Press-que Vu

Knowing that you have to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems in a mere 12 hours can be intimidating. So, here are some tips to dazzle committee and your chairs with well-researched information and snappy dialogue. 

1. Make a list of points that affect your country

It can be quite overwhelming to have the pressure of an entire country’s problems riding on your Dolce & Gabbana jacketed shoulders. So, de-construct your argument and break down the 50-page long study guide you were sent, into a list of the most important issues pertaining to your country. This is bound to boost your confidence, and you also show everyone that you know what you’re talking about!

2. Focus on one point at a time, when speaking and with paperwork

Over the course of committee, many ideas and solutions are brought up. The topics being discussed are vast, therefore addressing individual points at a time may be challenging, but it makes your speech or paperwork way more effective! Isn’t it nicer to listen to a speech that is well-thought out and structured? Focusing on an individual matter gives you more confidence and a feeling that you know what you’re talking about, which helps untie the uncomfortable knot in your stomach when you speak. Articulating your arguments also makes you sound smarter :p

By Alina Vaidya Mahadevan

  India has always been incredibly diverse in terms of race, religion, and culture. India has a lot of minority groups, one of them being Muslims (who make up 14.2% of Indian population.) Most Muslims haven’t had an easy life living in India. They have been discriminated since partition in 1947.  In fact, during the battle for independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (leader of the Muslim League) actually thought of India as “two nations”- the Hindus and the Muslims. So much so, that he feared that his coreligionists would be permanent minorities in a Hindu dominated country.

  Muslims have suffered in India throughout history because of media, some of our past ruling parties, and Hindu-Muslims disputes.

   Islamophobia in the media refers to the occurrence or perception that media outlets tend to cover Muslims or Islam-related topics in a negative light. In a lot of articles/ videos, the Indian media tries to link Muslims with crime. Attempts are being made to create fear, hatred, and prejudice against Islam. For example, in the beginning of 2018, there was an attack on a school bus in Gurgaon. The attack was widely condemned in India. Muslims were dragged into this, because those spreading Islamophobia were up to their usual antics. A couple of anti-Muslim people started spreading a message, which blamed 3 Muslims for the attack (without any evidence whatsoever.) Because of this, those Muslims were held responsible for something they didn’t do, even after the police clarified that no members of the Muslim community had anything to do with the event. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcn8yYPZ4A)

  Many social scientists feel that a lot of the acts of violence against Muslims are institutionally supported, particularly by political parties and organizations. In particular, scholars fault the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena for complicity in these incidents, and of using violence against Muslims as a part of a larger electoral strategy.  For example, researches done by Michael Biggs (an Associate Professor in Sociology) and Raheel Dhattiwala (an author, who writes about ethnic violence, specifically the Hindu-Muslim violence in India have stated that killings are far higher in areas where the BJP faces stiff electoral opposition than in areas in which it is already strong. In 1989, the north of India saw an increase in orchestrated attacks on Muslims, and the BJP had further success in the local and state elections. 

  There has also been violence against Muslims. There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since Partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks Muslims by Hindu mobs that form a pattern of communal violence between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982. 

  Religious minority groups are amongst those who encounter severe exclusion, discrimination and oppression. In case of Indian-Muslims as a religious marginalized community, these two concepts overlap. However, concern with ‘marginalization’ is relatively recent, and it is crucial to check the development on the marginalized groups. As considerable evidence exists, the process of ‘marginalization’ of minority communities exists in almost all societies and nothing shows that the same is not true of Muslims in India to a greater or a lesser degree. 

  None of this is justified. Muslims, or any other group for that matter, shouldn’t be oppressed because of their religion. However, one could say that Muslims are discriminated only to a certain extent. It must be considered that the Indian prejudice against Islam is not absolute. If there was 100% Islamophobia in India, then there wouldn’t have been a Muslim President of India – Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam – in the past. A lot of our famous Bollywood actors (such as Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, etc.) who are Muslims wouldn’t be apart of the Indian film industry. Yes, there have been numerous instances of violence and discrimination against Muslims  in the recent past, but it is also important to take into account the cultural and political importances the Muslim community has held in India.

A lot of ways to combat this have been tried in the past, but not all of them have been successful. As educated individuals, we can teach the coming generations about Islamophobia, and how it is unfair and unjust to oppress an entire group of people just because of the beliefs of others. Another way to combat this would be to remind people that India is a secular nation, which means that we aren’t connected with religious or spiritual matters. This is important to remember, because it reminds us of what we truly believe, and what we should continue believing to make India, and the world a better place.