“A government that has worked ceaselessly to one by one, decimate the constitutional rights of Muslims in India, has now had the temerity to declare Muslim Women’s Rights Day on August 1,” begins a statement expressing citizens’ disgust at the declaration of Union minister of minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The minister made the announcement to supposedly celebrate the passage of the law banning triple talaq on August 1, 2019. He called on women to observe August 1, 2021 as Muslim Women’s Rights Day. The letter from several members of the general public notes that the law aimed not at the protection of the rights of Muslim women unfairly divorced, but at showing Muslim men their place in New India by criminalizing civil matters.
“The government has diluted Muslim rights to citizenship by enacting the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019…” when Muslim women were out in the streets protesting and seeking the secure the rights of children and future generations of the community, the government turned a deaf ear, the letter explains. Instead, the government mercilessly arrested protesters and jailed Muslim women. Detention centres are constructed in Assam for Muslims and their families, for those who cannot produce “citizenship papers”.
The government has remained silent as Muslims were lynched, and BJP leaders went so far as to garland those accused of lynching. Beef bans, anti-conversion laws and the proposed population control bill in UP all target India’s Muslims. The government has systematically tried to rob Muslims of their livelihood and take away agency from Muslim women, the statement notes.
Right wing online mobs have targeted Muslims; ‘Sulli deals” have offered Muslim women on sale online; the recent murder in Afghanistan of Danish Siddiqui of Reuters evoked no statement at all from either Prime Minister Narendra Modi or anyone else in government.
The letter writers say they reject this “optics” and seek:
- Release of Gulfisha Fatima (arrested for protesting against CAA) and Ishrat Jahan (former councilor arrested in the Delhi riots case) from unjust incarceration.
- Release of student leader Umar Khalid
- Release of Khalid Saifi, founding member of United Against Hate.
- Release of activist Sharjeel Imam, held for protesting against CAA.
- On behalf of his mother and Muslim woman Fatima Nafees, find her son Najeeb who went missing in 2016 from JNU after a brawl with Hindutva elements.
“These are just a few names, there is a long list, Mr Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi,” the letter states. “And after you have done that, please then sit with us, with all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim women and men, who believe in our democracy and its promise of equality.”
