26 March, 2011
By Shafey Danish (TimesWireService.Com)
If you are an average Muslim living in North India (say Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal or Orissa) you could be forgiven for asking "Are there Muslim political parties?" After all, you have had to choose between a BJP candidate or a Congress candidate or a regional party candidate mostly. And all you know of Muslim political parties are that they are rumored to exist.
If you are better informed and know that there are indeed Muslim political parties, in fact quite a few of them - then you might ask "What are Muslim political parties?" as in: what are they supposed to do? Who are they supposed to represent? Who are their leaders? And most important of all: what will they do for me? Where ‘me’ stands for you, the common Muslim.
But first what exactly is this thing, a Muslim political party?
"Muslims are a community with common social and political problems which can be better addressed by a political party whose leadership is in the hands of Muslims," says Qasim Rasul Ilyas, a member of the Jamaat e Islami’s Central Advisory Committee. "Congress and other secular parties do not work for Muslims because they see it as going against their secular character."
That answers the ‘why’ of the issue. But there are other, more complicated questions that bedevil the very idea of a ‘Muslim’ political party. Questions of leadership (does it exist?), viability (Muslims are a majority in very few constituencies), clerical domination (middle class is busy in career planning), lack of education, and of too many divisions within the community itself.
Now, depending on who you talk to, there are many ways of answering these questions.
The scholar will tell you that problems are historical. Since the partition, widely blamed on the Muslim League, Muslims have had a fear of floating their own party, preferring instead to support the Congress. Muslims had the burden of "proving their loyalty." Not only that, with partition, a major portion of Muslim leadership and the active Muslim middle class migrated to Pakistan, leaving the community truncated and largely leaderless. Those of who did remain, trusted in the umbrella nature of the Congress and its secular credentials to protect them.
A member of one of the ‘Muslim’ political parties might point towards the nefarious design to ‘divide’ Muslims - quite literally - through delimitation in different constituencies so that they do not have a majority in any of them.
Read full article
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Contact me for website designing, development, domain registration, flash website, dynamic website etc (www.iws.net.in)
By Shafey Danish (TimesWireService.Com)
If you are an average Muslim living in North India (say Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal or Orissa) you could be forgiven for asking "Are there Muslim political parties?" After all, you have had to choose between a BJP candidate or a Congress candidate or a regional party candidate mostly. And all you know of Muslim political parties are that they are rumored to exist.
If you are better informed and know that there are indeed Muslim political parties, in fact quite a few of them - then you might ask "What are Muslim political parties?" as in: what are they supposed to do? Who are they supposed to represent? Who are their leaders? And most important of all: what will they do for me? Where ‘me’ stands for you, the common Muslim.
But first what exactly is this thing, a Muslim political party?
"Muslims are a community with common social and political problems which can be better addressed by a political party whose leadership is in the hands of Muslims," says Qasim Rasul Ilyas, a member of the Jamaat e Islami’s Central Advisory Committee. "Congress and other secular parties do not work for Muslims because they see it as going against their secular character."
That answers the ‘why’ of the issue. But there are other, more complicated questions that bedevil the very idea of a ‘Muslim’ political party. Questions of leadership (does it exist?), viability (Muslims are a majority in very few constituencies), clerical domination (middle class is busy in career planning), lack of education, and of too many divisions within the community itself.
Now, depending on who you talk to, there are many ways of answering these questions.
The scholar will tell you that problems are historical. Since the partition, widely blamed on the Muslim League, Muslims have had a fear of floating their own party, preferring instead to support the Congress. Muslims had the burden of "proving their loyalty." Not only that, with partition, a major portion of Muslim leadership and the active Muslim middle class migrated to Pakistan, leaving the community truncated and largely leaderless. Those of who did remain, trusted in the umbrella nature of the Congress and its secular credentials to protect them.
A member of one of the ‘Muslim’ political parties might point towards the nefarious design to ‘divide’ Muslims - quite literally - through delimitation in different constituencies so that they do not have a majority in any of them.
Read full article
___________________________________
Contact me for website designing, development, domain registration, flash website, dynamic website etc (www.iws.net.in)
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