THE TALK
Who are the Indian Muslims?
Is it a monolith community practising a faith alien to India? Or are they diverse people geographically rooted in Indian cultural ethos? Are they different from other Muslims? Is there a thing called ‘Indian’ Islam — a religion that grew out of Arabia but was nurtured in India with local characteristics? Has Islam atrophied over the centuries because the faithful clutched the letter forgetting the spirit of the religion?
Answering these questions, Ghazala Wahab takes a hard and candid look at the way world’s second largest religion is practised in India. She tried to understand the factors that have stalled the socio-economic and intellectual growth of the Indian Muslims, by being both critical and empathetic.
Even as she points out the internal factors that have contributed to Muslims’ backwardness, such as disproportionate reliance on the Ulemas, she doesn’t hold back from highlighting how apathetic government attitude and institutional prejudice has contributed to Muslim vulnerability and insecurity.
GHAZALA WAHAB
Ghazala Wahab started FORCE in August 2003 along with Pravin Sawhney. She is co-author Dragon on our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power (with Pravin Sawhney) and author, Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India. Apart from writing on issues like homeland security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, Left-Wing Extremism and religious extremism, Ghazala is responsible for the overall production of the magazine every month. Working closely with contributors, advertisers and designers, she wears multiple hats to ensure that no issue of FORCE misses its monthly deadline. She also writes a monthly column, First Person, in FORCE.
From 2003-1998, Ghazala worked as a principal correspondent in the Delhi bureau (features) of The Telegraph newspaper focussing on subjects like terrorism, communalism, international refugees and internally displace people, and insurgency. She also contributed a chapter on the changing profile of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir for the book Operation Parakram, authored by Pravin Sawhney and Lt Gen. V.K. Sood.
Ghazala started her career in journalism with The Asian Age newspaper in 1994, where apart from routine reporting and sub-editing, she brought out a weekly defence and security page.
She tweets regularly at www.twitter.com/ghazalawahab.