On
The March To Modernity
By Aniket
Alam
The Hindu
27 April, 2003
On March 15
last year, during the height of the Gujarat killings, Hyderabad was
bracing itself for its share of trouble. Many thought that this would
be the end of Hyderabad's decade-long era of communal peace. The police
were out in full strength in and around the Charminar area where the
Mecca Masjid is situated, to prevent any "untoward" incident
after the Friday afternoon prayers. But the police are often part of
the problem in such situations.
The `namazis'
started streaming out of Hyderabad's largest mosque, shouting slogans
against the killings in Gujarat and "police complicity" in
the carnage. The sight of hundreds of armed men in `khaki' did nothing
to calm their tempers; the situation was on the verge of spinning out
of control with the slogans getting shriller and stray stones flying
through the air.
It was then
that a few hundred women, many draped head to toe in `burqas', came
out, joined hands and stood their ground for peace between the slogan-shouting
men and the armed police. They would not allow their young men, however
angry, to resort to violence, nor would they allow the police to charge
at them. And they stood till both the sides dispersed.
These women
belonged to the Confederation of Voluntary Associations (COVA), an umbrella
organisation of 18 NGOs active in the Old City area.
The incident
was unprecedented and left both the protesters and police flummoxed.
Women coming out in the open and taking a public stand in such a dangerous
situation was something which Hyderabad had not witnessed since the
heady days of the Telangana peasants' armed uprising against the Nizam,
when women reportedly hid guns under their burqas and carried them to
their fighters.
Visitors who
come to Hyderabad often comment on the large number of women in burqas.
In today's context, the burqa is identified with conservative, even
fundamentalist, Muslims.
But, says university
teacher and women's activist, Rehana Sultana, "the purdah has not
been a hurdle, but rather the means by which women are coming out of
their homes''. Dr. Sultana, who has a doctorate from Osmania University,
runs an educational institution in the middle and lower middle-class
neighbourhood of Dabeerpura, a few km from the Charminar. "You
see more burqas on the streets because there are more women coming out
to study and work."
Women, whose
mothers and grandmothers spent their entire life indoors and remained
uneducated, are going to schools and colleges and taking up jobs breaking
every stereotype. And their social and economic compulsions are such
that they could never have ventured out without the burqa, according
to Dr. Sultana.
It's not just
that their men would have denied them permission, they also needed to
wear `burqas' to hide their "old and worn-out clothes".
Despite the
patriarchal control and poverty that this implies, she says "very
real progress" has been made on both these fronts in the past decade-and-a-half.
More and more women, even in the most deprived or conservative households,
are getting an education.
Women are also
increasingly taking a stand on domestic and marital issues. In one out
of five marriages taking place in the Old City today, some level of
choice is exercised by the girl, claims Dr. Sultana adding that this
was unheard of even a few years ago.
The main factors
driving this trend are increasing prosperity provided by thousands of
young men migrating to the Gulf and North America, and a growing sense
of confidence and security, the result of a decade-long stretch of peace
and communal harmony.
Maulana Abdul
Rahim Quraishi, secretary, All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, and
president of the city-based Tameer-e-Millat, recalls that after the
end of the Nizam's rule, the Muslim community went through a phase of
confusion, decline and impoverishment. Muslims lost their jobs in Government,
faced violence and eviction from their properties, and a hostile Government.
In 1962, 28
per cent of Muslim rickshaw-pullers in Hyderabad were former employees
of the Nizam State and 10 per cent were skilled workers who had lost
their jobs during the 1950s, according to a survey quoted by Javeed
Alam, professor in the city-based CIEFL.
This survey
indicated that 47 per cent of these rickshaw-pullers were literate and
two-thirds of them had been "gainfully employed" earlier.
It was only with the sudden expansion of the job market in the Middle
East and the parallel trend of starting educational institutions in
the 1970s that this dour situation started changing. Muslims migrated
to the Gulf in ever increasing numbers as also to North America, often
to do the most common jobs.
But the money
they saved and sent home changed the economies of hundreds of families.
The message "stand on one's own feet'' propagated by different
community-based organisations such as the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul
Muslimeen and the Tameer-e-Millat was slowly but surely internalised
by the Hyderabadi Muslims.
Education quickly
emerged as the best means to upgrade employment and increasing access
to money sent from abroad spurred attempts to enter business and trades
which Muslims in Hyderabad had never attempted before. Over the two
decades and more since then, Muslims have successfully moved into various
businesses and trades.
Education too
has taken a strong hold on them and though census figures for Muslim
literacy levels in the city are not available, most people agree that
it has grown faster than ever before.
Bashiruddin
Babukhan, a former Minister of Higher Education and member of the Telugu
Desam Party, says that this prosperity, along with a long phase of communal
peace, has led to the economic stabilisation of the Muslim community.
The increasing level of economic well-being is, in turn, reinforcing
the constituency for peace. He also gives full credit to the TDP Government
for its "strong political will" to prevent any communal violence.
Mr. Quraishi
also points to the role played by Hyderabad's "high quality Urdu
press", led by the Siasat and the Munsif, daily newspapers, in
fostering communal peace and social and educational reforms. Together
they have close to a million readers, according to NRS survey data.
The Urdu press is secular, well-informed and has ridden the wave of
growing education and prosperity.
Over the years,
the dailies have become intellectual pillars of the Muslim society,
providing a platform for informed debate and crucial initiatives in
education and relief. In the aftermath of the Gujarat killings, the
Siasat raised over Rs. 3 crores from among its readers for relief and
the Munsif raised close to Rs. 2 crores. Besides the newspapers, money
and relief material were collected by a number of other organisations.
Many truckloads of relief material were sent to Gujarat, houses built,
kitchen equipment and textbooks distributed, medical camps held and
many children who were orphaned in the killings were brought to Hyderabad
for schooling.
"It is
because we helped the Muslims of Gujarat to stand on their feet once
again that our young men are being targeted as ISI agents and terrorists,"
alleges Maulana Quraishi. "The BJP will fight the next elections
on the issue of terrorism as it has failed on all other fronts... Muslims
will be the target of this campaign too."
K. M. Arifuddin,
who heads a chain of Muslim educational institutions in the city, speaks
about the ease with which the "ISI and Pakistani'' label can be
stuck on any Muslim without anyone questioning the Government or security
agencies for proof. He accepts the positive impact that increasing prosperity
and education have had on the Muslims, but adds that all this can be
lost if the growing sense of alienation, fear and insecurity among them
is not addressed.
The state apparatus
is inherently biased against Muslims and Government efforts to reach
out to them have too much symbolism and too little content, he rues.
While the Haj subsidy is increased and Muslim holy days are declared
as holidays, incompetent and corrupt"yes-men" are appointed
to Government-controlled institutions which could benefit the community.
Budgetary allocations for minority education and employment are meagre
and often misappropriated, according to him.
Speaking of
his experience in running his educational institutions, he says that
"we do not get anything without going to court" and that it
is becoming increasingly difficult to work with the Government machinery,
which is "biased and insensitive to our needs".
Government jobs
still remain out of the reach of all except a few Muslims. Of the over
1,200 persons trained and coached for recruitment to security services
and the military by the Siasat-run trust, only a handful have gained
entry even in the juniormost levels.
This when Syed
Ashfaq Hussain claims that unlike earlier, when they were eager to go
to the Middle East, Muslim boys today want to work in the country and
are willing to travel for that. Mr. Hussain is president of the Iqra
Society for Career Guidance, which has been active in spreading entrepreneurial
awareness among Muslim students, besides guiding students in career
opportunity.
He says education
has such a premium that parents are willing to sell household goods
for their sons' education. He reinforces Dr. Sultana's claim that despite
the patriarchal bias and prejudices against women, they are breaking
out.
Women's incomes
have become crucial to the survival of many families and often hold
the key to children getting an English education.
As Asaduddin
Owaisi, Majlis leader, says "earlier, sheer survival, both economic
and physical, was the issue for most Muslims in Hyderabad, but today
it is economic improvement and social progress which is uppermost in
their minds". In this context, continuously charging Muslims with
being "ISI agents", "terrorists" and "fundamentalists"
has the danger of pushing those at the receiving end to extremism and
violence. Muslim leaders claim that hardly ever is proof provided for
these charges and often those charged and arrested are killed in "false"
encounters. They warn that this has the potential to undo much of the
positive changes that the community is going through.