CHALLENGES BEFORE INDIAN MUSLIMS
Much has been said and written about the challenges facing the Indian Muslims over the last six decades. The fact is that even 63 years after Indian Independence, the plight of Indian Muslims remains as grim as ever but I can say that vast opportunities exist today for their amelioration. One way of looking at the issue is doing the simple SWOT analysis, that is, identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the Indian Muslims but this would be an outdated approach.
As we know, Muslims constitute the second biggest community in India after the Hindus. The preliminary exercise now underway for 2011 census indicates that India’s population in March 2011 is likely to be around 1.2 billion. Muslims constitute approximately 14 percent of the population, which means that there are around 17 crore Muslims in India now. No other country in the world, Muslim or non-Muslim, has Muslim population rivaling India.
Needless to say, Muslims have a pan-India presence. Jammu & Kashmir has Muslim majority. In six other States the proportion of Muslims to total population is above the national percentage of 13.4 as per 2001 census. Assam has 30.9 percent Muslims, West Bengal 25.2 percent, Kerala 24.6 percent, Uttar Pradesh 18.55 percent, Bihar 16.5 percent and Jharkhand 13.8 percent. In absolute numbers, Uttar Pradesh has 30.7 million Muslims, West Bengal 20.2 million, Bihar 13.7 million, and Maharashtra 10.70 million Muslims,
A huge community like the Indian Muslims faces numerous problems and challenges for assorted reasons, partly historical. Suffice to say that three major studies commissioned by the Government of India in the last three decades have brought out a broader profile of Indian Muslims. A high-level Committee to study their conditions was set up in 1980 under the chairmanship of Gopal Singh.
The Committee, in its report, concluded that the poor among the Muslims could not avail opportunities in education, employment, and economic activities because of isolation and various historical factors. In view of this, in 1983, the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi launched the Prime Minister’s 15- Point Programme to provide a sense of security to minority communities and ensure their rapid socio-economic development.
After the United Progressive Alliance Government succeeded the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance Government in 2004, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh constituted a High-Level Committee on social, economic and educational status of Muslim Community of India, better known as Justice Rajender Sachar Committee. The Sachar Committee’s report provides a grim but most exhaustive and comprehensive profile of the social, economic and educational backwardness of Muslims even as India has entered the 21st Century with a new confidence.
The UPA government also set up the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, better known as Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, in 2004 to recommend measures for welfare of socially and educationally backward sections among religious and linguistic minorities, including reservation in education and government employment. The Commission, in its report submitted in 2007, also concluded that Muslims, who account for 73 percent of the population of minorities in India, remain the most backward among all the socially, educationally and economically backward groups in the country, despite the initiatives taken by the Government through policies of positive discrimination and affirmative action for social, educational and economic development.
The Ranganath Misra Commission has recommended 10 percent reservations in education and public employment for the Muslims and five percent for other minorities. The Sachar Committee has also made a series of far-reaching recommendations with regard to general policy initiatives and approaches as well as specific policy initiatives to tackle the myriad problems faced by the Muslim community at the Central and state levels. A geographical mapping of minorities has also been undertaken and districts, cities and towns, with a population exceeding 50,000, which have a substantial minority population, have been identified.
The comprehensive reports of Sachar Committee and Ranganath Misra Commission have pointed out the pitiable socio-economic conditions of the Muslims and low education and literacy levels among them. It was found that the Muslims were even more backward than the Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and ill-health were widely prevalent among the Muslims, though a substantial proportion of Muslims lived in urban areas. The fate lf Muslims in rural areas was worse off.
Though Sachar Committee and Ranganath Misra Commission have not looked into the issue of political empowerment of Muslims, as it was beyond their purview, the fact is that Muslims remain under-represented not only in the Indian Parliament and the State Legislatures but also in the local urban and panchayat raj bodies. A closer look at the electoral data reveals that the number of Muslim elected representatives has been declining both in the Parliament and State Legislatures despite the fact they account for a sizeable chunk of the electorate in at least 100 out of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and one-sixth of the Assembly constituencies across the country. Thus, Muslims not only suffer from social and economic deprivation but also political under-representation.
Apart from socio-economic and educational backwardness and political under-representation, Muslims suffer a deep sense of insecurity mainly because of the hostile posturing by the Hindutva forces led by the Sangh Parivar on the one hand and discriminatory actions of the administrative and law enforcement machinery on the other.
In every successive communal riot, Muslims suffer both at the hands of the Sangh Parivar and the police. Moreover, after every terror attack in any part of the country, Muslim youth are targeted by the security forces even as non-secular parties and forces point an accusing finger at the Muslims even without an iota of evidence.
Invariably, thousands of Muslim youth have suffered imprisonment and humiliation under the draconian Acts enacted in the past like TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention Act) and POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). After the bomb blast at Mecca Masjid, Malegaon Idgah and Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Muslim youth were arrested and tortured by the security forces even as the needle of suspicion in these attacks pointed to the role of groups with Hindutva roots.
Despite the fact that the major political parties, including the ruling Congress and other secular parties, do not field Muslim candidates in proportion to their population or electoral strength in the Parliament and State Legislatures, the Indian Muslims have played a pivotal role in the 2004 general elections and firmly and determinedly rooted for the Congress and other UPA constituents, bringing to an end the six-rule draconian rule of NDA for the minorities of the country. They have voted with determination and resoluteness again in 2009 general elections to keep the BJP and other NDA constituents away from power.
As India marches forward and is on the way to emerge as an economic super power in the next two decades or so, the biggest challenge for the Indian Muslims is to march forward with the rest of the population of the country. The process of liberalization, privatization and globalization over the last two decades has impacted the disadvantaged sections, including Muslims, very adversely and, at the same time, opened the flood gates of opportunities for them. The Muslims don’t need to depend solely on public employment or government –run educational institutions for their advancement.
The minorities, including Muslims, have set up their own professional colleges across all the streams of higher education. Most of these institutions are, incidentally, run in the southern states, including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Andhra Pradesh has engineering, MBA, MCA, medical, dental and pharmacy colleges run by Muslim minority. Thousands of Muslim boys and girls are getting professional education in these colleges. In some states, they are getting reservations in educational institutions and public employment on the basis of their socio-economic and educational backwardness.
The UPA government, on its part, has taken several initiatives for the minorities, particularly Muslims. The 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) talks about social justice, inclusive growth and empowerment of the minorities. The 11th Plan document, while discussing the schemes and programmes for minorities, observes, inter alia, that:
“In pursuance of the Constitutional provisions, the government is committed to the well being of the minorities. Such measures are not limited to protecting and promoting their language, religion and culture, but also in making special efforts for their socio-economic development and mainstreaming.”
The Prime Minister’s new 15-Point Programme, launched in 2006, is aimed at ensuring the well being, protection and development of minorities. The focus of the new Programme is to make certain that benefits of various schemes/programmes flow equitably to the minorities. For this, it quantifies a certain portion of development projects to be established in areas with a concentration of minorities. It stipulates that wherever possible, 15 percent of targets and outlays under a dozen schemes shall be earmarked for the minorities. On 29th January 2006, a separate Ministry of Minority Affairs (MMA) was created.
The budgetary outlays for the welfare of minorities have almost been raised ten-fold since 2004-05. In the Union Budget for the financial year 2010-11, allocation for minority welfare has been raised to 26 billion rupees. The Ministry of Minority Affairs has launched new schemes and initiatives. The corpus of the Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF) has been enhanced manifold for expanding its activities for implementation of educational schemes for educationally backward minorities. The authorized share capital of the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) has been raised substantially for expanding its loan and micro-finance operations to promote self-employment and other economic ventures among backward sections of the minority communities.
A Multi-Sectoral Development Programme has been launched in 90 identified Minority Concentration Districts which are lagging behind in terms of critical socio-economic and basic amenities parameters and require focused attention and specific programme intervention. The programme aims at improving the quality of life of the people and reducing imbalances in line with the priority attached to inclusive growth.
Identified ‘development deficits’ in education, sanitation, pucca housing, drinking water, electricity supply etc. and absolutely critical infrastructure linkages like basic health infrastructure, Integrated child development services (ICDS) centres, skill development and marketing facilities are being addressed through this programme. The focus of this programme is on rural and semi-rural areas of the identified 90 Minority Concentrated Districts.
Despite positive discrimination and affirmative action by the UPA government at the Centre and some of the State governments, like the Andhra Pradesh government, a lot more needs to be done both by the Union government and the State governments concerned to ensure effective implementation of minority-specific schemes as well as other policies, schemes and programmes of the government so as to accelerate socio-economic and educational development and political empowerment of the Muslims.
The Government also needs to ensure security to the lives and properties of the Muslims so that there is no repetition of the 2002 Gujarat carnage in any part of India.
It will be naïve for the Indian Muslims to look up to the government to do everything for them. The government can launch policy initiatives and schemes and programmes to address the specific problems of the Muslims but ultimately it is the collective responsibility of the Muslim community to ensure that it draws the maximum benefits from these schemes and initiatives. It is for the Muslims to avail and exploit the myriad opportunities that exist outside the government sector. Education with a modern outlook is the key to success for the Muslims in these trying times. As the Quranic verse goes, Allah does not ameliorate the condition of those who do not change themselves.
The greatest strength of the Indian Muslims is that they are the second biggest community in the world’s second most populous country. Their biggest weakness is that the bulk of the community is steeped in abject poverty, widespread illiteracy and political under-representation. Myriad opportunities await them in India’s liberal democratic and economic set-up even as the country joins the big league of economic super powers. The gravest threat to Indian Muslims, of course, comes from the Hindutva forces who are doing everything to subvert India’s multi-racial, multi-linguistic and multi-religious polity with a view to turning India into a Hindu Rashtra. However, Indian Muslims also need to insulate themselves from and isolate the fringe elements within their own community who are misguiding youth to take to the path of so-called Islamic extremism or Jihad.
