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India Muslims Demand Burial Ground
8-26-2015
Muslims in Mumbra-Kausa suburb in Mumbai greater area have urged authorities to provide an adequate burial ground, revising years long promise that was never fulfilled.
"We need a bigger burial ground as the Muslim population in Mumbra-Kausa has increased,” Najib Mulla, president of the city unit of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), told Times of India.
“There have been occasions when people have been forced to dig up old graves so that they can bury their loved ones.”
Mulla was referring to an old problem that dates back to almost two decades ago.
According to the NCP official, the development plan of 1999 shows that a five-acre plot in Kausa has been reserved for a burial ground.
Long years after the plan, the land plot is still a part of a private property that has not be acquired.
“We have been requesting the civic officials for a burial ground for over a decade, but nothing has been done yet and our pleas have fallen on deaf ears," he added.
Similar demands for a burial ground were made by the Muslim community in India's smallest state of Goa in 2008.
In Islam, the human body must be treated with the utmost respect not only when a person is alive, but also when he or she is dead. Funeral rites and practices have been prescribed by the divine law in accordance with the dictates of Allah.
According to several media reports, Muslims account for 180 million of India's 1.1 billion people, the world's third-largest Muslim population after those of Indonesia and Pakistan.
Muslims have long complained of being discriminated against in all walks of life in Hindu-majority India.
Official figures indicate that Muslims, who make up around 13 percent of India's population, are lagging behind in literacy.
Muslims also complain of being discriminated against in jobs.
They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees, and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.
Muslims have also repeatedly complained of being selectively and unfairly targeted by anti-terror police.
They also accuse authorities of feeding stereotypes about their religion.
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