ISLAM, CASTE & DALIT- MUSLIM RELATIONS IN INDIA
Dalit Voice not only removed all the prejudices generated by the Hindu nazis against Muslims but tried to unite the Dalits & Muslims, the country’s two worst persecuted the sections.
book deals with this subject by a writer closely associated with DV from its early days.
At least 80% of India’s Muslims are converts from Dalits and hence the two are blood brothers. In the latest Parliament elections, the two jointly threw out the ruling Hindu nazi govt. in Delhi. The two live together in ‘urban slums and both are persecuted by the same common enemy. Hence the need for Dalit Muslim unity. Nobody questions such a unity except the Hindu nazis who thrive on dividing the two and instigating the Dalits against Muslims.
MUSLIM WRITINGS IN DV
The minority elite sections within Muslims are closer to the upper castes (Hindus). This was proved in the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid in Delhi supporting the Hindu nazi party of BJP in the Parliament election, a call outright rejected by the Muslim masses.
No other paper in India has written so much on the common problem of Muslims and Dalits as DV. The book devotes one whole chapter to the “Muslim writings in Dalit Voice” (DV Nov. I, 2002 p.9: “Muslim writings in DV advocate. struggle against Brahminism”) and says though the Editor of DV, V.T. Rajshekar, is not a Muslim,
“He has a large following-among the Muslims of. India for his unstinting commitment to Muslim causes, for his favourable views on Islam as a force for social liberation and his fierce opposition to upper caste Hindu aggression” (p.94).
SUPPORT TO BACKWARD MUSLIMS
DV supports the movement of Backward Muslims and their demand for revolution.
It also criticises the Muslim religious organsiations and religious leader’s tor not taking up the revolutionary aspect ‘of Islam. The Quran even sanctions Jihad and urges the Muslims to fight and die to secure justice for the oppressed. But the Muslim leadership not only did not fight for the country’s most oppressed Dalits but did nothing to support the struggle of their own Backward Muslims.
DV is the first and perhaps the only paper to take up this question so seriously, even going to the extent of antagonising the elite Muslim the leadership.
The book devotes considerable space to the Dalit Sahitya Akademy book, Dalit Muslim Unity, Why & How? by Dr. Ram Nath, with a foreword by V.T. Rajshekar (DSA-1995).
Yoginder Sikand pays tributes to the work of Igbal Ahmed Sheriff, noted advocate and the Bangalore representative of Dalit Voice, for his Urdu and English writings and his critique of the Muslim religious organisations.
REVOLUTIONARY MUSLIM MEET
Following the publications of the article, “Muslim writings in DV“,a number of revolutionary Muslim writers, whose articles had appeared in DV (DV Dec.1, 2002 p. 8: “DV Muslim writers must meet to plan future action”), proposed a meeting ‘of such writers. A Hyderabad-based Muslim organisation had agreed to host such a meeting.
WANTED URDU TRANSLATION
The need for a revolutionary Islamic leadership to expedite the Dalit- | Muslim unity to tackle the Hindu nazi violence and thus ‘help establishment of the Bahujan rule is the aim of Dalit Voice.
All these are very well brought out by Sikand’s book, first of its kind on the subject, which needs to be translated to Urdu to bring it to the notice of revolutionary Muslim masses.
