Respected Mr.Guha,
I recently came across your opinion on Indian Muslims through your article in Indian Express, and no matter how bizarre it was, let me congratulate you since it took you career span of all most 33 years to arrive at it.
About your first finding, that said “Burqa = Trishul”. I guess Muslim women in India are powerful enough to tell you the truth and I guess they have already done it too through various articles. After all, if they can fight such a long social and legal battle for getting respectable divorce rights they can very well handle how and what they want to wear.
Your second argument that “there were only three Muslim mass leaders in India since Independence” was indeed disrespectful to the sacrifice of millions of Muslims who gave their lives for the freedom of this country and for making India a better country.
Sir, I am not here to talk about your findings. In fact, I initially thought to meet you in person and discuss core issues faced by Muslims. But like Harsh Mander rightly pointed out the growing social trend of not wanting to appear being a “Muslim appeaser”, I wonder if you would even listen to our core issues, forget writing about them.
I should also apologize for the fact that I could not be part of this discourse at an early stage because I am a PhD candidate. You must be thinking what is this whole fuss about being a PhD Candidate?
Sir, since you were busy working on your findings, let me share with you that today, the Muslim population as a whole, is the most illiterate in India and have the lowest rate of enrollment in higher education. So the fact that I am enrolled in higher education, especially at this juncture, finishing my education is one of the biggest struggle for me and other young Muslims like me.
Irrespective of whether we are rich or poor, educated or uneducated; the condition of Muslim youth in the absence of any proper law to ensure our right to life with dignity is the trickiest in the country today. We don’t know when we will disappear from our university campus and our mother will be crying on roads; we don’t know when a crowd will kill us on our way back home because of some fake news on WhatAapp; we don’t know when we will be lynched and hanged from trees; we don’t know when we will be sent behind bars for marrying someone or loving someone not from our religion; we don’t know when a company will say no to our job application on the basis of our name or address; we don’t know when we will be denied flats because of our religious background; we don’t know when we will be beaten to death on railway stations and bus stands on the false pretext of carrying meat; we don’t know when we will be sent behind bars on false charges; we don’t know when we will be labeled radical if ever we raise issues like reservation, education, employment, and right to life with dignity.
Sir, the problem of Muslim youth is lack of access to primary and higher education, reduced number of fellowships in higher education, increasing number of religious profiling in private sector, improper reservation mechanism which ignores million of needy Muslims in getting access to government jobs. We need the long pending Communal Violence Bill which provides us with the right to life with dignity.
What we wear, how we wear it are issues that are brought into mainstream discourse mostly with the intention to misguide us from basic issues of survival and is now a very old technique which we know very clearly.
Sir, I know you are a well-wisher, but let me assure you we can take care of our issues, we just need to be empowered just like any other Indian citizen and for that, we do need support from academicians and thinkers like you.
I sincerely hope that the next time you talk or write about Indian Muslims, you will for sure raise our core issues.
Yours humbly,
Sharique Hassan Manazir