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From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Aug 22, 2005 Subject: Interview: Zakia Jowher on Gujarat Communal Situation and Anti-Fascist Struggle Zakia Jowher is a senior fellow with Action Aid in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand she talks about efforts to promote communal harmony and secure justice for the victims of the 2002 state-sponsored anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat. Q: Action Aid is one of the few NGOs in Gujarat to have taken the issue of the struggle against communalism seriously. In this regard, what sort of work has it been engaged in? A: Action Aid came to Gujarat in 2001, in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Kutch. Before this we used to work with local partners. During the 2002 genocide we worked along with several other NGOs and citizens??™ groups in providing relief to thousands of Muslims who had been driven from their homes and forced to take refuge in the camps. In the course of working in the camps we devised a campaign, Aman Samudaya, involving peace volunteers, whom we call Aman Pathiks, who worked to provide relief materials, medicines and psycho-social counselling to people in the camps, as well as to help them present their claims for compensation. We formed teams of two Aman Pathiks each, one a Muslim and the other a Dalit, and they worked together in the camps. In this way we wanted to bring Muslims and Dalits, the prime victims of the carnage, to come together. We managed to get around two hundred Aman Pathiks to work in the camps, but once the camps were closed their number was substantially reduced. Thereafter, through the Aman Samudaya, the family of Aman Pathiks, we helped several hundred riot-affected families to set up small businesses and provided them means of livelihood. Q: What work is the Aman Samuday presently engaged in? A: The Aman Samuday is now active in seven locations in Amedabad city as well as in the Panchmahals, Sabarkantha, Baroda and Dahod districts, all of which are very communally sensitive areas. The Aman Pathiks are engaged in peace activism in their own ways. One way is by working with impoverished Muslim and Dalit communities for common social purposes. So, some Aman Pathiks in Ahmedabad and Godhra have helped mobilise Muslims and Dalits living in slums to protest against demolitions of their homes by the municipal authorities or in taking out joint rallies on Dr. Ambedkar??™s birthday or, as recently, protesting against police atrocities on striking workers in Gurgaon. Last May Day some of Aman Pathiks helped mobilise workers??™ unions and other deprived communities, including even burkha-clad Muslim women, all carrying red flags in a large demonstration through the streets of Ahmedabad. Through such common actions we believe one can build bridges between the different marginalised communities who have to face the brunt of communal violence and atrocities committed by the various state authorities. Other Aman Pathiks have staged street plays on the theme of communal harmony and the politics of communalism, and have organised other functions, such as Eid Milans, Raksha Bandhan celebrations and joint cricket matches to bring the youth from the different communities together. Others are working among women, mainly Muslims and Dalits, trying to promote awareness of women??™s rights. In some villages, Aman Pathiks have helped Muslims, who had fled and whose houses were burnt down, to return. As part of our efforts to mobilise marginalsied communities for their rights we arranged for a group of some 2000 people from Gujarat, mostly Tribals, Muslims and Dalits, to participate in the World Dignity Forum in Delhi. One woman Aman Pathik, Nasib Shaikh, several of whose family members were killed in the carnage, has even been nominated for the alternate Noble Peace Prize that is collectively given to a thousand women around the world this year. The Aman Samuday is also involved in the Godhra Gaurav, a network of more than 20 civil society organisations working for peace, harmony and justice in Gujarat. These include Dalit, Hindu and Muslim groups as well as NGOs, including such organisations as the Nirankari Mission and the Rationalist Humanist Association. Godhra Gaurav works in a very difficult environment??”in Godhra town, which is communally almost completely polarised. It recently organised a satyagraha opposing the recent violence in the town on the occasion of the Ganesh Yatra, taking out a peace rally of Hindus, Dalits and Muslims through the streets. In order to bring people from different communities together it has organised a series of events, such as garba dance programmes during Navratri, ghazal and qawwali programmes, street theatres, a mehndi competition for girls and a mixed Hindu-Muslim-Dalit cricket match. It has also taken up common issues, such as the plight of sanitation workers or slum dwellers, with the district authorities. Q: In other words, Action Aid and Aman Samuday seems to be moving from a purely development-based approach to rights-based approach. Is that correct? A: Exactly. Action Aid is one of the few international donor agencies that has adopted a distinct rights??™ based approach. It is obvious that communalism must also be countered at the political level, and what we are trying to do is to strengthen certain non-party political processes, politics here being understood in a wider sense. We have to intervene at the public level in order to carry forward the struggle against fascism. We cannot act in the usual NGO style service-delivery mode. That won??™t really change anything. NGOs cannot be a substitute for peoples??™ struggles. We need mobilisation on the streets, not merely seminars in hotels, which is how most NGOs operate. By trying to mobilise Muslims, Dalits and other marginalised sections and concerned groups to intervene in the public sphere we are seeking to promote a broad alliance against fascism and to strengthen local level alternative leadership. Thus, for instance, in March 2004, just before the upcoming elections, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad began a Trishul Diksha campaign in Godhra to distribute lethal tridents to Hindus in the town. Our Aman Pathiks, along with other members of the Godhra Gaurav, protested against this to the district collector and sent a letter to the Election Commission and to the National Human Rights Commission demanding a ban on the VHP??™s programme. However, no action was taken. So, to register our protest we organised a Gulab Dikhsha or flower distribution programme as a symbolic counter to the VHP??™s programme on the same day as the latter was held. We organised a march through the streets of Godhra, distributing flowers to onlookers, shouting slogans in favour of communal harmony. Many more people attended our programme than the event held by the VHP. Our point was that if some people can mobilise public support for an ideology based on hate and violence, why cannot we mobilise the public to come out in favour of peace and justice? Another move that we have made as part of the rights??™ based approach is our involvement in the ongoing struggle to secure justice for numerous innocent Muslims detained by the state under the draconian POTA law. We have been working with like-minded groups through the Gujarat Jan Andolan, an anti-fascist and anti-globalisation alliance of peoples??™ movements, to provide legal aid and psycho-social support to some POTA cases and to pressurise the Supreme Court to order the reinvestigation of some 2000 cases that were summarily closed. We have organized numerous demonstrations for justice for the victims of the carnage, for stern punishment to its perpetrators and, through our documentation and legal intervention, have sought to highlight the massive violation of human rights in Gujarat, which still continues. Of course the struggle on the legal front is really an uphill battle, when the state itself is completely controlled by fascist forces, as in Gujarat today. Hardly any convictions have been pronounced in the over 4000 cases related to the carnage, and it appears that the vast majority of the victims are doomed to remain without justice. Q: What do you feel about the ways most NGOs responded to the genocide of 2002? A: The difference between the massive support extended by NGOs and other civil society groups during the Kutch earthquake of 2001 and the anti-Muslim genocide a year later is really striking. Relatively few non-Muslim NGOs helped out in the relief and rehabilitation, and now hardly any NGOs are working for communal harmony or against Hindutva fascism. Most of those who helped out with relief work have gone back to their core areas of work??”economic development, gender issues or enviromental protection or whatever. I cannot think of a single NGO whose major concern is the struggle for communal harmony and resisting Hindutva. Many local Gujarati NGOs are quite right-wing, I think, and so obviously do not see this as an issue at all. Also, very few NGOs here have any Muslim staff members, a reflection of their priorities, I suppose. I think the events of 2002 have led to some sort of change among the Muslims of Gujarat, and this would impact on how NGOs could relate to them. There is now a perceptible restlessness among many Muslims in Gujarat, a realisation that they must act on their own for their empowerment since they find themselves so marginalised by the state and the Hindutva forces. One reflection of this is the recent emergence of a number of small groups of concerned Muslims, especially youth, who are trying to work for the empowerment of and reform in the community in their own ways. For instance, there is this group of Muslim women in Ahmedabad called Niswan or ???Women??™, with which I am also associated, which is working to promote gender awareness. There is another group of young Muslims in Juhapura, the biggest Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad, that is working on the educational front. These grassroots efforts need to be linked up to wider struggles of other marginalised groups, such as Dalits, Tribals, Backward Castes and factory contract workers, to promote a political understanding of poverty, communalism and so on. We in Action Aid are also trying to do this. This is essential in order to develop a progressive Muslim leadership that focuses particularly on social, political and economic issues confronting the community, instead of on simply religious issues, which is what the traditional Muslim leaders have generally been doing. This will enable Muslims to participate in mainstream political action, and to reverse the trend, aggressively promoted by the Hindutva fascists and also by religious fundamentalists within the Muslim community, to perpetuate Muslim isolation, to cut Muslims off from wider struggles for justice, secularism and democracy. Q: Is Action Aid??™s engagement with Muslims in this way limited just to Gujarat or is this happening in other parts of India as well? A: We want to promote an alliance of progressive Muslims at the national level. The Gujarat experience has made us feel the urgent need to start similar sorts of engagement with Muslim groups elsewhere. Just as Action Aid has for years been engaged with Dalits and Tribals, we now think that it should also support marginalised and poverty-stricken Muslim groups, developing and strengthening Muslim leadership through capacity building of Muslim youth, linking them up with other progressive movements and groups and strengthening non-party political processes for the community??™s empowerment. It is really imperative for groups committed to social justice to take the social, economic and political concerns of Muslims seriously. Typically, civil society groups that have sought to build bridges with Muslims have worked through Muslim religious leaders and organisations. Personally, I see this as a very limited approach. Why must Muslims be defined, as they are both by the Hindutva camp and by Islamic religious groups, solely in religious terms? When we deal with Dalits and Tribals we rarely refer to religion but, instead, focus on their social, economic and political concerns. Why can??™t we adopt the same approach wit Muslims? I think we should keep religion out of the picture. It should be treated as a private issue. We should resist the tendency to see all Muslim issues through the prism of religion, which is how both Hindutva ideologues as well as doctrinaire Islamists see them .We need to interact with Muslim youth and women directly, instead of through maulvis or Islamists as intermediaries. It simply is not true, contrary to what some people imagine, that Muslims cannot be mobilised on non-religious issues or that they refuse to consider joining wider struggles or efforts along with non-Muslims. We, through the Aman Pathiks, have tried to approach Muslim youth directly on secular issues and I must say that the reception has been quite encouraging, not only from many Muslim youth but also from some ???ulama, particularly some among those associated with the Jamiat ul-???Ulama-i Hind. Q: How do you think the events of 2002 have impacted on the Muslim leadership in Gujarat? A: I think there is a growing realisation, at least among some Muslims here, that we need a new set of leaders, who can steer the community to focus on the myriad social, economic, educational and political problems afflicting the community, rather than harping on religious or identity-related issues alone. It is very obvious to me that doctrinaire Islamists are as much a danger to the Muslims themselves as are Hindutva groups. Islamists see everything in religious and rigidly ideological terms, and so, not surprisingly, have failed to take up the secular concerns of the community. Hindutva and radical Islamism feed on each other and must be both opposed consistently. Both are equally opposed to secularism, democracy and gender justice. I must add, however, that the ???ulama are not a homogenous category. As said earlier, in our work in Gujarat we have received considerable support from several independent ???ulama and some associated with the Jami???at ul-Ulama-i Hind, many of whom are sincerely committed to Muslim welfare and communal harmony. =========================== Zakia Jowher can be contacted on zakia@... |
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