BaKhabar, January 2012, Page-4

better light a candle than curse the darkness

Pondering over the Next Role of Bihar Anjuman

.... Mohammad Allam (mohammad_allam@rediffmail.com), Faculty, Minto Circle, A.M.U.Aligarh

Now it is time to diversify the activities of Bihar Anjuman in some other needed fields to serve the community. No doubt that with increased access of the Muslims of Bihar and Jharkhand to modern education made them more active and in a position to play dominant role in the development of the state and community. This certainly will provoke some unexpected reactions from the traditional power-holders of Bihar and Jharkhand. And they will try to impede this march. They will use different tactics to derail the advancement of the Muslims of Bihar and Jharkhand in education, politics, and economy. So, to strengthen the line of march and to serve the people of the nation, the role of Bihar Anjuman has to be enlarged. The area in which Bihar Anjuman should work now is education, law, and social awakening against social evils. These could be achieved by formulating programmes, policies and establishment of councils or bodies to look after these matters in practice, on a wider scale. Following bodies are proposed:
1. Educational Advisory Council.The council should be comprised on the educational expert of different field of education. There should be 20 members of the council. The meeting of the council should be twice in the year. The function of this advisory council should be to assist in the development of the schools among the community. Any group from the community which wants to establish schools for the community would get free expert advice on the every aspect of school like administration, grants etc. The council should guide the people in every aspect of school education.
For awareness about the education among the people, the council should organize the conference, Talimi Caravan, Seminars, Educational Awareness Week in the various districts of Bihar with the help of local running chapter/coaching centers of the Anjuman.
The people who would support this council should be the students and the teachers of the various institutions and are ready to volunteer themselves for the cause of the state and community.
2. Legal Advisory council. This council should comprise on the legal expert of the law .There should be 30 members in this council. Ten (10) members should be retired and rest should be in working if possible in which five should be women.
The purpose of this council should be to look after all the matter related to cases of terrorism only. The council would assist the state and victim to find out the culprit and dispense justice. This council should investigate the cases of terrorism and follow legal battle on the behalf of the people. The organization should also look after the rehabilitations of victims of terrorism with the help of the society and government
There should be 4 meetings of this organization every year. The people who would assist this council should be practicing lawyers, teachers of legal law, Media persons, students Union, Women Organizations etc.
The council should organize awareness programme regarding the law procedure of the nation, nature of different crimes, terrorism and working of different anti terrorism organizations.

3 Anti Social evils council .This group should be comprise on 20 members .At least 5 members should be women and three Ulemas/Mufti. The yearly meeting of this organization should be twice in year. The targeted social evils should be Dowry, Child labor, Domestic Violence, Divorce and marriage ceremony.
The council should launch programme about the awareness against these social evils by organizing seminars, social gathering and people to people contact on village level. The anti social evils Caravan comprising students, teachers, social activist, media person and women organization. This caravan should be in touch of every local chapters of Anjuman.
All those people who wish to join these organizations should be allow to work .There should be members directory maintained by the council with name, address and contact numbers.
About the funds to start these organizations, every chapter organize a Donation Party on a cup of tea. While a mass appeal should be sent through news paper to the people on the challenging issues face by the community through mass media.
This may be a small beginning but is urgent need of time as we are seeing the knocking on the door by unseen enemies in form declaring north Indian area and Muslims as emerging hub of terrorist organizations (see reports of various newspapers)..

Women insecurity: A Threat to Women's Education

... Shahzad Alam Barni, RTI Activist (Aligarh)

The security for the women is a very sensitive issue in the post modern era. As per the data collected by the National Crime Records Bureau's publication “Crime in India 2009” shows that with 1,759 rape victims in 2009, UP had 0.9 rape victims per lakh population. Compare that with the 1,631 victims in a much smaller state like Assam, which means a rate of 5.3 rape victims per lakh population, almost six times the rate in UP.

At the other end of the scale, the five worst were Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and West Bengal, in descending order of the rate. Even the best among this lot, West Bengal had a rate of 2.6 rape victims per lakh population that is about thrice as bad as in UP. The five best States or Union Territories in 2009, among those with a population of 100 lakh or more, were Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, UP and Bihar in that order, all of them having less than one rape victim per lakh population.
As per the report of Times of India published on Jan 6, 2008 there has been a phenomenal eight-fold increase in the number of rapes committed in India since 1971, the year from which data for rape cases has been collected by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This stands in marked contrast to other serious and violent crimes like murder, robbery, dacoity, kidnapping and rioting. Overall, violent crimes under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) have actually declined.

The issues of women are getting hyped day by day. Social activists, especially the women's rights activists raise the issues for the empowerment of the women and gender equality but they forget the most and very prior requirement of life that is security for the women.
This is a very common practice that we have the most valuable assets into the locker just because of the security reasons as same as we try to safeguard the women in the society. The security of the women can never be fully achieved with full freedom given to the women, but with some reasonable restrictions in the system.
Educational backwardness among the women is also a very dangerous problem prevailing in the society. Cultural and social development of a child mostly depends on the environment provided at home so it is very necessary to be educated for the head of the family at home that normally the mother.
There are two main problems that exist in the society; one is women should be educated to provide the overall development for the new generation as we know that the best teacher of a person is his/her mother, secondly another problem is the security of the women as we know that cases of the sexual harassment are increasing with very fast rate.
So such kind of a system must be developed in the society that both the problems could be solved at the same time; and for this, government must open women polytechnique, women’s colleges, special schools for the girls so that women could get proper education with proper security.