Here's what I think, or know about the situation. I am not a Muslim but I appreciate some aspects of their society in India, as well as those of all other religious groups in India.
Population growth amongst Muslims:
Muslims may have the right from Al-Quran to marry more than one wife. It was a historical necessity following the fierce wars of the 7-10th centuries in what we call the near-East. But I myself have several Hindu friends and acquaintances (senior IPS/IAS officers, and ex-rajas) who have one or two wives, some from respectable families of the same caste, the women having been abandoned by their own husbands for other women, others from lower castes. So, I can establish the fact that Hindus also have several wives, both in rural and urban areas. Among Kulin Brahmins of Bengal where only hypergamy is allowed, males till recently had so many wives that they couldn't remember their names and locations. The wives therefore could not establish their rights, except to die with Brahminical funeral rites. There is no count or recognition of the legal or illegitimate children they spawned. (However, presently, most Muslims I know, in academia, have only one wife!)
The difference between the two communities is that in Islamic polygamy, all the wives have rights to maintenance for themselves and their children and a share in the husband's property if he predeceases them. Among my Hindu friends, the 'other' wives may be called 'Rakhael', 'kept', even 'Randi' by society and the first wife. I don't think they have a legal right to maintenance for themselves and the children they may produce. Look at the trouble N. D. Tewari's son had to claim his paternal origin and rights, which he denied and which were ultimately settled by DNA tests.
Secondly, the main reason that Muslims have a higher population growth rate is not because they have significantly more children but because they do not practice female foetal abortion, killing of newborn girl children or starvation and denial of medical aid to female infants. I personally know Haryanvi Hindus who have had to rescue and rear their nieces from parents who wanted them to die of neglect, disease or starvation. Just look at the under-5 male-female child ratio in districts like Jhajjar, next door to Delhi, in Census 2011. Also in prosperous, urban Gujarat. Muslim populations, both rural and urban, are also poorer, so they have less access to FW and modern birth control facilities. Please do examine these statistics if you want to debate with me.
Muslims of both sexes can perform talaq. Husbands do not have to indulge either in bride burning, wife killing, or abandonment of female children, and all girls go to school, at least till they become literate. So, in the Muslim society that I'm familiar with, girls and women receive the same care, academic encouragement and rights as their male cohorts.
Among Paharis in Uttarakhand and Himachal, Hindu women of all castes can and do practice polyandry. Like Draupadi did. Do you object to that too?
UCC:
Hindus in India have the most exclusive Civil Code, which only applies to themselves! Its primary focus is the maintenance of the HUF. For example, on inheritance matters, till recently daughters, married or otherwise, seldom had paternal property rights granted to them after a parent's death. Only male heirs had these. Widows had rights only to maintenance. After decades of work by economist Bina Agarwal and others, widows and daughters were granted their legitimate property rights from the Supreme Court of India, including rights to agricultural lands.
Article 370:
This Article was the basis on which Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to the Union of India. Its abrogation cannot be done by any authority or body other than the Constituent Assembly of J&K state. However, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved in 1951 after the forced accession to India. Please remember, those who wanted Azaadi then and those who framed J&K's separate Constitution were mostly Kashmiri pandits, Dogras and other Hindus. All Kashmiris, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and tribal, felt they had a different ethnic and cultural identity from the Hindu dominated, caste stratified regions of the rest of India.
There are therefore grave implications of the unilateral abrogation of Article 370 by the Republic of India. The case that would be put forward against it would then go on indefinitely for decades and reach international courts and the UN again particularly since it would be cruelly enforced by an army under AFSPA and untrained paramilitaries like BSF, CRPF, ITBD AND CISF. IN FACT, other nations including our 'Enemy No. 1' China, and world power alliances under a UN mandate could actually take over the area to conduct that referendum that every Kashmiri on both sides of the LOC knows was promised to his/her people.
Would that solve any problems for India, Kashmir, or the region??
Kindly put aside your Hindu-centric male chauvinist worldview for a while, study the issues and historical origin of all points of view carefully and rethink your absolutist, and, in my perception, 'RSS influenced' solutions to these problems. Solutions have to be acceptable to all parties in a political dispute in this day and age, particularly one that has led to armed conflict. And do remember, the nuclear option touted by the unlettered saffron brigade would destroy your own North India completely.
Joya Roy
On Tue, 21 May 2019, 13:06 Girender Singh, <girinder_singh@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ms. Joya Roy,What you would like to advice on the following issues to be faced after few decades in India and then may be Me and You would not be on scene?1. Population outworst mainly by a single religion for which the knowledge starts and ends on their fanatic religious book?2. Common Civil Code?3. Article 370?4. Why, the intellectuals like you never spoke on such agenda's in past 6 decades?regardsGSOn Monday, 20 May, 2019, 1:38:47 pm IST, Prodipto Roy <prodipto.r@gmail.com> wrote:Maine pramana nahi di, kya? North Indians speak an Indo-European language. They like to think they descend from 'Aryans' whereas their genes could come from central Asia, Turkey, Iran, central, Balkan or Mediterranean Europe, or even from the Arabian peninsula. Yet they look down on South Indians on the basis of colour, imagined race and language. It's atrocious to expect anyone to adopt a language that is from a completely different family group, besides being bereft of centuries old literary tradition like Hindi, to belong to a country which is a federation of ancient and new cultures. You must be too young to know that in the mid-60s Tamils rioted against imposition of a language that was foreign to them and devoid of their own history, saying they would secede if Hindi became an official language.I'm pointing to the incapability of North Indians of understanding the cultural diversity of India. This insensitivity, arrogance and distorted view of country, it's creeds, geography, history and politics, handicaps them in understanding their North-eastern, Eastern, tribal, Southern, and western co-ciitizens as well as from learning new things. So wake-up, my Hindi speaking countrymen and women and try to learn a little more about the ancient history and genetics of the Indian population.Modi and his cohorts represent the business class of a certain section of North-western Indians. Their status has been raised by the Hindutwa brigade, run by upper castes and their Banar sends, who wish to impose Brahminical values on the polity, Many of us do not respect the values they hold, their policies, projects and capacity to rabble rouse in the name of religion - to use anything to gain political, personal, and business ends, ignoring the egalitarian, equalising currents that led to vibrant modern democracies. Sorry about that.Joya RoyOn Mon, 20 May 2019, 12:18 Girender Singh, <girinder_singh@yahoo.com> wrote:Ms Joya Roy,I completely disagree with you. You may be wise in collection of data's and express the same from the historians who never put the right history of Indian peoples that all due to the administration of Congress like parties and netaj's like Jinna and other's your inner heart will include them. I never praised north - the picture of Bharat region wise. We north Indian's think that peoples in south have discouraged the public to pronounce Vande Mataram, Hindi Learning and on National Anthem, untill you people don't read hindi literatures, the thinking alike you would never change, nothing to say more.The general elections would show you the right path and right history of Akhand Bharat in coming year's. I request you please not to hate North Indians and further not to divide the country of castism, regionalism and wrong data's of some biased historians.ThanksGirendra SinghOn Tuesday, 14 May, 2019, 8:51:20 pm IST, Prodipto Roy <prodipto.r@gmail.com> wrote:Shri G. Singh's reply exemplifies the problem with North Indians - uski pramana deti hai - they still think they are the heart and soul of India despite the assurances of cultural equality given in the Constitution we accept and the historical fact of the North's supine acquiescence to every light skinned infiltrator, adventurer, invader and colonizer that ever reached the so-called heart of India from the north-west Hindu-Kush passes or Western seas. Starting with the Etruscans from the Mediterranean (see historian Prof. Nilkantha Shastri on this) Ephthalites, 'Aryans' from Iran and central Asia, Kushana, Yueh Chi and Huna tribes, Bactrian Greeks, Gurjaras, Ahom from South East Asia, down to the Timurid Uzbeks and Afghans who ruled this same Aryavarta for 1000 years with the full acquiescence of its numerous 'Hindu' Kings and princes.
The myth of creation of Rajput clans in the agnikund at Mt. Abu was invented by opportunist Brahmins seeking jobs at the courts of these ersatz newly baptised 'kings'. Hence also the pillar of Heliodorus, a Greek general made into an Indian chieftain, as a votary of Vishnu, near Sanchi.
Our puranas expunged all references to the great Magadhi Buddhist emperor Ashoka, who was rediscovered for India only by British epigraphicist James Princeps in the 19th century, while his monuments were uncovered by a series of British and German amateur and professional archaelogists.
What I am pointing to is the reliance on myth as history in North India and privileging of an upper caste cultural ethos and it's literature that subsists till today ignoring the great nations of pre- 'Hindu' societies now reduced to SCs and STs in the upper caste world view.
Deceit and deception have left their mark on the thinking of most North Indian upper caste 'Hindus', except for the genuine scholars amongst them. Hence we cannot accept an election Commissioner from the North or West who cowtows in supine deference to the party in power of the moment.
Joya Roy
