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[1] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Wed Jun 8, 2005 9:12pm Subject: ASIF JALAL: Say no to quota at AMU Say no to quota at AMU by ASIF JALAL Asstt Supdt of Police Shimla, Himachal Pradesh [ aasifjalal@...] (Tribune 28.05.2005) THE demand by the fundamentalist fringe of the Muslim leadership for a quota for the Muslims at AMU, Aligarh, was long-standing. The government finally yielded to this demand when it approved the AMU Academic Council??™s proposal to reserve 50 per cent of the seats for Muslims for admission in 36 postgraduate courses at AMU citing Section 2(1) of AMU (Amendment) Act, 1981, and Section 5(C) of the Act which empowers the university to formulate policies for promoting ???the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India???. This approval, apart from being blatantly communal, is totally against the interest of the Indian Muslims. Though on the surface, it may appear contrary. It has to be understood that for the Muslim leadership in India, the institutions and issues like AMU, Jama Masjid, MPLB, Babri Masjid, Rushdie affair etc. are stepping stones of their political career through which they raise themselves to the corridors of power and manoeuvre the government of the day. The present move is a fine example of this fact. The previous government sought to bring AMU under the ambit of the Common Entrance Test (CET). This was interpreted as an attempt to ???erode its minority character???. Now to draw political mileage from the whole affair, quota-based admission policy is being introduced as a sop to ???rectify??? the damage sought to be done by the previous government. The logic cited for this is ???to promote the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India???. However, the argument that the study of the modern courses like MBBS, MCA, engineering, LLB, BEd etc by Muslims at AMU would promote their (Islamic) cultural advancement is absurd on all accounts. Today??™s India is a land of opportunities. Thousands of educational institutions are providing courses in liberal arts, science, technology etc. like never before. We have low interest rate educational loans to facilitate the pursuit of the dream if we are poor. Thousands of fellowships are offered to the young and enterprising. It was never so easy to study and get empowered. There are countless men and women who, by hard work, acquired education and substantially improved their lot. However, among Muslims there exists really no earnest desire for education and material success through institutionalised mechanism. Muslim society is basically a lost world. It is a world of persistent delusion of persecution complex. It is a world of men sitting idly and waiting for the state to intervene and ameliorate their condition. Here children have no schools, no tradition of selfless intellectual pursuit, and no deep urge to awaken their self or to know the secret of life. In this world, the dominant belief is that Muslims are discriminated against in government jobs, therefore technical skill and educational qualifications are not worth pursuit. Education is seen more as an eligibility criterion for applying for government jobs than an instrument to choose one??™s destiny. The advocates of educational uplift of the Muslim through reservations have no inkling to work at this level in Muslim society because it involves years of selfless, unnoticed, unrecognised blood and sweat in the hundreds of villages and towns of India. Such work will not win them a general election, or the favour of the ruling party. In fact, in the rear side of another institution of minority character, Jamia Millia, Delhi, you would get the largest mass of illiterate Muslims. The Muslim intellectuals of this institution are short of time and resources to educate and guide aimless young boys and girls, migrants and locals, unemployed and employed in the self-alienating and demeaning jobs. Again not very far from here is the locality of the Meo Muslims of Haryana, a community at the bottom of socio??“economic indicators. In fact according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), female illiteracy among the Muslims on the all India level is 66 per cent and in Haryana it is universal (98 per cent). Ironically, an organisation run by people of another faith is working here, but not a single soul who is championing ???to promote especially the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India??? is to be found here. The prescription of reservation does not address this issue of mass illiteracy and a pathetic absence achievement motivation through approved means. And if there exists indifference and apathy towards education at the basic level, there will be no Muslim to go to study at AMU. The problem of the Muslim community is not the shortage of educational institutions to get enrolled, rather it is the shortage of men and women to get enrolled. The need of the moment is to unleash the reserve of talent, of infinite aspiration among the young Muslims and give it a constructive direction. ----------------------------------------- [2] From: sanjeev nayyar <exploreindia@vsnl.net> Date: Wed Jun 8, 2005 11:21am Subject: pick of the month june 05 Namaskar Mitra, 1. Influence of Indian Languages on China, Korea and Japan - based on book by the Ramakrishna Mission. http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_inside.asp?cat_name=cultphil&cid=538&sid=9007 2. Why Pakistan will never allow India to live in peace - the current friendship between the two nations is a myth. Pakistan is all along working on weakening India, making it khokla from inside. The day Pakistan desires true friendship with India there would be no reason for it to exist as a nation. By raising issues like demolition of the Babri Masjid during Advani's visit it is positioning itself as the protector of Sub-continent Muslims. The eventual plan is as Sri Aurobindo said, to make the Muslims rule India once again. http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_inside.asp?cat_name=warsfa&cid=135&sid=17 ------------------------------------------------- [3] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com Date: Wed Jun 8, 2005 Subject: Mullahs Can't Speak For Muslims: Secular politics requires new language, actors Mullahs Can't Speak For Muslims: Secular politics requires new language, actors YOGINDER SIKAND [ TIMES OF INDIA, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 08, 2005 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1135070 In theory, Islam preaches the radical equality of all Muslims, having no room for a priesthood or intermediary between the individual believer and God. Ironically, that is precisely what the class of mullahs has been reduced to. Claiming the status of heirs of the Prophet, they argue that they alone possess true knowledge of Islam. Lay Muslims, they insist, must follow them unquestioningly. To do otherwise, they warn, would be tantamount to defying the divine will. Mullahs routinely use their claim to leadership of the Muslim community as a bargaining tool with political parties. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's recent meeting with the leader of the Jamiatul-Ulama-i-Hind, Asad Madani, is the most recent instance of parties bending backwards to appease conservative mullahs in the hope of garnering Muslim votes. By according the mullahs the status of leaders of the Muslim community, secular politicians do little to help the cause of the ordinary Muslim. Indeed, they do the ordinary Muslim positive harm by hoisting on him a reactionary leadership that is ill at ease with the modern world and is unable to play any positive role in helping the community face today's challenges. By privileging conservative mullahs as Muslim leaders, secular parties indicate their own prejudicial belief of Muslims being the sole exception to democratic politics. While lay individuals can represent Hindus, Sikhs, Dalits and Christians, these secular leaders concur with Islamists, mullahs and Hindutva chauvinists that Muslims must necessarily be represented by men from the madrassas. In this way, Muslims are denied the opportunity of developing an alternate leadership that, in contrast to the majority of mullahs, is in touch with the real problems of Muslims and of the complexities of living in a multi-religious society. Rather than harping only on contentious issues, such as the Babri mosque, Urdu or Muslim Personal Law, such leaders would focus on the real concerns of Muslims, including poverty, illiteracy, women's rights and communalism. Such a leadership would obviously be perceived as a threat by a range of formidable actors. Radical Islamists and many conservative mullahs may be expected to denounce such leaders as enemies of Islam. Again, there is nothing that anti-Muslim forces such as the Hindutva brigade, as well as secular parties who see Muslims simply as vote banks, would hate more than having progressive Muslims replace mullahs as leaders of the community. This would mean an end to the politics of tokenism, forcing political parties to give Muslims their due. According the mullahs the status of leaders of the Muslim community is harmful for both Muslims as well as the country. The mullahs are fiercely divided among themselves. Sectarian intolerance is intrinsic to the worldview of the mullah, which also extends to seeing all other religions as deviant. One can, therefore, hardly expect the majority of traditional mullahs to be passionate advocates of genuine dialogue and pluralism. Muslims rank among the poorest communities in India and there is considerable merit in the argument that they have suffered government neglect and discrimination. Allowing mullahs to represent the Muslim community will make no difference to the stark reality of Muslim poverty, and is even likely to only further worsen it. For one thing, the majority of the Muslim poor is of low caste background, while mullahs are generally from the ranks of the ashraf or higher castes. The latter, like their Hindu upper caste counterparts, have shown little or no concern about the plight of their low caste co-religionists. In addition, most mullahs have little understanding of the complexities of a modern economy. Almost all that they learn in madrassas are the Qur'an, the sayings attributed to the Prophet and mediaeval tomes on Islamic jurisprudence. Most of them would naively imagine that a ban on interest, imposition of the zakat levy and strict observance of Qur'anic laws of inheritance would miraculously eradicate poverty. They can, thus, be expected to do little to help Muslims climb out of the trap of poverty. On the education front, too, the mullahs have done little for Muslims other than setting up madrassas, where poor Muslim children get free food and a modi-cum of education. Many mullahs look upon modern education with mistrust, as threatening to lead Muslims astray and tempting them to question the authority of clerics. Treating mullahs as authoritative spokesmen of Muslims inhibits the development of alternate voices that can speak for Islam. Such voices are crucial today in order to articulate more relevant Islamic perspectives than what mullahs preach on a range of issues, from interfaith relations and gender justice to questions of war and peace. A number of progressive Muslim modernists in the co untry ??” scholars as well as activists ??” are struggling to do just that, often having to face the wrath of Islamists and conservative mullahs. For secular parties to flirt with mullahs further diminishes the hope that progressive modernists will get a seri ous hearing within the community and beyond. |
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June10, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Anti-coke, military spending & Dalit Muslims >> |
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