By Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood,
In 2006 the Prime Minister’s High Level Sachar Committee and in 2008 the Government of India’s Mishra Commission have duly documented, supported by most authentic data, that in our beloved country the plight of Muslims is pitiable. Muslim representation ranges from one-fourth of the community’s share in the national population to one-fifth or even less than that in each arena of life be it parliament, state assemblies, local bodies, educational institutions, economic status, corporate employment, public sector, housing colonies, or the like. In some areas Muslims are starkly invisible. Even basic infrastructure is mostly unavailable in Muslim settlements.
Harsh Mander, former IAS officer who had resigned protesting against the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and Member, UPA’s National Advisory Council has narrated, in his 91-page report of one-year long survey conducted in 2011 ‘Promises to Keep’, the reasons why necessary initiatives have not been taken to improve the condition of Muslims even after five years of the presentation of Sachar Committee Report. He says that the officials of central and state governments and those in the districts are fully aware that the Sachar Committee had been appointed for the sake of completing electoral formality but its implementation does not figure in the Government’s political calculations. The institutional structures designed to implement these initiatives – right from the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs down to the implementing officials in districts and below –lack conviction, clout and even a clear mandate to directly battle the socio-economic structural discrimination and denial encountered by the community. Consequently, the schemes enunciated in the light of Sachar recommendations were thinned out to all the minorities reducing their Muslim-specific viscosity to either nil or bare minimum. Then, major portion of the billions of rupees worth of their annual budgets are incurred in areas where there are hardly any Muslims or even other minorities. (For a 4-page summary of Harsh Mandar Report, please click: http://www.zakatindia.org/images/HARSH%20MANDAR%20STUDY%20ON%20NON-IMPLEMENTATION%20OF%20SACHAR%20REPORT.doc)
Waqf Bill ignores vital recommendations of Sachar and JPC
Twenty vital recommendations made by the Sachar Committee and the JPC on Waqfs were ignored while drafting the Waqf Bill 2010. On top of that, bending rightward, the official draftsmen came up with a self styled amendment that delimits the ‘confined to Muslims’ Waqf usage and opens up access to the use of Waqf properties to all and sundry. On the other hand, the website of the Ministry of Minority Affairs shows that in the new government appointments made during the last five years after the submission of the Sachar Committee Report, the total minority representation makes only seven and half percent. This is against nineteen percent of the total minority population in the country. Obviously the Muslim share is much lesser. Nonetheless – riding roughshod over serious reservations expressed by the UPSC, most of the state governments and majority of the central police organizations – a new scheme has been put together in 2011-12 by the union home ministry to recruit hundreds of additional IPS officers that would bring down the existing pitiably low Muslim presence in the elite cadre to either zero or to such a small figure that it can be easily counted on fingers.
Why are we, Muslims, being subjected to these miseries for decades – with no let-up in sight despite multi-cornered election-eve promises to the contrary? What is the remedy? There are tens of thousands of chains of bureaucrats & politicians where legislative, judicial and executive decisions are taken every day at central, state, regional, district and local levels. In more than ninety percent of these chains there is no Muslim. Hence these decisions are taken in the absence of Muslims, without any heart beating for them and often at cross purposes with their interests.
One vital factor of this widely prevalent anti-Muslim apathy and protracted injustice is surely the ridiculously low Muslim representation in the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Out of the 552 seats in Lok Sabha, Muslims should occupy 74 seats in proportion of their 13.4% share (as per the Census statistics of 2001) in the national population. However, on the average, Muslims have been able to occupy only 27 seats, which means that they are deprived of around two-third of their rights during the last 65 years. Their parliamentary representation from some states remains nil. The period of more than six decades since Independence generally reflects that the political parties have been avoiding giving tickets to Muslim candidates. Most of those Muslims who do succeed in obtaining the tickets face defeat.
Muslim-populated seats reserved for SC
Fifteen percent of the Lok Sabha seats are reserved for scheduled castes (SC) while the executive wing of the Government, unconstitutionally and surreptitiously, excluded Muslims from the list of scheduled castes in 1950. This is despite the Muslim community having always been consisting of a good complement of sweepers, cobblers and blacksmiths etc. On the other hand, as the second anti-Muslim jeopardy flagged by Justice Sachar Committee, the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies having huge population of Muslims but very low SC presence have been reserved for scheduled castes. Conversely, the constituencies having huge SC population but negligible Muslim presence have not been so reserved. Muslims suffer big loss in either case. Thus, for the last 65 years, Muslim voice has not been reverberating – in proportionate pitch and rhythm – in the houses of parliament and state assemblies and such vacuum has been transducing itself into bureaucratic and judicial apathy leading to Muslim deprivation in different walks of life. The characteristic anti-Muslim couldn’t care less attitude has, unfortunately, become a part of the national ‘culture’ bordering apartheid; the Indian statecraft as well as the ethos of private life have practically written Muslims off their mind. This phenomenon has rendered Muslim presence even in the bureaucracy to the pathetically low percentage of less than three.
There seems to be a ray of light at the end of the dark tunnel. Thanks God, in some quarters – during the sixth and seventh decades after Independence – there has been some talk of Muslim reservation though confined to government jobs and admission in educational institutions. Asaduddin Owaisi, MP emphatically advocated reservation for Muslims on the occasion of celebrating sixtieth anniversary of parliament. This gives some solace to Muslims though too late and too less. There is every reasonable ground of reservation for Muslims not only in the government’s executive offices and the judiciary but also in parliament, assemblies, district boards, municipal corporations & boards, panchayat samitis, gram panchayats, educational institutions and government housing projects. The allegation that the Central Government’s 4.5% OBC reservation orders issued in December 2011 two days prior to the provincial elections were a mere lollypop was recently contested by a central minister. Let us make a fair analysis.
Proportionate reservation or separate electorate
As mentioned above, Muslims make 13.4% of the population in India. The Sachar Committee used the data provided by government agencies and documented that in each field Muslims are lagging behind the followers of every other faith. The Mishra Commission too deliberated on the same lines. Still the 4.5% OBC sub-quota spans all the minorities and that too is confined to the central government jobs and admission in centrally run educational institutions. It would also be recalled that the Mishra Commission had recommended 15% reservation for minorities in educational institutions out of which 10% was recommended to be reserved for Muslims. But even in this paltry 4.5%, no space was earmarked for Muslims. So, this minuscule reservation of uncertain percentage reluctantly doled out after 65 years of blatant deprivation could at best be described as the proverbial lollypop for Muslims.
To ensure that even this lollypop survives judicial scrutiny and does get implemented at the ground level no preemptive or proactive mechanism was devised by the government. As a result, the AP High Court didn’t need more than the fall of a hat to roll it back; we can separately discuss the nuances in another write-up. Even otherwise, the 4.5% sub-quota has been meeting intermittent executive disregard. For instance, the advertisement published in March 2012 regarding the recruitment of additional IPS officers had no mention of 4.5% minority sub-quota. Likewise, during the same period, there were Muslim candidates available for the reserved 4.5% seats for the MBA admission in Indian Institute of Mines, Dhanbad. But, raising a technical objection, the seats reserved under this quota were left vacant presumably to be filled in due course by non-minority candidates. This leads one to the assumption that, despite the formal issue of 4.5% sub-quota orders for OBC among the minorities, the cross-national ambience has yet to undergo a benevolent transition for its heartful implementation.
In any case, such small half-hearted quotas here and there cannot make up for the oppression and injustice meted out to the Muslims over 65 years and the spree still continues unabated. Reverting for a while to the eve of Independence one finds that the legendary Dr Ambedkar had got approved some historical resolutions at the All-India Scheduled Castes Conference held in 1942 at Nagpur. The Conference strongly demanded Separate Electorate for Scheduled Castes returning to the parliament, state assemblies and local bodies such number of SC members as squarely correspond to their share in the population. These resolutions sponsored by Dr Ambedkar also demanded reservation for scheduled castes in the bureaucracy as per the proportion of their population. Subsequently, Mahatma Gandhi went on fast. This led to the Poona Pact between him and Dr Ambedkar based on which special provisions were incorporated in the Indian Constitution. The scheduled castes were accorded reservation in the parliament, state assemblies, local bodies, government offices and educational institutions. Thanks to Dr Ambedkar’s 1942 intervention, there is huge presence of scheduled castes in each arena of Indian life today.
Conversely, today’s Indian Muslims are in a miserable condition – much worse than the condition of scheduled castes that obtained before Independence. In his article Persistent Political Under-representation of Muslims in India published in the famous research journal ‘Law and Ethics of Human Rights’, the well known social analyst Professor Rajiv Bhargava, Director, Center for the Study of Developing Societies has written that Muslims should be given proportional representation wholeheartedly. He has also suggested that the methodology to do this is to chart out special multi-member constituencies with provision for preferential voting. [http://www.clb.ac.il/workshops/2005/articles/rajeeb.pdf]
We, Muslims, must now have proportional reservation in the parliament, state assemblies, judiciary, district boards, panchayat samitis, gram panchayats, central / provincial / district government offices, all non-minority educational institutions and all government housing projects. However, should this not be forthcoming, then we the Muslims would prefer to go in for Babasaheb Ambedkar’s 1942 recipe of separate electorate for the parliament, state assemblies and all local bodies etc. For that purpose, necessary modifications need to be incorporated in the constitution. To conclude, I invite the readers’ attention – men, women and youth – to take inspiration from Faiz Ahmad Faiz:
Chashm-e-num, jaan-e-shoreeda kaafi nahin
Tohmat-e-ishq posheeda kaafi nahin
Aaj bazaar mein pa-bajaulaan chalo !
Merely moist eyes and a disturbed spirit will not suffice,
Just being accused of latent community love is not good enough;
Let’s us go out in public even though in shackled feet !!
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Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood was OSD to the Sachar Committee. He is the President of the Zakat Foundation of India [http://www.zakatindia.org]