Community Round-Up

The so-called minorities-friendly Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh seems to be not ready to accept the demand of Muslims to amend the State Land Ceiling Act to provide share of agricultural land and other properties to the Muslim women. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board in a letter to the state government requested the amendment of the Land Ceiling Act so that Muslim girls could get a share in the Property of parents including agricultural land. Two ministers from Mulayam’s cabinet met Board President, Maulana Rabe Nadvi and expressed the government’s inability to amend the law.

The Sadbhav Mission and Jamia Millia Islamia are jointly organising a one day seminar on Sufis and Communal Harmony on October 2, 2005 to develop a comprehensive understanding of the culture of masses. According to convener Vipin Tripathi, the Mission intends to publish a book on Sufi Saint Movement, running into 350 pages shortly.

The Delhi High Court has directed Delhi Government, Delhi Wakf Board and Municipal Corporation of Delhi to prepare a “re-development plan” within two months for restoring the pristine glory of the historic Jama Masjid here. In a judgement the Division Bench of Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Rekha Sharma also asked the Delhi Wakf Board to decide as to who was the owner of the land adjoining the mosque where houses of the Imam and certain other persons were situated. The Bench wondered why the authorities had not decided the ownership of the land for the last 50 years.

The Hazrath Bismillah Shah Hospital located in the downtown locality here will begin operations soon after Ramadan. The building with 45,000 sq. ft floor space area has been constructed on an 18,000 sq. feet plot of Wakf land obtained on lease from the adjacent Bismillah Shah Mosque at an estimated cost of Rs. 1.30 crore. The hospital set up by the Anjuman Khuddamul Muslimeen will have general surgery, general medicine, pediatrics and gynecology departments. The Anjuman has been running a clinic at its premises on Ibrahim Sahib Street since 1991.

The Karnataka Government has issued notification for opening 13 more Morarji Desai Schools for Minorities in the State. These will be set up in Mysore, Hassan, Chitradurga, Koppal, Chamrajnagar, Bagalkot, Raichur, Manavi, Kokkunoor, Kerebelchi (Davangere district), Gadag, Kolar and Dandeli. The schools will admit students from all minority communities and provide boarding and lodging facilities. The Karnataka Government has established five Government Muslim Residential Schools at Srirangapatna, Ramanagram, Mangalore, Hubli and Gulbarga under this scheme in 1995.

The Mumbai police has decided to implement the Supreme Court ban on the use of loudspeakers between 10 pm and 6 am in mosques too. The police had come in for sharp criticism from the Shiv Sena and other Hindu organisations for implementing the ban only with regard to Ganapati mandals. In fact, the police booked cases against two Ganapati mandals at Antop Hill recently for violating the ban. Joint commissioner of police (law and order) Arup Patnaik said ACPs and senior officials across the metropolis had been asked to hold meetings with Muslim religious leaders in their areas and ask them to help implement the SC order. ‘The emphasis is on persuasion’, he added. The ‘azaan’ for the first ‘namaz’ is made at around 5.15 am and most mosques use public address systems. Opinion within the Muslim community is however, divided on the issue. Members of the community are planning to approach the Supreme Court to seek a relaxation of just two minutes for the Fajr (morning) azaan. Maulana Mahmood Dariyabadi, general secretary of the Ulema Council said that in several mosques, imams and muezzins have been directed to reduce the volumes of loudspeakers, especially for the morning namaz.

The Best Bakery re-trial, which hogged the limelight in the media coverage among the trials of Gujarat riots cases, inched towards closure now as the recording of evidence is over and arguments have begun in the Special court here. Special Public Prosecutor, Manjula Rao marshalled the witnesses’ statements and entries in the police diary to establish the sequence of events that led up to the attack on Best Bakery in Vadodara on March 1, 2002, during the post-Godhra riots in which 14 people were killed. Rao mainly sought to prove that the mob which had gathered around the Bakery on the previous evening had intention to attack it and the people in the mob were not outsiders. Prosecution has examined 70 witnesses in the case and there are over 3,500 pages of documentary evidence that the court has to plod through. This case is the hope in the struggle for justice for all the families of the victims of the Gujarat violence.