Sunday, April 13, 2008
RE: http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/296025.html
PERMANENT ADDRESS MH-01-JA-454 By SWAPNIL RAWAL
COMMENTS POSTED ON INDIAN EXPRESS WEBSITE:
The story of Taxi Driver is more poignant as his life has been conditioned by a Government that is on one hand insensitive to his existence as a common citizen, while on the other hand devises various legal measures to make his life more miserable. And all this in the name of the welfare of the people! An unalloyed Kafkaesque situation!!!
As a member of the Muslim minority, who are doomed to suffer for the sin of supposedly ‘dividing the nation’, he is completely cut off from any welfare measure that Government introduces to provide for the ‘below poverty line’ of its citizenry, be that for food or shelter. He is out, as he is a Muslim. He is out as he is Uttar Bharati. He is out as he does not have a home address, so no voter or ration card. He is not eligible for any of the various Government Housing scheme, again as he does not have a house in his name. Leave it to the wily bureaucrats to devise ways and means to see the unwanted are marginalised. A new danger that looms over his head of the serious risk of his taxi and himself being attacked by ‘MNS’ or “Shiv Sena’ hooligans, who themselves are not the original inhabitants of Mumbai/Bombay, but are now claiming the city as their own.
Moinuddin Shaikh travelled to a Gulf country to earn a better living, leaving back a dismal disjointed family to survive in a rat-race stricken city. He is among millions who are still in the Gulf countries and who had remitted and are still remitting, billions back home. Indian Government has no organised scheme to offer them social support, if and when their lives are disrupted due to various breaks in life cycle of a Mumbai resident. Government has never come around to organise some Gulf Returnee scheme to rehabilitate the returnees to a full life of local opportunities; even though they had at one time helped the country when it was heavily dependant of their foreign remittance.
A very interesting fact disclosed in the life story of Moinuddin Shaikh and his son, is the appearance of a ‘Madarsa’ as the relief centre for the uprooted. His son will not only be accommodated, fed, clothed but also will be educated; thus taking the entire burden off the head of the father, who could barely survive on some footpath of Mumbai. Here the Madarsa is not the matter of choice. It is the means of survival of his son and millions like him. The Madarsa is a fully community supported welfare measure. This same Madarsa has been demonized by the US and Israel as the hotbed of conspiracies against the West.
The worst part is that those in authority are fully aware of the whole set of handicaps imposed on an Indian Muslim by the communalized ruling class, and in fact are rejoicing sadistically in their devilish schemes to impoverish and disenfranchise 200 million Muslims of India. And they want to die and disappear without even raising a sigh. However, this slow working genocide is not being noticed by the rest of the ‘international community’. Hope is still high that the opening to the world of India as a new power on the block, will expose India’s dreary pockets of hateful crimes inflicted on its own citizenry and the very international friends who are goading the ruling class to target Muslim in line with the current anti-Muslim hate wave, may turn their tables against their partners in no times; the tide is bound to turn.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
GhulamMuhammed.Mumbai 