Amid controversies surrounding Haritha, the women’s wing of the students’ organisation of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Noorbina Rasheed, national general secretary of the party’s women’s wing, Vanitha League, has said that the party was pushing for “community politics and not gender politics”. Speaking at a seminar organised in connection with a meeting in memory of former Chief Minister C. H. Muhammad Koya here on Tuesday, she said that minority politics was not above gender politics. “Women in the IUML should not forget that they are Muslims first and then only women. The model adopted in the IUML is that women should live for their families,” she said, adding that she, as a woman, lived for her husband and children. Ms. Rasheed said the identity of the party was that of religious minority and party’s constitution had never subscribed to the idea of gender minorities. “We are born as Muslims. We have to live as Muslims and die as a Muslim in India. We should maintain that,” she said.
She said that the general public and society had the mistaken idea that the party stood for gender politics.
The seminar was organised by Haritha after it was reconstituted following allegations that Muslim Students Federation (MSF) leaders had made sexually explicit remarks against its girl leaders.
The new Haritha leaders also vowed that they would do nothing that would hurt the sentiments of IUML leadership. A time would come when all would realise that the decision taken by the party was right, Rumaisa Rafeeq, the new Haritha general secretary, said.
