The train from Deoband

Abdul Wajid has come to Deoband to board the Sheikh-Ul-Hind Express from Rampur, some 200 km away. The madrasa teacher has attended many conferences of the Jamiat but realises the importance of the Hyderabad meet in these times. And so do the hundreds of clerics who have boarded the Aman Ekta Karwan from neighbouring Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore, and other western Uttar Pradesh towns and from Uttarakhand.

The organisation, that was founded in 1919 and led a prominent role in the freedom struggle, last held its conference in 2005. The issue it debated then was reservations for Muslims, now it8217;s terror.

8220;One of the issues that we will discuss is, 8216;Can terrorism ever be jehad?8217;. The Darul Uloom at Deoband had recently passed a fatwa on terrorism but ordinary people are still not clear on this. Jehad is a term used in the Quran against zulm atrocities but terror itself is a zulm. So these two things are separate, they cannot be one. We want to make this message clear,8221; says Jamiat leader and Rajya Sabha MP Mahmood Madani.

The delegation will also discuss the related issue of community profiling. 8220;In the name of terrorism, the way investigation is often carried out and the way a community is profiled is not right. The third issue is that there is one force that is threatening the minorities in the country and there is another that is provoking them. We have to deal with both,8221; adds Madani.

However, Madani admits that there is a need for the community to introspect. 8220;We should introspect. Not just us, everybody should look within themselves. We will not let our youth go astray. If someone is wrong, he should be punished. There was Mansoor Peerbhoy who confessed to what he did. There was also Peerbhoy8217;s mother who withdrew the lawyer the family had hired to defend him when he told her of his involvement,8221; says Madani.

Peerbhoy, the Pune techie, was arrested by the Mumbai ATS on September 29 on charges of sending terror emails and for his alleged involvement in the Indian Mujahideen plot.

In the coaches, the passengers are settling down slowly. The aisles are busy with people carrying and stocking water bottles while others have got comfortable enough to read newspapers and pull out rotis and paranthas from tiffins.

America8217;s president elect Barack Obama is the obvious topic of conversation and his message of change appears to have struck a chord here too. 8220;By sending a Black to the White House, the American people have shown that there can be change, there can be progress. Change is good. We should learn from that,8221; says 32-year-old Tafzil Ahmed. 8220;Who knows? Maybe some day India will elect a person from the backward class as its prime minister,8221; adds another.

For many, it is their first visit to Hyderabad and once they are done with the conference, they plan to take time off to visit the Charminar and Mecca Masjid. Quari Mohammad Shoaib is one of them.

An alumnus of the Deoband madrasa, he now teaches in his hometown of Najibabad in Uttar Pradesh. 8220;This conference is important. Many young people like me are scared to even travel these days. I feel scared that the police may harass me because of the way I look.8221; Shoaib, who spends a lot of time among young students, says he has seen a slight inferiority complex creep amongst them.

8220;They seem more hesitant to go out, to travel. They think people stereotype them because of their beard and topi,8221; he says.

But this one time, they are not scared to step out and travel. At the next stop, Meerut, about 200 clerics get on the train, some get off to offer namaz at the platform while others take a hurried tea break. The stops are limited on this train. After Meerut, it stops at the Nizamuddin station in Delhi, then Bhopal. And finally when the Aman Ekta Karwan stops at Hyderabad on Friday evening, its passengers hope it will be the beginning of a peace process.