India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), one of the biggest Muslim organizations in India, has welcomed the Supreme Court staying the mass eviction in Haldwani and expressed serious concern over the growing insensitivity to crime against women in society.
Addressing media persons at its headquarters on Saturday, JIH vice-president Prof. Mohammed Salim Engineer said that the stay order would strengthen the faith of the people in the judiciary.
JIH assistant secretary Waseq Nadim Khan, who was a part of the JIH’s fact-finding team to Haldwani led by JIH secretary Malik Moatasim Khan, going into the history of the dispute regarding eviction, said that the entire exercise through a court petition was intended to change the demography of the city. He pointed out that the presence of a huge number of Muslim voters in the area came in the way of the BJP winning the Haldwani assembly seat and it was the reason why a backdoor effort through judicial intervention was made to evict the Muslim population to enable the BJP to win this seat in future elections. He, however, said that there was also a non-Muslim population in the affected area but the Muslims formed the majority of the population.
Referring to the tragic death of Anjali Singh who was dragged by a car for about 12 km in the national capital, a 17-year-old girl attacked with acid on her way to school, and a woman stabbed 51 times by her stalker with a screw-driver in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district, Prof Salim said that “all this point to the growing apathy and disregard of society to the inviolability of a woman’s life and the dignity accorded to her by her Creator, the Almighty Allah.”
He said that it was unfortunate that crime against women was not coming down. NCRB data, he said, indicate that there was a 15 percent increase in criminal cases against women in 2021. As many as 32 percent of these cases pertained to “cruelty by husband.”
Stating that Islam accorded great respect and esteem to women, Prof. Salim expressed the need to change the outlook of people towards women from the school level itself.
“It is important to sensitize people towards respecting women and putting an end to the atrocities and insensitivity that women have to endure today,” Prof. Salim emphasized.
Expressing grave concern over growing communalism in Karnakata and other states, the JIH leader said that “this is worrying as assembly elections are due in Karnataka and very soon at the national level.”
“From opposing the wearing of Hijab in colleges, disallowing Muslims to set up stalls and shops in Hindu festivals and attacking Christian congregations, there seems to be a free rein to the peddlers of hate and bigotry in Karnataka,” Prof. Salim pointed out.
To substantiate his allegations, the JIH leader referred to Karnataka state BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel asking the party cadres to focus on “love jihad” rather than raising issues of good governance and civic amenities.
Referring to the selective demolition of Muslim houses on different pretexts without judicial orders in BJP-ruled states, he alleged that this was being done to polarize the majority community votes in favour of the BJP.
“The Jamaat feels that this trend of majority appeasement through minority baiting is not in our national interest and will become a threat to our democracy and constitutional values. It is the duty of political parties and the electorates to reverse this trend,” he remarked.
He pointed out that for the Muslims of India, the year 2022 was no different from the year before that as the ruling dispensation with the help of its affiliated organizations, government agencies, and the media was out to make Muslims “politically invisible” and spread baseless allegations against them and their religion. “Democracy continued to be under threat and there were frequent communal conflagrations,” he noted.
He, however, hoped that better times would ring in for our country in 2023.
Prof. Salim also raised concerns over the assault on tribal Christians in Chhattisgarh and the displacement of thousands of them from their native villages in December 2022. He pointed out that forcing the tribal Christians to Hinduism was a flagrant violation of Constitutional laws and demanded an immediate halt to violence against them from radical groups of the majority community.
