Iraq

Communalism

US Imperialism

Globalisation

WSF In India

Humanrights

Economy

Kashmir

Palestine

Environment

Gujarat Pogrom

Gender/Feminism

Dalit/Adivasi

Arts/Culture

 

Contact Us

 

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.