With their help government agencies and NGOs have been able to establish their reach in a community overwhelmingly orthodox and conservatives

Jaipur: Every day after namaz is over, Abdul Aziz, imam of Masjid Alam Shah in Tonk doesn’t forget to deliberately engage himself in talks with a different group of people. After some informal chat about family and work, he comes down to the business; He talks to them about importance of institutional deliveries and family planning.

Unbelievable as it may sound, a group of 26 clergymen has become voice of change in their community. Breaking stereotype image of Muslim clerics, the one holding rigid orthodox views particularly on health and family planning, they have been spearheading a campaign to save mothers and newborns.

With their help government agencies and NGOs have been able to establish their reach in a community overwhelmingly orthodox and conservatives.

High rate of illiteracy and extreme poverty had only complicated things further for government health workers and volunteers. Not surprisingly, Tonk was one of the worst performers in IMR and MMR in Rajasthan as people resisted to formal health care, family planning and immunisation for the fear of breaking religious laws.

“We have seen women beaten by their men even if they went to aanganwari centre where pregnant mothers and young children are provided nutritional food,” said Ejaz Hussain, who is also a cleric.

“We needed a credible voice to convince people to adopt standard health practices. Someone who could assure people that deliveries, immunisation or family planning was not against their religion, which only clerics could have done,” said Hemant Acharya, campaign coordinator for Save the Children in Rajasthan which came up with the idea of engaging religious leaders with the campaign to reduce IMR and MMR in Tonk.

Mohammed Iqbal, a Muazzin couldn’t agree more.

“Since I am a religious leader, people listen and act on what I say. There is a large family of eight brothers and about same number of sisters but none of them had received vaccines because they feared that it would make them ill. I was approached by a volunteer to convince the family for immunisation. The family agreed to get vaccines after I told them,” he said.