10 Gujarat Muslim traders forced out of business take their plight to NCM.

At a time when western diplomats and investors are making a beeline to seek favours from Gujarat chief minister Narindra Modi, atleast 10 Gujarati Muslim traders have alleged having been forced to close down businesses over past one month.

At a time when western diplomats and investors are making a beeline to seek favours from Gujarat chief minister Narindra Modi, atleast 10 Gujarati Muslim traders have alleged having been forced to close down businesses over past one month. The latest complaint was been filed on Thursday by hotelier Mustafa Patel, who claims to have  shut down his Jyoti Hotel on Viramgam highway, 90 minute drive from Ahmedabad, after receiving threats.

According to Patel, local politicians forced him to close down his business on February 9.
His petition says that despite court orders police has refused to provide him protection.
Confirming that the Commission has received complaints related to preventing people to operate their businesses, chairman Wajahat Habibullah said he has sought reports form Gujarat government.

Earlier the Commission had received complaints from nine traders of Chhota Udepur, alleging their businesses have been ruined. The complaint says, that sarpanch of village Baroj, Jayanti Rathwa engineered a riot in the area to take away the luxury transport business from his competitor Irfan Abdul Ghani. The region witnessed communal clashes on February 12 following a minor altercation between Adivasis and Muslims. 

“On February 12, many minority industries were attacked, set to fire. SP, DIG went there, FIRs were lodged but till today no one has been arrested,” adds the complaint.

According to a report earlier released by an NGO Anhad, the miscreants in the area, burnt down plastic godown. Despite being named in the FIR, they  have not been arrested owing to their allegiance to a local don with strong  political backing, the report alleged. When the trader from minority community had attempted to restart his business, the godown was set to fire once again on March 8. Three days after fields belonging to Muslims caught fire and a person responsible was caught red handed.

“He had come with 3-4 people. His initial statement indicated that someone had asked him to do this but the local police told him to record on video that he dropped a beedi by mistake and it caught fire,” said the complaint filed before the NCM. The traders say,
Muslims and Advisasi have lived together in the area for centuries and smell a conspiracy to create bad blood by forcing minority community out of business in the region.

Those who have been forced to close down their business are Kasim Ahmed (scrap dealer), Ahmed Airf (minerals), Farooq Bhai (power production unit), Yakub Mohammad (mineral production), Saifudin Ali (power production), Ahmed Khoka (power), Shabir Bhai (mineral production), Majid Khan (power) and Harun Abdul Malajher (mines).

Reacting strongly to the complaints to the NCM, Gujarat government spokesperson and state finance minister Nitin Patel refuted all the claims. “There are thousands of minority traders and merchants prospering in Gujarat. Hundreds are doing their business in the walled city areas of Ahmedabad.

No such incidents have happened in the state, where traders or any other person has been forced to shut down their business just because they belong to minority community.

This is Gujarat and traders of all the communities and religions have flourished here without any bias of discrimination. This is an effort to malign Gujarat’s image,” said Patel.

Source:http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1817054/report-10-gujarat-muslim-traders-forced-out-of-business-take-their-plight-to-ncm

The fight for Muslims is fundamental for the survival of our democracy

Despair can turn you from citizen to perpetrator. From the hunted to the hunter. 

SOME YEARS ago, at a TEHELKA press conference, a young Muslim man walked up to TEHELKA Editor Tarun Tejpal and held his hand in deep gratitude. “If it had not been for your journalists, we would long have picked up the gun. Your work gives us hope, Sir,” he said. “You help us believe we belong to this country.” It was one of those rare moments of vindication journalists live for. The young man’s father, a respected maulvi, was falsely incarcerated then. We had just written his story. He would be acquitted a few years later.
In a sense, it is immaterial who that young man was. Over the past few years, TEHELKA journalists have documented hundreds of stories of innocent Muslims languishing in jails — often brutally tortured — on flimsy or false charges. It is easy to blank that phrase out, to be inured to it: “Hundreds of Muslims arrested on false charges”. But each case hides hair-raising stories about prejudice, incompetence and deliberate malafide. Each case also holds stories of pain, destroyed lives and hollowed futures.
Innocent Muslims have been jailed with impunity in India over the past decade because it was easy to jail them. Within hours of any terror attack, a bunch of Muslim boys would be arrested and their names aired in the media as “masterminds”. Then they would disappear from mainstream consciousness. Their guilt was assumed: it did not need to be proved.
Since 2001, a terrible maxim had seeped into the Indian mainstream: All Muslims may not be terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. It did not matter if you caught the wrong ones. No one needed veracity. Everyone only wanted the illusion of security and “action taken”.
It wasn’t easy to report on these stories and ask the hard questions. The few human rights and media groups who did, were scorned as “anti-national”. Or doctrinaire liberals. The key point was missed. It is no one’s position that those who plant bombs should go unpunished. Those, like us, who were raising flags had only two simple arguments to make. One, take the long route, catch the real culprits, remain constitutional: that is the only way to real security. Two: do not make false arrests and breed fresh despair, triggering new cycles of hate and revenge. In the clever calculations men make about security and State, they underestimate the power of human despair. When you lose faith that a system will play fair by you, it can breed fatal recklessness. It can make you abdicate from the rules that cement human relations. Despair can turn you from citizen to perpetrator. From the hunted to the hunter. Despair can be a deadly weapon.
Fortunately — even if slowly — this dangerous tide has begun to turn. The dogged exposés are paying off. Over the past few months, there have been some very significant developments. First, in November last year, nudged by a committed citizens’ group — People’s Campaign against the Politics of Terror — CPM leader Prakash Karat took a list of 22 Muslims to President Pranab Mukherjee and demanded the Centre take immediate steps to help such victims of “State-led injustice”. The demands included fast-track courts; rehabilitation and compensation for those falsely jailed; and a review of the UAPA Act. Most importantly, Karat’s delegation to the President made the idea of ‘justice for Muslims’ front-page news. The sound-proof towers had been breached.
In March this year, in another unprecedented move, in the Rajasthan High Court Infosys agreed to pay a compensation of 20 lakh to Rashid Husain, a young Muslim engineer who’d been questioned by the police and unfairly sacked from his job soon after. Hopefully, this will set a blueprint for all those whose lives and reputations have been similarly destroyed. Young men who’ve spent decades in jail; who cannot find jobs or houses to rent even when they’re acquitted; whose families find themselves ostracised and sisters find themselves unmarriageable because their brothers have been stigmatised.
Finally, in a potentially far-reaching move, this week — perhaps driven by cynical electoral concerns — Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde wrote to parliamentarian Mohammed Adeeb that the government was considering setting up fast-track courts to expedite trials of Muslims in terror cases. It is absolutely crucial that this letter of intent does not go into oblivion. The fight for justice for Muslims is not an act of chivalric charity towards minorities: it is a fundamental act of survival for Indian democracy.
TEHELKA has compiled all its coverage of this issue online as The Muslim Question. Do read it. You will understand why.
shoma@tehelka.com

Source: http://tehelka.com/the-fight-for-muslims-is-fundamental-for-the-survival-of-democracy/
 

Exams where caste stigma has no answer

Manish Kumar landed in the Capital from Bihar three years ago with happy thoughts that his childhood dream of becoming a doctor was almost within grasp.

He was on the right path, with a seat secured in a well-known medical college and with the realisation that he could finally shed the caste identity that was part of his small-town upbringing.

In the three years since, Manish has studied hard, seen the insides of a court room, filed RTI applications and knocked at the doors of government offices, but has still not managed to get past the second year of the MBBS course.

“I was a first year medical student at Vardhman Mahavir Medical College in 2008 when I first failed in physiology. This happened again in July 2010 and I sat for the supplementary exams in October. I did not know how to react when I found out that I had failed again in the supplementary exams along with 24 of my classmates, every one of whom belonged to the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or some other reserved category,” says Manish, adding that he received a bigger shock when he found that among the 25, there were students who had been failing only in physiology from 2004 onwards until 2009.

Manish and his friends realised something else later. “The university allots roll numbers to the reserved category candidates in a row and the answer-sheets are coded and collected in a way that the identity of the reserved category students is revealed easily.”

Ever since this revelation, the students seem to have knocked at every door that could help them -- from filling RTI applications to complaints with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, and even going to the High Court.

However, the legal battle only brought them some temporarily relief. “Under the Court's supervision, we took another exam in which every one of us, including those who had failed repeatedly since 2004, passed. The Court also passed an order that we be allowed to attend classes for the second year and that due consideration be given for shortage of attendance.”

Since then the students have been attending second year classes but were prevented from taking their exams in mid-November. “We were told we did not have sufficient attendance. The Principal usually refused to meet us and whenever he had, he pretended that he was not aware of anything and seems to have washed his hands off the whole affair.”

When contacted by The Hindu , the Principal refused to discuss the matter.

These days Manish spends all his time worrying whether he would be allowed at least to take the supplementary exams in March, and praying that he would not be humiliated every time he attends class.

“Right after the court case, the lecturers would tell our classmates to look at us -- the people who could only gain entrance into a medical college through reservations and couldn't pass without a High Court order. After some complaints it has toned down,” says Manish.

The students, however, believe another legal battle is imminent. “Our lawyer has asked us to file for contempt of court. I don't see this ending easily.”

Source:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article2654919.ece