Muslims in India should bridge the gap between the person they elect to public office and their community by focusing on education and capacity building of their youth, said an academic.
\nSpeaking to Anadolu Agency in Istanbul on the sidelines of a conference, Varsha Basheer, an expert on religious pluralism at the University of Kerala, said the distance between a lawmaker and a common man in India is so wide that if he \u201cthinks of bridging that divide, he cannot\u201d.
\nIndia is currently holding general elections to vote for the new prime minister and members of the parliament. The multi-phased polls which started on April 11 will end on May 19.
\nThe main contest is between right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, a fresh face of the oldest political dynasty of India.
\nShe said there were wide divisions in the Indian Muslim community, owing largely to their conservative traditional practices, which has alienated and ghettoized them.
\nQuoting an example from a 2005 official report on the state of Muslims in India, she said \u201cthe Sachar Committee report shows us how dismal their status is on all counts.\u201d
\nIts findings showed a dismal image of living, educational and economic status of Muslims living in India.
\nBasheer said the Muslim community leadership should be able to negotiate with the government, hold politicians accountable and remind them of their promises.
\n“So that kind of community leadership and that kind of community negotiation happening with the policy makers is the only way Muslims can bring about some kind of pressure on the government,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cOnly crying and making Dua won\u2019t do\u2026 that is half of it\u2026 Then Allah says you have to work on it.\u201d
\nBasheer said that education and capacity building play a major role in the process.
\n\u201cIndian Muslims need to allocate funds on developing capacity of their youth who can make policy changes and present demands of the community to their public representatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indian elections<\/strong> Muslims in India should bridge the gap between the person they elect to public office and their community by focusing on education and capacity building of their youth, said an academic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nCommenting on the ongoing general elections, Basheer said that the Indian Muslim has already seen five years of right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule and \u201cwhat it brought forth; brutal lynching [of Muslims] throughout their strongholds\u201d.
\n\u201cFrom what the BJP is saying right now, what they have put in their manifesto, the kind of sloganeering they are using in the [election] campaigns, there is a clear message [in it],\u201d she said.
\nAccording to Human Rights Watch, India has witnessed increase in communal rhetoric since 2014 spurring violent vigilante campaign against beef consumption.
\nData recorded by online Factchecker on lynching in India shows 46 people were killed since 2012 in the incidents which pre-dominantly targeted Muslims.
\nCows are considered sacred in the Hindu religion and since Modi came to power in 2014 there has been a rise in attacks on Muslim cattle owners by Hindu nationalists, with several self-styled cow protection groups emerging in the country.
\nBasheer said the economy was in tatters and the BJP was not focusing on the issue.
\n\u201cAll they promise is that they will clamp down on Muslims. If this is not an open call to divide the society on communal lines, what is it? They are trying to define \u2018who an Indian is\u2019,\u201d she added.
\nOn the other hand, she said, the Indian National Congress, a secular party founded by independence leaders of the country, has come up with an election manifesto that promises an \u201cequal footing to all the poor and destitute in the country and that gives hope\u201d.
\n\u201cBut that does not mean we forget that it [Congress] was ruling all these years and that is when the major riots that were anti-Muslim pogroms happened (in 1969, 1983, 1992).\u201d
\nHowever, she concluded that if the Congress comes to power Muslims will have \u201cat least a chance of negotiating a better settlement\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"