The Standpoint

National Meet on the Status of Muslims in India

By

Karan Deep Singh

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MUSLIM IN INDIA TODAY- was the subject of a National Meet on the Status of Muslims in India organised by Anhad, in collaboration with other organisations including Action Aid, Apna Angan and Youth for Peace from October 3-5 at the Constitution club, Delhi. The meet was organised to document the continuing ways of discrimination, exclusion and persecution of Muslims in India.

The three day event was divided into two sessions per day from October 3 to October 4 and the 5^th of October was kept as the day for deliberations and preparation of proposed recommendations by the jury members. The first session was on ‘Persecution in the Name of Terrorism’ followed by a second session on ‘Social, Economic, Educational, Political Discrimination, and limited access to the impact of Govt. schemes’. The third and the fourth session deliberated upon the ‘Faces of Discrimination’ and ‘Communal Violence and State Impunity’.

The event began with an opening speech by Ms. Shabnam Hashmi, social and political activist, Founding and Managing Trustee, Anhad in which she talked about the constant discrimination faced by the ordinary Muslims from being denied the space for burying its dead or forcible occupation of Qabristan lands, to losing its sons in fake encounters and several other forms of discrimination and persecution of Muslims.

Mr. Harsh Dobhal, editor of Combat Law Human Rights Magazine conducted the rest of the proceedings for the first session on ‘Persecution in the Name of Terrorism’. The panelists present for the session were Mr. Colin Gosalves, Mr. Hanif Lakdawala and Ms. Rooprekha Verma among others.

The first session being an account of the victims of persecution, the panelists heard over seventeen victims with their painful stories about themselves, their family members and acquaintances who were wrongly persecuted.

Manisha Sethi, teacher at Jamia Milia Islamia brought to the attention of the listeners about the alleged Batla House Encounter at Jamia Nagar on 19^th September which she termed fake while mentioning that the “only evidences of bomb- making material found at L-18 were a Bucket, Polyethene Bag and Cello Tape!”. Sethi also mentioned that “17 year old Sajid, one of the accused in spite of being a minor who should have been dealt under the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) was deliberately killed by the police and the fact that he was shot on top of the head points to the fact that he was deliberately made to sit and then shot leading to the death of a child”.

Musarrat Jahan, her sister, Ishrat Jahan who was killed in an encounter by the state police for having links to terror outfits Lashkar-e-Toiba including a mission to assassinate Chief Minister Modi said: “My sister was even scared of a cockroach, we never even knew who Modi was, how could she ever be involved in a mission to assassinate him. How can they take a life when they can’t give it back”? The sobbing sister left the podium after raising the question: “Hum ab kahan jayein, kya karein? Kya humse galti ho gayi ki hum is mulk mein paida ho gaye?”

The accounts of other members were patiently heard by the panelists and related documents were submitted by the victims, their family members and acquaintances to the jury to support their accounts and arguments.

The continuing session was followed by the second session for the day.