A Tribute to the Lost Lives and the Grieving Souls

May 27, 2010

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As I woke up in the morning of May 22, my family had gathered in the living room, their faces glued to the T.V. screen and a myriad of emotions displaying on everyone`s face from shock to horror and finally sympathy registering. A plane crash claiming the lives of 150 odd people turned our lives inside out and left us hanging in there with a question, “Is this all that is there to life??”

 

 

There was no chaos at home that day, no breakfast bustle, no one hurrying to be punctual, no one initiating the daily chores and no one complaining as usual about the hot Mangalorean weather. Everything seemed to stand still and time froze for everyone in our living room and all that flickered was the blazing flame on the T.V. screen fuelled by fresh human bodies and I knew hell had unleashed on that chilly Saturday morning.

 

 

Air India flight IX-812 carrying 158 passengers and 6 crew members from Dubai was to land on the soil of Mangalore on Saturday, May 22. Everything was going as predicted by the pilot until ‘Fate’ took the upper hand. No sooner did the flight touched the runway, it grew a mind of its own, went way out-of-control, broke into halves and plunged into the cliff. It killed over 150 people including the crew members.

 

 

A father robbed of his child, a wife robbed of her husband and children, a boy orphaned, security snatched away from him like it’s nobody`s business and left him with nothing but debris of the plane and burnt bodies of his loved ones whom he scarcely recognises anymore. Young or old, rich or poor, black or brown, healthy or weak, death knows no bounds. The Qur`an says in Surah Al-Imran (3:185) “Every soul shall taste death” and in Surah An-Nisaa (4:78) “Wherever you are death will find you out. Even if you are in towers built up strong and high.”

 

 

 

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Imagine waking up one morning to find your mother or father or your siblings burnt to ashes. It’s not something that happens on a daily basis for anyone. Would you not bargain everything you have, put your life at stake and try to bring them back and get things back to normal? Or maybe if you could take a sneak-peek into the future would you not be a better son/daughter, a better sibling, a better friend, a better human?!!

 

 

Ah! But fate is a funny thing. It doesn`t let you have a glimpse of the future. It gives you no hint of what it will be throwing at you next. It can be a straight ball or a slow ball or a fast ball or a curve ball. Whatever it is you have to prepare yourself. If you are a coward you dodge it but if you are a fighter you catch and throw it right back. Then again, how do you fight fate when it robs you of everything you have and leaves you in the middle of nowhere? What do you do when you are stranded and have no one to watch your back or no one to run to for comfort? What would YOU do??

 

 

Money can buy a house but it can`t buy a home. It can buy a body guard but it can`t buy security. It can buy food but it can`t buy appetite. It can buy lovely things but it can`t buy love. Everything that happens in and around us has a lesson to teach. This incident teaches us a very important fact and that is ‘Death’. You can have all the money, all the riches and luxuries of life. But when you die, you leave behind everything you possessed, everything you cherished and carry with you only your deeds, both good and bad. Death is just one step away from us. It can come with or without a warning. Question is, are we ready for it?

 

 

This plane crash claiming over 150 lives of innocent people in a fraction of a second changed the face of humanity. From a journalist to a farmer, police officer to a nurse, carpenter to a fire fighter, social worker to a layman, everyone and anyone, with no masks to cover their face from the smoke and no gloves to cover their hand, rolled up their sleeves and got down to business. They stayed put at ground zero, helped carry the burnt bodies, clear the fuselage and search for the missing black box from dawn to dusk. Language barriers broken, religion barrier put behind, everyone came out of their way to help their brother in distress. Like my best friend always says, “At the end of the day, we are all there for one another”. Hats off to you brave men. In the middle of cruelty, despair and losses, 8 people miraculously escaped and survived the plane crash, showing that the ray of hope still exists.

 

 

“....There are people dying, if you care enough for the living, make a better place for you and for me...” were the lines sung by Michael Jackson from his song ‘Heal the World’, as a tribute to those people who lost their lives in the war. Today I write this article as tribute to those lost lives and the grieving souls. May their souls rest in peace and may God accept all their good deeds. Ameen.

 

 

The author is a student of BA Journalism at St Aloysius College, Mangalore

 

 

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Wafa Sultana
April 4,2020

Over the last couple of days when the world was occupied with unifying efforts to fight the deadly Covid19 pandemic, sections of Indian media provided viewers a familiar scapegoat – the Indian Muslims – who are often stereotyped as a community being constantly at loggerheads with the citizenry and the State. Biased media channels were quick to resort to blaming the entire Muslim community for the spread of the disease in the country, thanks to an ill-timed Tablighi Jamaat gathering at its international headquarters in Delhi’s Nizamuddin. Unsurprisingly, the opprobrium was also marked by a sudden spike in WhatsApp forwards of videos with people wearing skullcaps licking spoons and performing Sufi breathing rituals, suggesting some sort of wild conspiracy on the part of the community to spread the virus.  Some media channels were quick to formulate, hypothesize and provide loose definitions of a newly discovered form of Jihad i.e. ‘Corona Jihad ’ thereby vilifying the Islamic faith and its followers.

While the investigation on the culpability of the organizers of the Nizamuddin event is still ongoing, there is enough information to suggest that the meeting was held before any lockdown was in force, and the problem began when there was no way of getting people out once the curfew was announced. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that organizing a meet of such a scale when there is a global pandemic smacks of gross misjudgment, and definitely the organizers should be held accountable if laws or public orders were defied. Attendees who attempt to defy quarantine measures must be dealt with strictly. However, what is alarming is that the focus and narrative have now shifted from the unfortunate event at Nizamuddin to the Tablighi Jamaat itself.

For those not familiar with the Tablighi Jamaat, the organization was founded in 1926 in Mewat by scholar Maulana Mohammad Ilyas. The Jamaat’s main objective was to get Muslim youth to learn and practice pristine Islam shorn of external influences. This is achieved through individuals dedicating time for moral and spiritual upliftment secluded from the rest of the world for a brief period of time. There is no formal membership process. More senior and experienced participants typically travel from one mosque to other delivering talks on religious topics, inviting local youth to attend and then volunteer for a spiritual retreat for a fixed number of days to a mosque in a nearby town or village to present the message to their co-religionists. Contrary to ongoing Islamophobic rhetoric, the movement does not actively proselytize. The focus is rather on getting Muslims to learn the teachings and practices of Islam.  This grassroots India-based movement has now grown to almost all countries with substantial Muslim populations. Its annual meets, or ‘ijtemas’ are among the largest Islamic congregations in the world after the annual Haj. One of the reasons for its popularity and wide network in the subcontinent and wordwide is the fact that it has eschewed the need for scholarly intervention, focusing on peer learning of fundamental beliefs and practice rather than high-falutin ideological debates. The Tablighi Jamaat also distinguishes itself from other Islamic movements through its strictly apolitical nature, with a focus on individual self-improvement rather than political mobilization. Hardships and difficulty in the world are expected to be face through ‘sabr’ (patience) and ‘dua’ (supplication),  than through quest for political power or influence. In terms of ideology, it is very much based on mainstream Sunni Islamic principles derived from the Deobandi school.

So, why is all this background important in the current context? While biased media entities have expectedly brought out their Islamophobic paraphernalia out for full display, more neutral commentators have tried to paint the Tablighi Jamaat as a fringe group and have tried to distance it from 'mainstream Muslims'. While the intent is no doubt innocent, this is a trap we must not fall into. This narrative, unfortunately, is also gaining ground due to apathy some Muslims have for the group, accusing it of being “disconnected from the realities of the world”. Unlike other Muslim organizations and movements, the Tablighi Jamat, by virtue of its political indifference, does not boast of high-profile advocates and savvy spokespersons who can defend it in mainstream or social media.  The use of adjectives such as 'outdated' and 'orthodox' by liberal columnists to describe the Jamaat feeds into the malignant attempt to change the narrative from the control of the spread of the pandemic due to the Nizamuddin gathering to 'raison d'etre' of the organization itself.

A large mainstream religious group like the Tablighi Jamaat with nearly a hundred-year history, normally considered to be peaceful, apolitical and minding its own business is now suddenly being villainized owing to unfortunate circumstances. Biased media reactions filled with disgust and hate seem to feed the Indian public conscience with a danngerous misconception - to be a nominal Muslim is okay but being a practicing one is not.  For those committed to the truth and fighting the spread of Islamophobia, the temptation to throw the entire Tablighi Jamaat under the bus must be resisted.

The writer is a lawyer and research scholar at Qatar University. Her research interests include Islamic law and politics.

Comments

zahoorahmed
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Saturday, 4 Apr 2020

great article! provides a great perspective on tableeg jamat

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Ram Puniyani
May 2,2020

India has tragically witnessed the phenomenon of lynching becoming dominant during last few years. It was particularly around the issue of Holy Cow-Beef, that lynchings became more prevalent and two communities had to face the brunt of it, Muslims and dalits. The IndiaSpend data showed the rise of the incidents from 2014 and that close to 90% of victims were Muslims or dalits. Some notorious cases of lynchings were the one of Akhlaq, Junaid, Alimuddin Ansari, the beatings of dalits in Una. At another level it is during this period that the noted social worker Swami Agnivesh was also subjected to humiliating beating in the public. The communal color in India by now is so strong that many events, even before the details are known, are looked at from the communal color and false social noises start even before real facts are known.

Nothing can exemplify this more than the tragic lynching of two sadhus and their driver in Gadchinal village, near Palghar, a city nearly 110 Kilomenters from Mumbai. As the news of this tragedy spread the BJP leaders immediately started blaming Muslim minority for the crime. Nalin Kohli in an Interview to a German Channel said so. Not to be left behind Sambit Patra, the BJP spokesperson launched a tirade  against the liberals-seculars for their silence on the issue. As the matter stands the truth comes out that those sadhus were travelling to Surat from Kandivli area of Mumbai. It is a period of lockdown and they did not have the permission so they were avoiding the highway travel and going through interior routes. On this route was a village Gadchinale, an Adivasi dominated village where this tragedy took place.

During the lockdown period due to Corona virus the economic and social deprivation of poor people is extreme. Many rumors are floating there. In this village the rumor doing rounds was that a gang of chid lifters is roaming in different guises. Thats what these Sadhus were taken to be. Since the victims were Hindus and culprits are deliberately presumed to be from the other community. One recalls that to trigger the Mumbai violence in 1992-93 the incidence of murder of two Mathadi workers (HIndus) and burning of Bane family (Hindu) in Jogeshwari area of Mumbai, both these were false, these incidents were used as the pretext for the attack on the minorities.

In this case not only BJP leaders, the RSS itself also  jumped into fray along with Sadhu Samaj. A vicious atmosphere started building up. 

As the incident took place, Palghar case dominated the usual media channels and large sections of social media. The Government of Maharashtra (Shiv Sena+NCP+Congress) stood on the solid ground of truthfulness and arrested nearly 100 culprits, none of them being a Muslim. Interestingly the local body of the village is controlled by BJP and the chief of this body Chitra Chowdhari is a BJP leader. While the Maharashtra Government is standing on the solid ground of the facts of the case, it has also given the warning that those spreading falsehoods will not be spared.

The cruelty of those taking law into their hands is shocking. During the last few years taking law into the hands of the mobs is becoming close to normal. The real reasons are many. One of this being the lack of proper punishment to those who indulge in such dastardly acts. Not only that many of them are in the good books of the ruling establishment and many of them are honored despite their despicable role in such incidents. One recalls that in case of Mohammad Ikhlaq lynching, one of the accused died in the police custoy due to incidentlal disease. Then Union Central Minister Mahesh Sharma landed up to drape his body in tricolor. In another such case of Alimuddin Ansari, when eight of the accused got bail, the Union Minister Jayant Sinha garlanded them. What message it sends down the line?

The other factors contributing to the rise in intensity of violence is the overall social frustration due to life generally becoming more difficult. The rule of BJP has also encouraged intolerance, where people with differing opinions are looked down upon and called anti- Hindu, Anti National etc. Swami Agnivesh who criticised the blind faith, the statements like ‘plastic surgery in ancient India, or divine nature of Barfani Baba in Amarnath was humiliated in public.

The core issue is the dominance of sectarian mindset promoted by the ruling party and its parent organization the RSS. They are waiting to jump at any event which can be given communal color or where the minorities can be demonized. Few news channels, who are playing the role of loud speakers of divisive politics are adding salt to the wounds. The degree of Hate spread in the society has further taken the aid of innumerable social media networks to spread the false hoods down to all the sections of society.

The need for law against lynching needs to be brought in. All those participating in such dastardly violence need to be punished. Before that the whole atmosphere of Hate mongering and feeling that those talking law into their hands can get away with it, needs to be countered strongly. While a prompt police action against such incidents is the need of the hour, those who have made spreading hate as their business need to realize that no country can progress without the feeling of fraternity. Demonizing weaker sections may give them higher TRP, but it is also undermining our path of peace and progress.

Respect for Indian Constitution and rule of law needs to be restored. The fact check mechanisms like AltNews need to be activated much more. And lastly one must applaud the steps taken by the Government of Maharashtra to ensure that justice is done and Hate spreading is  checked right in its tracks.

Comments

Amar Akbar Antony
 - 
Wednesday, 24 Jun 2020

Beautiful article. We need people like you- the need of the hour.

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