For  the past few days Indian Media, specially national media has focused itself on the conversion rackets taking place in Uttar Pradesh. It has gain public attention and became kind of a bigger issue than COVID itself. If you see with their prospective it’s not something new and I don’t think it will be last time they will be reporting something like this. It can be also seen as way to gain attention as the election are nearing by. There has always been report on news channels about spreading  hate towards a specific community.

 But what really happened ?

Is everything we saw on the news channel is the truth or there is more to it?

 Continue reading to know the whole truth.

On June 20 the U.P. Police Anti Terrorist Scot ( A.T.S.) arrested two persons, Mohammad Umar and Jahangeer  Kasmi  from Delhi’s Jamia Nagar in a case of alleged mass conversion.

An F.I.R. was filed in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow under various sections of I.P.C.  and were also charged with the  Sates  Anti Conversion Law passed in November of 2020. A statement was released by Umar Gautam’s daughter on 26th June saying,” My father Mr. Mohammad Umar Gautam has been arbitrarily arrested on false charges. He is a proud convert himself, who lives a life of a law abiding citizen of India. He has also not received any illegal funding from any foreign source as alleged by media. These allegations are completely baseless.”

Meanwhile The Office of the Islamic Dawa Center (I.D.C.) at Jamia Nagar’s Jogabai extension remains closed. People living around Umar knew him as a respectable man. But due to fear of counterattack many of them refused to come forward to say anything.

According to the Newslaundry’s Report the people have sad that Umar used to help the people who wanted to convert the religion legally and have refused the claim that the man tried to convert people with force or by bribing the with money.

The F.I.R. names these two with the accusation of forced conversation which included, Missing Person’s case by 247/2021 filed by the parents of Aditya Gupta at Knapur’s Kalyanpur Police Station.  The second known to be victim Manu Yadav, A resident of Gurugram, came in light of A.T.S. through social media. At Gurugram’s Babupur village Manu Yadav’s parents who had converted and changed his name to Abdul Manan, his parents are busy giving media Interviews.

According to his mother she last saw her son in the first week of June. 22 year old Manan id deaf and non-verbal. On February 17 Manan showed his parents a conversion certificate and told them he has accepted Islam as his religion. The certificate has been issued by Umar’s organization I.D.C. and was signed by Kazi Jahangir Kasmi.

According to Manan’s  mother he stopped eating and became very violent on the thought of letting have Islam and his friends convinced him to keep patience and allegedly the parents agreed to his wish.

Manan’s interest in Islam began in 2017 but his parents refused let him being converted. His mother explains that his situation kept hating worse due to not eating and his mental situation was also not getting better so they agreed. The mother also thinks that his son drifted away from Hinduism due to unemployment. According to her in the December of last year Manan had his physical test for the examination he was preparing for but he failed and became more disappointed. The conversion group took advantage of  it and told him that his gods are not helping him enough and if he decides to convert he will be given a government job, a house, land and will get married to a Muslim girl.

After Manan went missing in April, His father, Rajiv Yadav, a cab driver approached the Gurugram Police several times but there was no progress. He claims that he found videos and chats on Manan’s phone which proves that his son was being influenced. He handed over data to U.P.A.T.C. for further investigation. He also blames Manan’s friend Skaheel and two others who befriended him  while he was perusing vocational course in welding at an ITI in Gurugram as being responsible for his conversion. The link between these friends and Umar is not clear.

On 28 June , Manan was arrested by U.P.A.T.S. It was claimed that Manan was behind the conversion of Aditya Gupta. In F.I.R. Manan was not accused with the conversion but with damaging the idols at his home and that he has become iradical with respect to Islam.

Aditya converted and changed his name to Abdul Kadir. He was a resident of Kanpur and is 24 years old. Abdul is also deaf and non verbal as Manan. He went missing in March. On 12 April 2021 was reported missing in Kanpur’s Kalyanpur Police Station.

 Later Abdul told his parents through a video call that he is in Kerala and has converted to Islam. In June he returned home  with a conversion certificate issued by the I.D.C.

Abdul’s mother acknowledged that her son has been inclined towards Islam since 2012. According to the mother her son has started skipping meals and has started getting up early and started paying the she came to realise that he was practicing Islam.

 Kadir told Newslaundry that it is difficult for disabled people like him to find a job, hence they switch to another religion.  He also said that he has been poor and disable his whole life and after paying and still not getting anything he turned towards different religions and when some of his friends told him that Allah  will fulfill his wishes and so he decided to convert to Islam.

The another common link between Manan and Abdul other than I.D.C. is an educational institution at Noida. Both of them were enrolled at  Noida Deaf Society. The building has been locked ever since the institution’s involvement came into light. There was some protest also some days ago and therefore two Policemen have been stationed outside the building.

 The founder  of the Society told the media,” We are collaborating with the ATS and providing support.” She also stated that at  NDS they don’t teach religion and its limited to professional programmes only.

To counter allegations of forced conversion Umar Gautham’s family has issued videos of individuals who have came to IDC for documentation.

The initial arrest was made in Deli alleged with the victims from Gurugram and Kanpur who were studets at an institution in Noida.

According to UPATS, what seems to be a pan India racket actually has its rot in Ghaziabad. There has been several incidents taken place and has banned the entry of Muslims in April 2021.

In June 2021,two men who were converts had tried to enter the temple by hiding their identities, Narsinghanan , temple’s priest alleged that the men had came with the purpose to assassinate him. UPATS now claims that they got their lead about Umar Gautam from these two men.

There are concerns about whether the investigation is an attempt for religious divide in an election year. There are still some things unclear and missing in this case and UPATS needs to find as soon as they  can.

What do you think about this whole thing please tell your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you for reading .

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882 – 1944)

Arthur Eddington was a British astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He was born in Cumbria, UK before moving to Weston-super-Mare as a child. He was not from a wealthy family but did so well at school that he got a scholarship to go to Owen’s College, Manchester. He graduated with a physics degree in 1902. Arthur was then offered a position at Trinity College, Cambridge where he completed his master’s degree. He worked at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, before returning to Cambridge five years later.

He was the first person to propose that stars were powered by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. The limit to how bright a star can be before it begins to collapse is named after him, the Eddington Luminosity.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

He is most famous, for his work on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Arthur carried out observations of a solar eclipse to confirm the theory. This work was considered so important that it prevented him beginning military service during the First World War. Arthur was happy about this as he was a pacifist, but he did offer to join an ambulance unit, or work as a harvest labourer on home soil.

Arthur viewed the eclipse from the island of Principe, off the west coast of Africa. He chose that location because there was a good chance of clear skies, and he could view the eclipse in full there. During the darkness of the eclipse, Arthur took photographs of stars close to the Sun. These stars are normally blocked by the light of the Sun during the day. Arthur observed that stars close to the Sun had their light shifted by the Sun’s gravitational field. This confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Cosmology

Eddington was also heavily involved with the development of the first generation of general relativistic cosmological models. He had been investigating the instability of the Einstein universe when he learned of both Lemaître’s 1927 paper postulating an expanding or contracting universe and Hubble’s work on the recession of the spiral nebulae. He felt the cosmological constant must have played the crucial role in the universe’s evolution from an Einsteinian steady state to its current expanding state, and most of his cosmological investigations focused on the constant’s significance and characteristics. In The Mathematical Theory of Relativity, Eddington interpreted the cosmological constant to mean that the universe is “self-gauging”.

Eddington number for cycling

Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist’s long-distance riding achievements. The Eddington number in the context of cycling is defined as the maximum number E such that the cyclist has cycled E miles on E days.

For example, an Eddington number of 70 miles would imply that the cyclist has cycled at least 70 miles in a day on at least 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will (probably) require more than five new long distance rides, since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington’s own life-time E-number was 84.

He later wrote this short poem about the discovery:

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate

One thing at least is certain, LIGHT has WEIGHT,

One thing is certain, and the rest debate—

Light-rays, when near the Sun, DO NOT GO STRAIGHT.

Discrimination is the state when all individuals are not treated equally and not given equal rights. Every individual in the community yearns for equal status, opportunities, and equal rights. People generally say these days that everyone is treated equally but they are not. Discrimination usually exists because of cultural differences, geographical differences, and gender. Inequality on the basis of gender is something that is not appreciated, but it is seen many times in many companies. There are many areas where equal opportunities are not provided to women.

We are in the 21st century, and even now, women are not treated equally as men. It is generally believed that women are more talented than men, and it has been proved many times, but society is not yet ready to accept this fact. Gender equality is the term used when equal opportunities in the fields of politics, economics, education, and health are provided to both men and women.

As per the World Economic Forum’s gender gap ranking, India holds the rank 108 out of 149 countries. The rank should be a major concern in the country as it signifies the immense gap between the opportunities given to women when compared to men. The structure in India is such that women are neglected in many fields like education, health, finance, etc. They are just limited to household chores which should not be the scene here. There are many places in India where women are considered as a burden and they are not allowed to go to school and study as well. Also, a preference for sons prevails in many areas in India.

The seven important forms of gender inequality :

1 . Women works Longer than Men :

In most of the societies the male – stream is the main stream who argues that women have comparative advantage in household non- market production, like cooking and cleaning for the family that cant be called emotional and personal caring work. Based on this thinking, household jobs are then asymmetrically distributed. Women are more valued in home. Men are specialised in market- baesd production. Thus, being the bread- earners, males enjoy both power and status.

2. Inequality in Employment and Earnings :

Historically, men have greater participation in work outside home than women. But women ( particularly of poor households) share unequally household duties in addition to economic production. Thus they work longer than males. This kind of ‘ division of labour’ may be seen as the ‘ accumulation of labour’ on women, as described by Amartya sen. Household activites are often viewed as ‘ sedentary activites’ which require less ‘ calore’ to gain energy.

3. Ownership Inequality :

A case of social inequality. Let us turn to another kind of inequality, called ownership inequality a classic case of social inequality. In most of the societies, ownership over property and means of production rests mainly on male members . The law of inheritance provides such ownership rights on male child. Such denial coming out of hierarchical dualism within the family not only reduces the voice of women but also prevents them from participating in commerial, economic and social activites.

This kind of social deprivation means absence or lack of capability or because of ‘capability deprivation’, women are subject to various kinds of exploitation and unfreedoms. Social inequality distorts the process of development. Unfortunately, ownership inequality in any country is not of recent origin. In her earlier life, a woman comes under the influence of her father, then husband as she enters a married life and finally, under sons ownership right over property is skilfully avoided. A telugu proverbs corraborates this understanding: ” Bringing up a daughter is like watering a plant in anothers courtyard.”

4. Survival Inequality :

Another crudest from of gender disparity is the unusally high mortality rates of women , though biologically, women live longer than men! Thus more boys than girls are born evrywhere leading to a ‘ deficit’ of women and a ‘ surplus’ of men. In developed countries beacuse of absence of gender bias in health care and nutrition, women outnumber men. In Europe and in north America, 105 or more girls are born per 100 boys. Such high female- male genderd survival rate in different age groups.

5. Gender Bias in the Distribution of Education and Health :

Health and education are the major forms of human capital are realted to economic development . Human capital gets accumulated as a society advances in education . The contribution of human capital towards Japan’s remarkable economic progress attracts our attention . Improvement in health capital also improves the return to investments in education .

However, one finds a huge education and health gaps between developed and developing countries. In recent times, despite a large increase in econoc advancement on times, despite a large increase in economic advancement in asia and africa, these countries lag far behind the developed countries in terms of educational attainment particularly in respect of women’s education. Gender disparity not only hindrrs economic progress but also exacerbates social inequality.

6. Gender Inequality in Freedom Expression :

Let us talk about gender inequality beyond economic issues or factors. Women are not only subject to income or asset inequality but also in terms of freedom and power deprivation of women goes beyond one’s imagination. They lack not only economic freedom at home because of absence of autonomy in house hold decisions, limited or poor wages earned but also lack any freedom in airing opinions over education of children.

In some backward poor societies the right of women giving options is completely denied. Such un – freedoms, however, are not uncommon even among the educated elites who enjoy enormous power and authority in the male domined society. Historically , this sort of law socioeconomic status of women has been continuing nowasdays.

7. Gender Inequality in Respect of viloence and victimisation :

Finally, anti – female bias starts before the girl child is born and this attitide of the society a female member carries throughout her life. It is because of the unequal sharing of income, property, household benefits . Women are subject to both physical and sexual violence – the oppsite of freedom, and an extreme form of coercion. This is common for both poor and not too much uncommon in rich countries as well as among rich people. One in three women in the word is beaten or raped during her life times.

Dowry harassement is considered as an ‘ instrumental use’ of violence. Dowry death is the most serious form of domestic violenece. Wife beating is not uncommon. Sexual violence is an obnoxious form of human rights violation.

Specifically, public health can contribute to reducing health inequities by integrating health equity considerations into policy and programs, collebrating with other sectors to address inequities engaging with communities to support their efforts to adress inequities, identifying the reduction of health inequities.

Reducing inequality requires transformative change. Greater efforts are needed to eradicate ectreme poverty and hunger and invest more in health, education, social protection and decent jobs especially for young people, migrants and other vulnerable communities.

We should understand that women are the part and parcel of any family. When it comes to flexibility, they can manage their home and offices at the same time. If equal opportunities are not given to them, they will be led down and won’t be able to achieve big milestones which they are obviously capable of.