An Indian Muslim

Shoaib,

What a sensitive and eloquent way of making your point. The point of the average, law abiding Indian.

May your tribe increase.

good one, shoaib...

good one, shoaib...

You see Shoib I agree with your opinion,We the Indian Muslims have been most victimised .Those who at the behest of MoulanaAzad And Congress Nehru For one reason or another did not Migrate was once betrayed .

At the formation of B De sh in 72 There was rude awakening for those who migrated but to East Pakistan.Its double indemnity .If migration the answer then why did migrated Indian Muslims were Killed in Muslim state East Pakistan or B De sh ?

The answer is not this or that .
If Correct answer is Migration Then Why is there political orphan status of those who left there home ?

it can be argued left behind Muslim Minority have been orphan so in India too .

Let Say more Indian Muslims migrated . was Jinnah able to take in 3 crores in 47 or 15 crores present population of Indian Muslims.I don't think so .There were no provision nor solution to Indian Muslims ..
In my opinion Independence and Partition was done in HASTE . Congress was drooling to have it very next day if possible .they could not wait even one more day If there was not so much haste things could have been worked out even Kashmir ....instead of 2 wars and present excuse for terrorism .I condemn the terrorist in the same breath as you as Indian Muslim .But Indian Muslim did not want partition .no body cared .
I am afraid no terrorist will listen to us .We are sitting in car whose steering is in the hands of
India
Paskistan
or Terrorist
and there is nothing you can do about it .

The fourth element is the Right wing hindutva ..I know some Hindutvawant to bounce Indian Muslim as Ping Pong ball between congress and Appeasement vote bank slur .Only thing that all are willing to give is A vote per Muslim every 4/5 years for what it is worth .

Youngman Shoib
You are a good person and has written this piece straight fromthe heart. I pray that you remain so and for that it is necessary that you stop coming to Chowk where cynicals like us will destroy your idealism.
All the best and keep it up.
Regards

The good people at Chowk have made some changes which I feel are very important to the whole article.

I have written to them about it. However since my permission was not taken before these changes were put into place I am taking the liberty of putting down my original points here:

"The BJP has already taken out ads which read "Fight Terror. Vote BJP" should read:

The BJP has already taken out ads in Delhi which read "Fight Terror. Vote BJP" written on a background of blood.

If need be I can also provide a digital copy of the ad. Or you can just pick up yesterday's copy of any Delhi paper (ToI, HT).

The last line of the article has been totally deleted. It read:

"JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF MINE."

And most importantly the current title is not mine. And in fact I DO NOT want this article to be named "An Indian Muslim". The original title was , "Dear Mr. Terrorist"

Good one Shoaibh. If only more Indian muslims were like you, there wouldn't be any problem.

Shoaib,
Though Modi of Gujarat is considered a muslim nemesis and patron of Sangh parivar, he had no remorse in clearing several hundred temples to make way for a highway last month. Nobody heard of riots by Hindus.

Here is a way forward.Whenever the religion gets in the way of civilized life, it should be firmly told to get out.

Here is one simple way of creating a snowball. Every morning at 5AM, students, night shift workers, sick and in short who are trying to sleep are woken up by Azaan. Hindus have also taken the cue, political assertiveness is put through loud speakers for Kirtans, Bhajans...

You as a Muslim. Write articles, call public attention and ask mullahs to send SMS or telephone calls to invite to prayer and no azaans on loud speakers. I swear, I'll walk in the first kirtan and ask them to stop as long as I can show that muslims are also trying to be ... civilized.

I feel strongly one simple action where Mullah and Pundits are defeated will be sufficient to bring back secular and civilized society back to its feet.

Dear Shoaib,

Even though you will not like what I am saying I shall still say it.

People like me (and have not found anything contrary to the same) it is not Muslims but Islam that is evil as in our view like xtianity and judaism it is not a religion but a perverse political philospsohy that is inherently murderous.

However for the 1st time I have felt that the anguish of a muslim could be genuine for Bharat Ma's pain.

At the same time pls see ofr it yourself if you were in any muslim country the rights etc you would have had would have been much less than here and it is only a few people like you amongst your community who could value that.

Sanatani

I was in Gonda in 1997 the muslims had voted en bloc for Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh (one of the chief mobilisers for the BJP during the rath yatra) as simply 1 person was arrested from his house who happened to be Dawood's agent. For the funeral of a Lance Naik of the Grenadiers in a village close to Gonda died in Assam in CI ops it was said that not even 5% of the muslims from his village came but a whole lot of Hindus even from the main city. They all came at the instance of the local RSS leader who mistakenly thought that the muslims would view it positively if they paid homage to a muslim who died for his country. Apparently the local muslims had no use for such a man. This RSS guy was seethingwith anger and they say angers causes madness his parting comment to me on the subject was agar aaj Danga hota hai to mai pehli us Shaheed ke ghar walon ko marronga yeh mussalman Mader**** keval yeh hi bhasha samajhte hai. The irony was lost on him of his own words then and his previous actions.

Re: # 8

Regards Sahib,

Please let me know how you equate the Pandits with the Mullahs. The only politico religous demand of the Pandits has been to ban cow slaughter.

That a subject being dear to Hindus is not wrong. But in the case of Mullahs and Imams it is a totally different thing.

Babri Msajid could have been bilaterally solved between Hindus and Muslims of Ayodhya if the mullah leadership and AIMPLB had not intervened to make it a issue of Islam khatre main and Islam ki izzat.

To equate the two is not silly it is like covering up a crime.

Hope this will help you to see the truth of the actions of both

Regards
Sanatani

Shoaib, a good article but plz. dont under estimate things

No one supports the innocent killings and no one can justify what terrorists did


But its also wrong to say all is well for muslims in India

How many of muslims according to thier population precentage are EE from IIt Mumbai, IIT Madras etc. If you have did it well good, but did muslimsare even about 1% in such institutions if not 20% which they make up of whole india

Plz. dont tell me they are so dumb and duffer to get into these schools !

Teerorism iin any form is not justified but plz. dont say all is colourful what we have seen recently in Orissa for christians and for muslims in Gujrat

Regards

Re: # 11

An article by BBC (written by a Hindu journalist):

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/south_asia/6938090.stm

Why do Indian Muslims lag behind?


By Soutik Biswas
BBC News



As historians tell it, during India's first election in 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru was already worrying about the feeble representation of Muslims in the country's positions of authority.
Many more Muslims had stayed back in India than the millions who migrated to newly-born Pakistan after the partition just five years before.

India's first prime minister's concerns about the country's second largest religious group and the largest religious minority were eminently justified.




"There were hardly any Muslims left in the defence service, and not many in the secretariat," says historian Ramachandra Guha.

Little change

Next year, in 1953, a group of intellectuals met to discuss forming a political party for the Muslims and spoke about the low representation of Muslims in political positions and bureaucracy.

More than half century later, on India's 60th anniversary of independence, very little has changed.


Today, at over 138 million, Muslims constitute over 13% of India 's billion-strong population, and in sheer numbers are exceeded only by Indonesia's and Pakistan's Muslim community.

The country has had three Muslim presidents - a largely ceremonial role. Bollywood and cricket, two secular pan-Indian obsessions, continue to have their fair share of Muslim stars - the ruling heroes in Mumbai films are Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman Khan, and the star of India's current English cricket tour is pace bowler Zaheer Khan. Not long ago, the national team was led by the stylish Mohammed Azharuddin.

That's where the good news essentially ends.


Muslims comprise only 5% of employees in India's big government, a recent study found. The figure for Indian Railways, the country's biggest employer, is only 4.5%.
The community continues to have a paltry representation in the bureaucracy and police - 3% in the powerful Indian Civil Service, 1.8% in foreign service and only 4% in the Indian Police Service. And Muslims account for only 7.8% of the people working in the judiciary.

Indian Muslims are also largely illiterate and poor.

At just under 60%, the community's literacy rate is lower than the national average of 65%. Only half of Muslim women can read and write. As many as a quarter of Muslim children in the age-group 6-14 have either never attended school or dropped out.

They are also poor - 31% of Muslims are below the country's poverty line, just a notch above the lowest castes and tribes who remain the poorest of the poor.

Identity card

To add to the community's woes are myriad problems relating to, as one expert says, "identity, security and equity".

"They carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time," says a recent report on the state of Indian Muslims.

Historians say it is ironic that many Indians bought the Hindu nationalist bogey of 'Muslim appeasement' when it had not translated into any major socio-economic gain for the community.

So why has the lot of Indian Muslims remained miserable after six decades of independence?


For one, it is the sheer apathy and ineptitude of the Indian state which has failed to provide equality of opportunity in health, education and employment.
This has hurt the poor - including the Muslim poor who comprise the majority of the community - most.

There is also the relatively recent trend of political bias against the community when Hindu nationalist governments have ruled in Delhi and the states.

Also, the lack of credible middle class leadership among the Muslims has hobbled the community's vision and progress.

Consequently, rabble rousers claiming to represent the community have thrust themselves to the fore.

To be true, mass migration during partition robbed the community of potential leaders - most Muslim civil servants, teachers, doctors and professionals crossed over.

But the failure to throw up credible leaders has meant low community participation in the political processes and government - of the 543 MPs in India's lower house of parliament, only 36 are Muslims.

Also, as Ramachandra Guha says, the "vicissitudes of India-Pakistan relations and Pakistan's treatment of its minorities" ensured that Muslims remained a "vulnerable" community.

Regional disparities

The plight of Indian Muslims also has a lot to do with the appalling quality of governance, unequal social order and lack of equality of opportunity in northern India where most of the community lives.

Populous Uttar Pradesh is home to nearly a fifth of Muslims (31 million) living in India, while Bihar has more than 10 million community members.


"Southern India is a different picture. Larger cultural and social movements have made education more accessible and self employment more lucrative benefiting a large number of Muslims," says historian Mahesh Rangarajan.
In Andhra Pradesh state, for example, 68% of Muslims are literate, higher than the state and national average. School enrolment rates for Muslim children are above 90% in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Mahesh Rangarajan says poverty and "absence of ameliorative policies" has hurt India's Muslims most.

If India was to be "a secular, stable and strong state," Nehru once said, "then our first consideration must be to give absolute fair play to our minority".

Chief Justice thats true and really sad :(

A lot of people here are reeling out facts of the backwardness of Muslims in India

In my article I have mentioned that but I have also mentioned that “a large part of the blame for which (backwardness) it will have to shoulder itself.�

Yes, the state is responsible to some extent, no doubt, but so is the community itself. Let us not be ostriches and not take cognisance of the fact.

For example who is stopping us from bringing women into our Masjids? Who? Why don’t we?

Why do we have a civil code that makes polygamy legal? Why don’t we agitate for that instead of wasting our energies over some cartoon drawn in Europe?

The more we run away from the real difficult things, the deeper we will dig ourselves into this pit, until one day it kills us.

Another thing.

Many commentators across the board have blamed the marginalisation of India's Muslims for their angst which in turn, they say, leads to these terror attacks.

To some extent this is true. But only to some extent. Firstly, Muslims aren't the only marginalised group in India.

Secondly, if this is the reason for terror in India, what reason can there possibly be for terror in a place like Pakistan where the question of Muslim marginalistaion does not even arise?

Let us not run away from the problem. Let us tackle it head on.

Shoaib,

nice to hear from you.

These kind of attacks hurts the Indian Muslims real bad than helping them. But to tell you the truth as Sanatani said, people are realising that it is Islam that is the problem and not the Muslims.

Same way as Hinduism is attacked for caste discrimination, it is high time Muslims start attacking Islam for the murderous ideology it is.