A citizen’s concern: No one here has heard of namaz being disrupted before

GURUGRAM: Under the Constitution, which elected representatives are sworn to protect, members of all creeds have a right to assemble peacefully for prayer. But what has unfolded in Gurugram over the past few weeks wasn’t something that people living here had ever expected to see.
“The contempt of politicians for the Constitution is deliberate, and doesn’t arise out of ignorance,” says Saba Dewan, among a group of concerned Gurugram residents who have been meeting with administrators in an effort to ease tensions fuelled by the opposition to namaz at open spaces in the city.

“The priority is to find a way out through negotiation and dialogue,” insists Dewan, who is also behind the #NotInMyName movement, which was triggered by the cold-blooded murder of Junaid Khan last July. “For the two and a half years that I have been here, I’ve never heard of disruptions. And residents who’ve lived here for 20 years or longer, they too have never heard of any issue being made out of open-air namaz.”

Dewan believes many are missing the context. Namaz, she explains, is unacceptable to Muslims if it causes inconvenience to anyone. But Gurugram only has nine mosques (all save one in the old city). “There’s a reason why namaz takes place in the open,” Dewan explains. “It’s not out of choice at all, and I think that is a very important point. Many of the Waqf properties in Old Gurugram are under litigation because they have been encroached upon. So, they are not in use.”

Also, the very point of Friday prayers is congregational, a time for the faithful to gather. “Which is why believers are forced to hold namaz out in the open. “It is no-one’s case that they do it because they want to — they are forced to do it because there is no choice,” says Dewan. Incidentally, in 2016, proposals were invited by Huda for construction of new mosques, though ultimately no permission was granted by the urban development authority.

Even near Cyber Hub, prayers are held out in the open. “You have all these corporate offices here, and there are Muslims working in those offices,” says Dewan. “Many of those offering prayers are not poor Muslim villagers, they’re well-off people who, because they have nowhere else to go, pray out in the open.”