Will Shabana Azmi please speak up?

Thanks to Sh Krishen Kak for alerting me to this extraordinary report of how Muslim women are being denied their freedoms…and the right to development by their own. Excerpts from Swaminathan S Aiyar’s  Anjumans deprive Muslim women of microcredit:

The government seeks inclusive growth and access to credit. The Sachar Committee is dismayed by the relatively low access of Muslims to bank credit. Yet, neither the government, Sachar Committee members nor intellectuals are raising an outcry against a massive drive to deny millions of Muslim women access to microcredit. This is driven not by Hindu extremists but by Muslim anjumans (community organisations) in Karnataka. Thus, a community complaining of credit deprivation is itself destroying credit to millions of Muslims — because the anjumans are male bastions and the poor borrowers are women.

Ramesh Bellamkonda heads BSS Microfinance, the worst hit of several microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Karnataka. He says BSS has provided microcredit for two years in Kolar, three-and-a-half in Mysore, and eight in Ramanagaram, enjoying excellent relations with its Muslim borrowers and virtually 100%  repayment. Today, repayment is down to almost zero, because of  non-repayment directives by the anjumans and their goons, who threaten and even assault BSS staff. Muslims constitute a substantial proportion of borrowers, so the anjuman directives can bankrupt entire MFIs, affecting other community borrowers too.

Other Karnataka MFIs in several towns face the same problem, and have been obliged to halt lending to Muslims. It is a triumph for the most reactionary Muslims, and a tragedy for Muslim women denied empowerment through finance.

…The anjumans say interest on loans is un-Islamic, and so borrowers need not repay, and no further microloans should be given to Muslims. Really? Then why don’t the anjumans demand that banks stop lending to Muslim businessmen like Azim Premji of  Wipro, Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, Hamied of Cipla, film producers and stars like Shah Rukh Khan, and hundreds of Muslim businessmen dominating the leather and footwear industry? Why don’t the anjumans send goons to prevent Muslim millionaires from repaying their much larger loans with interest?

Because the anjumans will not take on moneyed males, only poor women. They don’t like female empowerment through micro-credit, and so use the bogus rhetoric of Islamic finance to promote their gender agenda.

…sad to say, politicians do not want to take on anjumans that they view as vote banks. Hence, the Karnataka anjumans have gained credibility, and the non-repayment virus may spread to other states, shutting Muslim women out of the microcredit revolution sweeping India.

Oddly, no mention of this on the world wide web. A quick search unearthed nothing other than Swaminathan Aiyar’s article and a short post by Veena Jayaram. Veena refers to the mass default in her post and mentions about a WSJ article:

The (WSJ) piece makes an interesting reference to the mass default that is currently being witnessed in Ramnagaram, town and districts such as Kolar, Mysore etc in Karnataka. The cause for non-repayment is brushed off with “Local mosque leaders have started telling people in the predominantly Muslim community to stop paying their loans”, without exploring the actual development of events that led to such a directive from the Mosques.

Further, the (WSJ) article quotes that the Mosque elders say that non-payment is not due to micro finance being against Islamic principles, while the circulars issued by the Anjuman Committee in Kolar to mosques in all the districts show otherwise.

As Swaminathan Aiyar writes:

The need of the hour is for Muslim leaders and intellectuals to speak out on this issue. Industrialists like Premji, Hamied and Khokariwala must speak out. So should film stars like Shabana Azmi and Shah Rukh Khan. So should Muslim intellectuals from universities, and even vice president Hamid Ansari.

And yet, everyone is silent.

Where is the outrage?

Where are the news-channels? Where are the shrill anchors? Where are the campaigns? Where is Arundhati Roy…and where is Shabana Azmi?

…or is there a Deoband fatwa that forbids Muslim women from repaying loans?

A few days back, I wrote (in a slightly different context):

The real “issue” I feel is the so-called Muslim leadership – which thrives on real and manufactured grievances and has a vested interest in the community being perceived as oppressed. Unless we tackle them, not much will change, I am afraid.

This “leadership” continues to be blithely indifferent (and unaware?) about this matter – busy as they are with more pressing concerns such as denying “Love Jehad” and explaining their opposition to Vande Mataram.

Sad, very sad.