– Waseem Reja (Independent Researcher)
After more than half a century of independence, on March 9, 2005, the Indian government, under the then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, set up a high-level committee, headed by the former chief justice of Delhi High Court, Rajindar Sachar, to enquire into the social, economic, and educational status of the Indian Muslims. The 7-member panel submitted their report on October 17, 2006, and the report was presented in the Parliament on October 30 of the same year, which later came to be known as the Sachar Committee Report (SCR). The committee tabled a total of 76 recommendations, out of them the UPA government accepted 72, refused to accept 3 and deferred 1. The report unmasked an egregious indifference of the government towards the socio-economic plight of the said community, and sparked a widespread controversy on the disparity, exclusion, and alienation of religious minorities in India, especially Muslims. The data not only unveiled the abysmal incompetency of the government but also punctured the often-blabbered hollow rhetoric of “Muslim appeasement”. It has been a long eighteen years since then. Has the socio-economic and educational status of Muslim community changed? Has it improved or worsened? Have the tall promises met, or it remained unmet? Has any paradigm shift in Muslim Community happened? How much efforts have been made to ameliorate the dolorous state of the Muslims? We will try to answer the questions In Shaa Allah. But before that, let`s have a glimpse of the landmark report.
According to the report, the condition of Muslims is worse than Dalits
The 404-page document mentioned, “The condition of Muslims is worse than Dalits”. The report also stated, “The literacy rate among Muslims in 2001 was 59.1%. This is far below the national average which is 65.1%”. The committee also revealed that “one fourth of Muslim children in the age group of 6-11 have either never attended school or are dropouts. Only 50% of Muslims who complete middle schools are likely to complete secondary education, compared to 62% at the national level.” Their exclusion increases exponentially as the level of education increases and that “in some instances the relative share for Muslims is lower than scheduled castes (SC) who are victims of long-standing caste system”. The committee recommended 15 % of posts in all cadres under the Central and State Governments should be earmarked for minorities, with a break-up of 10 % for Muslims. But several reports note that Muslims are still under-represented in both State and Central government jobs. The report cited that in the premier universities and colleges in India, only 1 out of 25 undergraduate students (4%) and 1 out of 50 postgraduate students (2%) were Muslim. There are so many reasonable recommendations – if you are really interested to know those, a simple google search will help. However, my concern is to investigate the palpable plight of the community – has it changed or worsened? Let`s delve into the reality.
As per the 2011 Indian government census, Muslims rank at the bottom of the higher education ladder along with Scheduled Tribes (ST). A 2018 study titled “Intergenerational Mobility in India” concluded that in terms of educational mobility, Muslims in India are worse off than their African-American counterparts. Apart from the African-American analogy, other findings, which are quite striking, affirm that there has been no meaningful change in the educational status of Muslims. An article titled “Untouched by economic growth states: One in 4 beggars in India is a Muslim, reveals census” published by The Hindu uncovers an utter apathy of the government towards the community that every fourth person in India categorized as a beggar is Muslim. Though Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) strongly discouraged Muslims to opt mendicancy as a profession. Another report by National Sample Survey of India mentions that Muslims religion is the poorest religious group in India. Muslims’ average per capita spending is Rs. 32.66, while it is Rs. 37.50 for Hindus, Rs. 51.43 for Christians and Rs. 55.30 for Sikhs.
18 years have passed since the report and the conditions of Muslims have hardly improved
Of the many myths the Rajindar Sachar Committee busted, the Muslims were well off in the Left-ruled states was one. It was not true at all. The report placed West Bengal as the “worst” performing state. The data showed that the Muslims in West Bengal were more deprived than the Muslims of Gujrat. This embarrassed the Left to no end and provided the BJP with a propaganda point which ended up in inflaming the Modified anti-Muslim carnage in 2002. This also led to the alienation of Muslim Community from the Left in Bengal and resulted in the Left`s defeat in West Bengal in 2011, after ruling a long period of 34 years. In Bengal Muslims fix the “magic figure”. Still all political parties whether it is Left or Right give them nothing but hollow promises and use them as “taken for granted” vote bank since time immemorial.
As far as higher education in Bengal is concerned, there are so many instances of denial of admission of Muslim candidates to PhD programs. Students often claim that some eminent universities such as University of Calcutta (CU), Jadavpur University (JU), University of Burdwan (BU), and Kalyani University (KU) do not follow the PhD admission procedure properly. Nepotism seizes seats, merits do not fit. In some cases, it is found that all the seats of different categories are filled up except that of OBC-A. They brazenly write “no suitable candidates found”. There is a famine of Muslim faculty in the universities and colleges of West Bengal as well. While the Sachar Committee talks about inclusivity, the state accelerates the process of ghettoization of Muslim community, be it Mumbra in Maharashtra or Jamia Nagar in Delhi or Park Circus and Rajabazar in Kolkata. There are also so many incidents in Indian academia where burqa and hijab-clad Muslim students made to choose between hijab and exam. What a sheer shame! Finding a paying guest or a rental accommodation for a Muslim student in almost every Indian city is getting harder day by day owing to the prejudice the majority community holds in their manipulated minds against the Muslims; nevertheless, I would urge young minds irrespective of creed to come forward to dismantle this doddering castle of hate. Above all one of the prime reasons behind this pathetic state of the Muslims might be the fact that they are not leading their lives in accordance with the commands of Allah. As Allah says in the holy Quran, “Allah would never change a people`s state (of favor) until they change their own state (of faith)”.
A large number of muslim dominated areas in India are uninhabitable
However, it goes without an iota of doubt that the plight of Muslim community in India has been deteriorating. Vilification and alienation of the largest minority in India has become an everyday job of un/paid far-right Hindutva nationalists, better say chauvinists. After 2014 victory of the BJP, the chest-thumping BJP netas started spewing xenophobic, racist, hateful, genocidal rhetoric against this community openly. They want anti-Muslim sentiments to traverse in the psyche of common Hindus, and they have managed to do so. Consequently, India witnessed many anti-Muslims incidents, i.e., killing, abusing, and lynching even in the broad day light. The first such case reported after BJP`s win in 2014 was a mob-lynching of a 28-year-old techie Mohsin Shaikh in Maharashtra. The second innings of NDA govt. came into power with a new scheme of declaring India as a Hindu Rashtra. Muslims were again made to feel “traitorous others” and politically “untouchable” community by brining discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, to make them second class citizen with this 21st century`s new Nuremberg law. Abrupt order of eviction of Muslim ghettos, bulldozing Muslim houses without court order have become the official policy of world`s biggest Democracy. In an interview in Frontline Aakar Patel, journalist, and the author of “Our Hindu Rashtra”, says, “Structurally, we have already arrived at a Hindu Rashtra”. We got acquainted with some neologism, e.g., “Corona Jihad”, “Love Jihad”, “Gharwapsi”, and “Gauraksha” – these all made a deadly cocktail, which is often served to malign Muslim identity and infect the once-peaceful-society with animosity. Christophe Jaffrelot, a French political scientist, in his book “Modi`s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy” argues that “India has changed, perhaps irreversibly, from a liberal secular democracy less than a decade ago to a majoritarian “ethnic democracy” today.” Muslims especially university students erected walls of resistance against all these pernicious odds, but in most of the cases efforts went in vain. The authoritarian state either muzzled their voice by hook or by crook or slapped draconian law like UAPA against them, and then they ended up languishing in jails.
Of late the incumbent prime minister has turned the General Elections 2024 into a war between Hindu vs. Muslims only to create monopoly on Hindu votes. How on earth a PM can call his own citizens “infiltrators”? He handpicks the destructive game to practice his old detrimental tactics. Don’t be surprised! He is the same person who, as a chief minister, had addressed the relief camps for Gujrat riot survivors as “child-producing factories”. But what if Congress, who claims to do just to all, would win the election? Would they implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee? The question remains.
