04-16-2009, 07:07 AM
There's a cottage industry that sprung up after 2002 riots, especially in US to fleece the victims. And they have an interest in keeping these victims as victims for their own personal benefit. These vultures who prey on helpless should be exposed for who they are.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Everybody loves a victim</b>
Hindustan Times
Intro: Have Gujarat's Muslims got a raw deal from NGOs?
Labels come easy and crisp in Gujarat. Pro-Modi. Anti-Modi. For the rest
of the world, you are either with him or against him. Which is why when
it comes to the Muslims of Gujarat, and the Muslim victims of the 2002
riots, it is best to stick to the safe story: Muslims live in mortal
fear in Gujarat and non-governmental organisations have given a new life
to riot victims.
Or, I could tell you the truth - how many in the media and many NGOs want to keep Gujarat's Muslims refrigerated as 'victims' for all foreseeable times to come - even if those in the community don't want to be seen as victims, even if it works against them, and even if they want to unshackle themselves and get on with their lives for their future.
How else does one explain the media's complete inability - or
reluctance - to describe Gujarat's Muslims in no way other than whiners?
How can they not see and write about Gujaratis like the maulana I met
who bought an apartment from his stock market earnings, the Muslims
running English-medium schools in the ghettos, the stock broker who lost
everything in the riots and went on to pioneer Islamic finance in India,
the riot survivors now writing TOEFL exams and getting ready to go over
seas to study? Or the sprawling Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind school for riot and
earth- quake orphans - Hindus and Muslims -in remote Kutch that has
changed hundreds of lives?
<b>Or how they ignore simple facts: Muslims in Gujarat have a literacy rate
of 73 per cent, more than Muslims anywhere, and more than the national
average. Gujarat's 45 lakh Muslims - just over 9 per cent of the state's
population - fare better than the national average for all religions on
several counts including sex ratio and work participation. Yes, Muslims
and Hindus don't get homes in each other's neighbourhoods. There is
actually a law in Gujarat that bans such sales in several places. Yes,
Muslims do feel discriminated against in many areas. But they are doing
all this despite all that. Modi or no Modi, Gujarat's Muslims are armed
with the supreme weapon that every Gujarati is armed with: their
centuries-old entrepreneurial spirit. No amount of imposed victimhood
can take that away.
</b>
Yet, there is a deep and astounding disconnect between what we in the
media believe the condition of Gujarat's Muslims to be and what it
actually is. And maybe there is a lesson in that. Still, the image of
Gujarat's Muslims as perceived outside Gujarat and outside India is one
we have created and nurtured: that they are helpless victims, no better
than second-class citizens.
Then there are the NGOs. Many of these organisations took money from the
riot victims before letting them live there. In Godhra, for example, a
two-room set with plastered walls took about Rs 33,000 to build, and the
families paid Rs 20,000 each for them. They begged and borrowed from
friends and family members, scrounged and somehow put together the
amounts. That doesn't sound like relief to me. It sounds like a
subsidised real estate deal.
Worse, these families don't even own these two-room sets. The properties
have not been transferred in their names and they are technically
illegal squatters. The head of the Islamic Relief Committee, which
supervised these constructions, told me that this was done "so that the
riot victims don't sell those homes... that sort of thing happens here".
And that money was taken from them "so that they know that everything
does not come free".
Then there's the place that provoked the National Commission of
Minorities to state, "If there is hell under the sun, it is here."
Citizen Nagar, a neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, is where Muslim riot
victims live next to the city's largest garbage dump, where sewage flows
through their lanes in the monsoons and they battle disease and squalor.
<b>For five years, Citizen Nagar is, for the NGOs, the symbol of what is
wrong with Gujarat's Muslims. They lost their livelihoods, they are far
from their places of work, schools or medical facilities. But who chose
that location? Who bought the land and resettled the families near the
reeking garbage dump? The same NGOs who are complaining today. Rather
than encourage and prepare them to return home or to rebuild their
lives, the NGOs, according to a prominent Muslim philanthropist, "threw
money at the families and created victims for life".
</b>
It was haphazard, poorly thought out and downright cruel. First the mad
rioters killed people and Modi's government looked the other way. And
since then, the media and many NGOs are trying to ensure that they
always remain just that: victims.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Everybody loves a victim</b>
Hindustan Times
Intro: Have Gujarat's Muslims got a raw deal from NGOs?
Labels come easy and crisp in Gujarat. Pro-Modi. Anti-Modi. For the rest
of the world, you are either with him or against him. Which is why when
it comes to the Muslims of Gujarat, and the Muslim victims of the 2002
riots, it is best to stick to the safe story: Muslims live in mortal
fear in Gujarat and non-governmental organisations have given a new life
to riot victims.
Or, I could tell you the truth - how many in the media and many NGOs want to keep Gujarat's Muslims refrigerated as 'victims' for all foreseeable times to come - even if those in the community don't want to be seen as victims, even if it works against them, and even if they want to unshackle themselves and get on with their lives for their future.
How else does one explain the media's complete inability - or
reluctance - to describe Gujarat's Muslims in no way other than whiners?
How can they not see and write about Gujaratis like the maulana I met
who bought an apartment from his stock market earnings, the Muslims
running English-medium schools in the ghettos, the stock broker who lost
everything in the riots and went on to pioneer Islamic finance in India,
the riot survivors now writing TOEFL exams and getting ready to go over
seas to study? Or the sprawling Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind school for riot and
earth- quake orphans - Hindus and Muslims -in remote Kutch that has
changed hundreds of lives?
<b>Or how they ignore simple facts: Muslims in Gujarat have a literacy rate
of 73 per cent, more than Muslims anywhere, and more than the national
average. Gujarat's 45 lakh Muslims - just over 9 per cent of the state's
population - fare better than the national average for all religions on
several counts including sex ratio and work participation. Yes, Muslims
and Hindus don't get homes in each other's neighbourhoods. There is
actually a law in Gujarat that bans such sales in several places. Yes,
Muslims do feel discriminated against in many areas. But they are doing
all this despite all that. Modi or no Modi, Gujarat's Muslims are armed
with the supreme weapon that every Gujarati is armed with: their
centuries-old entrepreneurial spirit. No amount of imposed victimhood
can take that away.
</b>
Yet, there is a deep and astounding disconnect between what we in the
media believe the condition of Gujarat's Muslims to be and what it
actually is. And maybe there is a lesson in that. Still, the image of
Gujarat's Muslims as perceived outside Gujarat and outside India is one
we have created and nurtured: that they are helpless victims, no better
than second-class citizens.
Then there are the NGOs. Many of these organisations took money from the
riot victims before letting them live there. In Godhra, for example, a
two-room set with plastered walls took about Rs 33,000 to build, and the
families paid Rs 20,000 each for them. They begged and borrowed from
friends and family members, scrounged and somehow put together the
amounts. That doesn't sound like relief to me. It sounds like a
subsidised real estate deal.
Worse, these families don't even own these two-room sets. The properties
have not been transferred in their names and they are technically
illegal squatters. The head of the Islamic Relief Committee, which
supervised these constructions, told me that this was done "so that the
riot victims don't sell those homes... that sort of thing happens here".
And that money was taken from them "so that they know that everything
does not come free".
Then there's the place that provoked the National Commission of
Minorities to state, "If there is hell under the sun, it is here."
Citizen Nagar, a neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, is where Muslim riot
victims live next to the city's largest garbage dump, where sewage flows
through their lanes in the monsoons and they battle disease and squalor.
<b>For five years, Citizen Nagar is, for the NGOs, the symbol of what is
wrong with Gujarat's Muslims. They lost their livelihoods, they are far
from their places of work, schools or medical facilities. But who chose
that location? Who bought the land and resettled the families near the
reeking garbage dump? The same NGOs who are complaining today. Rather
than encourage and prepare them to return home or to rebuild their
lives, the NGOs, according to a prominent Muslim philanthropist, "threw
money at the families and created victims for life".
</b>
It was haphazard, poorly thought out and downright cruel. First the mad
rioters killed people and Modi's government looked the other way. And
since then, the media and many NGOs are trying to ensure that they
always remain just that: victims.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->