Frontline
May  2001 
Editorial

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Minorities within minorities

Whenever Communalism Combat is blamed for being ‘too pro-minority’, we hold the sangh parivar and the rest of the saffron brotherhood responsible for this editorial ‘tilt’. Had Hindutva not hijacked the national agenda and targeted the country’s religious minorities, so much time and attention would not have been needed  to defend Muslims and Christians from the vitriol, vilification and violence that is deliberately directed at them. In fact, but for the hate mongers, this magazine itself would not have been necessary. In such an imagined paradise of communal peace, had your editors still been involved in an issue-based publication, it would very likely have focussed on how one half of India (comprising of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and men who respond to other identity markers) treats the other half — women.

Be that as it may, provisional figures that have emerged from census 2001 give us an urgent reason to focus on the plight of women. The large-scale gender killings through the obnoxious practices of foeticide, infanticide, dowry-related murders and deaths through acute malnutrition of the girl child have led to a situation where the number of women per every thousand male in the population is on a dangerous decline. It’s an ugly reality that should make every Indian of the male gender hang his head in shame, but the high command of Hindutva particularly so as the ‘national mainstream’ which they claim to represent contributes more than its share to what is nothing short of homicide. Nonetheless, it’s also a social crime that implicates, in one way or another, people from every religion of India. Could there not be a multi-religious consensus on a collective expression of remorse and a resolve to rid India of this shame?

Our cover story this month, however, is especially focussed on the country’s ‘minorities within minorities’ — Dalit and Muslim women. In common with their male counterparts, they suffer the depravations and indignities on account of caste, class and community. But if one thought that the experience of one’s own oppression or social humiliation makes people sensitive to others in society who face a similar predicament, the double or triple oppression of Dalit and Muslim women on account of gender dispels that belief. And such a state of affairs reinforces the imperative before those who would be consistent in their commitment to the ideals of democracy, pluralism and human rights to constantly highlight the plight and the rights of the ‘minorities within minorities’. An accompanying report on a recent attempt, perhaps the first of its kind, to bring women from Kashmir and the Northeast together to share what it means to be a woman from an area of continuing conflict adds yet another dimension to the experience of gender. 

Elsewhere in this issue, we are happy to take note of the all–party MPs forum that has been launched to challenge the attempt of the HRD ministry to impose a saffron education policy on the country without discussion or debate. Your editors are also happy that through KHOJ — a programme for secular education in schools — and through the campaign run by Communalism Combat, based on the research findings of the KHOJ programme, we have played our small part in the growing national concern over biased textbooks and the importance of teaching tolerance. 

From Kanpur, the city that was sought to be dragged into the communal cauldron (see CC, March & April 2001), we have the report of a heartening citizens’ initiative to heal wounds, promote amity and strive to bring the guilty to book.

A special report by our roving correspondent, John Dayal, sheds considerable light on how the economic disempowerment of India’s minorities is in-built into the very mindset of our planners. 

By the time this issue gets to the reader, Union home minister LK Advani, would have made a second appearance before the Liberhan Commission inquiring into the demolition of the Babri Masjid. As part two of our flashback to that critical period, we recall for our readers two mysterious murders in the aftermath of the demolition in Ayodhya. Mahant Laldas, the head priest since 1983 of the very Ram temple which the sangh parivar wished to ‘liberate’, and who had consistently opposed the politicisation of the dispute, was brutally murdered in November 1993. And Subhash Bhan Sadh, an IAS official with the Uttar Pradesh home department, died under mysterious circumstances in a rail accident on April 30, 2000 while carrying important documents to submit before the Liberhan commission. 

— EDITORS

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