Herald, 10 July 2009
The denial of a kabrastan to the Muslim community in Salcete is a violation of the right to die with dignity, says VIDYADHAR GADGIL
The kabrastan issue has once again come to the forefront of public debate in Goa. Hanging fire for almost 30 years now, the lack of a resolution to this vexed problem has led to a mounting sense of frustration in the Muslim community over the denial of this perfectly legitimate and justified demand.
For a long time now, the Muslim community in and around Margao has been managing with a 125-year-old kabrastan at Pajifond in Margao, which was donated by a Muslim family. But with the growth in the population of Muslims, both due to natural growth and due to in-migration, the kabrastan has been unable to cope with the load, raising the need for either extending the existing kabrastan or setting up a new one in the vicinity of Margao.
Various efforts (documented elsewhere; see http://tinyurl.com/md5zta) have been made over the years towards this end, and politicians across the board have promised to make arrangements for a kabrastan, all without any actual progress on the ground. Not relying on the government to provide land, the Muslim community also mobilised its own resources to purchase suitable land in a number of places for the purpose, but in all cases there were objections that stalled the plans. Unfortunately, both Hindus and Christians in Salcete have been against setting up a kabrastan, with the Christian community in fact at the forefront of the opposition.
During the 2009 Lok Sabha elections there was, predictably enough, a slanging match between the BJP and the Congress over the issue, with BJP leader Manohar Parrikar castigating the Congress government for failing to meet this demand – not that Parrikar himself, during his 4-year rule as Chief Minister, did anything either. Congress Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and Francisco Sardinha, the Congress candidate for the South Goa seat, made counter-promises, of course, but these appear to have been promptly forgotten once the elections were over.
The right to die with dignity, which includes the right to perform the last rites as per the dictates of one’s religion, is a basic human right. Given that it is widely acknowledged that the existing kabrastan at Pajifond is inadequate to meet the Muslim community’s needs, there can be no reasonable justification for denying this demand, and yet no solution to the problem has emerged.
Anti-Muslim prejudice – fanned by Hindutvavadi propaganda and George Bush’s global war on terror, which demonised Islam and Muslims – has developed into a kind of fear psychosis, and there are repeated scares about masjids and kabrastans being set up in various villages. In an incident in Moira last year, a Muslim worker mentioned that he was carrying a load of stones to a “masjid”, which led to an uproar in the village. It turned out later that the stones were intended for renovation of a chapel; the Muslim worker only used what to him was the generic term for place of worship.
Similarly, there have been protests in Panzarcone and Sarzora over paddy fields allegedly being acquired for a kabrastan, though there is no such proposal. But politicians across the board are always ready to fish in these troubled waters in search of cheap popularity. In Sarzora, Joaquim Alemao was quick to jump on the bandwagon and asked the Village Panchayat not to grant any land for development of a kabrastan.
The plan of the government to acquire land for a kabrastan in Davorlim led to the Sarpanch convening a Gram Sabha meeting to discuss the issue, and the proposal was unanimously opposed in this meeting. The land is apparently Comunidade paddy fields, though not actually being cultivated for some years. The whole incident evoked an anguished reaction from Davorlim resident Tabrez Mahamad, “When it comes to the kabrastan issue, everyone seems to become defensive and uneasy...It is very difficult to understand how burying the dead of one community would affect the peaceful existence of the other.”
The fact that some Muslims are migrants is used as an excuse to justify denial of a kabrastan. This is completely illogical – are migrants from other communities denied the right to bury/cremate their dead? Further, how would Goans feel if they were denied the same right in the places, both in India and abroad, where the Goan diaspora has spread and settled? What does a human being’s Goan vs migrant status have to do with this issue in the first place? As Dr Nandkumar Kamat pointed out in a recent article, “Providing basic facilities for final rites of the dead is a serious human rights issue. It cannot be seen from the narrow perspective of who’s Goan and who’s not.”
Other critics have resorted to criticism of the alleged practices of the Muslim community to justify denial of a kabrastan. One critic alleged that separate graveyards will be needed for Sunnis and Shias, and criticised Muslims for burying their dead separately according to sect. He apparently sees this as somehow different from the fact that Christian sects bury their dead in separate cemeteries, or that Hindu cremation grounds are often caste-specific. In any case, the Muslim community is quite clear that when a kabrastan becomes available, there will be separate sections set aside within it for Shias and Sunnis, just as there already are in the existing Pajifond kabrastan.
It is also alleged that Muslims do not re-use their graves, thus putting severe pressure on land. This is not true in Goa – the community has recognised the multiple pressures on the limited land resources, and in the Pajifond graveyard the graves are re-used every two years. Even then, the land is grossly insufficient to meet the community’s needs, and many bodies have to be taken to Maharashtra or Karnataka for burial.
What is the way out this impasse? Objections can, of course, be raised over any and every specific piece of land, but it is difficult to believe that there is no land whatsoever anywhere for the purpose. It is here that the religious authorities and the government have an important role to play. A government that acquires massive tracts of land at the drop of a hat for grandiose projects, despite widespread public opposition, can have no excuse for inaction in this matter. As for religious authorities, they need to provide guidance to their flocks about the basic human rights involved here, and ask them to refrain from opposing this legitimate demand.
Hearteningly, for some time various religious bodies have been making some efforts for an inter-faith dialogue to help the various communities understand one another better, and dispel prejudices and misapprehensions about each other. While this is certainly laudable, it has unfortunately remained stuck at the level of endless discussions. Why are religious heads from the Christian and Hindu communities not willing to issue public statements to their flocks to help find a solution? Granted that in these times people may not always follow the guidance of religious authorities, but that does not absolve them from the responsibility of making the effort.
We would do well to pay heed to the recent impassioned statement of Jesuit priest Fr Cedric Prakash, the well-known human rights activist from Ahmedabad: “There are Catholics in Goa who refuse to give Muslims the land to bury their dead. This is a sin, this is wrong. Jesus never taught us to discriminate. I can say this with conviction and with a full heart.” The local religious authorities, Hindu and Christian, need to show similar resolve, and the government must find the political will to live up to its constitutional mandate, in order that all the Muslims of Salcete are enabled to get the six feet of land, which, as Tolstoy points out in his famous short story, are all that a man, in the ultimate analysis, needs – but which are still denied to the Muslims of Salcete.
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