Are Muslims Practicing Self-Exclusion? A Case of Public Health Care vis-à-vis Muslims in Delhi, India

Seminar

Wednesday 2nd February 2011, 2.30pm - 4pm, Room V1009, Tower 2, LSE

Speaker: Rosina Nasir

Chair: Ruth Kattumuri

Memories are highly significant and provide the window of opportunity to record the past experiences of people that have remained undocumented, unshared and unvoiced and residing in their collective memory, either subdued or termed as rumours and myths. In the creation of identity, information and knowledge stored in memory and history respectively, and surrounding activities, lead individuals to identify objects, persons and things with which they connect/are connected and they construct images of the self which finally gets magnified into group identity. The sense of group identity intensifies when guardians of law are found or believed to be involved in victimization of one section of the society and required institutional actions seem feigned and superficial with the deliberation to erase the records of the incidents from people’s memory. It ruins the faith and trust in the state and its legal proceedings. The present study is an account of the Muslims of Delhi with special reference to their experiences in the public health care sector, describing how memories could percolate and precipitate into perception and gradually initiate the process of self-exclusion. With this conceptualization, in this paper attempt has been made to understand how people can smoothly weave past memories into present experiences, and how the Muslims of Delhi link the Indian Emergency and the sterilization campaign with a state drive to control their population, how their past experiences get recalled whenever any untoward incident happens concerning the Indian Muslims with the backdrop of their experiences in the public health care services. An attempt has also been made to show the different extents which force, support or contribute to the self-exclusionary process but are being evaded due to their subtle nature and a want of apparent and readily discernible links within the process. It is an attempt to make this study a holistic account.

Speakers