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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.

Food Waste vs. Hunger: Our National Contradiction

Writer: Dr. Sanjay Joshi
Dr. Sanjay Joshi
Mar 14, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Mar 17, 2025


Food Waste vs. Hunger

In last week’s article, I mentioned the ‘Food Waste Index Report 2024’ released by the UNEP, which aims to halve food waste by 2030 to achieve Sustainable Development Goal #12. (SDG 12) Before moving ahead, I thought I should give a brief introduction to SDGs.


The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty and hunger, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. There are a total of 17 sustainable development goals that are integrated and interconnected. It is recognised that the action in one area will affect outcomes in others and that development must balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability.


Out of these 17 goals, SDG #2 speaks about ‘Zero Hunger’, which means not a single person should remain hungry or malnourished by 2030. A large share of the world population is still consuming far too little to meet even their basic needs. Halving the per capita of global food waste at the retailer and consumer levels is also important for creating more efficient production and supply chains. This can help with food security and shift us towards a more resource-efficient economy. This is the objective of SDG #12.


Against this backdrop, let us see where India stands. We are well aware of the fact that India has a rich heritage and a lot of diversity concerning food habits and cuisine. However, more than 23 crore people are far away from getting proper food. The Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India has reported that nearly Rs. 50,000 crores worth of food gets wasted each year. This amount of food that is getting wasted every single day in a country where millions of people still go to bed hungry each night is an appalling reality that demands our immediate attention and action.


In addition to reports like the Food Waste Index, other global assessments also track hunger and nutrition levels. One such tool is the Global Hunger Index (GHI), prepared annually by Welthungerhilfe, a 60-year-old non-profit organisation based in Germany, in collaboration with Concern Worldwide and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict. The GHI is a peer-reviewed report based on data from credible sources such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and authorised government surveys.


The GHI is used to measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, and it acts as a critical pointer to the current state of food insecurity across nations. Countries are ranked based on four indicators: undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. The higher the score and rank, the more serious the hunger situation.


GHI is a tool to measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, and is a pointer to the sorry state of affairs. It ranks and allocates scores to countries based on four indicators: undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. The higher the rank, the worse off the country is. In the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2024, India ranks 105th out of 127 countries, highlighting a "serious" hunger crisis driven by ongoing challenges of food insecurity and malnutrition. This is a little better than GHI 2023, where India’s rank was 111th out of 127 countries. More about this and food security and food waste in the next article. Till then, have a nice weekend!


(The author is an environmentalist.)

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