Name of Fellow: Masihuddin Sanjari
Genre: Social and Economic Justice
Area of Work: Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh

Masihuddin is a veteran social worker from Uttar Pradesh with extensive experience of social issues, research and peoples’ movements. He has been working on communalism, caste discrimination, minority rights, and social and communal harmony for nearly 20 years.

Coming from a joint family in a village, he was among seven siblings. His family was traditionally involved in healing practices and hence after pursuing Masters in Commerce in 1986, even before economic liberalization, he could have taken up stable jobs. But initially taking up business at his locality, Masihuddin started to work on social issues as well. His attraction towards social issues made him completely devote his to social movements and research. At the same time, he started doing freelance journalism.

As the policy changes were coming through globalization, liberalization and privatization, he was witnessing the social changes. At that time, when privatization was going on at one hand, social movements, on the other hand, were also growing. Along with economic changes, he noticed the discrimination of people, growing inequality, poverty etc. and the subsequent rise of communal politics. During the Babri Masjid demolitions, he saw the widespread communal hatred. While he was already working on caste discrimination, he also started to highlight the issues of communalism through his research.

Masihudding, known as Massu bhai, took to freelance journalism to put forth the stories of communalism on one hand and sensitizing the whole community about the intangible ideals such justice, equality, fraternity, democracy, human dignity and secular values on the other hand through his community engagement programmes such public meetings, discussion forums etc.

As one of the few highly educated persons from his village, he has been promoting education among the children, especially girls. He is taking initiatives such as setting up libraries in his district to develop reading habits among the children. He has set up a library where he is facilitating reading groups as well as discussing the Constitutional values with the students, youths and community members.

As a senior social worker, he is known to the community and this makes it easier for him to engage with them to discuss ways to promote communal and social harmony. His experience of reporting and leading fact-finding research, also helps him articulate the nuances of communalism and religiosity among the people. He has been working to sustain the peoples’ movement and protection of minority rights in the state as it has become evident that religious minorities are going through very difficult times.

He is also working on to provide legal help to the families whose members have been in prison without charges for many years.

From contributing as a research assistance to New York University in extensively researching on migrant labours and human rights to authoring various fact-finding reports on instances of violece, to translating books in various languages, Masihuddin has produced highly intellectual and socially responsible knowledge. His association with New York University was specifically to find out the conditions of construction workers in three West-Asian countries — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Through the fellowship programme, he is working on to take his understandings of social issues, and concepts of secularism, equality, justice, fraternity etc. to people through social media platforms and focus group discussions. He is regularly organizing discussion groups with young people in Azamgarh in the library as well. He holds regular meetings with community members to discuss the Constitutional values.