Haq Hai | SabrangIndia

Distance dissent from hate! Haq Hai appeals to the Muslim community

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 13:34:31 +0000

Around 100 people gathered at Mira-Bhayandar, Mumbai on June 16, 2022 to decry the right politics both within and outside the Muslim community. Organised by local rights organisation Haq Hai, the gathering appealed to the community not to fall victim to the enmity spread by right-wing elements.

Haq Hai is a citizens’ collective at Mira Road-Bhayandarthat seeks to defend the constitution and the idea of India. Following the June 10 protests by the Muslim community, many anti-CAA-NPR activists in Uttar Pradesh were listed in a ‘demolition list’ created by the Allahabad administration.

According to Haq Hai leader Sadiq Basha, Haq Hai supported people’s right to condemn the hate speech against Prophet Mohammad and Islam. However, he denounced the administration for targeting dissenters in such a manner.

“This threat of a bulldozer is against the constitution. That too by the state. The police knows how to crowd control and deal with stone-pelters. So, the police should do so,” said Basha in condemning the most recent and widely covered demolition of Allahabad activist Javed Mohammad.

He warned of a regime where the state government became the judge, jury and prosecutor. At the same time, Haq Hai said it had observed certain right-wing Muslim groups trying to justify stone-pelting. Basha said that people become easily susceptible to such manipulation even though Islam itself calls for peace. For this reason, he felt it was important to fight the right-politics. His call on Wednesday night was a call for the assertion of peace.

Fortunately, this call was answered by the Muslim women and youth in Mira-Bhayandar. Although the organisation had gained prior permission from the police, officials refused to allow the protest in a Muslim-dominated area. Still, protesters observed a silent protest before starting rallying to another location.

As the event was intended to be a music programme, videos with audio background were also circulated later on.

“There is an undercurrent of hate within the Muslim community. It is important to channelise the dissent in a peaceful manner to channelise the anger otherwise, it will go elsewhere,” said Basha.

The group also discussed the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and how the current regime is manipulating their ordeal to push their own agendas. Overall, the event was a solidarity call for struggles in different areas rather than a protest.

The event went on for two hours from 8 PM to 10 PM. Haq Hai said that it planned to identify those groups in Mira-Bhayandar that attempted to spread hate. This will help the community flag manipulative content rather than wait for the police to do something. In line with Citizens for Justice and Peace’s (CJP) call for mohalla committees, Haq Hai said it intended to start such groups in the region to do away with hate completely and isolate right-wing majority and right-wing elements in the Muslim community.

“We need to address the right politics. It is important that people understand we protest calmly and not with hate. However, even yesterday, we could see that people are gradually becoming more emotional,” said Basha.

The post Distance dissent from hate! Haq Hai appeals to the Muslim community appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Beyond formal education: Haq Hai to help school dropouts

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 13:07:28 +0000

Image Courtesy: Facebook.com

In a bid to regain normalcy, Mira Bhayander’s Muslim women called upon the neighbouring people to help sustain the education and livelihood of those living in Naya Nagar, Mira Road. On March 13, 2022, Haq Hai, a local organisation fighting for better education, formed a women’s sub-committee to address issues like high school fees and drop-outs among children orphaned during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Previously, Haq Hai worked alongside Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) during the pandemic to provide relief to the suffering families in Mumbai. Nowadays, it is trying to address challenges faced by the Muslim community, particularly with respect to education, in the post-Covid period.

Convener Sadiq Basha explained that the dropout rate in the area increased during the pandemic period. Parents were already agitating against high private school fees when the pandemic forced children to move to Zoom meetings instead of classrooms. However, with parents educated in Urdu-medium schools, it became difficult for families to maintain the quality of education.

A member teacher and former school principal attending the meeting spoke about how children’s grades have worsened over the last years of the pandemic. She informed how students previously getting D grades nowadays get an F grade while excellent students getting A grades in pre-pandemic times nowadays get a D grade instead. Describing this as a very serious problem, she said that the lockdown period affected all students across all schools.

Many women in the committee itself expressed a deep desire to learn English for conversational, reading and writing purposes. The 40-year-old and 50-year-old women finished their basic education in Urdu medium schools where rudimentary English is taught from Class 5 at 11-12 years of age. As a result, these children suffer when they go to junior college because all subjects are taught in English. During Covid-19, this impacted their income as well.

“The middle-class and similar families are being excluded from the formal education system. Children are dropping out and so the committee said that we need to arrange for alternative education until children can once again enter formal institutions,” said Basha.

In line with this, the committee resolved to start an English course, initially for its members and then for any person interested. This will be followed by capacity building so that the people who learnt the skill can become teachers as well. Basha said that already registrations of instructors had begun and the first batch for women may begin soon with four hour lectures every weekend.

Simultaneously, the committee is working on a database of students whose parents are unable to pay school fees to try and raise resources for their re-admission. The organisation will start a cooperative offering services for the existing 500 members and allowing a steady cash-flow for the families. Until then, volunteers will approach local schools and hire their infrastructure to conduct teaching activities.

At municipality schools, members will conduct a social, infrastructure and academic audit. This will help them organise more efficient English-teaching programmes on weekends.

“In these programs we will provide the training not only for the school students but also to anyone in the area who is interested [to learn]. We will provide meals to these students / parents/ participants such as to encourage them to attend the program,” said Haq Hai in a statement.

Additionally, the committee felt a need to build a life-skill programme such that students can learn real life skills. For this, organisers will first arrange for night or evening schools in municipal schools or private schools on a paid rent basis.

However, to achieve this, Haq Hai said it needs the help of the community. Members appealed to neighbouring people to lend their labour or resources or asked to sponsor some children’s education. Alternatively, the committee also voiced appreciation for any person with prior experiences in this field to offer their assistance. Similarly, sharing of notes, books, instructional videos, etc. will also give a positive thrust to the community-based effort.

“There is a huge amount of distress out there. These are all middle-class families that are suffering loss of income and jobs and they can’t even cry,” said Basha, stressing that this effort is much required to resolve such social inequalities.

The post Beyond formal education: Haq Hai to help school dropouts appeared first on SabrangIndia.