It is this fear of
becoming easy prey to Hindu chauvinists that is at the root of the “Muslim
issue”. Reservations can do nothing to relieve this pain. What Muslims need is
justice. This holds true for the riot victim as it does for a person who is
denied a fair shot at a job. We have perfectly good laws to handle such issues,
the problem is that they are not observed, and the Muslims know this only too
well. How could Reservations have helped Ehsan Jafri from being killed by
riotous Hindu mobs in his own apartment in Gulbarg Society, Ahmedabad? What can
Reservations do to give his wife and children justice; as indeed to Bilkis Bano
and to hundreds of other victims of the Gujarat carnage of 2002? Muslim
expressions of being discriminated against are coloured by these features, and
not by statistical figures of poverty and literacy.
It is not only the poor, but many fortunate Muslims too, who feel
this discrimination in their bones. It is to this aspect then that policy makers
should pay attention, instead of dismissing it for want of hard, quantifiable
facts. Professional Muslims and their intellectual supporters shun this line of
thinking for it does them no good. To ask for justice would offend their
political masters and cut short their careers. No ruling party in India wants to
know, or even be reminded of, its many transgressions of justice, especially
when it comes to being gentle to ethnic killers. But by demanding Reservations
you can have backwardness and the plums of office too! -- Dipankar Gupta
By Dipankar Gupta
THE Sachar Committee Report could have done a number of things, but
ended up doing just one. It fed our addiction to Reservations instead of being
the healing touch. It contained the right message but went to the wrong
address.
We did not need a special commission to know that Muslims are
generally poorer than the average Indian, or that they have lower educational
qualifications, or even that they are under- represented in the state and
private sectors.
These facts are about as hot as yesterday’s
news.
The real point of the Sachar Report was to remind us that though
these features are passé, their resolution requires us to think afresh. In
particular, we were admonished not to rely on the familiar “ social
discrimination” argument.
This was the compressed, spring loaded political message of Sachar’s
Report, but it missed its intended target. Muslim Reservation advocates dodged
this missive blithely and took cover in tomes of poverty and educational data
that the Sachar Committee had already pronounced as
inconclusive.
Sachar Commission
The Sachar Commission begins with a straight confession. The authors
acknowledge that none of the data they have collected on Muslim poverty and
their relative lack of education can be nailed to the door as evidences of
discrimination.
If anything, the Committee members weigh in on the side of those who
believe that economic backwardness, more than discrimination, is the major cause
for the negative status that hovers, spectre like, over
Muslims.
If that should be the case, then we don’t need Reservations with
blanket quotas.
Instead, as the Sachar Committee suggests, it is necessary to design
programmes that affect specific areas of Muslim backwardness. Besides adding
muscle to the general anti- poverty schemes, it also recommends a closer
attention to equal opportunities and a calibrated nomination procedure to
enhance Muslim presence in politics and governance.
In line with this we might also contemplate a greater presence of
Muslims in certain sensitive departments, such as in the police, and so on.
Incidentally, one of the more successful measures that America adopted to fight
racism was to disproportionately increase the number of Blacks in the police
force. If all this requires yet another commission, so be it! Whoever said
policy making was easy was probably only thinking “
Reservations”.
Indeed the Sachar Committee confirms that in upper class
opportunities, such as those opened by the IIMs and the UPSC tests, Muslims did
as well as the rest.
This instantly takes the polish off the “ Reservations for Muslims”
campaign. In fact, a close reading of the Report underlines the old finding that
when it comes to handicrafts, self- employment and small scale enterprises,
Muslims outperform other communities. Is it then possible that if there are
fewer Muslims in low paying government jobs it is because they have chosen to
opt out of them? There is no point in being an underpaid underling if there are
better pickings to be found in working for oneself.
For those who are not convinced about Muslim entrepreneurship and
want to know more, a visit to the carpet belt of East Uttar Pradesh or Khoja
Chawl or to Mohammad Ali Road in Mumbai is highly recommended. Interestingly,
Bal Thackeray encouraged Marathis in his 1970s Marmik column “ Udyogi Marathi”,
to spurn low paying jobs and set up their own businesses instead. In other
words, junk the pao bhaji for the srikhand and be a real manoos for a
change!
Popular prejudices
Additionally, the Sachar Report also lays low a few popular
prejudices. For example, it finds that being a Muslim does not necessarily mean
a dogged rejection of birth control. Not only is the fertility rate going down
among Muslims, but it must also to be said that in places like Puducherri they
have taken to family planning more readily than any other community. Even the
Christians have been left behind. Unarguably, there are many shortcomings in the
statistical analysis of the Sachar Report.
It also has too many tables taken straight out of the National Sample
Survey, and too few with data of its own.
However, as a public document it does rather well in unsettling
creatures of intellectual habit. But as the Report went to the wrong
destination, its many interesting findings were ignored, as were the subtlety of
its arguments and the devil in the details. We need to be able to sift through
what discrimination means to different communities. The prejudices Muslims feel
are vastly different from what the Scheduled Castes
experience.
This in turn is streets away from the “sons of the soil” clamour of
Shiv Sena and MNS. A few Scheduled Caste entrepreneurs and white collar
functionaries are emerging today, but still very
tentatively.
They have still a long way to go, especially when compared with the
established Muslim elite of this country.
In fact, there are parts of India, including in your very own
district, where even rich and successful Muslims feel discriminated against. One
can also sense this sentiment among prosperous rural Muslims, for example, the
Muley Jats of west UP. The Babri Masjid episode may have deeply humiliated them,
even rendered them vulnerable, but catch them having a cup of tea with a Harijan
or a Valmiki! Discrimination obviously means different things to different
people.
Substance of discrimination
Not only does the substance of discrimination and prejudice vary, but
the position of Muslims too differs from state to state and from city to city.
Sadly, this is one issue that Sachar’s team generally ignores. In Mumbai, after
1993, no Shiv Sainik dared mess with Muslims, yet in Ahmedabad, post 2002,
Muslims continue to be soft targets.
It is this fear of becoming easy prey to Hindu chauvinists that is at
the root of the “ Muslim issue”. Reservations can do nothing to relieve this
pain. What Muslims need is justice. This holds true for the riot victim as it
does for a person who is denied a fair shot at a job. We have perfectly good
laws to handle such issues, the problem is that they are not observed, and the
Muslims know this only too well.
How could Reservations have helped Ehsan Jafri from being killed by
riotous Hindu mobs in his own apartment in Gulbarg Society, Ahmedabad? What can
Reservations do to give his wife and children justice; as indeed to Bilkis Bano
and to hundreds of other victims of the Gujarat carnage of 2002? Muslim
expressions of being discriminated against are coloured by these features, and
not by statistical figures of poverty and literacy.
Professional Muslims
It is not only the poor, but many fortunate Muslims too, who feel
this discrimination in their bones.
It is to this aspect then that policy makers should pay attention,
instead of dismissing it for want of hard, quantifiable facts. Professional
Muslims and their intellectual supporters shun this line of thinking for it does
them no good. To ask for justice would offend their political masters and cut
short their careers. No ruling party in India wants to know, or even be reminded
of, its many transgressions of justice, especially when it comes to being gentle
to ethnic killers.
But by demanding Reservations you can have backwardness and the plums
of office too!
The writer is a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library,
Delhi
Source: Mail Today
9:21 PM
Sultan Shahin
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