SOURCE:
https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/193272/13/13_chapter%204.pdf
CHAPTER 4
MUSLIMS IN INDIA: A STRUGGLE FOR INCLUSION AND EQUALITY
The Indian general elections of 2014 saw historical results with a right wing Hindutva party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to the power with overwhelming majority for the very first time since Independence. Their performance turned out to be so dominating that they did not require support of any other party to form the government, however, they decided to take a long some parties whose ideology is coherent to them as well as welcoming some new parties that had earlier been doing centrist or caste based politics. Moreover, the party registered their biggest ever victory under the leadership of Narendra Modi, who had been accused by many human rights groups of not doing enough as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, to control the riots, in which about 2,000 Muslims were killed by the right wing groups including Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) along with the cadre of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS).
Although the new government promised unity and equal opportunity to every citizen of the country, their ideology backed by that of RSS gave little hope to the minorities, particularly Christians and Muslims, the later being the prime target and the eternal ―other‖. Muslims, who were demanding affirmative action on the basis of their backwardness, had a big blow when new minister for minority affairs, Najma Heptullah declared that Muslims could not be considered a minority. "Muslims are not minorities. Parsis are. We have to see how we can help them so that their numbers don't diminish," she told the Indian media, when asked how her government proposed to take Muslim welfare forward.1
Her statement resulted in uproar and was criticised by various political parties, rights groups and academics. It came up as a surprise because Najma Heptullah herself comes from the family of Abul Kalam Azad, a great Muslim leader, freedom fighter and the first education minister of independent India. However, she did not stop there,
1 ‗‗Muslims are not minorities, Parsis are: Najma Heptullah‘ 28 May 2014, available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Muslims-are-not-minorities-Parsis-are-NajmaHeptullah/articleshow/35651799.cms last accessed on 12 June 2014
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in January 2015, she reiterated, ―Muslims should not waste time and energy, demanding quota as it is mere tokenism‖. This time she was referring to the case of Muslims in the state of Maharashtra, who were demanding reservation at a time when the Marathas were given reservation by the state government.
Such demands made by the Muslims are not new. The community has been bearing the brunt of partitions as most of the leaders chose to leave India in 1947. Since then, Muslims in India continue to lag behind every other community in every aspect of life. The major grievances put forward by the Muslims in the 1970‘s remain same even today. Written in 1976, a research paper2 mentioned the following grievances of the community:
I. Muslims are economically backward, compared to other sections of the community, because (a) the number of Muslim industrialists is negligible, and there are none in the front ranks-a typically petty bourgeois complaint, but a significant index in a capitalist-landlord regime all the same; (b) the abolition of zamindari and intermediary tenures in Uttar Pradesh and some other states has more adversely affected Muslims, large numbers of whom were retainers and dependents of Muslim zamindars, who in turn constituted a far larger proportion of their class than warranted by the Muslim share of total population; (c) Muslims being a heavily urban community, accounted for a very large section of artisans such as weavers and metal workers and these strata have continuously suffered under the de-industrialization of colonial India, and then under the present regime when craft unemployment has grown enormously; and (d) Muslims are discriminated against in matters like the grant of licences and permits.
II. Muslims are educationally backward. Figures such as the number of Muslim candidates successful in higher secondary examinations or the number of Muslim pupils in comparison to the total are often cited, on the basis of different surveys. The fact that there are proportionately fewer school pupils and college students among Muslims than in other major communities seems
2 Irfan Habib, Iqtidar Alam Khan and K. P. Singh, ‗Problems of the Muslim Minority in India‘ Social Scientist, Vol. 4, No. 11 (Jun., 1976), pp. 67-72 available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3516200, last accessed on 25 April 2015
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well established. It is probable that the literacy rate among Muslims is also lower. The reasons offered for this are: (a) inherited backwardness owing to the failure of Muslims to take to modern education in time; (b) economic backwardness prevents parents from sending children to school; (c) the emphasis on Hindi and practical exclusion of Urdu (so far) in Uttar Pradesh and the other Hindi-speaking states; and (d) migration of large numbers of educated Muslims to Pakistan.
III. Discrimination is practiced against Muslims in employment. (a) In public services, such as police, where Muslims tended to be well represented, they have been excluded by deliberate design (for example, G B Pant's secret circular in Uttar Pradesh) for a very large number of years. Even when there is no deliberate discrimination against Muslims, they tend to be excluded because employment and promotion are so heavily made on caste basis. (b) Since the Muslims are educationally backward, they are not recruited in adequate numbers through open, competitive examinations. (c) Indian business being still largely governed by bonds of family and caste, very few Muslims are employed by industrial and commercial firms.
IV. Practically there is suppression of Urdu by denying it any role as a medium of instruction or as a language of administration in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for the last 25 years. A person knowing only Urdu cannot even read the road signs. Official schemes such as those of employing Urdu primary school teachers and translating large numbers of books into Urdu are welcome; but so long as Urdu is not made the second official language in states where over 10 per cent of the people regard it as their mother-tongue, it would be hardly worthwhile for anyone to read in this language.
V. There is insecurity of life and property. Being a minority, Muslims usually suffer far more than any other section, when a communal riot occurs. It is now even officially recognized (as during the revolt of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) in Uttar Pradesh, when the faults of the PAC were being publicized), that the police has not only failed to protect Muslims but has in fact often attacked them.
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Even before BJP came to power with a thumping majority, the Indian Muslims under other governments, most of whom were lead by ―centrist and secular‖ Congress party were not doing any better. In the first three general elections Muslims rallied behind the congress flag and lent their full support to Jawaharlal Nehru whose secular credentials were never in doubt. Of the total Muslim legislators in 1952, 145 belonged to the Congress; in the next general election 131 of the 159 legislators were Muslim Congressmen. In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, Muslim candidates contesting elections on Congress Party tickets constitute the largest proportion among the Muslim political activists and succeeded in getting elected in larger proportions than the candidates put up by other political parties.3
In fact, where Muslims are now is a result of cumulative discrimination and apathy on part of the governments, arguably under pressure of the majoritarian groups accusing them of minority appeasement. Even when there were efforts of making an affirmative action by giving reservation to Muslims in certain areas, it was challenged citing the Constitution that discourages any form of reservation to a particular community on the basis of its religious identity. The result of which could be seen everywhere and attested officially by the (Sachar Committee) report submitted to the government of India, by a committee headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar in 2006.
Another parallel committee, appointed by the same UPA in 2004, with the name of National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM), also known as Rangnath Mishra Commission, submitted its report in 2007 in which it found out that the Muslims had the lowest literacy rate among all Indian Communities. Even before these Commissions and their subsequent reports, way back in 1980 the Congress-led government of India appointed a ‗high level panel‘ which came to be known as Gopal Singh Committee, after the name of its head.4 However, all the committees and their reports failed to move the governments. Even if they tried to do something to uplift the community, they were accused of ‗Muslim appeasement‘. The perception that there has been ―appeasement‖ of Muslims has given rise to
3 Imtiaz Ahmad, 'The Muslim Electorate and Election Alternatives in U P', Religion and Society, vol xxi, no 2, June 1974. 4 The Committee submitted a 118-page long report (with 205 annexures describing situations of the Muslims of India in every respect) on 14 June 1983. Its release was delayed several times and none of its recommendations was implemented.
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resentments on the part of many Hindus, and has been readily fostered and exploited by anti-Muslim movements and ideologues.
Similarly, Srikrishna Commission of 1998 reported on the anti-Muslim rioting in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 following bomb attacks on the Bombay Stock Exchange. This report rejected the notion that the riots were spontaneous eruptions of Hindu anger, and suggested that publications and leaders of a local Right-wing party, the Shiv Sena, had deliberately incited or legitimized the rioting, while the state government had been complicit through acquiescence and inaction. The commission found, in a revealing precedent to Gujarat a decade later, that the attacks on Muslims were mounted with military precision, with voter lists in hand. As would also later occur at Gujarat, Justice Srikrishna found that in Mumbai individual policemen had participated in the attacks on Muslims, and that there was evidence of anti-Muslim bias in the police force, which led to reluctance to take firm measures against violence, looting, and arson.5
The most recent to report (2009), has been the commission chaired by Justice Liberhan to look into the events surrounding a Hindu mob‘s demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, in December 1992. The Liberhan Commission, which was charged with reporting within three months, has justly been criticized for reporting almost 17 years after the events in question, and for taking several years after concluding its inquiry to prepare its report. The government in turn has been criticized for delaying several months in releasing the findings to the public. A source of irritation for some Muslim advocates has been that the Srikrishna and the Liberhan panels, while unequivocally finding that violence was planned rather than spontaneous, and that right-wing Hindu mobs acted at the behest of senior political leaders (in the case of Ayodhya, the BJP) and in collusion with state officials and police, excoriate the role of Muslim sectarians and criminals who joined the fray and compounded the problem. It has been suggested in certain quarters of Muslim and secular Hindu opinion that these types of conclusions reflect an unfortunate pattern of blaming the victims.
5 Several official inquiries have looked at the actions of the police over the years, in addition to the Srikrishna Commission; these include the Madon inquiry into Bhiwandi Jalgaon, Jagmohan Reddy into Ahmedabad, and Vythyathil into Tellicherry. See, Srikrishna Committee findings available at: http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/sri%20main.htm last accessed on 13 February 2015
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Apart from these alarming reports that were submitted to the government, the general impression that Muslims were lagging behind in every aspect of life gained momentum in the 1990s following unprecedented wave of communal violence including post Babri Masjid demolition riots and many other riots that got little media attention. The media censored even several reports of atrocities. In the last decade there have been several cases of Muslims youths being picked up by the security agencies and later acquitted by the judiciary after long periods of trials. This, along with several other aspects of marginalisation and stereotyping of Muslims, has left them really low on confidence and in most cases failing to take initiatives for themselves. Another major feature of Muslims of India is their livelihood in ghettos, in most cases due to a rampant insecurity and sense of alienation that they have faced over the years. The number of Muslims preferring to live in ghettos increases after every big communal incident, 2014 riots in Muzaffar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh can be seen as a recent example where riot hit people refused to return to their homes after their male family were killed and females were raped.
For a better perspective of the existence of the community, Muslims in India should be considered as a homeland minority that has been living here for roughly over a millennium. Even at the time of division of India in 1947 a large number of people preferred to stay back in India while quite a few could not go to Pakistan due to widespread violence. Some of them, however, left in the later years. A community devoid of its own leadership chose India‘s secularism and composite culture over the religiously motivated independent state of Pakistan. However, for a large number of Muslims confusion persisted. A G Noorani notes:
Bereft of determined wise leadership, the Muslims of India took wrong turn in 1948-49 and found themselves confused. Some treaded along the cul-de-sac of political mobilisation for redress of grievances, which shows no signs of lessening. The mobilisation had been mostly on a commercial basis. Others found themselves largely ineffective in secular parties, not least because of their own inadequacies. On their part, the political parties reckoned that too strident an espousal of the Muslims‘ cause might cost them support from the majority community and doom them to marginalisation if not extinction.6
6 A G Noorani (ed) The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record, Oxford University Press, New Delhi (2003), pp 1-34
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Right after the independence, the Hindutva forces began to flex their muscles and started influencing the leadership even in the ruling congress party. Leaders like Sardar Vallabbhai Patel and and Dr Rajendra Prasad, backed by the Hindu Mahasabha and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, had little interest in secular values. Patel in particular had serious doubts about the loyalty of Muslims living in India. Jawahalal Nehru‘s biographer, S Gopal has noted, Patel assumed that Muslim officials, even if they opted for India were bound to be disloyal and should be dismissed; and to him Muslims in India were hostages to be held as security for the fair treatment of Hindus in Pakistan.7 Another account supporting this claim comes from Patel‘s correspondences to Nehru. In one of his letters, dated 15 October 1948, Patel suggested Nehru to warn Pakistan that if the transfer of Hindus from East Pakistan continued, India would send out Muslims from West Bengal in equal numbers.8
Muslims, who stayed back in India, have hardly anything to prove when it comes to the loyalty to the nation (India) they chose to live in. However, the right wing parties and Hindutva groups always question their loyalty and often accuse them of having extra territorial affiliations, particularly with Pakistan. Moreover, whenever there has been any effort to know the exact condition of Muslims in India it has been vehemently opposed at various levels.
Moonis Raza, in 1994, noted that it is unfortunate that the paucity of reliable and authentic data about Indian Muslims makes it possible and for various anti-national political formations to sow the seeds of prejudice about them and fan the fire of suspicion and hatred against them. In the light of the significant number of Indian Muslims and the consequential influence of their involvement in the destiny of India, it is really unfortunate that the decennial census or the national sample surveys do not systematically address themselves to the living condition and demographic characteristics of the ‗untouchable‘ Muslims. It is no doubt true that a small number of census tables were generated for Muslims separately some decades ago. The figures presented such an alarming picture of their plight, led to such a strong protest in parliament and created such a furore among concerned demographers within the academia that the matter was carefully and diplomatically hushed up with 7 S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol.II Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1974, pp 15-16 8 Durga Das (ed) Sardar Patel‘s Correspondence 1945-50, Vol VII, Ahmedabad , Navjagran Publishing House, (1973), p 670
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considerable finesse. Having burnt its fingers once, such tables, to the best of our knowledge, were not generated for the second time. The socio-economic plight of the Indian Muslims remained clouded in mystery. 9
Before going any further in this chapter, it should be made clear that unlike the Muslims in Israel, who are mostly ethnically Arabs and predominantly Sunni in the confession, the Indian Muslims constitute a community full of diversification. It is true that homogenising this group is only a shallow assumption, however, the Indian state policies towards Muslims affect the entire community cutting across their sectarian and (in very South Asian case) caste lines. The state perceives them as one group, while the majoritarian forces hate their very existence in the state while accusing them of being solely responsible for the division of ―Akhand Bharat‖.
The Hindutva forces, though having apparent dislike for the Christians, go several steps ahead to express their hatred for Muslims. While Muslims share many of the identity related concerns with other minorities (who are generally not as poor), they are the only minority that has to continually deal with the stigma of being seen as ‗anti-national‘. As a result their security related concerns are more intense. Thus, as compared to other minorities, Muslims in India face more severe problems with respect to security, identity and equity. Despite all this, the diversity of perspectives within the community is remarkably high.10
Dibeysh Anand notes that the different shades of extremism or moderation, Hindu nationalists see the Hindu nation as equivalent to India. There is no aspect of Indian nationalism that can be credited to non-Hindus. Non-Hindus can occupy the position of a marginal guest of the Indian/Hindu nation forever grateful to the Hindus for their magnanimous hospitality or be the disloyal subjects of the Indian state doomed to be outside the Indian nationhood. At best, individual non-Hindus could, in theory, go against their own religionists and prove their loyalty to India. But most of the time,
9 Moonis Raza, ‗Indian Muslims in their Homeland‘, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 39 (Sep. 24, 1994), pp. 2540-2542 10 See Rakesh Basant, ‗Education and Employment among Muslims in India: An Analysis of Patterns and Trends‘, India Institute of Management, (Ahmedabad), September 2012, available at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/assets/snippets/workingpaperpdf/12051717332012-09-03.pdf accessed on 12 January 2014
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they will remain peripheral or a hurdle to the national project.11 The existence of Muslims is taken as a malady for the national project. Therefore, their inclusion in the society, according to the Hindutva forces, would hamper the development of the nation imagined by them. It will be shown with some empirical data later in the chapter that how the underrepresentation of Muslims in the state machinery is a result of the prejudice and the pressure exerted by the majority community. These examples of apathy towards Muslins find their roots in the ideology that guides the BJP-led national government in India.
Muslims in India: A Demographic View
Constituting the third largest Muslim population in the world, the Muslims in India are around 170 million, as per the estimated figure for the year 201112. It is estimated to be 13.4% to the total population with a marginal increase of 0.2% over the 2001 census. This is due to the higher fertility rate with 29.9% as per National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III though the fertility has gone down by 1.32% between NFHS II-III. The 2011 religion census data (which is yet to be officially declared) also shows that the share of Muslims in the population has risen 80 basis points (one basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point) from 13.4 per cent in 2001 to 14.2 per cent with some border states showing a high increase. This decadal increase in share, however, is lower than the 1.7 percentage points increase registered in the
11 For more discussion on this see Dibeysh Anand, Hindu Nationalism in Indian and Politics of Fear, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011 12 See, census of India, available at: http://censusindia.gov.in/ as a brief reference, one may see: The provisional Census 2011 data says the total Indian population is 121,01,93,422 with 58,64,69,174 females and 62,37,24,248 males. The decadal growth rate is 17.64%. Birth rate: 20.97 births/1,000 population growth rate: 1.344 %. Death rate: 7.48 deaths/1,000 population. Fertility rate: 2.62 children born/woman. Infant mortality rate: Total: 47.57 deaths/1,000 live births. Female: 49.14 deaths/1,000 live births; male: 46.18 deaths/1, 000 live births. Life expectancy at birth: Total: 66.8 years -- female: 67.95 years; male: 65.77 years. Age structure: 65 years and over: 5.5 % (male: 30,831,190 and female: 33,998,613). 15 years to 64 years: 64.9 % (male: 3,98,757,331 and female: 3,72,719,379); 0 years to 14 years: 29.7 % (male: 187,450,635 and female: 1,65, 415,758). Median age: Total: 26.2 years -- female: 26.9 years; male: 25.6 years Sex ratio: Total: 1 female/1.08 males 65 years and over: 1 female/0.91 male 15-64 years: 1 female/1.07 males; below 15 years: 1 female/1.13 males; at birth: 1 female/1.12 males. Literacy: Total: 77,84,54,120 -- females: 33,42,50,358; males: 44,42,03,762. Literacy rate: Total: 74.04 % -- females: 65.46 %; males: 82.14 %. Net migration rate: -0.05 migrant/1,000 population
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previous decade, 1991-2001.13 In absolute terms, the number of Muslims increased 24.4 per cent to 17.18 crore from 13.8 crore during the period 2001-11. And during the previous five decades — 1951 to 2001 — their share rose from 9.8 per cent to 13.4 per cent.14
Muslims as percentage of total population in different states of India (Census 2001)15
13 Abantika Ghosh and Vijaita Singh, ‗Census: Hindu share dips below 80%, Muslim share grows but slower‘ Indian Express, 24 January 2015 14 Ibid 15 available at: http://censusindia.gov.in/
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The dispute over whether the census offers an accurate count of the Muslim population is considered a volatile issue reflecting the volatility of the Muslim predicament in the country. Anti-Muslim right-wing opinion offers estimates of the Muslim population as high as 30 percent of the total population. This anxiety is used to propagate the idea that one day Muslims will render Hindus a minority. Meanwhile, some Muslim also believe that the actual numbers are double the official figures, and that the figures are deliberately understated in order to deny Muslims their proper place in the polity, or to mask the scale and significance of their underrepresentation in its key institutions. Some others suggest that Muslims could be as high as 20 percent. By any count, Muslims are the second largest religious group in India, and the largest Muslim minority by far.
It must be noted that Muslims have always remained a minority in the subcontinent, even though there were Muslim rulers for centuries in this part of the world before being colonised by Britain. Muslims of various ethnicities (Turkic and Persian) and dynasties had ruled most of northern India for six or seven centuries in the form of the Delhi Sultanate and the Moghul Empire. The Muslims, along with Hindus took part and in some cases spearheaded the anti-colonial and freedom movement of India. However, the Hindu religious nationalists saw in national independence an opportunity to restore the greatness of Hindu civilization, and to stamp a Hindu character on the polity, on the grounds.
This undercurrent of Hindu chauvinism, or at least Hindu supremacy, is of longer standing than the recent rise of the BJP and its Hindutva allies, according to several scholars, it has long been present even in the professedly secular Indian National Congress party, albeit as a minority tendency. Although many have noted the Congress party‘s opportunistic turn to ―soft Hindutva‖ in the past two decades throughout India and, particularly in Gujarat in the past decade, the tendency may be older.16 This chapter will probe some realities that are the result of the majoritarian pressure on various governments due to which the Muslims are lagging behind. Even the data provided by the government and some independent organisations (to be
16 Manu Bhagavan, ―The Hindutva Underground: Hindu Nationalism and the Indian National Congress in Late Colonial and Early Post-Colonial India,‖ Economic and Political Weekly, September 13, 2008, p. 39.
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discussed later) shows that the status of Muslims is quite poor as compared to the other communities, particularly the Hindus.
The Muslims in India reside across the country, and yet their concentration varies substantially. Besides, the demographic dynamics have changed over different periods in time and in different regions. The trends in the southern states are quite different from those in the north-central states. The focus is on the distribution of the Muslim population as estimated from the 2001 census of India. In 2001, of the 138 million Muslims in India, 31 million, or 22%, lived in one state, Uttar Pradesh. Of course, Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state of India with 13% of the total population. Three other states, West Bengal, Bihar, and Maharashtra also had over ten million Muslims each. The majority of the Muslim population in India is in these four states. Besides, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Karnataka had five to ten million Muslims each, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Tamil Nadu 3 to 5 million each, and Delhi, Haryana, and Uttaranchal one to two million each. Generally, large states also have large Muslim populations, as expected. However, Punjab and Orissa, with populations of over twenty million each, had fewer than one million Muslims.17
Beginning with the popular perception about an Indian Muslim, one may come across various descriptions and narratives about this identity. Markers of Muslim Identity — the burqa, the purdah, the beard and the topi — while adding to the distinctiveness of Indian Muslims have been a cause of concern for them in the public realm. These markers have very often been a target for ridiculing the community, as well as of looking upon them with suspicion. Muslim men donning a beard and a topi are often picked up for interrogation from public spaces like parks, railway stations and markets. Meanwhile, women donning hijab experience difficulties in finding jobs in the corporate offices. Muslim women in burqa complain of rude treatment in the market, in hospitals, in schools, in accessing civic amenities such as public transport and so on.18
17 See Census of India 2011, available at: http://censusindia.gov.in/ accessed on 12 September 2004 18 Sachar Report, how it affects them, will be added later. See also Abusaleh Shariff, India: Human Development Report, A Profile of Indian States in the 1990s, NCAER & OUP, New Delhi, 1999; Abusaleh Shariff and Mehtabul Azam, Economic Empowerment of Muslims in India, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, 2004; Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Unequal Citizens: A Study of
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Distribution of Populations according to Socio-Religious Communities (SRC) (Table 4.1)
Table 4.1 based on the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data, gives an account of the rural and urban population of socio-religious communities in India. This data is important here because the Sachar Committee Report (to be discussed later) has based its finding on the same data, which includes the Muslims who identify themselves as Other Backward Castes (OBC). According to these estimates about 41 % of Muslims identified themselves as OBCs in 2004-05; this proportion was 32 % in 1999-2000. Among the Hindus, about 43 % reported OBC status in 2004-05 whereas it was 38% in 1999-2000, while about 31 % people belonged to the SCs/STs categories in 2004-05.
Table 4.2 on the other hand, goes much deeper and gives the account of every socio-religious community with respect to the number of people who identify themselves as SC/ST, OBC and others. Sachar Committee found it desirable to base its estimates mainly on the general and OBC categories of Muslims as the number of SC/ST was found negligible as shown in the table. Distribution of Populations of each Religion by Caste Category (Table 4.2)
Muslim Women in India, OUP, New Delhi, 2004; Imran Ali & Yoginder Sikand, 'Survey of SocioEconomic Conditions of Muslims In India', 9 February 2006, www.countercurrents.org; C. Rammanohar Reddy, 'Deprivation Affects Muslims More', 7 August 2003, www.countercurrents.org.
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Legal Status of Religious Minorities in India
The Indian Constitution says that the state has distanced itself from religion. In 1976, the word ―secular‖ was added to the preamble of the Indian Constitution to emphasise that no particular religion in the state will receive any state patronage whatsoever and no citizen in the state will have any preferential treatment or will be discriminated against simply on the ground that he or she professes a particular form of religion. In other words, in the affairs of the state the professing of any particular religion will not be taken into consideration. The same Constitution, however, arguably gives protection to the different religions and religious groups by including religious rights as fundamental rights. Article 25 confirms that all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality, and health. Article 26 gives to every religious denomination a fundamental right to manage its own affairs in matters of religion. This cannot be abrogated in any way.
The Constitution of India: Equal Opportunity and Rights for All Citizens — Major Provisions (Table 4.3)
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Article 29 gives the absolute and unqualified right to minorities to conserve their distinct language, script, and culture. Article 30 gives the fundamental right to all minorities, whether based on religion or language, to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, but the religious denomination‘s right to manage its own affairs is restricted to ―matters of religion‖ which are ―subject to public order, morality and health.‖ The only rights that are absolute and unfettered are the right to freedom of conscience under Article 25 and the right of minorities to conserve their distinct language, script, and culture under Article 29. The Constitution does not equate religion with freedom of conscience, and the freedom of religion (defined as embracing the propagation, practice, and public expression of it) is not an absolute one and is subject to regulation by the state.
Despite the clear incorporation of all the basic principles of secularism into various provisions of the Constitution when originally enacted, its preamble did not then include the word secular in the short description of the vision, which it called a ―Sovereign Democratic Republic.‖ This was, of course, not an inadvertent omission but a well-calculated decision meant to avoid any misgiving that India was to adopt any of the western notions of a secular state. Twenty-five years later—by which time India‘s peculiar concept of secularism had been fully established through its own judicial decisions and state practice, the preamble to the Constitution was amended to include the word ―secular‖ (along with ―socialist‖) to declare India to be a ―Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic.‖19
The constitution and other laws and policies protect religious freedom and, in practice, the national government generally enforced these protections. Some state and local governments, which hold responsibility under the constitution for law and order, limited this freedom by maintaining or enforcing existing "anti-conversion" legislation and by not efficiently or effectively prosecuting those who attacked religious minorities. The government provides minorities strong official legal protection, although at times its weak law enforcement, lack of trained police, and overburdened court system played a role in not addressing communal tensions as
19 Indian Constitution. Preamble.: amended by the Constitution (Forty-Second Amendment) Act, 1976 (enforced since Jan. 3, 1977). As noted by Tahir Mahmood, Religion, Law and Judiiary in Modern India, (2006) available at: http://www.law2.byu.edu/lawreview/archives/ 2006/3/6MAHMOOD.FIN.pdf last accessed on 17 January 2015
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swiftly as possible. Moreover, Indian Muslims neither own the major means of production nor control the policy making decisions of the State. Rarely do we find the presence of big capital and big landlords among the Muslim community in contemporary India.
The government, led by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), 2004-14 (in two terms) tried to implement an inclusive and secular platform that included respect for the right to religious freedom. Despite the national government's rejection of Hindutva, a few state and local governments continued to be influenced by Hindutva. The Indian law generally provided remedies for violations of religious freedom; however, due to a lack of sufficiently trained police and elements of corruption, the law was not always enforced rigorously or effectively in some cases pertaining to religiously oriented violence. Legal protections existed to cover discrimination or persecution by private actors.
The Ministry for Minority Affairs, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), and the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) are governmental bodies created to investigate allegations of religious and other forms of discrimination and make recommendations for redress to the relevant local or national government authorities. The NCM has a statutory responsibility, under Section 9(1) (g) of the NCM Act, 1992, to evaluate the progress of the development of the minorities and to suggest appropriate measures, to be taken by the Government, in respect of any community. Although NHRC recommendations do not have the force of law, central and local authorities generally followed them. The NCM and NHRC intervened in several instances of communal tension, the enactment of "anti-conversion" legislation in several states, and incidents of harassment and violence against minorities. Let us now try to analyse, in the light of the Sachar Committee Report, the status of Muslims in India.
Report, Reality and Recommendations
Reviewing the available data and literature on Indian Muslims gives a clear idea that the community is not only poor, discriminated but also marginalised. In post-colonial India, when the socio-economic issues of Indian Muslims need serious attention, often, the Muslim question has been traditionally caught up in and around the debates
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on secularism and communalism. Researchers have pointed out that 'an important factor contributing to the nature of the current debate on minority rights is the fact that the Indian State has fallen short of recognising and actively addressing the issue of the socio-economic rights of Muslims.20
The Sachar Committee Report (SCR) outlined that Muslims across most parts of India, as a community are deeply impoverished and suffer from huge illiteracy, a high drop-out rate, depleting asset base, below average work participation and lack of stable and secure employment. Their deplorable situation is further compounded by their limited access to government schemes and programmes, poor credit flow from public banks and other financial institutions and meagre share in public employment. Regional variations notwithstanding, Muslims, as a whole, have performed only a shade better than scheduled castes and tribes (SCs/STs) on most indices of development, while they have lagged behind the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). A year later, the report of the Commission on Linguistic and Religious Minorities (Ranganath Misra Commission, 2007) also reached a similar conclusion regarding the status of Muslims.
Going by the findings of the SCR, there is a significant disparity on various parameters between the Muslims and the other socio-religious categories. The majority of Muslims suffer grave deprivation in social opportunity, because of lack of access to education, health care and other public services, and to employment. For the most part, they are even more disadvantaged than Dalits and are emerging as, if they have not already crystallized into, India's principal underclass. Forty-three per cent of them live below the official poverty line. The SCR begins with the population that we have discussed all ready according to the needs of this particular study. Let us now straightaway begin with the other parameters.
Status of Education of Muslims in India
The Indian Constitution directed the state to provide elementary education under Article 45 of the Directive Principles of State policy. ―The State shall endeavor to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for
20 Meeto (Kamaljit Bhasin-Malik), In the Making: Identity Formation in South Asia, Three Essays Collective, New Delhi, 2007, p. 108.
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free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years,‖ stated Article 45. The Supreme Court, in 1993 ruled that the right to education is a fundamental right flowing from the Right to Life in Article 21 of the Constitution. Subsequently in 2002 education as a fundamental right was endorsed through the 86th amendment to the Constitution. Article 21-A states that ―The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age six to fourteen years in such a way as the State may, by law, determine.‖
The 86th Amendment also modified Article 45 which now reads as ―The state shall endeavor to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of 6 years‖. However, despite this commitment the number of children in this age group who have remained out of school is alarmingly large.21 The finding of the SCR elucidates the fact that Muslims are at a double disadvantage with low levels of education combined with low quality education; their deprivation increases manifold as the level of education rises. In some instances the relative share for Muslims is lower than even the SCs who are victims of a long standing caste system.
As far as numbers and statistics are concerned, the Sachar Committee based its study on the data provided by the Census 2001. However, the story would not see any considerable change in the next one decade and remain same. The literacy rate among Muslims in 2001 was 59.1 %. This is far below the national average (65.1 %). If the SCs/STs, with an even lower literacy level of 52.2% and Muslims, are excluded, the remaining ―All Others‖ (see Table 4.3) show a high literacy level of 70.8 %. In urban areas, the gap between the literacy levels of Muslims (70.1%) and the national average is 11 percent and in relation to the ―All Others‖ is 15 percent. Although the levels of literacy are lower in rural areas (52.7% for Muslims), the gap between the compared categories is also narrower. It is important to note, however, that the SCs/STs are still the least literate group in both urban and rural India. Although the literacy levels of 64% and 68% amongst male SCs/STs and Muslims respectively are not low, they are far below the level for ‗All Others‘ which is 81%. In contrast,
21 Sachar Committee Report, pp pp 49-84
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Muslim women with a literacy level of 50% have been able to keep up with women of other communities and are much ahead of the SC/ST women in rural India.22
Literacy by Place of Residence (Table 4.3)
Source: Sachar Committee Report 2006
It is often believed that a large proportion of Muslim children study in Madarsa23, mostly to get acquainted with the religious discourse and ensure the continuation of Islamic culture and social life. A persistent belief nurtured, in the absence of statistical data and evidence, is that Muslim parents have a preference for religious education leading to dependence on Madarsas. It is also argued that education in Madarsas often encourages religious fundamentalism and creates a sense of alienation from the mainstream. Sachar Committee found out that in reality the number of Madarsa attending students is much less than commonly believed. For example, in West Bengal, where Muslims form 25% of the population, the number of Madarsa students at 3.41 lakhs is only about 4% of the 7-19 age group.24 At the all-India level this works out to be about 3% of all Muslim children of school going age. The National 22 ibid 23 One reason for the misconception that the majority of Muslim children are enrolled in Madarsas is that people do not distinguish between Madarsas and Maktabs. While Madarsas provide education (religious and/or regular), Maktabs are neighbourhood schools, often attached to mosques, that provide religious education to children who attend other schools to get ‗mainstream‘ education. Thus Maktabs provide part-time religious education and are complementary to the formal educational institutions. Moreover, there are several types of madarsas. For example, residential Madarsas are institutions that impart religious-Islamic education. The pupils do not attend any other type of school nor seek any other kind of education. There are many such Madarsas across the country. 24 Sachar Report. p 76
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Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) data is supported by estimates made from school level National Council of Economic Research and Training (NCERT provisional) data; which indicate a somewhat lower level of 2.3 % of Muslim children aged 7-19 years who study in Madarsas. The proportions are higher in rural areas and amongst males.
The report also points out at the non-availability of education in the Urdu language as one of the reasons for the low educational status of Muslims in India.25 According to SCR, a substantial number of the Urdu-speaking people in most states made this point during the Committee‘s interaction with them. Despite the positive recommendations of different Committees, in many states, there is a dearth of facilities for teaching Urdu. The number of Urdu medium schools is very low in most states. Contrary to the widely held belief, the Urdu-speaking population is not merely confined to the IndoGangetic plains. Urdu is also reported to be the mother tongue of a sizeable section of the populations of Karnataka (10%), Maharashtra (7.5%) and Andhra Pradesh (8.5%). Interestingly, in all these states, the percentage of Muslim population reporting Urdu as their mother tongue is substantially higher than the states in the Hindi-Urdu belt.26
One learns from the history that the condition of Urdu in the current situation is not merely the product of partition. Prabhu Bapu notes that the right wing Hindu Mahasabha right from the time of British period wanted to do away with Urdu, the language of Muslim elite and replace it with Devnagri.27 The (Dev)Nagri lobby attacked Urdu as a ‗spurious offspring of Hindi in a Persian guise‘, reminding one of the ‗centuries of enslavement‗ by Muslim rule in India.28 Urdu and the Persian script, it was claimed had foreign origin and facilitated the use of ‗incomprehensible‘ Arabic and Persian words, making court (legal) documents ‗illegible‘ and encouraging
25 According to the Census 2001 Hindi has been declared the mother tongue by more than 450 million people, which is much higher than the second highest linguistic population of 83.4 m. in the case of Bengali. Urdu is the 6th most spoken language in the country. 26 ibid 27 Prabhu Bapu, Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History, Routledge, (London) 2012, p121 28 Paul R Brass, ‗Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and ethnic identity among Muslims in South Asia‘ in David Taylor and Malcom Yapp (eds) Political identity in South Asia, London 1979 p.57
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‗forgery and fraud‘.29 Urdu‘s ‗immorality‘ took several forms, its script leading to a great deal of ‗fraud‘ in society and the government.30
The criticism and hate against Urdu did not stop there. It was accused of corrupting the Hindu society and led them astray from their own religious and cultural heritage into a ‗dark era of Muslim misrule and tyranny‘. The common refrain was that the teaching of Persianised Urdu tended to ‗degenerate‗ Hindus, and that Hindi was a personification of ‗Hindu Culture‘ and a ‗national pride‘, posing an ‗antiquity, naturalness and Indianness‘ superior to Urdu.31 Savarkar viewed Hindi as the ‗richest and the most cultured‘ of all the ancient languages, and Nagri, the script of the ‗Hindu scriptures‘ as phonetically by far the ‗most perfect‗ in the world.32 Long before the British or even the Muslims stepped into India, he explained, Hindi in its general form had already come to occupy the position of a ‗natural tongue‘ representing the ‗inner life‘ of the nation.33 Hindi was the language used by Hindu pilgrim, the tradesman, the tourist, the soldier, the pandit (priest) in the country.34 It provided the basis to recompact Indians educated in regional vernaculars into a ‗homogenous‗ Hindu community, establishing a common bond to a ‗Hindu identity‘.35
Meanwhile, M S Golwalkar emphasised, every province had its own language, yet Hindi provided a ‗linguistic unity‘ across the nation. The projection of Hindi as a ‗national language‘ was determined by the process of ‗internal cohesion‘, whereby Hindi appropriated the space of the vernacular languages including Brajbhasha, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu etc., which were regarded as ‗not autonomous‘ in tradition, but ‗deviations‗ from sanatan dharm (orthodox Hinduism). 36 As the ‗national language‗ of India, Hindi was to attain its rightful place in the system of
29 ‗Memorial presented to Government in 1873 Praying for the Restoration of Nagri Characters in Courts and Public offices‘ to Sir William Muir , Lt. Governor, North-Western Provinces, in Malaviya, Court Character, Appendix, pp 74-75, cited by Prabhu Bapu (2012) p, 121 30 Pandit Gauri Datta, Nagari aur Urdu ka Svang (‗The Melodrama of Nagari and Urdu) Meerut, p.11, cited in Charu Gupta, ‗Obscenity, Sexuality and the Other: Gender and Hindu Identity in Uttar Pradesh, 1880s-1930s‘, PhD Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2000, p. 119 31 Hardoi Union Club‘s memorial presented to the Hunter commission, 1882; Education Commission Report, p. 543, cited by Prabhu Bapu, op. Cit. 32 V D Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan 33 ibid 34 ibid 35 ibid 36 MS Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur 1947, p.18. Cited by Prabhu Bapu (2012) op cit p126
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education providing a basis for the territorial vision of the Hindu jati (nation).37 In sangathan theory, Hindi‘s ‗territorial communication‗ as well as its ‗homogenisation‗ was viewed as a strog source of the ‗national solidarity‗ of Hindus and a bond of Hindu ‗cultural identity‘ of India.38
The Hindu Mahasabha emphasised the Aryan ‗Hindu Identity‘ demarcating Hindi as an aryabhasha from Urdu, the language of Muslims.39 Persian-Urdu, a symbol of Muslim cultural identity was rejected as ‗alien‘ to Hindu culture; and its position was not natural but an outcome of a political privilege ~ Muslim rule, which had lost its historical rationale.40 The Muslim conquest of India had obstructed ‗Hindi‘s progress‘, it was contended, but Hindi‘s superiority as well as resilience was proved by the fact that Muslim rulers, too, had to learn in order to govern the country.41 The end of Muslim rule marked the beginning of Hindi‘s hegemony.42 By the early decades of the twentieth century, Urdu had lost its dominance as a language of administration and education in major parts of north India. The Hindu right wing groups demanded a ‗Hindi-only‘ policy.
The expansion of education into the countryside, where Nagri was taught in the vernacular schools combined with the campaign of Hindu revivalists had resulted in the development of Hindi literature, which competed with Urdu in towns and districts of Uttar Pradesh. The declining position of Urdu was a reflection of the end of the dominance of Persian-Urdu writing and the rise of burgeoning Hindu literary class in the province.43 The exclusionary ideals implicit in the sangathan campaign had made the identity of Urdu controversial, accelerating the emergence of Hindi as the language of Hindu identity in north India.44
The intensity to sideline Urdu grew even more after the independence as most of the north Indian Urdu speaking people left for Pakistan, where it was declared the national language. Language was not the only reason for people to leave India, there
37 ibid 38 ibid 39 ibid 40 ibid 41 See Prabhu Bapu, op. Cit. P 127-29 42 ibid 43 ibid 44 ibid
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were several factors spearheaded by religion. Meanwhile, the right wing in India saw it as an opportunity to completely wash away the language, particularly the script and replace it with Nagri. Urdu, however, for many years remained in tradition with poetry, cinema etc. Nevertheless, it was somewhat limited to the elite, as people, would gradually find it difficult to find job in the market.
Coming back to the SCR, it has been clearly pointed out that Madarsas have indeed provided schooling to Muslim children where the State has failed them. Many children go to Madarsas and thereby acquire some level of literacy/education when there is no school in the neighbourhood.45 Many Madarsas provide education that is similar to that provided in ‗mainstream‘ schools.46 The SRC calls for a significant shift in the policy of the State, along with the creation of effective partnership with private and voluntary sectors. This is substantiated by the data that data clearly indicates that while the overall levels of education in India, measured through various indicators, is still below universally acceptable standards, the educational status of the Muslim community in particular is a matter of great concern. When alternative indicators of educational achievement, more representative of the progress made in education, are considered, a significant disparity between the status of Muslims and that of other SRCs (except SCs/STs) can be noted.
Besides its other findings, the report highlights the recent trends in enrollments and other educational attainments, following its interaction with the members of the community, in order to dispel certain misconceptions and stereotypes with respect to education of Muslim:
Muslim parents are not averse to modern or mainstream education and to sending their children to the affordable Government schools. They do not necessarily prefer to send children to Madarsas. Regular school education that is available to any other child in India is preferred by Muslims also. A section of Muslims also prefer education through the English medium, while some others would like the medium of instruction to be Urdu. The access to government schools for Muslim children is limited.47
45 SRC, p 78 46 Ibid. 47 ibid p 85
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There is also a common belief that Muslim parents feel that education is not important for girls and that it may instill a wrong set of values. Even if girls are enrolled, they are withdrawn at an early age to marry them off. This leads to a higher drop-out rate among Muslim girls. Our interactions indicate that the problem may lie in non-availability of schools within easy reach for girls at lower levels of education, absence of girl‘s hostels, absence of female teachers and availability of scholarships as they move up the education ladder.48
A review of SRC and other relevant material clearly indicated that there has been a careless approach by the government when it comes to the education of Muslims. The established institutions that were providing education to Muslims on various levels have been neglected severely by the governments. Urdu medium education, that could have given better results have been the biggest causality over the years.49 The role of right wing forces has been vital in the entire process as they have been able to push the successive governments backwards whenever there was an effort to take affirmative action for minorities in general and Muslims in particular. All in all, the condition of Muslims in terms of education and a matter of concern and the state is urgently required to take some actions in order to put a break on the continuous misery. The status of education is directly connected to the employment and economy of the Muslims. The less educated person is very likely to be less employable. Is it the case with the Muslims? Let us see with the help of various relevant researches.
Economic Condition
The economic condition of any particular section of a society depends heavily on the kind of education acquired by the people belonging to the community in question. Muslims in India, as any other community, show diverse trends when it comes to choosing the profession. According to several reports most of the Indian Muslims are found to be self employed. However, this is not indicative of the fact that how many
48 ibid. 49 The Sachar Committee suggested that the availability of Urdu schools is very limited. Such schools are important for the community in Urdu-speaking areas, especially at the primary level where education in the mother tongue is generally preferred. Madrasas are an important community initiative but their reach is very limited; less than 4 per cent school-going Muslim children go to madrasas. Consequently, mainstream schools are the only means to satisfy increasing demand for education in the Community. And the supply of such schools in the vicinity of Muslims habitats may be one of the reasons for lower educational attainments.
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opportunities they have to enter the service industry in both private and public sectors. As discussed above, the community is clearly lagging behind every other group in terms of getting education, the reason for which has been lack of government help for the education of minorities. These people, when try to enter labour market, find it difficult to get jobs.
The surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organization50 (NSSO) are one of the best available sources to assess the situation of the ground realities. The Employment-Unemployment rounds of the NSSO – 55th (1999-2000), 61st (2004-05) and 66th (2009-10) - are the largest sample surveys in India that provide information on the caste and religion of the respondents along with information on education and employment characteristics. The Sachar Committee Report highlights the fact that Muslims carry a double burden of being labeled as ―anti- nationalists‖ and being appeased at the same time. The fact that the so-called appeasement has not resulted in any benefits is typically ignored. Identity markers often lead to suspicion and discrimination by people and institutions. Discrimination too is pervasive in employment, housing and education. Gender injustice is usually identified purely with personal law to the exclusion of gender-related concerns in education and employment that Muslim women do face on a continuing basis.51
Rakesh Basant writes that the discriminatory attitude of the police and others compounds the feeling of injustice; ghettoization is a result of insecurity and discrimination in housing, schools and jobs. Insecurity adversely affects mobility, especially of women, leading to situations wherein Muslims are not able to fully
50 In the Indian context, economic conditions along with community and caste affiliations present themselves as appropriate variables that should go into defining these groups. Consequently, taking a lead from the Sachar Committee, socio-religious communities (SRCs) within both Muslim and nonMuslim population are sought to be defined in a fairly disaggregated manner. Using the National Sample Survey (NSS) data separate categories have been defined. These disaggregate Hindus into: • Hindu, upper castes - Hindu (UC); • • Hindu, Other Backward Classes – Hindu (OBCs); • Hindu, Scheduled Castes – Hindu (SC); and • Hindu, Scheduled Tribes – Hindu (ST). • Muslims are divided into general and OBC (including those Muslims that report their ‗caste‘ as SC) groups: • Muslim, General – Muslim (Gen); and • Muslim, OBC – Muslim (OBC). Other minorities (OM) have been retained as a separate category. 51 Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India, Oxford University Press (New Delhi) 2004. cited by Rakesh Basant, Education and Employment among Muslims in India: An Analysis of Patterns and Trends, IIM Ahmedabad, September 2012, p 7
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exploit economic opportunities. The widespread perception of discrimination among Muslims results in a sense of alienation and is therefore seen by the Community as an important cause of inequity.52 The employment situation has deteriorated because globalization and liberalization processes appear to have affected Muslim occupations (mainly self-employment) more adversely than others, especially for women. This, coupled with low bargaining power of workers (especially home-based), results in low incomes. Non-availability of credit curtails the ability of the community to improve their economic status; Muslim concentration areas are designated as ―red zones‖ where credit flows are virtually non-existent. Discrimination in the implementation of government programmes and in infrastructure provision adds to the problems in the economic sphere.53
The Sachar Committee Report shows that worker population ratios for Muslims are significantly lower than for all other socioreligious communities in rural areas but only marginally lower in urban areas. The low aggregate work participation ratios for Muslims are essentially due to much lower participation in economic activity by women in the community; while they do not differ much for males in different communities. Interestingly, work participation rates for Muslim women is much lower than even that for women belonging to upper-caste Hindu households, where there may be socio-cultural constraints to women‘s work.54
Worker Participation Rates by Socio Religious Communities (SRCs)
Source: Sachar Committee Report 2006
The Sachar Committee also found out that a high percentage of Muslims workers engaged in self- employment activity. This is particularly true in urban areas and for women workers. Taken together, the three self-employed categories constituted about 52 Basant (2012) 53 ibid. 54 Sachar Committee Report p 90
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61 per cent of the total Muslim workforce as compared to about 55 per cent of the Hindu workers. In urban areas this share is 57 per cent for Muslims and 43 per cent for Hindus. Among women the share is as high as 73 per cent for Muslims and 60 per cent for Hindus. When it comes to salaried jobs, he participation of Muslim workers in salaried jobs (both in the public and the private sectors) is quite low. In the aggregate while 25 per cent of Hindu-UC workers are engaged in regular jobs, only about 13 per cent of Muslim workers are engaged in such jobs.
The committee also found out that in most of the government departments and Public Service Undertakings (PSUs), the share of Muslim workers does not exceed 5 per cent. To assess the situation the committee received a data of 88 lakhs employees from different government departments, agencies and institutions; of which only 4.4 lakhs or 5% are reported to be Muslims. Information on 1.4 million PSU workers shows that Muslims constituted only 3.3% of Central PSUs and 10.8% of the State level PSUs from which data was received.55 The following tabular representation based on the data provided by the central and state government departments shall give a better idea of the current situation, which comes from previous years.
Muslim Employees in Government Sector Employment
Source: Sachar Committee Report 2006
55 Sachar Committee Report, p 165
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During the year when the report was being finalised, the share of Muslims in the Indian administrative services was fund to be pretty low, the case is reflective of a larger picture in which the percentages of Muslim candidates remains similar almost every year. The date of 2006 showed that the presence of Muslims was found to be only 3% in the IAS, 1.8% in the IFS and 4% in the IPS. Moreover, Muslims who have secured high level appointments could do it mostly as ‗promoted candidates‘; their share as direct recruits through competitive examinations is low at 2.4%, 1.9% and 2.3% respectively. For the same services, in 2003 and 2004, Muslims constituted only 4.9 % of candidates who appeared in the written examination of Civil Services. This is far below the 13.4 % share of Muslims in the population, however, the success rate of Muslims is about the same as other candidates. This is indicative of the fact that the number of muslim candidates may rise if, they themselves take these examinations and along with this the government policies should encourage them to do so.
The report indicates that Muslims‘ shares in employment in various departments are abysmally low at all levels. The share of Muslims increases only marginally for lower level jobs but even in group ‗D‘ employment (which requires only a low level of education), the share is only about 5 %. Their share in this category of jobs is even less in Central PSUs. Across categories, Group ‗C‘ has the largest number of employees and officers who normally establish mass contact during the course of employment are generally from this category. Muslim presence at this level is less than 5%and even lower (2.5 %) in public sector banks. Indian Railways employs about 14 lakh people. Of these only 64 thousand employees belong to the Muslim community, a representation of only 4.5%. Besides, almost all (98.7%) Muslim railway employees are positioned at lower levels; with only 1.3% employed as Group ‗A‘ or Group ‗B‘ officers.
Similarly, the share of Muslims even in these security agencies is as low as 3.6% at the higher and 4.6% at the lower levels/categories of employment. Taking all agencies together, practically all Muslim (96%) employees are positioned at the lower levels, especially in Group C, with only about 2% as Group ‗A‘ or Group ‗B‘ officers. In Postal Department out of 2.75 lakh employees the share of the Muslim community is only 5%. Even at the government universities, Muslims are just 3.7% in the teaching faculty and 5.4% in non-teaching staff of the total number of employees throughout
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the country. in banking sector, which includes, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Scheduled Commercial Banks, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and SIDBI shows that there are 6.8 lakh employees, about 32% at higherlevel positions and 68% at lower-level positions. The representation of Muslims is very low at 2.2% in bank employment overall, just 1.7% at higher levels and 2.5% at lower level positions. At the State level, the representation of Muslims in bank employment is more than 5%.
The information obtained by the Sachar committee from various states, across India, only twelve of whom could provide the data shows yet another grim an overall picture of the percentage of Muslims employed in the state level employment. In no State does the representation of Muslims match their population share. Instead, they are falling far behind their population shares. Andhra Pradesh is the only State where the representation of Muslims is fairly close to, but still less than their population share. Three other States which show Muslim representation in government jobs as more than 50% of their population shares are Karnataka (70 %), Gujarat (59 %) and Tamil Nadu (57 %).
Share of Muslim Employees in Selected State Governments
Source: Sachar Committee Report (2006) based on the information given by various state departments.
The result of the lower number of Muslims in government jobs, lower employment opportunities, elsewhere due to lack of required education and negligence by the central and the state governments vis-a-vis the Muslims have resulted in about 38% of Muslims in urban areas and 27% in rural areas live below the poverty level Many
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more are close to the poverty level. This reduces the credit worthiness of such households and makes it difficult for them to access credit from banks and similar financial institutions. Given this status of the Muslim community, assistance from Government programmes is critical for improving the welfare levels of the poor amongst them, particularly women and children.56 The committee has found out that although there are several government schemes57 available to the financially backward people to catch up, however their implementation has been very poor, therefore no desirable results have been achieved at both central as well as the state level.
Even the report went on to an extent to say that the Muslims have not benefitted much from any of the programmes run by the government. At times Muslims do not have adequate participation as beneficiaries and at others, when participation is adequate, the total amounts involved in the program are too low to make a meaningful impact. Moreover, there is a lack of transparency in the assessment and monitoring of the programs. Apart from collecting appropriate data for evaluation purposes, there is a need to sensitise the state bureaucracy at all levels to include Muslims in the different programmes.58 Besides this, the strategy of the Hindutva forces to turn a local dispute into a communal one also pushes the small time Muslim self employed people back to the brink. There have been several examples of communal riots ignited by a local dispute across small towns and cities in India, where the ultimate loser turn out to be Muslims. There has been a trend to hurt Muslims physically and attack their places of work to further push them down in the social standing, the result for which is very well shown in the Sachar Committee Report.
It has also been found out that the access of Muslims to bank credit, including the PSA, is low and inadequate. The average size of credit is also meagre and low compared with other SRCs both in PuSBs and PrSBs. The position is similar with respect to finance from specialized institutions such as SIDBI and NABARD. The financial exclusion of Muslims has far-reaching implications for their socio-economic 56 Sachar Committee Report p 176 57 Such as the National Minority Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) and the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation (NBCFDC), Maulana Azad Education Foundation, Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Area Intensive and Madarsa Modernisation Programme, State Backward Classes & Minorities Departments/Corporation, National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation, National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation and others 58 Sachar Committee Report p187
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and educational upliftment.59 Moreover, some banks use the practice of identifying ‗negative geographical zones‘ on the basis of certain criteria where bank credit and other facilities are not easily provided.60 Such a practice is referred to as ‗red lining‘ in the United States and ‗negative zones‘ by some bankers in India. It is possible that in some of these areas the share of Muslim population is high and yet the community is not able to benefit fully from the banking facilities.
When it comes to providing the basic civic amenities to the Muslims, the successive governments have again failed. The housing conditions of Muslims are at par with the overall average. The overall standard of living of Muslims is close to the H-OBCs, better than SCs/STs but poorer than others. About a third of small villages with high concentration of Muslims do not have any educational institutions. There is a scarcity of medical facilities in larger villages with a substantial Muslim concentration. About 40% of large villages with a substantial Muslim concentration do not have any medical facilities. Muslims are concentrated in locations with poor infrastructural facilities. This affects their access to basic services like education, health facilities, transport, etc.61
The point made by the report regarding sensitising the bureaucracy assumes significance because an alliance between the bureaucracy and soft Hindutva has been pointed out several times. A large number of high government officials have been often seen having a soft stance of Hindutva ideology. In fact a lot of retired government officials joined the right wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) before 2014 general elections. The instances of former army chief, intelligence head, police chiefs, bureaucrats and other government officials joining BJP gives an impression that these people during their services had ample political inclination towards these parties. The 59 Sachar Committee Report p 136 60 On the basis of information furnished (to the Sachar Committee) by one of the Scheduled Commercial Banks, the characteristics of negative zones are: [1] Either the bank has experienced high delinquencies or where, based on market information, such areas are known to be highly delinquent zones. [2] Crime rates are relatively high. [3] The bank's ability to recover its dues is undermined by the existence of a large proportion of anti-social elements residing in the area. [4] There are many illegal structures constructed in violation of municipal laws in such areas thereby preventing the bank's loan recovery. [5] Addresses are difficult to trace, as in highly congested areas or areas where addresses are not well coded, so that tracking customers becomes difficult in such areas. [6] High security areas where permission is normally not granted to civilians to enter these areas. In such areas lending is selectively done based on prior approvals given by authorities to bank officials to enter such areas; for e.g. military cantonment, defence establishment, atomic plant township etc. [7] Low income levels, implying that credit exposures in such areas will be prone to high credit risks. 61 Sachar Committee Report, p 148-50
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nexus between the Indian army and the Hindutva forces is very well established and reported in the Indian as well as the international media.62 Even before BJP, according to a scholar Hindutva people had infiltrated Congress as well. Under the leadership of Tilak Congress was the vehicle of Hindutva in a major way. With Gandhi assuming the leadership of Congress, Hindutva was subjugated to the main 'anti-British' project and was side tracked. But it existed within Congress all the came. Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Sardar Patel and later Purshottamdas Tandon were the main 'Hindutva' votaries. Also there was a uniform scatter of these ‗strong saffron‘ to mild saffron leaders at all the rungs of leadership.63
This kind of leadership, coupled with a bureaucracy that generally favours a particular community and discriminating the other takes many forms in India. Social stigma is not only limited to Muslims, the lower caste Hindus, Adivasis, Christians and other minorities also consistently complain about being discriminated against at various levels. They feel that a they have been facing injustice at the hand of the dominant upper class Hindu community particularly those subscribing the idea of racial supremacy and the myth of purity of blood. However Muslims are a different category altogether. they are seen as the enemy, the agent of impurity, the reason for the decay of Hindu culture and alleged for many other things that has happened to this part of the world over the years. The Hindutva brigade is adamant at no compromise with the ‗Muslims enemies‘, as their presence in the country can only be tolerated if they accept a certain ways of life prescribed by them. This makes Muslims live in perpetual insecurity in India. We shall move on further and talk about the security scenario for Muslims in India and with the help or relevant literature try to find out
62 ‗India‘s Military-Hindutva nexus stirs serious security concern‘ available at: http://dailymailnews.com/2014/11/14/indias-military-hindutva-nexus-stirs-serious-security-concern/, lasr accessed on 14 November 2014 63 R. R Puniyani, ‗Hundutva Offensive Social Roots: Characterisation‘ available at: http://www.foil.org/politics/hindutva/rampun1.html#4 accessed on 25 December 2014.With Nehru assuming strong 'socialist, secular' principles as the state policy, the Hindutva elements kept themselves maintaining their roots. After Nehru's demise and with change in social dynamics, Indira Gandhi veered to upper castes as the main support base, the upper caste vote bank, in 84 electrions. Rajiv's Congress lost out the battle for the 'upper caste' vote bank, to the blatant puritan and unadulterated upper caste agenda of BJP, which since then has not looked back and has by now become 'The' vehicle of Hindutva politics, marginalising the Congress from the upper caste arena. All in all though Hindutva has played a 'hide and seek' expression in some periods, through Congress. But it is the BJP which has been the major and preferred vehicle for Hindutva agenda. Shiv Sena, which thrived on the 'sons of the soil' garbage, watered from the backyard by some elements of Congress, came up strongly in Bombay. Supported by the big capital, it unleashed a'physical annhilation' of communist labor leaders in Bombay.
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the current status, which apparently is something that the Indian state would not like to show to the others.
Following the recommendations made by the Sachar Committee, the government launched its flagship programme -- the Multi-Sectoral Development Programme (MSDP) -- in 2008, aimed at upgrading infrastructure in 90 minority concentration districts (MCDs) spread over 20 states64 where minorities comprise 25% or more of the population. These 90 MCDs were lagging behind the national average in terms of indicators for socio-economic and basic amenities. Under the MSDP, district-specific plans focus on provision of better infrastructure for schools and secondary education, sanitation, pucca housing, drinking water and electric supply, besides beneficiaryoriented schemes to create income-generating activities. However, the exclusion of Muslims is evident in the planning, design and implementation of the MSDP. The government has failed to make Muslims a target group and brought the scheme in under the larger umbrella of ―minorities‖, despite being urged that the Muslim community needed targeted interventions to bring it socially and economically on a par with the mainstream.
The MSDP allegedly leaves out a large number of Muslims from its schemes by concentrating only on districts which have a minority concentration. Most of the districts in these 90 MCDs have a Muslim concentration of less than 25%. Thus the MSDP covers only 30% of the Muslim population of India, completely ignoring Muslims in non-MCD districts. Another major shortcoming is that it takes the district as the unit of planning rather than villages or blocks with minority concentrations, thus making benefits available for all. 65
Even for the small percentage of Muslims who are covered under the MSDP programme, there have not been very positive outcomes. In fact, the community has experienced exclusion in the identification of areas for development, allocation and delivery mechanisms. This identity-based discrimination was highlighted in a study
64 Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Kerala, Karnataka, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand 65 Ayesha Pervez, ‗Persistent Exclusion of Muslims in India, Infochange News and Features, December 2011, Available at: http://infochangeindia.org/human-rights/analysis/persistent-exclusion-of-muslimsin-india.html Accessed on 12 November 2014
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by the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) in 2011, entitled ‗Promises to Keep‘, which evaluated ‗flagship programmes‘ for minority development initiated as a response to recommendations by the Sachar Committee.66 The study, which selected three districts in three states -- South 24 Parganas in West Bengal, Darbhanga in Bihar, and Mewat in Haryana -- says that despite the focus on minority districts, the Muslim community was not benefiting much as officials were often under orders to avoid Muslim villages, hamlets or urban settlements in plans designed by them. As a result, although money from this modestly funded programme is spent on districts with a greater proportion of Muslims, the study found that the programmes selected were neither located in nor benefited Muslim populations.
Further discrimination on the part of the government was highlighted when, in 2010, on the basis of reports and complaints received from the 90 minority-concentrated districts on ineffective implementation and the biased attitude of government officials, the central government appointed 90 national-level monitors to monitor implementation; they could find only seven Muslim monitors out of the 90. The state of Uttar Pradesh, which has the largest Muslim population in the country and the largest number of minority-concentrated districts, has only one Muslim monitor. This bias is well exposed by the Sachar Committee when it talks about discrimination and practices of exclusion in government structures, especially in security-related jobs -- defence, police and security forces -- where the percentage and number of Muslims is highly skewed.67
Various key recommendations of the Sachar report share a similar fate. For instance: establishing an equal opportunities commission with a structure and membership along the lines of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to examine and analyse the grievances of deprived groups, and making equal opportunities a legal right; developing a ‗diversity index‘, a statistical tool to measure exclusion in specific areas (education, housing, etc) which can be used for inter-institutional comparisons as well as to assess patterns over time which, in turn, will help in policy targeting; enhancing Muslim participation in governance.
66 ‗Promises to Keep: Investigating Government‘s response to Sachar Committee recommendations‘ Centre for Equity Studies, New DElhi 2011, available at: http://centreforequitystudies.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/08/Sachar-study.pdf accessed on 28 December 2014 67 Ayesha Pervez, op cit.
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Moreover, the recommendations of the Ranganath Mishra Commission report (2007) for 10% reservation for Muslims in central and state government jobs and 6% within OBC quotas for Muslim OBCs, and the inclusion of Muslim and Christian dalits in the scheduled castes list, are yet to be implemented. Many argue that a large section of Muslims is being covered under reservations meant for other backward classes (OBCs). However, Sachar‘s report has put paid to that myth. In the context of Muslim OBCs, the committee concluded that their abysmally low representation suggests that the benefits of entitlements meant for the backward classes are yet to reach them. The committee also concluded that ―the conditions of Muslims in general are also lower than the Hindu OBCs who have the benefits of reservations‖.68 We shall come back to the failures of the state while initiating and implementing policies for the Muslims, before that we shall have a look at the security threat posed to the Muslims by the right wing hindu groups.
‘Threatening Other’ and ‘Perennial Enemy’
As mentioned in several parts of this work, Muslims are perceived and as a threat to the Hindu Rashtra that the Hindutva brigade seeks to achieve cutting across the national boundaries of the several countries in south Asia. The ‗othering‘ of Muslims at social level is a direct result of the imagination that Muslims, although a living as a minority for more than a millennium, if not stopped, would take over the entire Hindu Nation. A demographic reference is always given by the right wing groups showing the higher birth rate and continuously increasing share of Muslims in the total population of India. There is a lot of fear mongering done by the Hindu groups in order to put float their discourse against the Muslims. Apart from this illegal immigration of Bangladeshi Muslims is also cited and made a political agenda to garner support against the ‗enemy‘.69
At the national level, this perception was amplified by the fact that illegal immigration became a flashpoint issue during this period. For example, politicians in 68 ibid. 69 Illegal immigration contributed to the perception that the Muslim population in India was growing rapidly. Though there was a gap between this perception and the reality on the ground because some immigrants from Bangladesh were, in fact, Hindus fearing political repression, most Indians equated Bangladeshis with Muslims. As a result, the perceived threat to India‘s sovereignty from ‗Muslim‘ immigrants from Bangladesh grew as illegal immigration increased. cited by Neil Devotta, "Demography and Communalism in India," Journal of International Affairs, 56 (2002).
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West Bengal encouraged Bangladeshi immigration as a means of garnering votes, a divisive policy that became controversial not only at the local level in West Bengal but at the national level as well. Further, since the immigrant population from Bangladesh was concentrated in the border states of West Bengal and Assam70, there was a skewed belief that Bangladeshi immigrants were taking over these border states. Immigration from Bangladesh to India, thus, appeared to add to this regional divisiveness and emerged as a significant problem that constituted a ‗Muslim threat‘ to India‘s sovereignty.71 Beside this the terror activities allegedly carried out by the infiltrators from Pakistan, seeking to ‗liberate Kashmir‘ was also amplified as a reason for the fear that the Hindu groups were propagating.
The incidents of violence and terror attacks in the 1980‘s and 1990‘s represented a time of growing fear on the part of the majority Hindu population that the minority Muslim population was increasing its presence in India, challenging Indian sovereignty, and controlling the politics of the country. Though this insecurity was based on some truth, it would have remained in the background if the BJP, the RSS, and other members of the Sangh Parivar had not worked to bring it to the attention of the Hindu population. Specifically, since members of the Sangh Parivar were able to rally a popular foundation for the BJP. The RSS, for example, held mass rallies in the 1990‘s at which leadership emphasized the ‗threat‘ that the Muslim population posed to Hindus in India.72 Hindu nationalist forces also used the Indian vernacular press and other media outlets as a springboard from which to report the changing demographics of the Muslim population, the growth in Islamic extremism, and the importance of Muslim votes.73 Specifically, a key part of the Sangh Parivar strategy in support of the BJP was its effort to bring the change in objective conditions to the attention of the Hindu population through its use of mass media.74
In the 1990‗s some film makers in the Hindi film Industry undertook a concerted effort to portray the ‗Islamic‘ threat that India faced; a series of action movies
70 ibid. 71 Pranati Dutta, "Push-Pull Factors of Undocumented Migration From Bangladesh to West Bengal: a Perception Study," The Qualitative Report, 9 (2004): 335-358. 72 Nikita Sud, Secularism and the Gujarati State 1960-2005, Department of International Development, University of Oxford (2003 73 Robin Jeffrey, "Media Revolution and 'Hindu Politics in North India: 1982- 1999," 18 May 2006 <http://www.himalmag.com/july2001/essay.html> 74 ibid.
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depicted terrorists infiltrating India and plotting against the government. This trend culminated in the blockbuster hit Mission Kashmir which portrayed Islamic terrorists scheming to assassinate the Prime Minister.75 As a result, scholars have noted that Hindi film dramas post-1990 displayed a remarkably consistent pattern in producing a monolithic Hindu identity under threat from Islam.76 BJP partisans, thus, used Hindi film as an outlet from which to play up Hindu insecurity, harnessing the media as a means of communicating to people the changing conditions that characterized India at the time.
The rhetoric of ‗Muslim appeasement‘ was used by the right wing Hindu groups whenever they wished, however, it gained more frequency in the 1980s. The BJP adopted a critical stance in the late 1980‘s and 1990‘s that emphasised key instances where the Indian government gave in to Muslims at the expense of the majority population. Consequently, the BJP played on the perception examined in the preceding sections by emphasising cases where it appeared as though Muslims were controlling Indian affairs. The BJP floated the rhetoric of what they called the lack of true secularism in India. They accused the ruling Congress and its institutions of giving concessions to Muslims. BJP leadership, thus, denounced the presence of parallel civil codes or separate personal law boards of different religious minorities, particularly the Muslims. The BJP argued that India needed a ―positive secularism‖ whereby differential treatment of Indians on the basis of religion would not compromise the equality of all groups and citizens.77 BJP mobilization was grounded in its usage of key events78 as evidence of the growing influence of Indian Muslims.
75 Gyan Prakash, The Muslim in Hindi Cinema, Princeton University, New Jersey, 2005. cited by Anuj Nandadur, ‗The ‗Muslim Threat‘ and the Bhartiya Janata Party‘s Rise to Power‘, Peace and Democracy in South Asia, Volume 2, Numbers 1 & 2, 2006. 76 See Sheena Malhotra, and Tavishi Alagh, "Dreaming the Nation: Domestic Dramas in Hindi Films Post-1990," South Asian Popular Culture, 2 (2004): 19-37. 77 Shaila Seshia, "Divide and Rule in Indian Party Politics: the Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party," Asian Survey, 38 (1998). pp 1036-50 78 The BJP cited the Shah Bano case as an example of how Indian secularism gave concessions to Muslim interests. Though Shah Bano, who was divorced after 43 years of marriage, was awarded a monthly maintenance from her husband as per a Supreme Court ruling in 1978, political pressure from Muslim clerics induced Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress government to pass a Bill in 1986 that nullified the ruling. Also, the BJP argued that the special status granted to the Muslim majority state of Jammu-Kashmir as per Article 370 of the Indian Constitution represented an issue on which the Indian government had given in to Muslim interests. Specifically, the BJP declared that the Congress Party had sold out Hindus because while Hindu majority states were treated equally and governed by a single law, the sole Muslim state in India was given special treatment.
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The BJP was, thus, able to play on the underlying threat that the Hindu majority felt from the Muslim minority.79
Meanwhile, the BJP as well as Sangh Parivar was paving the way for harnessing Indian nationalism by redefining Indian identity as intrinsically Hindu. India was renamed in Hindu nationalist literature as ―Ram Rajya‖ or as the ―Kingdom of Ram.‖ In addition, the BJP, RSS, VHP and the Jan Sangh leadership portrayed Muslims as converts from Hinduism and called for their reconversion to Hinduism80, naming it ‗Ghar Wapsi‘. In conjunction with a redefinition of Indian identity, the BJP worked with its Sangh Parivar allies to undertake targeted symbolic mobilisations. These served to demonstrate the theme that Hindus had to unite to preserve Indian identity from `foreign‘ Muslim forces. The BJP campaign tried to garner support by telling people that the Muslims were foreign invaders and had sacked and pillaged the Hindu population in the past. This led to the formation of a distinctly Hindu identity directed at preventing a similar Muslim invasion in contemporary times, an invasion that took the form of the perceived threat that the Hindu population felt from the Muslim minority.81
The Hindu Right-wing groups took the help of their brand of History according to which, which India‘s Hindu population had been constantly suppressed and stifled by Muslim domination. They substantiated their claims by citing the examples of the invasion of Central Asian rulers and giving them a purely religious colour. BJP activists traced the peak of Indian civilization to the Gupta period prior to the 11th century. However, according to this story, Muslim conquests such as Mohammed of Ghazni‘s invasion of India in the 11th century brought this civilization down. The subsequent Muslim conquests under the sultanate, and the growth of the Mughal Empire, thus, were depicted by the BJP and its allies as bloody struggles during which entire Hindu populations were victimized and massacred. The twisting and turning of
Besides this, The Satanic Verses in 1988. the BJP highlighted this incident as evidence of the fact that Muslims were controlling the formulation of policy and were curtailing free expression, a bulwark of Indian democracy. 79 Robert L. Hardgrave "The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict in India: the Dilemmas of Diversity." Journal of Democracy, 4 (1993); pp 54-68 80 Adeney, Katharine and Lawrence Sâaez, eds. Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism. 1st Ed. New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 50 81 Koenraad Elst, Bharatiya Janata Party Vis-áa-Vis Hindu Resurgence, New Delhi, Voice of India, 1997.
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Indian history was combined with targeted, symbolic mobilizations that cemented an Indian ‗Hindu‘ identity. Their effort reached its peak in the late 1980s during the Ayodhya movement. The effort to resurrect the temple82 at Ram‘s birthplace was an important means of demonstrating the threat posed to Hindus by Muslims and, in this way, consolidating India‘s Hindu identity.
On 6 December 1992, the BJP with the help of hundreds of thousands of RSS cadres and other volunteers called ‗kar sevak‘ was able to demolish the 16th century mosque (Babri Masjid). While majority of the Hindus, particularly in north India saw it as a victory and celebrated the event with great sense of achievement, the Muslims were left shocked as they trusted the government agencies to save the mosque while stopping the onslaught of Right wing politics. The advocates of secularism in India dubbed the event as the biggest dent on India‘s secular values. Following the demolition of the mosque riots spread across the country at some places as a reaction and at some places purely due to provocation by Hindu groups. The riots began soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid structure as the Hindu groups started provocative celebrations.83
The city of Surat (Gujarat) witnessed horrific communal violence. The riot started following a rally that had been organized by the BJP in support of the kar sevaks who were responsible for the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. These riots claimed 180 lives according to media reports. But for other sources, even a figure of 200 dead would be an underestimation. The majority of those killed were Muslims. The violence produced nineteen thousand new refugees. Apart from this, Fifty-eight persons also died in Ahmedabad. Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, according to Justice B. N. Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry report,84 as the news of the demolition spread in Mumbai (then Bombay), Muslims flowed out into the streets. Communal Hindu victory processions, such as the celebration rally held by the Shiv Sena in the slum of 82 According to BJP leadership, the Ram Temple that had stood in Ayodhya had been demolished by the Muslim ruler, Babur, in 1528 and replaced with the Babri Masjid mosque; the ultimate symbol of Hinduism had been destroyed by the actions of a Muslim ruler and replaced with a Muslim shrine. 83 For detailed account of riots, see Violette Graff and Juliette Galonnier, ‗Hindu-Muslim Communal Riots in India II (1986-2011)‘Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, Science Po, (2013) available at: http://www.massviolence.org/IMG/article_PDF/Hindu-Muslim-Communal-Riots-in,738.pdf accessed on 12 May 2014 84 Justice Srikrishna Report On Mumbai Riots Of 1992, 1993 available at: http://wonderfulmumbai.com/justice-srikrishna-report-on-mumbai-riots-of-1992-1993/ last accessed on 31 March 2015
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Dharavi, provoked the rage of Muslims. In some places, the violence took the form of a police-versus-Muslim confrontation. According to media sources, ninety percent of the dead were killed by police firing. It is asserted that the police, incontestably, engaged in anti-Muslim behavior during these riots. In the area of Bainganwadi, near the mosque Nur-e-llahi, Shiv Sainiks (activists of the Shiv Sena) had come along with the police who subsequently shot many Muslims to death and set fire to the mosque. The death toll in this phase, probably amounted to more than 400.
The second phase of the Bombay riots commenced on 6 January. The Justice Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry established that the second phase of the riots resulted from the communal propaganda disseminated by Hindu nationalist organizations. Inflammatory articles, notably provocative editorials written by Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray in the newspapers Samna and Navaakal, inflamed communal passions. In all, the two phases of rioting in Bombay-in December 1992 and January 1993-claimed 900 lives (575 Muslims, 275 Hindus, 45 unknown and 5 others): according to the Srikrishna Commission report. 356 died in police firing, 347 in stabbing incidents, 91 died in arson attacks, 80 through mob violence, and 22 in private shooting incidents. In other estimates, the violence was claimed to have taken more than 1,500 lives. Riots were also reported from all major states including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, where hundreds of peoples lost their lives.
In retaliation for the Bombay riots of December 1992 and January 1993, a series of bomb blasts occurred in different areas of Bombay: at the Stock Exchange Building in the Fort area; the Air India Building at Nariman Point; the Zaveri-, Katha, and Century Bazars (the latter at Worli); the Sena Bhavan at Dadar; the Hotel Sea Rock at Bandra; the Hotel Centaur at Juhu; and the Hotel Centaur at Santacruz Airport; killing 257 persons and injuring 713 others according to the Srikrishna Commission. The authors of the blast were Muslims recruited by the Muslim mafia leader Dawood Ibrahim, operating from Dubai. However, the commission report held provocation from the Hindu parties along with the partisan role of police responsible for so many deaths during the riots. ―From January 8, 1993 at least,‖ says the Commission, "There is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders" from the level of
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shakha pramukh (branch head) to that of Sena chief Bal Thackeray. It describes Thackeray as the ―veteran general commanding his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims.‖
The report also mentioned speeches and slogans at BJP rallies seeking to intimidate Muslims from or about July 1992 as part of the campaign for the construction of a temple at Ayodhya. It also noted of the ―strident clamour‖ of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar for a temple at the disputed Ayodhya site growing louder by the day between October and November 1992, when preparations for kar seva at Ayodhya got under way. The Commission noted that some of the speeches and slogans aimed at the Ram paduka processions, chowk sabhas and meetings organised by the BJP from or about July 1992 as part of the Ayodhya temple campaign were ―downright communal, warning the Muslims that dissent on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute would be an act of treachery for which the Muslims would be banished from the country. Slogans like 'mandir vahin banayenge' (we will build the temple only there) and 'is desh men rahna hoga, to Vande Mataram Kahna hoga' (You must utter Vande Mataram if you are to stay in this country) rent the air."
Commenting on the reaction of the Muslims in the Bombay riots that took place in two phases, the Commission said that there was no material to show that the riots in Bombay were anything other than ―a spontaneous reaction of leaderless and incensed Muslim mobs, which commenced as peaceful protest but soon degenerated‖ into violence. ―Hindus must share... the blame for provoking the Muslims by their celebration rallies, inciting slogans and rasta rokos (road blocks during demonstrations), which were... organised most by Shiv Sainiks, and marginally by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists." There is no material on record, said the Commission, ―suggesting that even during this phase any known Muslim individuals or organisations were responsible for the riots,‖ though several individual Muslims and Muslim criminal elements ―appear to have indulged in violence, looting, arson and rioting.‖ The Commission also mentions some "insensitive and harsh" handling by the police of the mobs, "which initially were not violent"
A decade later, the bloodbath against the Muslims was again repeated, this time in the state of Gujarat. The riots, arguably the worst cases of mass violence in Indian history took the life of more than two thousand people, as opposed to an official figure of 850
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deaths, an overwhelming majority of whom were Muslims. Due to the realities that emerged after months of silence on the issue, the violence was called the first state-led pogrom in India. Every report on these events indicated that the riot was well-planned and sponsored by the BJP-led Gujarat administration and its chief minister Narendra Modi. The violence was preceded by concerted attempts to identify Muslim houses and shops in Ahmedabad and other of the state's cities and villages. Armed mobs of activists from the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, the RSS and the BJP, some wearing uniforms (khaki shorts and saffron scarves), arrived by truck in Muslim areas, targeting Muslim households with militia-like precision.
They used voters' lists from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to identify Muslim houses. The police refused to intervene, having received orders not to give assistance to the Muslim community. Policemen, reportedly, participated in some attacks, actively colluding with Hindu criminals. One hundred and eighty-four people died throughout the state of Gujarat-shot by the police. In Ahmedabad, 252 people died. The largest number of killings occurred in the Naroda Patia and Gulbarg Society areas. In Naroda Patia, 65 people were burnt alive by a 5,000-strong mob after having been hacked and raped. In Gulbarg Society, the 250 persons including former Muslim MP (Member of Parliament) Ahsan Jafry were targeted by a crowd of 20,000. Seventy people were murdered, with Jafry. The entire state of Gujarat was rocked by violence. Sixteen of its twenty-four districts were affected. The violence then spread to rural areas where, it is estimated, 1,200 villages were targeted. Adivasis participated in the attacks against Muslims on a scale never witnessed before. In the city of Baroda, on March 1, fourteen persons were burned alive at the Best Bakery, a Muslim establishment. Two hundred and forty-nine people died in Panchmahal district, 54 in Dahod district, 57 more in Mehsana district, 30 in Kheda district, 28 in Sabarkantha district, and many more in other districts.
Apart from these two major incidents there have been a number of acts of violence against Muslims in most parts of the country. The worst situation is that even the security agencies can not be trusted when it comes to holding the rioters back. It has been made very clear through various findings that the police more often than not assists the majority community in killing the members of the minority community. In cases when they wish to interfere, there have been cases, like in Gujarat, where
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ordered by the politicians not to do so. Even as mobs were rampaging in Gujarat on the 28 February 2002, and the police commissioner of Ahmedabad himself had urgently requested more troops in the city, the governments neglected to put in a formal request for army deployments. This despite the fact that the Southern Command in Pune had already prepared its contingency plan by early afternoon expecting to be called upon by the government. Even when the army troopers eventually landed in the riot-torn cities of Gujarat on March 1st, the administration did not provide them with equipment or assistance in handling the solution. This led to costly delays of several hours, which could have saved more than a hundred lives.85
Even after the riots were over, the state government showed little interest in any sort of investigation. When the government first announced a judicial probe to investigate the violence in Gujarat, it only limited the scope of the judicial commission to the massacre on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, and NOT the riots in the rest of Gujarat. After this decision caused widespread outrage, the government agreed to extend the scope of this inquiry to cover the post-Godhra violence as well. However, the judge appointed to head this commission, Justice KG Shah, is a retired Gujarat High Court Judge with close ties to the ruling government and a history of antiminority judgements. One of his judgements was overturned by the Supreme Court of India with the comment that "the finding of the judge... is not based on appreciation of evidence but on imagination.‖
Although, post 1990 India saw very deadly riots killing thousands of people, the country had seen riots even before that. According to Asghar Ali Engineer, the first major riot took place in Jamshedpur in 1961. In the 1960s India used to see around one communal riot a day, so more than 300 riots every year. The rioting increased in intensity in the 1980s; major communal riots occurred in Moradabad (1980), Biharsharif (1981), Baroda and Meerut (1982), Nelli, Assam, where 4,000 people were killed (1983), Bombay and Bhiwandi (1984), anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and other places (1984), Ahmedabad (1985), Meerut again (1987), Bhagalpur (1989).86 It is interesting to know that the BJP that was making efforts to get a break through in the 85 Shalini Gera and Girish Agrawal, ‗Gujarat Riots:The Top 5 Myths and Facts‘, Coalition against Communalism, available at: http://cac.ektaonline.org/resources/articles/myths+facts.htm last accessed on 23 December 2015 86See ‗Muslims in Hindu Nationalist India: A Conversation with Asghar Ali Engineer and Paul R. Brass,‘ Ethics and Public Policy Centre, Washington April 2004 No. 28
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electoral politics started realising that an all out attack on Muslims (as prescribed by the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and other organisations) would not be beneficial, therefore it began attacking the policies of the ruling Congress party vis-a-vis Muslims. Engineer notes that the BJP officially adopted secularism as its policy but then became more violent. In the early 1980s the BJP put a question mark on Indian secularism by calling it ―pseudo-secularism,‖ meaning that Indian secularism is Western in origin and is based on the ―appeasement‖ of Muslims. So it is not real secularism but pseudo-secularism. The BJP also adopted a slogan that only Hindus can be truly secular; no other religious group can be truly secular.87
It must be noted once again that most of the violence against Muslims took place when the ‗centrist‘ and ‗secular‘ Congress party was ruling the states as well the Union of India. However, the main agent of this violence and hatred had been the majoritarian communal groups mushrooming on the bed of Hindutva ideology. The riots at regular intervals virtually relegated the Muslims, barring a few elite families from the mainstream and left them marginalised in the urban and rural areas alike across the country. This is a part of the design that RSS had made for the minorities, particularly the Muslims. The RSS made all efforts to seem them withdrawing from the political process and pushing them to live in a space allotted and assigned by the Sangh Parivar. Morevover, they should be kept away from any process of nation building.
Moreover, the security of the economic and educational assets build by Muslims is not guaranteed in any case whatsoever. The glance at the historical pattern of the communal riots tells that the most intensive communal (anti-Muslim) riots have occurred in those places where the prosperity of Muslims is visible.88 Earlier, antiMuslim violence occurred in poor Muslim localities. From the 1990s onwards, the violence changed its character and now even the affluent section of the Muslims are targeted. This was seen both during Mumbai riots (1992-93) and Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom (2002). Another common thing that has come up after every such incident is the inability of the state to ensure security for Muslims and their institutions. This is purely due to electoral calculations that are kept in mind by the national and regional 87 ibid. 88 See Asghar Ali Engineer, (ed) Communal Riots in Post-Independence India, Sangam Books, (Hyderabad) 1994
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parties. Any help for the minority community or action against the miscreants from the majority community, they fear, would cost them the support of the Hindus and hence loss in the elections. It has already been discussed that how the Police get involved in the riots and help to majority community by giving them a covering fire, killing Muslims, who most of the times are protesters.
The sate-sponsored violent attack on Muslims in the state of Gujarat and in other incidents, the failure of state in providing security to the Muslims have created a sense of crisis in the community. The state‘s discrimination against Muslims is pretty much obvious in preventive arrests, enforcement of curfews, treatment of detained persons at police stations, reporting of facts and investigations, detection and prosecution of cases registered during riots. Moreover, Hindus view policemen as their friends. Their popular slogan shouted during communal riots has been ‗Hindu-Police Bhai Bhai, Beech Mein Vardi Kahan Se Aayi‗ (Hindus and Police are brothers, Police uniform does not matter). Muslims by and large have lost confidence in the police and consider them as enemies. Predominantly Hindu (as found out by the Sachar Committee) the police do not shed their prejudice at the time of entering the police force and this bias is manifested during the riots.89 What is the effect of this kind of treatment of the Muslims by the state and the majority community? The first is most likely to be ghettoisation, where a particular community is forced to choose and live in closed areas marked by their heavy presence, depravity absence of basic amenities and the worst of all consistently seen as criminals. Such ghettos are spread across the country where Muslims live marginalised in the city where once they and their businesses flourished.
Relegated, Marginalised and Urban Outcasts of India
The incidents of planned and sponsored violence have sustained the dynamics of self segregation among Muslims, who have been searching for safety in numbers. This process has been reinforced by the socioeconomic marginalisation of Muslims. The Muslim dominated neighbourhoods which have been emerging or expanding in this process of regrouping are increasingly being referred to as ‗Muslim ghettos‘ by
89 Ram Puniyani, ‗Muslims and Politics of Exclusion‘, in Abdul Shaban (ed) Lives of Muslims in India: Politics, Exclusion and Violence, Routledge, (New Delhi) 2012, pp 88-107
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India‘s Media, political class and academics alike.90 A book edited by Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot has taken up the issue in details with the contributors have studied the marginalisation of the Muslims in various cities including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Aligarh, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Cuttack,, Kozhikode (Calicut), Bangalore and Delhi.
The contributors of the book have found out that although there is a marginalisation of Muslims in various Indian cities, but the situation is different at different places. The Muslims apart from the Hindi speaking region and Guajarat have shown some good signs of regrouping and political participation. There have been some success stories to be shared from some parts of India, where the Muslim entrepreneurs, academics and other professional have made it big in their respective fields. But as repeated more often that not the success of some Muslims is not proportional to their share of demography of India There is absolutely no doubt that the Muslims constitute an vital ‗vote bank‗ for various political parties, who take the calculated risk of talking about ‗Muslim issues‘ however after elections everything is forgotten. Meanwhile, there are places where the condition of the Muslims is quite dismal.
Ghettoisation has crucial consequences for the economic and educational conditions of Muslims and for relations between the different communities. Besides, this there have been several reports on housing segregations in various parts of the country, particularly in affluent areas where Muslims (only those who can manage to spend millions of Indian Rupee) find it difficult to buy a house for them. Some Muslims are able to rent or buy homes in Hindu-dominated areas or buildings. But the obstacles faced by many is encouraging housing developments specifically targeting well-off Muslims seeking to escape the overcrowding and squalor of older, neglected Muslim neighbourhoods. India has no law against discrimination in housing, and in fact protects people‘s rights to form societies or associations for common purposes, including building houses exclusively for members of religious faiths. But housing discrimination in Indian cities takes many forms.91
90 See ‗Muslims of the Indian City: From Centrality to Marginality‘ Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot in Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds) Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, HarperCollins (New Delhi) 2012 91 Amy Kazim, ‗Muslim Apartments Highlight Housing Segregation In India‘ Financial Times, 5 October 2014 available at: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/62e72d98-39a3-11e4-93da00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Q1W4bQQU accessed on 1 January 2015
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In Gujarat, where Narendra Modi was chief minister for 12 years, activists complain that the state‘s Disturbed Areas Act is being used to block the sale of property by Hindus to Muslims. Introduced in 1991 to prevent distress sales after incidences of communal violence, the act‘s provisions ban people from selling their property to buyers of a different faith in areas designated as disturbed. But the law now covers 40 per cent of the state capital Ahmedabad, preventing Muslims from buying even in many seemingly tranquil neighbourhoods.92 Mumbai is notorious for its ―vegetariansonly‖ high-rise apartment buildings, which in effect means only upper-caste Hindus, or members of the affluent Jain minority, can live there, while Muslim families – or meat-eating lower-caste Hindus – are kept out. In many middle-class Delhi neighbourhoods, where single family bungalows are giving way to four or five-storey apartment buildings, Muslims face extreme difficulties trying to rent, let alone buy.93
In general, Muslims are forced to settle in Muslim-majority areas with poor infrastructure and civic facilities, for which the government alone is to blame. Until the early nineties, one could find Muslim government servants occupying government housing in areas where the majority of the population was not Muslim. But even here, a change has been visible since 1992. To take just one example: a large number of Muslim teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, reputedly an enlightened institution with liberal outlook and social sensitivity, prefer to live in Muslim-dominated colonies or ghettos rather than on university campus after 1992.94
The result of this phenomenon is that all over the country Muslim families are to be seen only in areas that can be termed as ‗Muslim clusters‘. Muslim staff members as well as the old generation of teachers at JNU, have mostly returned to Muslimdominated areas after retirement. An employee of the World Bank or a foreign mission, owing to fear psychosis, is often forced to live in places like the Jama Masjid area of Old Delhi, though his social profile certainly does not match that of the average inhabitant of the walled city. It has become common for families that moved
92 ibid 93 ibid 94 Ather Farouqi, ‗Living together Separately: Ghettoization of Muslims‘ Twocircle.net, 14 April 2010, available at: http://twocircles.net/2010apr14/living_together_separately_ghettoization_muslims.html#.VMixYSiIxa U, accessed on 1 January 2015
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from the walled city to New Delhi some fifty years ago to move back to their old family homes simply because they do not feel secure in Hindu-dominated areas.95
Here, one has to take into account the response of the state, and in particular of the judiciary, to the development of such colonies identified by their inhabitants based on their socio religious identity. The Corporate Societies Act that regulates the housing societies in the country, put clear prohibition on the housing societies where membership would be confined to the people of a particular persuasion, religion, belief or region.96 Muslim enclaves (ghettos) did not come up suddenly. In most cases, those who were pushed to ‗safe‘ by communal violence settled in localities that has substantial Muslim population.97
The life of Muslims during the riots brings about various challenges. The biggest of them all is the question of security, both from the rioters. As discussed above and attested by various reports that the role of police is very partisan during the riots and Muslims take them as enemies for obvious reasons, one may add that life is even more miserable for those who are caught on charges of rioting or perhaps what is the emergence of a relatively new phenomenon ~ charges of terror. Hundreds of Muslims are picked up by the security agencies after the riots and detained without any charges adding to the social stigma against them. A number of commentators have pointed out at this dangerous trend which is completely illegal. Although in most of the cases, the ‗accused‘ are proved innocent at the court, however, the process takes a long time and it affects the entire life of the individual as well as the people related to him or her. 95 ibid. 96 The Supreme Court of India was expected to have enforced desegregation as a necessary concomitant of the Right to Equality and the constitutional prohibitions against discrimination based on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. However in the 2005 judgment in Zorastrian Cooperative housing society's case, it upheld a bye-law which prohibited non-Parsis from buying property in a Parsi-only society. The logic of the two judge bench was that the bye-law was permitted by the statute which was not unconstitutional. The Court refused to step into what it thought was the legislative domain. The judgment says: "The Constitution no doubt provides that in any State action there shall be no discrimination based either on religion or on sex... Unless appropriate amendments are brought to the various Cooperative Societies Acts incorporating a policy that no society shall be formed or if formed, membership in no society shall be confined to persons of a particular persuasion, religion, belief or region, it could not be said that a society would be disentitled to refuse membership to a person who is not duly qualified to be one in terms of its bye-laws..." quoted in a report by Sanjay Hedge, ‗Taking on the ghettos: India's courts must act to end housing discrimination‘, Daily Mail, 11 November 2103, available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2501212/Taking-ghettos-Indiascourts-act-end-housing-discrimination.html last accessed on 24 March 2015 97 See Rowena Robinson, Tremors of Violence: Muslim Survivors of Ethnic Strife in Western India , Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005, p 43
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Social activist and former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer reiterates that, the pervasive sense of insecurity, reported from various corners of the country, derive greatly from the prejudice, illegality and impunity with which police forces across the country deal with the challenges of terror. This is a regular pattern that recurs after every terror attack, and sometimes even when there have been no actual terror episodes but the State authorities claim that there was a conspiracy, which they detected and prevented.98 Almost none who bears a Muslim identity is exempt from the fear that they, or members of their families, can be subjected to the same allegations of terror links, and to similar processes of detention, torture, encounter killings or prolonged, multiple and biased trials. No class, no profession, no part of the country, is safe, as long as you are Muslim. Completely different standards are applied in the cases of the Hindutva terror organisations that have come to light. It is almost as if being Muslim and (usually) male makes you an automatic suspect of terrorism, and it is not the burden of the State to prove your guilt but your own responsibility to prove your innocence.99
Muslims, Crime and Media Representation
According to the official report on prisoners released in 2013, one in every five prisoners is a Muslim as they make 20 per cent of the total prisoners population across the country. The percentage of convicts as well of undertrials in India‘s prisons is much higher than their population in three important vulnerable communities – Muslims, scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs). The data suggest that while Muslims constitute around 14 per cent of India‘s population, their share of jail population is around 19 per cent – 17.1 per cent of convicts and 21 per cent of undertrials. The following two graphical representations will give a clearer idea of the disproportionate presence of Muslims in the Indian prisons. As mentioned before the conviction rate is quite low. Therefore, even those who are proved innocent have not choice but to spend time inside the prisons across India. In 2012 also, the religionwise break-up was almost same. Thus, there were 18.8 per cent Muslim convicts and
98 Harsh Mander, ‗Barefoot: To Be a Muslim in India Today‘ The Hindu, 7 August 2010, available at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/barefoot-to-be-a-muslim-in-indiatoday/article37959.ece accessed on 21 September 2014 99 ibid
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21 Muslim undertrials. The report has been prepared and release by the National Crime Records Bureau, a constituent of the Union Ministry of Home.
Source: Counterview.org
Source: Counterview.org
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A report by Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association100 (JTSA) focusses on the policies of the security agencies in framing the Muslims youths and many a times tampering with the evidences to prove them guilty in the court. The document talks about 16 cases in which those accused of being operatives of various terrorist organizations (Al Badr, HUJI, Lashkar-e-Toiba), arrested in main by the Special Cell of Delhi Police, were acquitted by the courts, not simply for want of evidence, but because the evidence was tampered with, and the police story was found to be unreliable and incredulous.101 The report also questions the way the media has reported the events of arrest and the trial of the accused. A large section of media takes no time whatsoever in dubbing an individual as a terrorist relying heavily on the version provided by the security agencies. According to the research, The Indian press has relegated the development issues of Muslims to the background. The poverty ridden and illiterate community‘s development problems get low coverage in the English press. The continued obsession of the press with politics at the cost of development has further alienated the Muslims from the mainstream population.102
When it comes to a question of the relationship between Media and Minority, Muslims once again get marginalized. One, of course, needs to unravel the communal, anti-Muslim hatred campaign of the Right-wing Hindutva forces to understand the kind of exclusion and marginalization that is currently being experienced by the Muslim community, but the role of media too is questionable. The media has created such a hypertrophy of information (read miss-information), by the endless proliferation of ungrounded images generated by it, that it has begun to subvert our sense of reality.103 The Media appears to be more interested in picking up the trivial issues on which there is a whole lot of debate within the Muslims. Taking an example of a news related a fatwa (theological opinion), the media plays up the issue related to fatwa as something really very relevant, which in fact, does not even draw the attention of Muslims in most of the cases.
100 http://www.teacherssolidarity.org/ 101 See the full report, available at: http://document.teacherssolidarity.org/JTSA_Report.pdf 102 Usharani Narayana and Priti Kapur, Indian Media Framing of the Image of Muslims, available at: http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/13641/1/Usha%20rani-1.pdf 103Avinash Kumar, ‗Mass Media and Muslims in India: Representation or Subversion‘, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 1, March 2011, pp 59-77
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According to veteran journalist and former editor of The Times of India, Dileep Padgaonkar, in projecting the image of Muslims, The mainstream media is divided into two groups. One stereotypes the Muslims as ―fanatical‖ and ―fundamentalists‖. Often, the acts of few individuals belonging to the community are seen as approved by the entire community. Even if a religious leader issues any appeal to the Muslims, it is described by a loaded word, ―fatwa‖, as if it is binding on all Muslims. Hardly anyone bothers to know what ―fatwa‖ is and what its relevance is. There is no concept of priesthood in Islam and therefore, a ―fatwa‖ even if issued by a prominent theologian, is simply his personal opinion. It is not binding or the ultimate word on the subject, unlike what the media presents it or the authorities at Deoband might like Muslims to believe. While the other media devotes miles and miles of news space for Muslims like sensational Shahrukh and Sania, the magical musician A.R. Rahman, pacers Pathan and Patel, the Bangas brothers (Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan) and many such others. One is unable to understand the extent of contradiction that how a community that is presented as ―fanatical‖ and ―fundamentalists‖ could always do exceptionally well in music, sports, entertainment and in education too like the former Indian President Dr. Kalam.104
All in all a better representation of the Mislims in the media is required. Crime and illegal activities are not the monopoly of Muslims and therefore such subjects related to certain members of the community should be covered the way it is generally covered. There is also a need to cover development related stories more often than not. The Indian media picks up some trivial Issues like fatwa, talaq, hijab, madarsa etc., that have very limited relevance of the daily lives of Muslims. It hardly ever heeds the absence of civic amenities in the Muslim majority areas. However, all this can not be blamed too much for the backwardness of Muslims because, after all, media is majorly a private enterprise, it works for profit, and Muslim subject are not easy to get sponsorship.
104 Interview with Avinash Kumar, 2007, See Avinash Kumar Op.cit
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Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that India as a democracy has all the promising features to cater every section of society. The Constitution of India by adding ―Secular‖ along with Sovereign, Socialist, and Democratic, gave a lot of hope to its citizens that the functioning of the state will not be affected by the interference of any religion. It has generally remained secular, however, there has been a tremendous pressure from the Right-wing Hindutva groups, which has its impact on public policy making particularly vis-a-vis Muslims.
Although various governments over the years have made policies and tried to take affirmative action to bring the Muslims in a better condition, however at the implementation level all the poiliec have failed. This is due to the allegation of being a ―Muslim appeaser‖ that the governments want to play it safe. The successive governments, most of whom run by the ‗centrist‘ and ‗secular‗ Congress party have been conscious of the possibility of losing the majority (Hindu) vote, if they displease them. Meanwhile, the BJP that currently is ruling at the centre and in several states is backed by the RSS ideology, that clearly seeks to make India a Hindu state.
Finally, the claims that most of the Muslims, who make almost 18 per cent of the total population of India, are lagging far behind the Majority community, are substantiated by several independent researches and government appointed commissions. The hue and cry about the plight of Muslims assumes importance because Muslims constitute a large section of Indian society and as a democratic country they must not be relegated to the margins of the society even in the multicultural and cosmopolitan cities, as what Loic Wacquant says ‗urban outcastes‘.
