Ziya Us Salam – författare

We live in an age when most Muslims take pride in singing Saare Jahan Se Achcha, penned by Muhammad Iqbal. Many though have forgotten that the same poet-philosopher called Ram as Imam-e-Hind. The Hindutva forces, meanwhile, have forgotten the unifying Saare Jahan Se Achcha in their pursuit of divisive nationalism. Their exclusionary politics stems from a mindset of self-limiting segregation: a world of ‘we’ and ‘they’, a world where a Muslim man is lynched for refusing to say ‘Vande Mataram’.Of Saffron Flags and Skullcaps attempts to trace the growth of the Hindutva ideology from the time of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar to the contemporary age, and how it precedes any talk of Muslim appeasement. Faced with these existential challenges, the Muslim community is involved in simultaneous churning within where the words of Islamic scholar and teacher Farhat Hashmi are bringing about a silent change at the grassroots level. Amidst all the challenges, the idea of India, often challenged, continues to show the way to a nation looking for direction.

Mohammed Akhlaq and Rakbar lynched in the name of cow protection.Chimma, a Dalit, lynched by the mob for entering a Hindu temple.In the recent years, the cases of mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits have increased to an alarming extent. These cases are discarded and forgotten without any justice served to the victims. The emergence of mobocracy from the roots of Hindutva and gau rakshaks has put India’s secularity and democratic constitution to test.Lynch Files pieces together the tragic stories of the people at the receiving end of mob violence and looks inside the mind of the lynchers who flout laws with impunity. Further, the book discusses the Supreme Court judgement against lynching and tries to restore faith in the court’s capacity to curb this violence.

In the age of Islamophobia, Madrasas are at crossroads—infamously labelled as ‘dens for terrorism’ where the ‘youth are misguided, motivated and recruited to resort to anti-Indian activities’. It is little known that in the golden past, Madrasas schooled reformers and personalities such as Rajendra Prasad, Motilal Nehru, Raja Rammohun Roy and many other noteworthy Islamic scholars.Through bonafide stories of products of Madrasas, the authors narrate the decline of the madrasas from being centres of excellence to institutions of restricted learnings with dark clouds of stigma surrounding them. Short of resources, rejected by the well-heeled, and condemned by politicians, will they be able to turn the corner? The answer is blowing in the wind.