Sabrang Print Media Monitor February 20, 2004 NATIONAL ISSUES THE MUSLIM FACTOR 'Why is Mulayam doing it now?' 1.Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Friday half-day for schools: Mulayam draws up a Friday timetable Several Muslim community leaders have strongly criticised this move calling it tokenism for political purposes. When contacted, Muslim Personal Law Board member Kamal Farooqi said: ‘‘This posturing isn’t going to help us...we need more schools, not an order that will be used by communal forces to attack us.’’ Said ex-MP Syed Shahabuddin: ‘‘Nobody asked for it. You can always offer namaz during lunch break. His (Mulayam’s) motive is political.’’ The state government order, issued on Monday, gave no reason but directed all government schools and colleges affiliated to the Uttar Pradesh board to conduct teaching work only till 12 noon every Friday. The BJP alleged that it is a ‘‘politically motivated’’ move to woo Muslim voters ahead of the polls.Uttar Pradesh BJP leader Vinay Katiyar charged the Mulayam Singh government with ‘‘communalising education’’ and demanded similar relaxation on Tuesdays to ‘‘help Hindus offer prayers in temples.’’ A section of Muslim clerics have backed the government decision.[ Source: The Indian Express] Mulayam’s Sop While some organisations and individuals welcomed the move, others reacted cautiously. rediff.com presents some of the reactions: Abdul Hameed Nomani, spokesman of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind: It is a good move as Muslim students will now be able to offer afternoon prayers. But we have to see the timing of the decision. We should avoid doing anything that disturbs peaceful environment in the country. It may help communal forces to spread canards about Muslims. We are going through a crucial phase, as elections will be held in another two months or so. (Jamiat has several educational institutions and Islamic seminaries (madrasas) in Uttar Pradesh) Rahat Abrar, spokesman of Aligarh Muslim University: The order is not going to make any difference here as the university has been practicing half day off on Fridays ever since its existence. (The university caters mainly to Muslim students) Syed Shahabuddin, member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board: It is nothing but to help the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. It is the outcome of BJP's tacit support in the formation of the Yadav government in UP. Historian Mohammad Sajjad of AMU: Yadav has an understanding with the BJP to corner their common enemy -- Congress party. The move is targeted at consolidating the Hindu votes for the BJP and Muslim votes for the Samajwadi Party. But the electorate has become very mature. And Yadav's leaning towards the BJP has become evident. So it may not help Yadav to woo Muslim voters. Hamid Ansari, former AMU vice-chancellor and retired diplomat: I wish political parties have real agenda to empower and educate the backward Muslim community. Unfortunately this is not happening. Farooq Sheikh, actor and television anchor: I am shooting right now and rediff.com is the first to let me know about this news. At present, I can only tell you that I don't understand the logic of giving half day for schools on Friday. If the government is planning Friday half day then there must be some logic behind. I will have to know more about this issue before commenting. Javed Anand, co-editor of Communalism Combat: I am opposed to this decision. I don't know what is the logic behind it. I think this is being done keeping the parliamentary election in mind. Javed Akhtar, film writer and president of Muslim for Secular Democracy: We don't appreciate this gesture. Instead of this the government should think of building more schools and colleges for Muslims and other weaker section of the society. This fruitless gesture won't help Muslims in any way. It will only benefit the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal who will propagate the appeasement attitude of the UP government for Muslims. When France is banning the headscarves and Jewish caps in their country we are trying to appease some community by giving Friday half day in schools or playing Saraswati Vandana in schools. We should try to uphold our secular values of our country rather than getting involved in such acts.[ Source: Rediff on Net] TIPS: It is a dangerous political gambit that can only help the sangh parivar. All Muslims will get out of this is one more charge of ‘minority appeasement’. Not surprisingly, even people like Kamal Farooqui of the All India Muslim Personal Board, Syed Shahabuddin and Maulana Kalbe Jawwad (an important Shia leader from UP) have criticised the move. To establish its own credential as a party that believes in justice to ALL and meaningless appeasement of NONE, it is critical that the Congress as party and Muslim leaders within it (particularly leaders from or in-charge of UP) not only criticise it in strong terms but even threaten an agitation against the move. ‘Secular parties’ failure to speak out will doubtless club the party with Mulayam Singh’s appeasement and work to the BJP’s benefit. This is particularly important since the BJP which is now trying to woo Muslims will most likely use this instance to say: ‘We believe in solving the real problems of Muslims and not token measures.’ BJP asks Muslims to give it a chance Interestingly, the BJP's bid to woo the Muslims has been supplemented by the RSS leadership's dialogue with several Muslim religious leaders, which is supposed to kick-start negotiations to resolve the Ayodhya imbroglio. Soon after the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP came out with the "Chennai Declaration" asking its cadres to try and win over Muslims. In 2000, then BJP chief Bangaru Laxman gave his "Nagpur Message", recalling Deendayal Upadhyay's famous quote that "every section of Indian society is the flesh of our flesh and the blood of our blood". The 2002 Gujarat riots and subsequent assembly polls took a heavy toll on whatever little credibility the BJP had managed to build among the community. The BJP's case before the Muslims now is that they should give it a chance. The party is showcasing— as proof of its intentions — the Rs 250-crore haj subsidy, which is an all-time high.[ Source: The Hindustan Times] Arif Khan all set to join BJP The former Minister spent considerable time and energy in Gujarat in the aftermath of the communal conflagration and plans to concentrate on the State to help bring the Muslims and Hindus together. "I more interested in establishing a relationship with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh so that together we can work to heal the wounds and rebuild the trust between the communities," Mr. Khan quit the Rajiv Gandhi Government in 1986, following differences over the Shah Bano case, and launched a campaign against the fundamentalist elements within the minority community. He, however, sought to build bridges with the Muslim community by targeting the BJP, especially when he was an MP in 1998. Today, he believes that the Sangh Parivar alone can hold the nation together. "The secular parties just cannot do the job; they have lost all credibility,'' he says. [Source: The Hindu] Flash in the pan? (Opinion: Praful Bidwai) Indeed, distressing new facts suggest that the institutions and agencies responsible for investigating and punishing Gujarat’s crimes themselves colluded in their commission — and cover-up. If further proof was at all needed of this, the Gujarat High Court has furnished it in the Best Bakery case by dismissing the plea for retrial. Its verdict not only ignores the intimidation of key witnesses, it even conjures up “a definite design and conspiracy” by human rights lawyers to “malign” Gujarat and “create a rift between two communities...” There can be no stronger argument for trying all the major cases of communal violence outside Gujarat than this judgment and the CBI’s findings. Regrettably, the Supreme Court is still reluctant to follow its own logic in the Jayalalitha case, and order this. Meanwhile, we citizens are being asked to erase our memory of what happened after the gory Godhra killings. Beginning February 28, over 2,000 people were speared, torched and hacked to death in systematically planned, coordinated and executed violence. Erasure was the central message from Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s latest appearance in Gujarat, when he praised Modi and appealed to Gujaratis to “forget the past”. The captains of our industry too abjectly genuflected before Modi after some initial — very welcome — criticism. The middle-class is being told that the Gujarat pogrom, although horrendous, was a mere ‘aberration’; it wasn’t essential to the BJP’s ideology and politics, nor connected to Hindutva. They must ‘forget’ Gujarat and vote for the BJP in ‘Shining India’. The ‘BJP minus Gujarat’ idea is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The essential character of Gujarat’s violence cannot be understood except by reference to Hindutva’s overall project. This wasn’t just another communal riot abetted by the police, nor a series of discreet hate-crimes. The violence was calculated to subjugate and humiliate a whole community. [Source: The Hndustan Times] ‘Anti-Laloo Muslim front born in Bihar’. (‘For us, no political party is untouchable to us anymore’). [Source: The Asian Age] TIPS BJP is holding a meeting of minorities on February 25, where everyone from Vajpayee, to Advani to Naidu will be present. This has to be challenged. No feel good, says Advani LK Advani admits that the feeling good factor does not extend to the country’s farmers Advani tempers ‘feel-good’ hype Advani was addressing a group of Haryana farmers who thanked him for the government's decision to waive capital gain and tax deduction at source (TDS) for the agriculturists on their acquired land.