Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: September 4, 2005
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=77518
Let me begin with a question. Why
have Muslims in India remained an underclass despite ''secular'' governments
having ruled for most of our years of Independence? It is a question over
which I have pondered long and deep because in the early years of my career
as a journalist I had the misfortune of covering several horrific Hindu-Muslim
riots. Bhagalpur, Moradabad, Meerut, Malliana, Mumbai - an unending tale
of horror in which ''secular'' state governments allowed civil servants
and policemen to get away with participating, actively or passively, on
the Hindu side. Not even in Gujarat did we see paramilitary personnel fill
a truck with Muslim men and open fire on them as happened in Malliana.
In the streets of Delhi in 1984,
I experienced first hand the trauma of being hunted by mobs who grinned
as they stopped the car I was in and waving their kerosene-soaked rags
in my face demanded to know if I was a Sikh. Unlike Justice Nanavati, I
have empirical evidence of Rajiv Gandhi's deliberate refusal to call out
the army until thousands of Sikhs had been massacred. I know from personal
experience how alone Muslims feel when some idiot Islamist commits an act
of terrorism in the hope of targeting the community as a whole. They know
that the state will not protect them if violence breaks out.
This long preamble is necessary
because I want to establish my credentials before I say something that
political correctness prevents most other commentators from saying. Muslims
must wake up to the truth that they remain an underclass because they have
been made victims of secularism. And, they are currently being targeted
again by the ''secular'' Sonia-Manmohan government.
In the name of strengthening secularism
the Prime Minister constituted a ''high-level committee to prepare a report
on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community
of India''. The committee was notified on March 9, 2005 and is headed by
that ancient ''secular'' warhorse, Justice Rajinder Sachar. The committee
consists of an even number of Hindu and Muslim members and has as its Member
Secretary an economist by the name of Dr Abu Saleh Shariff.
This high-level committee is already
touring state capitals to report on the condition of Muslims and I happened
to arrive in Jaipur a day after it made public, in a press release dated
August 24, 2005, Rajab 18, 1426, its view that Vasundhara Raje's BJP government
was treating Muslims badly. This information was picked up by a ''secular''
national daily which concluded that life for Muslims in Rajasthan was as
bad as Gujarat.
To me, what was interesting about
the committee's allegations against the Rajasthan government was that none
of them related to anything the government could be held responsible for.
The committee, according to Rajasthan
government officials, spent no more than a couple of hours with local Muslims
before producing its eight-page press release from Camp Jaipur. It also
behaved with unusual arrogance with some members refusing the state government's
hospitality on the grounds that state guest houses were not good enough
for them.
As for the charges made against
the Rajasthan government, they would be too ludicrous to discuss if the
committee did not have the Prime Minister's name attached to it. According
to the committee, Jaipur's Muslims complained of a ''sense of insecurity''
for the following reasons. They were finding it hard to buy ''residential
properties'', public and private sector banks were denying them credit,
they were not given ''targeted technical educational programmes'', there
was a shortage of schools, and public health and sanitation facilities
were abysmal.
Notice please that if private citizens
are reluctant to rent their properties to Muslims there is little the Rajasthan
Government can do. The only way to deal with specific instances of discrimination
is to try and prove them in a court of law. If banks are being difficult
about loans there is again little the state government can do other than
complain to the Union Finance Minister under whom they fall. As for appalling
education, health and sanitation facilities, did the committee not notice
that Jaipur's Hindus face the same problems?
State government officials I met
in Jaipur said the committee had demanded information that no state government
had ever collected. Which government knows how many Muslims avail of crop
insurance schemes or how many Muslim school teachers and health workers
there are. Rajasthan government officials told the committee that they
did not have segregated development programmes and this was seen by the
committee as an example of non-secular behaviour.
When the Prime Minister set up this
committee did he not realise that instead of helping Muslims it would set
them up as a target once more? Did he not remember the charges of ''pseudo-secularism''
that made L K Advani such a star in his Rath Yatra days?
Affirmative action may be a legitimate
tool to redress social injustices but surely not when it takes the form
of a committee of ham-handed activists who seem unable to distinguish between
unintended injustice and deliberate state policy. In Rajasthan, if the
committee had bothered to travel to villages near Nagaur, they would have
thought they had stumbled into an Islamic country. All the women are veiled,
all the children attend madrasas, almost the entire population of these
villages is Muslim and the only people who might feel ''insecure'' here
are Hindus. What would the committee like to say about this?
The Prime Minister needs to be careful
that his ''high-level'' exercise does not end up targeting Muslims instead
of helping them, and his committee needs to be careful that it does not
once again turn Muslims into victims of secularism.
Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
