kinds of “Muslim constituencies” in many Indian cities. In the old cities of erstwhile princely state capitals, where Muslims represent a large share of the voters—Hyderabad, Bhopal, Lucknow—local parties (the mim in Hyderabad, for instance) and the Congress indulge in emotional politics without paying much attention to the effective upliftment of the Muslims. They project themselves as the defenders of the waqf properties more than they promote education. That way, the local voters are bound to remain in the need of local saviours. The Congress and the mim are very good at playing this brand of clientelism which makes the ghettoised Muslims victims...of other Muslims! Similarly, ghettoised Muslims are not victims but actors when the making of Muslim enclaves is due to their quest of cultural homogeneity. Lower-middle-class neighbourhoods—like in Zakir Nagar in Delhi—sometimes develop along these lines. They do not result only from discrimination, but also from self-segregation on the part of families eager to offer to their children an atmosphere free from Hindu influences likely to “corrupt” them. Ghettoisation can also be a blessing in disguise. In Ahmedabad, the 2002 pogrom led middle-class people to go to Juhapura, where they took new initiatives that benefited the old, poorer inhabitants—including some slum-dwellers. Not only somewhat better roads were developed, but private hospitals and schools were created. This last initiative met rising expectations of the poor whose hunger for education was even more acute than elsewhere in India. If the relief colonies had been created for the victims of the pogrom by Islamic NGOs, which kept telling their “beneficiaries” that they had been punished for not being “good enough Muslims”—and which built mosques before anything else almost—most of the refugees do not indulge in guilt feeling any more but believe in modern education. Some of the new Juhapura schools are so “modern” indeed that their Islamic nature is completely obliterated. Some of them have even adopted Hindu names.... The paradoxical, positive impact of ghettoisation suggests that the real victims among the Muslims are not those who live in ghettoes, but those who live in slums within cities where the Muslim middle class can afford not to go to the ghetto, like in Mumbai and Aligarh. In Mumbai, the Muslim middle class has been shaken by the riots of 1992-93 and is affected by discrimination, but is more resilient than its Ahmedabadi cousin. As a result, there are more Muslim slums—like Shivaji Nagar—than Muslim ghettoes. In Aligarh, the Muslim university professors (and employees) represent such a critical mass that they form an enclave by themselves and do not mix (not even interact!) with the inhabitants of the Muslim slums (including Shah Jamal). Muslim social Class is a factor in Muslim fragmentation. (Photograph by Jitender Gupta)     The real victims among Muslims are not those in ghettos but those in slums within cities where the Muslim middle class are safer and have no need to ghettoise.     In addition to these socio-economic divisions along lines of caste and class, there are other factors of fragmentation within the Muslims. In Lucknow, Shias and Sunnis are locked in historical rivalries—which have to do with unequal access to power and economic resources again, and this fracture translates in the making of additional forms of spatial self-segregation. In Gujarat, a similar sectarian cleavage has resulted in the insulation of the Bohras from the other Muslims. In fact, the Bohras—trading communities who converted lately from Hinduism—do not wish to share the pain of the Sunnis and sometimes even do not give “Islam” as their religion to the census enumerators. Some of the leaders of the community have decided to make peace with Narendra Modi and are as close to the BJP as many Shias of Lucknow. Marginalisation is not the order of the day for Muslims of all Indian cities. Their situation is better in the south and the east than in the west and the north. The case studies conducted in Calicut, Bangalore and Cuttack (and presented in the book mentioned above) show that mixity resists trends of (self-) segregation. Such contrasts are the products of history: in the south, Islam was introduced by Arab merchants along commercial routes in a quietist manner and Muslims felt (and were seen to be) as much Dravidian as the Hindus did. In Kerala, they also benefited from the Gulf connection that partly explains their relative affluence. But the Muslims from Kerala are not the only ones to benefit from Gulf remittance money. In fact, in almost each and every city mentioned above, including Bhopal, Jaipur, Lucknow and, of course, Mumbai and Hyderabad, large numbers of Muslim families have expatriate members working in that part of the world. This external resource plays a major role in keeping them afloat. But the new, emerging (if not embryonic) middle class which is developing among the Muslims in the cities elsewhere is hopeful that other opportunities will materialise in India itself thanks to liberalisation. They not only expect more international trade from the economic reforms, but also more jobs. Usually, weaker sections—including the Dalits—long for a stronger public sector. The Muslims (who do not get the benefit of reservations) have no nostalgia for the Nehruvian pattern because the State has discriminated against them more than against any other community—as evident from the figures of the Sachar Committee reports which show, for instance, that non-OBC Muslims represent 2.7 per cent of the psus’ personnel and 4.5 per cent of the railways, when the Hindu OBCs are respectively 8.3 and 9.3 per cent. Whether the private sector will do better in this respect remains to be seen. The Muslims who invest in education have great expectations that may remain dead letter. In the process, they may learn to downplay their Islamic identity like some of the best schools of Juhapura or some of the Muslim localities which have adopted the name of Shivaji (in Bangalore and Hyderabad) in order to conceal their Muslim character. Whatever the result, these moves already suggest that even if ghettoisation is not as bad as it sounds, Indian multiculturalism is in danger. There is much at stake there. Most of SIMI’s cadre—including the few, radical ones who created, apparently, the Indian Mujahideen—were educated Muslims. To alienate those who invested in education in order to be part of the brighter part of urban India may result in the making of “reluctant fundamentalists”, to use the title of a recent book. (Christophe Jaffrelot is the co-editor of Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, to be published soon in India by HarperCollins.) 46/D-84 Jul 16, 2012 06:17 PM Lutuf Allah > If people go around covered from head to foot in black, how can they progress. Muslims have been treated 10000 per cent more generously than they ever deserved. They have abused the good treatment Hindus have given, correct !! Well spoken ... The Contrarian London, United Kingdom PERMALINK  |  LIKE (0)  |  DISLIKE (0)  |  REPORT ABUSE 45/D-80 Jul 16, 2012 06:09 PM  "The rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1980s-90s also contributed to the marginalisation of the community, and not just in socio-economic terms—the representation of Muslims among local businessmen and lawyers is on the decline almost everywhere—but also in spatial terms." Yeah right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This says all that needs to be said about the quality of this article. Rakhal Philadelphia, United States PERMALINK  |  LIKE (0)  |  DISLIKE (0)  |  REPORT ABUSE 44/D-77 Jul 16, 2012 05:58 PM 6/D-139 Ganesh Natrajan > Lucknow, Bhopal and Agra are not names with a Muslim origin ... Jaffrelot needs to brush up on his knowledge of Indian city names and their origins. Well Spotted. Most founded by Muslim rulers end up with "abad" ... The Contrarian London, United Kingdom PERMALINK  |  LIKE (2)  |  DISLIKE (0)  |  REPORT ABUSE 43/D-44 Jul 16, 2012 11:37 AM Varun [Moslems, generally speaking, were favoured under the British…] After The Mutiny I can see how that would be a logical move. [as a counterweight to the growing anti-imperialism and independence movement] Of course. In fact it was the Hindu Mahasabha who agitated for and won India’s independence from the British, not the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. I don’t understand how the history books have gotten it so wrong. ?? Kamaal ki baath hai. I learn a lot from comments on Outlook.   Zafar Sydney, Australia PERMALINK  |  LIKE (1)  |  DISLIKE (3)  |  REPORT ABUSE 42/D-42 Jul 16, 2012 11:31 AM Ramki Putting aside your defensiveness re JNU (why? What have they done to you?)… [Muslims (as a large community with 200 million followers) are far more urbanised than Hindus.] Correct. What does this mean is this - The Development paradigm that the Nehru-Indira-Rajiv-Sonia dynasty and their camp followers have adopted seem to have completely neglected the need for urban renewal and that, more than any evil RSS/BJP is responsible for the relative poverty among Indians.] Correct […the way to improve the lot of Indian Muslims is to encourage private informal sector,encourage the petty trade, encourage urban renewal of inner cities and spending more on urban infrastructure and doing everything to prepare India for more urbanisation.] Again, correct. (And correct for all Indians, not just for Indian Muslims.) [Now, did India in last 65 years - ruled mostly by Congress do any of these? Answer is no.] So why isn’t this quite urban community (Indian Muslims) of artisans and petty businessmen voting for alternatives to the Congress? I think you’ll find that quite often they do vote for alternatives – just not in great numbers for the BJP and its buddies. Why is this so? You listed some problems – you need to ask did BJP ruled states address them. Did they invest in inner cities, including Muslim dominated areas? Did they encourage urban renewal? Did they create a good business climate where ALL investors and ALL business people were treated fairly, where security was extended to ALL, where property rights were respected, and where fair compensation was paid to those who were displaced or disadvantaged by no fault of their own? Where there was no corruption? Take poster-child Gujarat, ruled by the BJP since 1995 (almost twenty years). Has the BJP in Gujarat invested in Muslim dominated urban areas like Juhapura, or have they systematically not invested in these areas? Are Muslim businesses as safe as Hindu businesses in Gujarat? Or are they a little less safe – must they try and placate the Govt to get what everybody else gets automatically by right? Is the property (and life) of Muslims as respected in Gujarat as the property rights and lives of Hindus? (Note: the many Muslims displaced by the 2002 Pogrom have not only not even now received adequate compensation for their losses, they have not been able to return to their most substantial investment – their homes). How is this good governance? See – you can criticise the Congress, and largely I will agree with you. But when you look at results rather than PR the BJP is not that different, and in fact comes with its own additional problems of communal violence and corruption. So instead of asking why the IMs don’t blame Congress Raj for their plight (which they do, going by how they don’t vote for Cong any more) why aren’t you asking why the BJP is failing to get the Muslim Vote? I have itemised concrete failures of governance – not just symbolic issues like mandirs and masjids etc – why isn’t the BJP doing well enough in these area to win the minority vote? Don’t you think that they should tryu? Regards   Zafar Sydney, Australia PERMALINK  |  LIKE (0)  |  DISLIKE (4)  |  REPORT ABUSE HAVE YOUR SAY |  READ ALL 46 COMMENTS  Comments Policy