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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.

Sun, Sand, and Shortfalls

Writer: Brian D’Souza
Brian D’Souza
Jan 1
2 min read

Was Goa’s festive season was tepid?

As we wind down on 2025, and with Christmas behind us, travel and tour operators in Goa will be assessing how good the season was for earnings and business. When this writer asked for the booking in a small-budget seaside resort, he was told that a room may be available for the last 2 weeks of December but the January-February period was difficult.


So, did tourists give Goa a miss this December? Going by local media, the holiday season has not brought in the kind of footfalls expected. Luxury car operators, for example, reportedly said that their bookings were down, and they had many unbooked cars. For some time now, there have been reports suggesting that tourists are not making a beeline for the sunshine state, preferring the more affordable Thailand.


Also, the chaos of cancelled flight bookings, the resultant high prices for air travel, the fire at a North Goa eatery in which 25 people died, and the now legendary taxi mafia – may well have scared tourists away.


Goa no longer hosts the year-end Sunburn festival that brought in people in their hundreds. The traditional Christian feast of the Jesuit educator and saint Francis Xavier brought in large numbers last year but this year, the numbers were probably back to the normal.


According to the India Data Tourist Compendium put out by the ministry of tourism, an estimated 10 million visited Goa in 2024, of which just over 9 million were domestic tourists. The report which contains fascinating data on India’s tourism arrivals both Indian and foreign among other data, suggests that Goa’s domestic arrivals accounted for 0.34 percent of domestic visitors while foreigners accounted for 2.23 percent of all arrivals.


The report also states that the Fort Aguada Complex, situated strategically on the coast saw 13,58,790 tourists and 13,025 foreigners respectively. The report also states that Goa’s two airports (Mopa and Dabolim) together accounted for 1.95 percent of foreign tourists’ arrivals, underscoring the state’s Goa’s continued popularity as a beach destination.


The situation may likely improve in the first months of the new year as the air traffic situation eases, and tourists feel safer to arrive in Goa. State authorities initiated a drive to identify and close down tourist establishments that did not have the required permissions to set up, and may have not adhered to safety guidelines .


At the end of the day, many of Goa’s tourists are middle class who really cannot afford the five-star properties and want value accommodation for their families. The state needs to do a lot more to provide such accommodation and also ensure that intra-state travel is safe and affordable. Can Goa Bounce Back in 2026?


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

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