top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 8:56:24 pm

‘Save Sharia’ campaign feeds Hindutva politics

Mumbai: Prominent Muslims and others have slammed the All India Muslim Personal Law Board’s ‘Save India, Save Sharia’ nationwide campaign, alleging that it could deepen polarization while willy-nilly supporting the very forces the AIMPLB claims to oppose. Launched on Sep. 17 – coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 76th birthday – the AIMPLB’s 3-month-long campaign is aimed at mobilizing public opinion around protecting the Constitutional rights, preserving the Muslim Personal Law...

‘Save Sharia’ campaign feeds Hindutva politics

Mumbai: Prominent Muslims and others have slammed the All India Muslim Personal Law Board’s ‘Save India, Save Sharia’ nationwide campaign, alleging that it could deepen polarization while willy-nilly supporting the very forces the AIMPLB claims to oppose. Launched on Sep. 17 – coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 76th birthday – the AIMPLB’s 3-month-long campaign is aimed at mobilizing public opinion around protecting the Constitutional rights, preserving the Muslim Personal Law within the framework of safeguarding India’s pluralistic and democratic character. The AIMPLB leaders said they are soliciting support of people, intellectuals, activists, social and religious organisations who value justice, democracy, peace and the Constitution, to strengthen constitutional supremacy, the rule of law, justice and equality, religious freedom, social harmony and national unity. Around 100 progressive Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists, organisations and supporters have warned that what the AIMPLB presents as a defence of constitutional rights, religious freedom and Muslim identity "could deepen divisions, and may provide political ammunition to right-wing forces". The progressive have accused AIMPLB of selectively invoking Art. 25-30 of the Constitution related to Religious Freedom, while ignoring that these rights are explicitly subject to public order, morality, and health. Moreover, they conveniently bypass Articles 14 and 15, which guarantee equality before the law and prohibit sex or religion-based discrimination. “Following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where civil society and opposition parties rallied under 'Save the Constitution', the AIMPLB's campaign inadvertently gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sangh Parivar a platform to posture as defenders of constitutional norms. Ahead of crucial state assembly elections, this campaign reinforces false narratives and fuels propaganda that Indian Muslims reject the law of the land,” said the intellectuals. They pointed out how the so-called ‘God-given Shariat Law’ in India is nothing but man-made personal laws and ‘male interpreted patriarchal interpretations’, defended by the AIMPLB. In its September 2016 Supreme Court affidavit in the Triple Talaq case (Sayara Bano v/s. Union of India), the AIMPLB’s affidavit claimed divorce rights belong primarily to husbands because men allegedly possess ‘greater power of decision-making’ and ‘control emotions’. It even argued that without a quick separation option, a husband ‘may resort to illegal, criminal ways of murdering or burning her alive’ - a disturbing rationalization of domestic violence. Claiming these laws are divine, the AIMPLB admitted that “India is a patriarchal society, and therefore personal laws of all communities are aligned with the patriarchal notion...” The progressives countered that Muslim-majority nations globally including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Morocco have codified and reformed personal laws to protect women's rights. “Millions of Muslims live in secular democratic nations with uniform family codes without putting ‘Islam in danger’. The Muslim community’s current legal predicament in India is the direct result of the AIMPLB and conservative leaders failing to proactively reform and codify Muslim Personal Law,” said the progressives sharply. They said that genuine family law reform must guarantee Muslim women equal rights regarding minimum marriage age, abolition of polygamy, mutual divorce, equal inheritance, child custody, adoption, and a ban on female genital mutilation and halala. While secular political parties rarely support the rights of Muslim women, the BJP and the Hindu Right wing do so with an obvious motive: ‘communal polarization’, said the progressives. “The sangh parivar sheds crocodile tears for Muslim women while ignoring relentless hate speech (Love Jihad, Land Jihad…) and hate crimes like mob lynching, bulldozing homes, demolishing mosques or economic boycotts, with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ to intimidate and strike fear. This accompanies state actions targeting Muslims: Waqf Amendment Act, draconian anti-conversion laws, and a weaponised SIR (Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls) to disenfranchise vast sections of the electorate,” they averred. The progressives have sought the active involvement of all enlightened forces, civil society organisations and secular political parties to ensure that the demand for a gender-just, religion-neutral Uniform Civil Code is rooted in equality and human rights, rather than weaponized for communal division. Among the signatories to the appeal are: Naseeruddin Shah, Amol Palekar, Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Anand Patwardhan, Sultan Shaheen, Teesta Setalvad, Ram Puniyani, Tushar Gandhi, Mallika Sarabhai, Ratna Pathak, Feroze Mithiborwala, Anita Cheria, Zakia Soman, Jyothi Yedulla, Noorjehan S. Niaz, Madhu Bhaduri, et al.

A tiger safari in Goa?

Writer: Brian D’Souza
Brian D’Souza
Oct 31, 2024
2 min read

It’s difficult to imagine going to Goa for, of all things, a tiger safari. A tiger safari is associated with places like Tadoba National park in Maharashtra, Corbett or Dudhwa national park in the Terai belt of Uttar Pradesh. Yet if the people of Goa had their way, the Mhadei Wildlife in North Goa could be the country’s 56th Tiger Reserve. But the government is yet to notify the area as such despite demands of the state’s environmentalists and the fact that the National Tiger Conservation Authority which does tiger censuses, has asked the state government to declare Mhadei as a tiger reserve based on the numbers of tigers seen.


The Mhadei sanctuary is located in Valpoi village, 40 km from Panaji, the state’s capital. Spread over 208 sq. km. It plays a key part in the preservation of the biodiversity of the Western Ghats.


So to support the people’s wishes, it appears the tigers themselves made an unexpected appearance recently. Reports suggest that a tigress and three cubs were seen at Chorla ghat. Their presence was confirmed through night vision cameras installed by the forest department. A local news report suggested that tiger faeces were seen. This is, therefore, credible evidence that the Mhadei sanctuary is located in a tiger belt that connects the animal’s habitats in neighbouring states.


Any environmentalist would tell you that these magnificent creatures respect no state or human-made boundaries. Yet, it remains to be seen why the authorities are dragging their feet on declaring Mhadei reserve as a tiger sanctuary and preserving for generations, India’s national animal.


This writer had the privilege of meeting Billy Arjan Singh as a young Reader’s Digest researcher way back in 1992 at Dudhwa national park which itself was set up thanks to the efforts of Singh who was once a hunter but turned to conservation. He did his best to save the tigers from, ironically, human predators, and won international accolades for his work. Singh wrote many books on his experiences trying to save the tiger, and among his most popular is Tiger Haven,


It is not as if declaring Mhadei as a tiger sanctuary will mean tourists will start to make a beeline for the area. It’s still the beaches that largely draw visitors to this state. Yet by declaring Mhadei as a tiger reserve, we give our national animal a chance to live longer on the sub-continent, and enthral us for many more decades to come. Under Project Tiger, the numbers of this animal are estimated at over 3600 tigers in the wild. We need to do everything to preserve the tiger’s habitats, and give them a chance to live in peaceful co-existence with humans.


(The author is a senior journalist based in Goa. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page