Mapping Muslims in the Development Landscape

In times when love jihad, Babri–Ramjanambhumi, purdah, talaq, ghar-wapasi, and cow-slaughter seize much of the public debate on Muslims of India, Working with Muslims: Beyond Burqa and Triple Talaq by Farah Naqvi is an effort to retrieve the developmental questions that are usually and often deliberately glossed over. A marked shift in the policy quarters was noticed in the previous decade with the institution of the Sachar Committee and the submission of its report in 2006 thereafter. The cultural myopia that framed much of the state–community interface all through the post-independence phase was significantly being altered with the arrival of Muslims as a development subject. For Naqvi, this was also a moment to map the extent of the presence of Muslims—as victims, beneficiaries, activists and planners—in the development landscape of the country, especially in the flourishing non-state arena of civil society activism. The book is the outcome of a research project that painstakingly tracked, categorised and analysed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the pattern of their activities among the Muslims of India. In addition, through its analyses of Muslim-headed NGOs, the project also sought to gauge the extent of development consciousness and the nature of activism among them.

The Absent Muslim in Civil Society