Indian Muslim women can now travel for Haj without male guardian: Modi

Agencies
December 31, 2017

New Delhi, Dec 31: Terming the policy of allowing Muslim women to perform Haj only in the company of a male guardian as "injustice", Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said his government has removed the restriction following which hundreds of women have applied to travel alone for the pilgrimage.

According to the ministry of minority affairs, now Muslim women aged above 45 will be allowed to go for the pilgrimage without 'mahram' in a group of at least four.

In his monthly radio address of 'Mann ki baat', the prime minister said removal of the restriction of having a male guardian or 'mahram' may appear as a "small thing", but such issues "have a far reaching impact on our image as a society".

He said when he first heard of the restriction, he was surprised as to who would have drafted such a rule.

"Why this discrimination? And when I went into the depth of the matter I was surprised to find that even after 70 years of our independence, we were the ones who had imposed these restrictions. For decades, injustice was being rendered to Muslim women but there was no discussion on it," he said in his broadcast.

He pointed out that such a restriction is not prevalent in many Islamic countries.

"I am happy to note that this time about 1300 Muslim women have applied to perform Haj without 'mahram' and women from different parts of the country from Kerala to north India, have expressed their wish to go for the Haj pilgrimage," he said.

He said he has suggested to the ministry of minority Affairs that they should ensure that all women who have applied to travel alone be allowed to perform Haj.

"Usually there is a lottery system for selection of Haj pilgrims but I would like that single women pilgrims should be excluded from this lottery system and they should be given a chance as a special category," he said.

He said it is his firm belief that the journey of India's progress has been possible due to women-power and on the basis of their talent...it should be our constant endeavour that our women also get equal rights and equal opportunities...," he said.

While referring to Muslim women and their rights, the prime minister did not mention about the bill passed by Lok Sabha last week which bans the practice of instant triple talaq.

He, however, had referred to the issue of instant triple talaq or 'talaq-e-biddat' while inaugurating the 85th Sivagiri Pilgrimage Celebrations at Sivagiri Mutt in Kerala via video conference this morning.

Referring to Christmas, Modi said Jesus Christ taught us about the spirit of service or 'sewa bhaav'.

He also recalled the life of Guru Gobind Singh which was full of instances of courage and sacrifice.

On the 350th anniversary of the Sikh guru, he said Guru Gobind Singh preached the virtues of sublime human values and at the same time, practiced them in his own life in letter and spirit.

Comments

Abu Muhammad
 - 
Monday, 1 Jan 2018

Monkey Batt, lies and damned lies, real burnig issues are forgotten. plays with emotions and sentiments of people. The bubbles of deception soon to burst.

SKB
 - 
Sunday, 31 Dec 2017

Joke of 2017 from Mr. Modiji

shahnawaz kukkikatte
 - 
Sunday, 31 Dec 2017

Dear Mr Modi

 

Your govt didnt removed the restriction and it was allowed and permitted by the Saudi Govt as per sharia rules

that any muslim women aged 45 and above can perform umrah and hajj in the company of such aged women, without the need of male guardian.  Its as per Saudi law and Modi govt or for that matter any

other govt cant dictate terms on Saudi Arabia.

 

Saudi Arabia has introduced the hajj and umrah for musim females in group of female members who are

45 and above about 5 years back.

 

Lie and propaganda at its peak by this BJP govt.

 

Abdullah
 - 
Sunday, 31 Dec 2017

Bander kya jane adrak ke swad.

 

What this monkey knows about Islam.

 

 

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News Network
March 22,2020

Bengaluru, Mar 22: The Karnataka government on Sunday afternoon announced that 9 districts in the State will be under lock down till March 31, barring essential services. It also announced imposition of Section 144 across the state for 3 hours - between 9 p.m. (when the "Janata curfew" will end) to 12 midnight.

The nine COVID-19-affected districts are Bengaluru, Bengaluru Rural, Mysuru, Kodagu, Dakshina Kannada (Mangaluru), Dharwad, Belagavi, Kalaburgi and Chikkablapur.

Announcing these measures after attending a meeting chaired by Chief Minister B. S Yeddyurappa, Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that there will be no commercial activity in these districts till March 31.

Inter-district movement, including public transport will be restricted. "Public transport will not work across the state tomorrow too. Air conditioned buses will be stopped till March 31," he added. He also clarified that while public transport, including KSRTC, BMTC and Namma Metro, will be withdrawn, private transport services such as cabs and autos will continue to ply.

According to Mr. Bommai, the State government will put in place further measures next week depending on how the situation will unfold in the State and the neighbouring States.

"Government offices will be operational in the State, including in the nine COVID 19-affected districts. As per the current schedule, the legislature sessions will also continue. Pourakarmikas will be working at 50% strength," he added.

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Agencies
February 20,2020

India ranked 77th on a sustainability index that takes into account per capita carbon emissions and ability of children in a nation to live healthy lives and secures 131st spot on a flourishing ranking that measures the best chance at survival and well-being for children, according to a UN-backed report.

The report was released on Wednesday by a commission of over 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world. It was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and The Lancet medical journal.

In the report assessing the capacity of 180 countries to ensure that their youngsters can survive and thrive, India ranks 77th on the Sustainability Index and 131 on the Flourishing Index, it said.

Flourishing is the geometric mean of Surviving and Thriving. For Surviving, the authors selected maternal survival, survival in children younger than 5 years old, suicide, access to maternal and child health services, basic hygiene and sanitation, and lack of extreme poverty.

For Thriving, the domains were educational achievement, growth and nutrition, reproductive freedom, and protection from violence.

Under the Sustainability Index, the authors noted that promoting today's national conditions for children to survive and thrive must not come at the cost of eroding future global conditions for children's ability to flourish.

The Sustainability Index ranks countries on excess carbon emissions compared with the 2030 target. This provides a convenient and available proxy for a country's contribution to sustainability in future.

The report noted that under realistic assumptions about possible trajectories towards sustainable greenhouse gas emissions, models predict that global carbon emissions need to be reduced from 39·7 giga­ tonnes to 22·8 gigatonnes per year by 2030 to maintain even a 66 per cent chance of keeping global warming below 1·5°C.

It said that the world's survival depended on children being able to flourish, but no country is doing enough to give them a sustainable future.

"No country in the world is currently providing the conditions we need to support every child to grow up and have a healthy future," said Anthony Costello, Professor of Global Health and Sustainability at University College London, one of the lead authors of the report.

"Especially, they're under immediate threat from climate change and from commercial marketing, which has grown hugely in the last decade," said Costello – former WHO Director of Mother, Child and Adolescent health.

Norway leads the table for survival, health, education and nutrition rates - followed by South Korea and the Netherlands. Central African Republic, Chad and Somalia come at the bottom.

However, when taking into account per capita CO2 emissions, these top countries trail behind, with Norway 156th, the Republic of Korea 166th and the Netherlands 160th.

Each of the three emits 210 per cent more CO2 per capita than their 2030 target, the data shows, while the US, Australia, and Saudi Arabia are among the 10 worst emitters. The lowest emitters are Burundi, Chad and Somalia.

According to the report, the only countries on track to beat CO2 emission per capita targets by 2030, while also performing fairly – within the top 70 – on child flourishing measures are: Albania, Armenia, Grenada, Jordan, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uruguay and Vietnam.

"More than 2 billion people live in countries where development is hampered by humanitarian crises, conflicts, and natural disasters, problems increasingly linked with climate change," said Minister Awa Coll-Seck from Senegal, Co-Chair of the commission.

The report also highlights the distinct threat posed to children from harmful marketing.

Evidence suggests that children in some countries see as many as 30,000 advertisements on television alone in a single year, while youth exposure to vaping (e-cigarettes) advertisements increased by more than 250 per cent in the US over two years, reaching more than 24 million young people.

Studies in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the US – among many others – have shown that self-regulation has not hampered commercial ability to advertise to children.

Children's exposure to commercial marketing of junk food and sugary beverages is associated with purchase of unhealthy foods and overweight and obesity, linking predatory marketing to the alarming rise in childhood obesity, it said.

The number of obese children and adolescents increased from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016 – an 11-fold increase, with dire individual and societal costs, the report said.

To protect children, the authors call for a new global movement driven by and for children.

Specific recommendations include stopping CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet; placing children and adolescents at the centre of global efforts to achieve sustainable development, the report said.

New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights; incorporating children's voices into policy decisions and tightening national regulation of harmful commercial marketing, supported by a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it said.

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News Network
January 17,2020

New Delhi, Jan 17: The Supreme Court on Friday closed the monitoring of the killing of rationalist M M Kalburgi in 2015 in Dharwad.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat noted that the charge sheet has already been filed and the matter was assigned to the sessions court. The court, however, noted two accused had absconded and could not be arrested till date, according to reports.

Senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, appearing for the Karnataka government, submitted that the High Court had also stopped monitoring of the matter.

The top court had in early last year directed that the Karnataka High Court's Dharwad bench to monitor the probe. The Karnataka police SIT, which investigated Gauri Lankesh case and filed the charge sheet, was allowed to take over the Kalburgi case.

Umadevi, in her 2017 plea, drew a parallel between Kalburgi's murder and killings of Narendra Dabholkar and Comrade Govind Pansare in Maharashtra and sought an SIT probe by a retired Supreme Court or a High Court judge. She urged the top court to monitor the probe till it reached its logical conclusion as there was no progress in the investigation conducted so far by the Karnataka police.

The court had earlier sought to know if there was a "common thread" in murder cases of Communist leader Pansare and rationalist Dabholkar in Maharashtra, and Kannada writer Kalburgi and journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka.

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