Muslim Dilemma in Independent India - Part One

By Naresh Chandra Saxena, New Age Islam

9 November 2023

Abstract

Muslims in Independent India have suffered immensely because of strong Hindu bias, which exhibited itself in excessive police violence against them during the riots even during the relatively ‘Secular’ Congress regimes. Since the 1980s, prejudice and suspicion against Muslims has further deepened due to the appeasement policies of the Congress government, and the role played by Muslim political leaders and clergy in those years. Such policies helped the BJP to exploit Hindu fears for political gains, and after coming to power BJP has openly promoted hatred against Muslims, reducing them almost to the status of second-class citizens. For the BJP Muslims are non-voters, and hence their concerns can not only be ignored but deliberately hitting at their interests occasionally (Art. 370, CAA, triple talaq, anti-conversion laws) is considered electorally rewarding.

How do Muslims fight against injustice? The path of agitational politics, so effective in a liberal democracy, is not likely to benefit Muslims as long as hatred against them dominates the Hindu mind. With the increasing gulf between the two communities, any agitation by Muslims against discrimination can arouse the very emotions amongst Hindus that foster discrimination and is therefore self-defeating. Unfortunately, the Muslim population's geographical dispersal renders it impossible for them to convert their cultural identity into a political pressure group. Furthermore, BJP's rise has left the community electorally irrelevant. Hindu illiberalism has emerged with a vengeance. As long as bias continues in the Hindu mind, even a 'secular' Government would be inhibited in initiating a policy that would be perceived as pro-Muslim.

This leaves little choice for Muslims, except to look within and achieve success on merit, rather than agitate for group rights. Luckily, there is no overt discrimination against them in education and recruitment to government jobs, and therefore Muslims should aspire not only to increase their share in elite professions, but also to improve their image, which would happen if in the next 20 years the best doctors, teachers and administrators in the country were Muslims. They need a mass movement in which basic thrust should be on the qualitative aspect of education.

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[1] This is a revised version of the author's article published in 'Citizenship: Context and Challenges', edited by Amir Ullah Khan and Riaz F. Shaikh, Centre for Development Policy and Practice, Hyderabad, 2021

Introduction

Despite adequate provisions in the Constitution guaranteeing justice and equality for all, Muslims in India have unfortunately faced immense problems since Independence, such as violence, lack of physical security, and discrimination. Even during the Congress regimes, Police had often displayed strong bias against Muslims and sided with the Hindu mobs while handling communal riots. Their status has further worsened after the BJP came to power in 2014, as its leadership has openly promoted hatred against Muslims abusing them as successors of Aurangzeb, Pakistanis, traitors, and terrorists. Poisoning of Hindu minds has often led to mob lynchings of Muslims without any provocation, and which has almost reduced Muslims to second class citizens with no security of personal life and property. Over eight years (2010–18) of the total 87 lynching cases, 97 per cent took place after Modi’s Government came to power in 2014, and of the 289 victims, 88 per cent were Muslims (Teltumbde, 2018). The BJP’s attack on the on fundamental rights of Muslims indicates a concerted attempt to impose a majoritarian concept of nationhood - one that clearly militates against constitutional democracy and common citizenship (Hasan, 2014).

The Sangh Parivar has been able to construct the identity of Muslims as inimical to the national interests (Singh, 2016). This strategy of spreading venom against Muslims has brought to the BJP immense political advantage because a very large number of Hindus have unfortunately a negative image about Muslims and therefore are easily persuaded by the BJP's propaganda. The BJP has been successful in converting deep seated Hindu prejudices and hatred against Muslims into political gains, as polarising Hindus on religious lines diverts the attention of voters from the Government's failure on economic fronts. The voters then judge the performance of government not on whether they have prospered economically, but whether Muslims have been adequately punished and shown their place.  Thus, BJP has an incentive to promote a 'malignant anti-Muslim vision for India' (Jangid, 2019), and its success has frightened the Congress and other political parties, who rather than come out openly against majoritarianism have themselves been forced to follow the policy of 'soft Hindutva' so as not to lose votes of the majority community.

Unfortunately, the focus of Muslim religious and political leaders in the last seventy years has been on seeking distributive justice through exclusivity and reservations, which further heightens Hindu fears against them. This paper therefore argues that rather than organize politically to fight for a separate Personal Law and job reservations, the Muslim leadership should take steps to reduce the Hindu bias against them, which is the root cause of the success of political propaganda against them by the BJP. The problem is more social than political.

The Early Period After Independence

Except for Jawaharlal Nehru, most other Hindu Ministers of the Congress Party, especially at the state level, exhibited strong bias against Muslims in their mental makeup and policies. As far back as 1936, Nehru noted in dismay that 'many a congressman was a communalist under his national cloak' (Hasan, 1980). They blamed Muslims for the vivisection of 'their motherland', and hurriedly took away whatever privileges were granted to them by the British. In November 1947, the UP minister for local self-Government introduced two bills that eliminated separate electorates for district boards and town councils. The widespread feeling among Hindus that Muslims were disloyal and might emigrate to Pakistan further reduced the chances of Muslims being employed in key posts or being recruited to the police. When UP police minister (and future Congress prime minister) Lal Bahadur Shastri announced in October 1947 that he was forming an 'absolutely loyal' investigative force to combat anti-state activities, there was no need for him to spell out what 'absolutely loyal' meant in terms of ethnic composition. The proportion of Muslims among the senior police force and civil service officers in UP dropped from 40 per cent   in 1947 to 7 per cent in 1958. The Government also reneged on the Congress Party's pre-independence promises to Muslims to promote the Hindustani lingua franca in both Hindi and Urdu, though as late as July 1947, nine out of every 10 cases filed by    policemen in UP were still written in Urdu (Wilkinson, 2004).

[1] Arundhati Roy: 'Congress has done covertly, stealthily, hypocritically, shame-facedly, what the BJP does with pride.' https://www.dailyo.in/politics/indian-muslims-islam-hindutva-rss-congress-bjp-secularism-amu-jamia-millia-islamia/story/1/9000.html

Though the Indian National Congress, throughout the Independence struggle, had promised proportional representation through joint electorates to Muslims, and this safeguard was included in the first draft of the Constituent Assembly, it was dropped    in the final version after Sardar Patel moved an amendment in 1949 and the provision for reserved seats for Muslims in legislatures was withdrawn (Patel, 1989).

On several occasions, Gobind Ballabh Pant, Chief Minister (CM) of UP from 1946 to 1954, showed his strong bias against Muslims. Rajeshwar Dayal, the then home secretary of UP in 1947, writes in his autobiography that he informed Pant of a dastardly RSS conspiracy to create a communal holocaust throughout the western districts of the province, but CM decided to keep quiet and did not instruct the police     to act. Procrastination and indecision of CM and the UP cabinet led to dire consequences and mass killings.

Mr. Dayal concludes that the roots of the RSS had gone deep into the body politic of UP,       and RSS sympathisers, both covert and overt, were to be found in the Congress Party  itself and even in the cabinet. It was no secret that the presiding officer of the Upper House, Atma Govind Kher, was himself an adherent and his sons were openly members of the RSS (Dayal, 1999).

Pant was also responsible for creating the Babri masjid fiasco in 1949. With his tacit support, the district Collector Nayar got the Hindu idols surreptitiously installed at    the Babri mosque on the night of December 22-23, 1949. Prime minister Nehru was furious and asked the CM to undo the wrong, but Pant did not act. The chief secretary   Bhagwan Sahay's frantic messages for the removal of the idols were not acted upon by the Collector Nayar on the ground that 'it will entail suffering to many innocent lives'.  Nayar later resigned to join Jan Sangh and was elected a member of Parliament.

Thus, there was a substantial gap between Nehru’s promises on minority rights and   the actual performance of Congress state Governments. Addressing the All-Indian Congress Committee in May 1958, Nehru said that although 'the Congress stood for a       secular society, the workers were slipping away from the principles of secularism and becoming more and more communal minded' (Wilkinson, 2004).

Handling Of Communal Riots by The Police

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 brought about a change in the attitude   of the people on the communal question. The RSS was banned and the Hindu communal elements were greatly weakened. The period between 1950 and 1960 may be called a decade of communal peace. General political stability and economic development in the country also contributed to the improvement of the communal situation. Unfortunately, the incidence of communal violence has been showing a continuous upward trend since 1964.

[1] KK Nayar’s radio message to the Chief Minister, 'A few Hindus entered Babri Masjid at night when the Masjid was deserted and installed a deity there. DM and SP and force at spot. Situation under control. Police picket of 15 persons was on duty at night but did not apparently act.'

[1] Based on Government reports and Judicial Commission findings. These are mostly official figures, actual loss of

Serious riots broke out in various parts of East India like Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Ranchi, because of tension that erupted in Kashmir over                 the theft of the holy relic of the Prophet from Hazratbal mosque. Although the relic was discovered within a week, the incident led to serious riots in far off Khulna in East Pakistan, which caused panic among the Hindu population of that region who started migrating to India.

These refugees carried with them harrowing tales of their woes in East Pakistan, and     as its reaction atrocities were committed against Muslims in Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Ranchi. According to Mr. S.K. Ghosh, who was the Additional Director General of Police in Orissa, about two thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed in     the riots in Rourkela (Saxena, 1984).

According to the official records, casualties in some important riots are shown in Table 1:

Table 1: People Killed In Communal Violence

NAME OF PLACE	YEAR	NO. OF PEOPLE KILLED
		Hindus	Muslims
Aligarh	(1961)	1	12
Ranchi/Hatia	(Aug. 1967)	20	156
Ahmedabad	(Sept. 1969)	24	430
Bhiwandi	(May 1970)	17	59
Jalgaon	(May 1970)	1	42
Firozabad	(1972)	3	16
Aligarh	(1978)	6	19
Jamshedpur	(1979)	12	107
Moradabad	(Aug. 1980)	18	142
Meerut	(1987)	41	131
Bhagalpur	(1989)	50	896
Bombay	(1992-93)	275	575
Gujarat	(2002)	254	790
Firozabad	(2013)	13	52

 (Saxena, 2019)

[1] Based on Government reports and Judicial Commission findings. These are mostly official figures, actual loss of Muslim lives has been much more, as revealed by independent studies.

The unfortunate fact is that administration in the handling of these riots has been grossly unfair to Muslims, though in almost all such cases, the Congress party was in power both at the state and central level. This has been amply discussed in various Commissions of Enquiry reports.

For instance, the Madon Commission on Bhiwandi (Maharashtra) riots, 1970 observed:

        Discrimination was practised in making arrests, and while Muslim rioters were arrested in large numbers, the police turned a blind eye to what the Hindu rioters were doing.

        Some innocent Muslims were arrested, with the knowledge that they were innocent.

        Some Muslim prisoners were beaten both when arrested and while in police custody.

        Muslim prisoners were made to stay in the compound of the taluka Police station, with the shade of trees for only a few of them, while Hindu prisoners were made to stay on the verandahs.

        There was discrimination in the distribution of food and water between Hindu prisoners and Muslim prisoners.

The Bhagalpur Inquiry Commission Report in 1995 remarked, 'We would hold   Dwivedi, the then superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, wholly responsible for whatever happened before 24 October 1989, on 24th itself and after the 24th. His communal bias was fully demonstrated by his manner of arresting the Muslims and by not extending them adequate protection. How the search was conducted was reminiscent of the searches in occupied Europe by the Nazis.' It is unfortunate that Mr. Dwivedi rose to the highest level and retired as DGP of Bihar in charge of law & order in 2019!

Rajat Sharma, who is considered close to the BJP wrote in Onlooker about the Meerut riots of 1982:

‘Steel-helmeted, rifle-wielding jawans forcibly entered the Muslim houses, breaking   down doors that were not opened. They refused to obey the order of the civil officers and commenced reckless ransacking of the houses. They overpowered everybody inside and beat them up with rifle butts. Then suddenly, the jawans opened fire, their weapons aimed at the residents. At this point, the civil officers fled from the scene. More than 100 bodies were removed by the PAC. It is said that 450 houses were raided by the PAC and each house had now at least one occupant who will live with a deformity for the rest of his life.

A Muslim Engineer was killed in the Kotwali area, and his 16-year-old son was shot   dead at Bhumia Pul. His mother, a convent school teacher, was assaulted. The trauma   made her go insane. Ustad, a motor mechanic, and his helper were shot dead in Shahghasa, their hut was set afire. Sakhawal, a rickshaw puller, was killed in Purwa Faiyaz Ali.’

This riot was officially investigated by me as Joint Secretary, Minorities Commission,     GOI in 1983. I quote from my report:

'Inside the Feroze Building, I met Shabana, aged 11, who still bears many marks of knife injuries on her body. I visited the houses of Abdul Rasheed, Sheru, Anwar, Sherdin, Zafar Ali, Abdul Aziz, Irshad, Kalwa, Moin, Salim Iqbal, Abdul Zayyam, and Wali Mohd., all deceased in the unfortunate police action on October 1. I was shown bullet marks on the walls, blood-stained clothes belonging to the deceased, and many photographs of the houses which were taken soon after the incident which prove not only the fact of entry of the police force inside the houses but also looting and wanton destruction of property. After detailed inquiries, I was convinced that at least the killing of eighty innocent people by the PAC were not accounted for in the Police records.'

Unfortunately, GOI did not like my exposing police brutality, and I received a written       warning from the then Home Secretary, MMK Wali, a Kashmiri Brahmin IAS officer of   the 1953 batch. I was verbally told that I could not continue  in GOI (I had come to Delhi just six months back), either I opt to go back to UP or suffer kalapani (a punishment posting) to Afghanistan, which was then under Russian control. I chose  the latter. I was very upset at being victimised for bringing to light unprovoked firing      at innocent women and children, and I retaliated by getting my paper published , though publication by a Government servant without Government approval is not permitted under the Service Rules. Luckily, senior IAS officers are not in the habit of reading serious stuff, so my publications went unnoticed and I escaped retribution.

Had the Government acted on my report and taken action against the culprits, perhaps similar but even more horrendous atrocity against Muslims in the same city   five years later in 1987, so aptly described by the then SSP Ghaziabad, Vibhuti Narain Rai in his book 'Hashimpura' (2016) would not have happened.

In this horrible massacre, Police picked up some forty innocent Muslim youth from the Hashimpura neighbourhood of Meerut district that had seen no rioting, loaded them onto an official truck, drove them to a canal in the neighbouring Ghaziabad district, shot them dead one by one, threw them into the water, and then returned to  the camp for regular life as though they had executed a routine job. I quote below from  the blurb of his book:

'Searching for survivors among the blood-soaked bodies strewn around the canal and between the ravines near Makanpur village, on the Delhi-Ghaziabad border, on the night of 22 May 1987, with just a dim torchlight - the memories are still fresh in Vibhuti Narain Rai’s mind. On that fateful night, when Rai first heard about the killing, he could not believe the news was true until he, along with the district magistrate and a few other officials, went to the Hindon canal.

He quickly realised that all of them had become witnesses to secular India's most shameful and horrendous incident - personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) had rounded up dozens of Muslims from riot-torn Meerut and had killed them     in cold blood in Rai's area of jurisdiction. Offering a blow-by-blow account of the massacre and its aftermath, Hashimpura is a screaming narrative of the barbaric use of state force and the spineless politics in post-Independent India.'

Twenty-eight years later, on March 21, 2015, the verdict on the crime was pronounced    and all the accused were released. Fortunately, the Delhi High Court countermanded   the acquittal of police personnel involved. What has not emerged in the judgement is   the role of VN Rai as SSP Ghaziabad and Kamalendu Prasad as Addl SP, who are shining    examples of integrity and impartiality expected from leaders. These cases need to be   discussed in the training academies so that young officers are aware of the pitfalls in following illegal directives by prejudiced superiors.

[1] Premature repatriation back to the state cadre is considered a punishment in the IAS

 

[1] This paper has been included in two books, Shukla, K. S. ed. (1988). Collective Violence: Genesis and Response. Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi; and Iqbal A Ansari (ed), 1997: Communal  Riots: The State and Law in India, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi

[1] Backward caste Hindu leaders such as Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti, and Pravin Togadia are the most vocal revivalists

A great deal has been written in the media on how communal and subservient to political masters the Police has become since 2014. Ramachandra Guha's observation (2020) on the handling of Delhi violence of 2019 by the police is worth noting:

‘the recent depredations of the Delhi police, their absolute disregard for the truth, justice, and due process, represent something qualitatively different. That, in the country's capital today, a non-violent, peace-loving citizen cannot expect fair treatment from the so-called custodians of the law merely because of her religious or political affiliation, is a chilling marker of how degraded our democracy has become.'

Finally, I quote below the Home Ministry's own conclusion on the role of administration in an internal report written sometime in 2013:

'With few exceptions, it has been observed by almost all the commissions of enquiry that police were not sincere in meeting the important objective of protecting minorities, or the people who were in a weaker position and were either victim or target of killing in a communal disturbance. There were serious allegations that the police remained passive on many occasions. In many instances, police remained idle while looting, arson, and murders were committed in their very presence. In certain cases, the police was an active participant in the violent mob.' (Saxena, 2019).

In almost all the cases described above, Congress was in power both at the state and central levels. The BJP has certainly been exploiting and in the process, intensifying   the deep-seated bigotry that unfortunately has existed for long in the Hindu mind, but it has not created that prejudice. The rise of Hindu fundamentalism serves several objectives. It helps the acceptance of lower castes within the Hindu fold, so long as they do the dirty work of brutal confrontation against the minorities on behalf of the      high castes. It also absolves the rulers from their responsibility of providing clean, equitous, and humane administration (Saxena 2002).

Bias against Muslims

Prejudice is an attitude that predisposes a person to think, feel and act in an unfavourable way towards a group and its individual members. A prejudiced individual evaluates a person belonging to another group not as a person but on the basis of his group membership. When Sharma cheats Gupta, he thinks that Sharma is a cheat, but when Bashir cheats Gupta he thinks all Muslims are cheats. Certain negative traits are first associated with the members of the other group and all individuals are then presumed to have those objectionable qualities ascribed to that group. Prejudice results in five types of rejective behaviour; talking ill of the other group with friends , avoidance, discrimination, physical attack, and in its extreme form wanting extermination of the other group (Allport, 1954).

An average Hindu's prejudice toward the Muslim community is because of his misconceived perception of first, the implied attempts made by the Muslim rulers  in medieval times to destroy Hindu culture; second, the separatist role played by the Muslims in the freedom struggle; third, their supposed reluctance to modernise themselves and accept a uniform civil code  and family planning ; fourth, the Congress Party's appeasement policies in the 1980s intensified Hindu fears that Muslim gains would be at their cost; and lastly, the accusation of their having extra-territorial loyalties. The Rise in Islamic radicalism across the globe has further alienated the two communities from each other. Most Hindus now equate Muslims with terrorism, anti-modernity and religious hysteria (Rauf, 2011).

[1] Backward caste Hindu leaders such as Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti, and Pravin Togadia are the most vocal revivalists and supporters of the Sangh Parivar today.

[1] A phrase quite popular amongst the Hindus in UP is 'Makkhi, Machhar, Musalmaan', equating Muslims with flies and mosquitoes.

[1] Medieval India was ruled by Muslims but Muslims did not rule India. Most of them were ordinary peasants or artisans, and suffered as much as the Hindus at the hands of the despotic rulers. As Hindu rituals did not permit a Hindu to touch a Muslim, almost all weavers, tailors, barbers, and bangle sellers in north India who had to physically touch the human body to provide their services to the Muslim gentry had to convert to Islam.

Bias may exist on both sides, but in the Indian context, equal bias does unequal harm, and harm done to Muslims is enormous, as Hindus are in a position of strength, both politically and economically. After the riots of Ahmedabad in 1969 in which 24 Hindus and 430 Muslims were killed, many educated Hindu rioters felt that they had avenged the plundering of the Somnath temple by Ghazni. An incident that had happened ten centuries ago was still fresh in the minds of the Hindus, and in their perception, an attack on the present -day population of Muslims meant vindicating themselves against Ghazni, with whom India’s Muslims have no relationship of descent or ethnicity except religion.

Hindu bias affects Muslims not only during the riots but influences day-to-day administrative decisions too. It is significant that in the city of Moradabad (UP), where the two communities have an equal share in population, educational institutions tend to be located in Hindu dominated areas, but most of the police stations and Chowkies (outposts) are located in the Muslim dominated area. It would appear as if the Hindus need education and the Muslims need the police, Danda! Government schools in Muslim-majority areas have low grade staff, and their performance is not adequately monitored. Municipal staff too neglect such areas. Muslim traders involved in the trade of buffalo meat, though perfectly legal, suffer a great deal of harassment, even violence. Most leather tanneries in Kanpur are closed since 2018, rendering about 6 lakh Muslims and Dalits out of business.

 

[1] India needs to reform individual personal laws to make them more gender-just, instead of getting stuck on the idea of single, universally applicable uniform code.

[1] Share of Muslims in India's population has risen from 9.8% in 1951 to 14.2% in 2011, but may stabilize at about 17-18% by 2050.

[1] In turn, Muslims believe that Hindus are cowards, casteist, superstitious and perfidious. And worse, idol worshippers.

[1] Muslim educational backwardness has many other dimensions discussed later in the paper.

[1] Did my lectures to the IAS and IPS trainees on this subject achieve its purpose of reducing bias against Muslims? I am not sure. Perhaps just showing them films like Garam Hawa and Bajrangi Bhaijaan      would have been more effective towards sensitising the administrators.

Very few trainees went beyond the first option, and none agreed with the 3rd and 4th  choice.

With the passage of time, one should have expected that the Hindus would forget the wounds of partition and accept Muslims as equal citizens. Fast economic development in the last 30 years should have also diluted ethnic identities based on religion. However, the reverse seems to have happened. The us versus them has grown with India growing older. Far from being bridged, the gulf has progressively deepened (Banerjee, 2020). This is primarily due to the appeasement policies that the Congress government at the Centre pursued since the early 1980s, and role played by Muslim political leaders and clergy in those years.

Congress And Muslims

Muslims had by and large voted for the Congress Party in the elections of 1952, 1957 and 1962. Still, there was a growing feeling among them that their vote was being taken for granted and in the 1967 elections the Congress Party did not get as massive a support from them as it used to get in the past. The ruling party succeeded in winning back their votes in 1971 but lost it again in 1977. With the emergence and popularity of several other 'secular' political parties, especially in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, such as Samajwadi, BSP, Janata Dal, CPM, and TMC etc., Muslim vote started shifting from Congress to these parties. The Congress Party's anxiety to woo them back made the Party start appeasement policies. It assumed that moderate articulation of Muslim demands would not result in any loss of Hindu votes, but unfortunately it helped in the revival of the BJP. Though the Hindutva ideology had its roots in the pre-Independence writings of Savarkar and RSS ideologues, it remained politically dormant during the period 1950-80, but got a big boost after Congress started its appeasement tactics.

Such policies started with the establishment of a Minority Commission followed by the appointment of the Gopal Singh Committee in 1981 to look at the educational backwardness of Muslims. Though in the Azeez Basha case, the Supreme Court in 1967 had held that the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was not a minority institution as it was neither established by Muslims nor administered by them, Mrs. Gandhi overruled the Court's judgment by bringing in a new law in 1981 to keep the Millat happy. Again in 1985, when the Supreme Court ruled that the divorcee Shah Bano was entitled to maintenance from her husband under the CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code) like any other woman, Rajiv Gandhi promptly changed the CrPC to appease the Muslim voters, who were perceived by the Congress to be totally influenced by the Muslim fundamentalists. I quote Zoya Hasan (1989) on this subject:

‘The Muslim Personal Law affects women directly and adversely. Their position under   its provisions is unequal: a Muslim man can marry four wives; a woman can be divorced by a unilateral pronouncement of triple talaq, a Muslim daughter inherits only half the share of the son and a divorced Muslim wife is not entitled to maintenance. Distinguished experts in Shariah laws like M. H. Beg, Murtuza Fazal Ali, Beharul Islam, S. A. Masud, Danial Latifi and A. G. Noorani defended the rights of Muslim women.’

[1] It was established by the central government through laws passed in 1920 and 1951, and administered by government.

Why did the government surrender to fundamentalist pressures? The most important consideration was the need to stem the anger over the Shah Bano verdict, which was losing the Congress its Muslim votes. Following the Congress defeat in the by-elections in Assam, Bijnor, Kishanganj, Bolapur, Kedrappa and Baroda and the belief that everywhere Muslim vote had tipped the balance in favour of the opposition parties, important Congress leaders advised the prime minister against the dangers of a confrontation with the fundamentalists. It is noteworthy that the enactment of the Muslim Women Bill conferred legitimacy on the AIMPLB and the mullahs as the ‘sole spokesman' of the community.

Communal harmony in a deeply divided society like ours needs the stability of policies. Too much tinkering and tilting of policies in favour of one group or the other increases communal discord and induces the communities to organise themselves on communal lines in order to extract more concessions from the regime or prevent the other group from gaining at their cost. It is interesting to contrast Ms. Gandhi's resistance to change the AMU character for as long as 14 years between 1967 and 1981 to Rajiv's immediate action on the Shah Bano case. Till 1985, the general understanding was that though civil laws for Hindus and Muslims may differ, criminal laws would be identical. This distinction was unfortunately overturned by Rajiv Gandhi by amending the CrPC and taking Muslims out of its purview. Then, to balance the mollycoddling of the Muslim community, he got the locks of the gates of the Babri masjid opened. Rajiv also laid the foundation stone of Ram Janmabhoomi temple, giving legitimacy to those who were agitating against the Babri mosque (Engineer, 1989). Madhav Godbole, who in protest resigned as the Union home secretary after Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, describes Rajiv Gandhi in his new book (2019) as the second most effective Pracharak for RSS after Nayar, who as Collector Faizabad got the idols installed at the mosque.

When Syed Shahabuddin demanded that Salman Rushdie's novel Satanic Verses be banned, Rajiv quickly obliged, before even Pakistan that was formed to uphold Muslim interests did. Such appeasement policies not only heightened Hindu anger but helped the BJP to mobilise Hindu votes to increase its share in Lok Sabha from just two seats in 1984 to 85 in 1989 and 120 in 1991.

Educational Backwardness

Interestingly despite their hostility to Muslims as a group, Hindus admire those individual Muslims who do well on their own merit, such as Bollywood’s three endearing Khans, musicians Bismillah Khan and Naushad, and cricketers like Pataudi and Azharuddin. Bollywood has been full of successful Muslims as producers, directors, actors, and singers, and no one has ever accused the public or industry of evaluating them negatively on the basis of religion.

At the same time, sympathy for individuals may co-exist with the negative image of the     group. Many Hindus who had saved the lives of their Muslim friends in riots have a negative stereotype of Muslims. They make a distinction between their friends and Muslims as a community.

A young Gujarati doctor who did marvellous work with riot victims remarked that Muslims were prone to be violent as they ate meat and followed professions, such as butchers.

[1] All India Muslim Personal Law Board. It has consistently asked for affirmative action for Muslims, but within the Board there are only 3 OBC Muslims out of a total of 39 members.

To what extent prejudice against Muslims is responsible for their poor performance in education and government employment? The Sachar Committee Report shows that the literacy rate among Muslims is far below the national average, and this gap is greater in urban areas and for women. In higher education, the differences between Muslims and others stand out even more sharply. Muslims accounted for only 4.4 per cent of students enrolled in higher education (Mander et al., 2019). Many Muslim students at secondary and Senior secondary levels leave the schools to learn technical jobs such as motor mechanic, motor winding, repair of automobiles, refrigeration etc. so that they may earn some money to support their families. Since most Muslims are self-employed or skilled workers, it makes them indifferent to modern education as it does not bring them economic benefits. Their lack of motivation arises out of the irrelevance of modern education towards their occupational roles and, hence parents prefer not to waste their resources in sending their children for higher education. After communal riots, which are preceded by vicious campaigns against Muslims, they are forced to move their children out of good public schools and put them in poor quality schools in Muslim areas, closer homes.

Recent figures (Jaffrelot and Kalaiyarasan, 2019) show that in 2017-18 only 39 per cent of Muslims in the age group of 15-24 were enrolled in schools against 44 per cent for SCs, 51 per cent for Hindu OBCs and 59 per cent for Hindu upper castes. The proportion of the youth who have completed graduation - the authors call this, 'educational attainment' - among Muslims in 2017-18 is 14 per cent as against 18 per cent among the Dalits, 25 per cent among the Hindu OBCs, and 37 per cent among the Hindu upper castes. Muslim youth in the Hindi heartland fare the worst. Their educational attainment is the lowest in Haryana, 3 per cent; in Rajasthan, this figure is 7 per cent; and it is 11 per cent in Uttar Pradesh.

Poverty alone does not explain the wide gap, as poverty amongst Muslims has been declining quite fast, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Decline in Poverty of major Religious Groups

	Per cent population below the Tendulkar poverty line			per centage point reduction in poverty
	1993-94	2004-05	2011-12	1993-94 to 2004-05	2004-05 to 2011-12
Rural
Muslims	53.6	44.5	26.9	9.1	17.6
Hindus	50.5	42.1	25.6	8.4	16.5
Urban
Muslims	46.6	41.8	22.7	4.7	19.1
Hindus	29.7	23.1	12.1	6.6	10.9
Rural + Urban
Muslims	51.2	43.6	25.4	7.6	18.2
Hindus	45.6	37.5	21.9	8.1	15.6

 

In the seven years between 2004-05 and 2011-12, Muslims poverty ratio declined by 18.2 percentage points, faster than the 15.6 for Hindus (Aiyar 2016). Though the absolute level of Muslim poverty remains higher than that of Hindus, the gap has almost halved, from 6.1 in 2004-05 to 3.5 percentage points in 2011-12. In rural areas, the difference has almost disappeared. But in urban areas, it remains high. In as many as seven states, Muslims are less poor than Hindus (Panagariya and More, 2014). This is unsurprising in Kerala, where Muslims have been major beneficiaries of migration to and remittances from the Gulf.

Therefore, the common impression that poverty rates are significantly higher among Muslims than Hindus is largely based on observations from the urban areas. Even here, the good news is that poverty reduction during the high-growth phase for Muslims at 19.1 percentage points is almost twice that for Hindus. Infant and child mortality among Muslims is also lower than the average and is definitely far lower than among Hindus .

These figures persist despite economic disadvantage and lower levels of female schooling among Muslims. The possibility of 'within-kin' marriage practices and lower marriage payments might explain why the girl child is not considered so much of a burden in Muslim households (Robinson, 2007).

In addition to higher urban poverty, what other factors could explain the poor performance of Muslims in education? In a survey of nine Inter Colleges of the town of Rampur which has 72 per cent Muslim and 28 per cent non-Muslim population, the performance of students who appeared in the Intermediate (class XII) examination, 1982 was as follows:

Table 3: Performance of Muslim Students in Rampur

	Muslims	Non-Muslims	per cent share of Muslims in total
Population	72 %	28 %	72
Number of students appearing for Intermediate examination	197	534	27
Students who passed the examination	89	344	20
Students who got 1st Division	2	40	5

 

A.R. Sherwani, an educationist and ex-Chairman, Minorities Commission, who had done this study (1983), concludes as follows:

'And all this while, the Muslim leaders and the Hindu secular leaders have been telling the Muslims they are not getting jobs because of discrimination. I do not deny discrimination. We Indians are the most discriminating people on earth. The Agarwal Bania discriminates against a Gupta Bania, the Sarjupari Brahmin against a Kanyakubja Brahmin and so on. But the position is that the Muslims are not even giving anyone a chance to discriminate against them in worthwhile services. Anyone can discriminate against the Muslims only when they qualify and compete. How many Muslims are competing? This no one tells, neither the Muslim 'leaders' nor the secular Hindu leaders who go about as the best friends of the Muslims.'

Though the above study is mostly about government or aided schools, Mr Sherwani has also been pushing Muslim educational institutions to do what they are supposed to do: provide decent education. However, it was the teaching staff and the supervisory boards of the schools that were much more to be blamed for their blatant failure than any alleged discrimination on the part of the Hindu authorities (Naim, 1995).

A recent study of government-aided Urdu medium schools in Delhi found that truancy was common for both the students and the teachers. Many children were involved in petty crime and the teachers gave higher priority to private tuition classes after school hours. Their academic performance as teachers was hardly a matter of concern for either the school management or the community (Razzack, 2019).

What About Muslim Share in Government Jobs?

The Gopal Singh Committee report in 1983 indicated that Muslims constituted a 3.04 per cent share in the central government services, and after purportedly benefiting from the opportunities available through the backward class category for 15 years, the Sachar Committee report again presented more or less the same picture of their representation in central services (Bader, 2019).

Muslims believe that their low share in government jobs is primarily due to discrimination against them. While Hindu bias does affect Muslim employment in private jobs as well as in housing, the reasons for their poor representation in government employment are more complex and need dispassionate analysis. Even in Kerala, where Muslims are well represented in politics and have gained a great deal financially due to migration and remittances, Muslims occupy only 2 per cent of the most senior class I posts and 3 to 4 per cent of Class II posts in the state government service. Muslim share in Kerala’s Indian Police Service cadre is even worse at 1 per cent (Wilkinson, 2004; Mohammed, 1995).

Muslims in India have not done well in acquiring higher education, and hence their share in government jobs continues to be low, of which discrimination is a minor causative factor; other reasons are lack of preparedness and sufficient motivation. This has further increased their sense of frustration. As against their share of roughly 14 per cent in population, Muslim share in Class III and Class IV jobs varies between 5 per cent to 9 per cent. However, for Class I and Class II posts, where recruitment is absolutely free from bias and made on the basis of written examinations followed by interview by Public Service Commissions, the figure is much lower, between 3 per cent to 4 per cent (Saxena, 1989).

In order to assess the performance of Muslim candidates in competitive examinations, Gopal Singh Committee collected data from some of the State Public Service Commissions, which can be seen from the following Table:

Table 4: Muslims' Performance in Competitive Examinations held during 1978 to 1980

Name of the Commission	Muslim share in population	Muslim Percentage in total
		who appeared in the written test	called for interview	selected
Andhra Pradesh PSC	9.6	4.3	3.4	3.1
Tamil Nadu, PSC	5.9	4.0	3.9	4.6
U.P. Combined State Services	19.2	8.5	1.2	2.5
Bihar Combined State Services	16.9	4.5	6.4	7.3
Madhya Pradesh PSC	6.6	2.9	1.8	1.7

(Saxena, 1989)

These numbers clearly show that not only the share of Muslims who appeared in the written tests was far less than their share in population (even in the southern states where they are less poor than the rest), but their performance in the written examination was dismal, especially in UP. On the other hand, the numbers finally selected were at par with those who were called for interview showing absence of bias in the Interview Board.

The very fact that Muslim share in civil services recruitment (IAS etc) through the UPSC during the last six years of BJP rule has gone up from 3.5 to 5 per cent shows that selection is done purely on merit with no bias on either side.

For class III services recruitment in many states is purely on the basis of a written examination, where no bias can be alleged. In 1979 in Delhi where Muslim share in population was 11.2 per cent, only 2.6 per cent of the total candidates who took the examination for class III jobs were Muslims, whereas their share in those who were declared successful after the written test was even less at 1.6 per cent (Gopal Singh Committee).

A recent study (Alam and Kumar 2019) of Uttar Pradesh, where 20 per cent are Muslims, and out of which about 60 per cent were included in the backward (OBC) list, showed that both in education and government jobs Muslim share continued to be dismal. The share of Muslims in recruitment done by the UP Public Service Commission for subordinate services during 2012-15 was only 2.3 per cent, whereas the share of Muslim OBCs out of the total OBCs selected was 4.1 per cent (Table 5) as against their share of about 25 per cent in the OBC population of the state. It should be noted that UP was ruled by a Muslim friendly Samajwadi party right from 2002 to 2017.

Table 5: Muslim Candidates Selected for UP PSC Subordinate Services Examination (2012-15)

Total Selected	4926
Muslims	115
percentage of Muslims in Total	2.3
Total OBCs selected	1388
Muslim OBCs	57
percentage of Muslim OBCs in Total OBCs	4.1

Why are Muslims convinced that discrimination is practised against them in government jobs? There could be several explanations. First, the absence of reliable data on Muslim education and employment has encouraged all kinds of polemical myths. Second, Muslims are acutely conscious of the feeling of hatred and hostility that prevails in the majority community against them. It appears to them as natural that the majority community, because of its predisposition, would discriminate wherever they get a chance to do so. Since most of the job givers are Hindus, rejection perse is taken as proof of bias and prejudice. Third, personal experience of discrimination in the private sector labour market, renting a house, construction of mosques, treatment of Urdu, etc. is generalised and a common frame of reference is created for judging all incidents. Fourth, according to many Muslims, an ideal society would be one in which all groups are represented in decision making positions in proportion to their population. Poor representation in elite professions is taken as confirmation of immoral discrimination. To them equity and fair play means group equality on the basis of share in population and not individual equality based on merit. Thus, the absence of an adequate number of Muslims in high salaried positions becomes in itself, in their eyes, adequate proof of an iniquitous system. And last, Muslim leadership has been trying to secure for Muslims the status of a protected minority with formal reservation in legislative and administrative positions and, therefore, their strategy will attract attention from the Government only if charges of discrimination are levelled repeatedly. We examine the role of leaders in the next section.

The empirical data presented in this paper unfortunately disproves the myth of discrimination against them. It would appear that the poor percentage of the Muslims in public employment is primarily due to their educational backwardness, lack of sufficient motivation and family inspiration, fear of rejection, inadequate awareness of examination patterns, lack of competitive spirit and proper guidance, high drop-out rates, tendency to avoid hard work, unequal access to books and libraries and, above all, perception of discrimination leading to withdrawal from competition.

Muslims, especially in north India are educationally backward, and feel politically powerless, demoralised and insecure. This psychology of despair and insularity does not promote investment in higher education. In a competitive situation only confident and assertive communities can do well. Because the Muslims find themselves in a non-Muslim and hostile environment, they like to imagine that they would be rejected in the employment market on grounds of religion and, therefore, do not concentrate on developing their talents. Thus, Muslims become victims of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They predict rejection first and by withdrawing from competition prove their own prediction.

Naseem Zaidi (2014) has rightly concluded:

'The rhetoric about poverty, low educational levels and the non-implementation of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report converge largely on the demand for a religion-based reservation in education and employment. However, it is the low level of participation rather than the low success ratio of Muslim candidates that is the root cause of the low representation. The Muslim political leadership revels in the opportunity to demand community-based reservations in education and employment in the public services.

[1] Guha (2018) looks at Muslims not only as victims, but also as a ghettoised, backward-looking socio-political group. Ghettoisation is due to the overt discrimination practiced against Muslims widely in renting out or even selling landed property to them.

Notwithstanding all the popular misgivings, two factors are certain. First, there is little desire to analyse the facts and figures, and second, pointing out the community’s shortcomings in regard to this area is taken to be an act of betrayal. The demand for community-based reservation by the Muslim leadership seems to be a wild-goose chase in view of the Constitutional and legal hurdles or political compulsions mainly for the political party in power. For the Muslim political leadership, this demand is a catchy slogan yielding rich dividends.'

All the arguments identified above for poor performance of Muslims in education and Government jobs can be used to explain the educational backwardness of the poor also. Shall we then conclude that the poor themselves are responsible for their indifference to higher education? Have they voluntarily withdrawn from elite professions? Similarly, women are also inadequately represented in Government jobs. Will it be fair to put the blame at their doors for not doing well in competitive examinations? Or is it the system, which consigns them to a sealed-off role in the home, and secludes them from modern economic activities that is responsible for their plight? Justice demands that the equals should be treated equally. But who lays down the terms at which the so-called equals will be examined? If examinations are   conducted in English or if questions are asked in the interview board on international affairs, students coming from non-English medium schools or from poorer homes with no access to newspapers or TV will be automatically rejected. Can it be said, then, that the system was 'fair'?

Therefore, there is need to take a structural view of the entire system rather than to      stop at observing the behaviour of individuals and then condemning those who do not    come up to the mark. Government may not explicitly discriminate against the Muslims, but the State certainly discriminates implicitly, just as it does against women, the poor and other disadvantaged groups. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim leadership rather than standing up for gender rights has been condemning Government action on issues like triple talaq etc., as commented by Zoya Hasan, quoted above.

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A career civil servant, Naresh Saxena had worked as Secretary, Planning Commission and Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development in Government of India. On behalf of the Supreme Court, Dr Saxena monitored hunger-based programmes in India from 2001 to 2017. Author of several books and articles, Dr Saxena did his Doctorate in Forestry from the Oxford University in 1992, and was awarded honorary PhD from the University of East Anglia in 2006.

 

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