Muslims continue to suffer economic deprivation. Their situation is so dire that, for them, economic reforms need precedence over all other amelioration policies. In fact, improvement in social and educational conditions as also the much-talked-about gender reforms can automatically follow as a byproduct of economic redemption.
On almost every measure of success – the number of Muslims in the IAS, the police and the Army; the number of Muslim-owned companies in the top 500 Indian firms; the percentage of Muslim CEOs or even, national newspaper editors – they lag far behind their statistical entitlements. And then there are millions of Muslims who live in abject poverty.
The backwardness of Muslims is depriving the country of one-fifth of its valuable talent. Economic problems cannot be solved with civil rights remedies but they could be relieved with public and private action that encourages economic redevelopment. The Government has been aggressively pursuing the agenda of reforms in the personal laws of Muslims alleging genuine concern for Muslim women.
The economic agenda is more urgent for the community than most of the reforms which the Government is contemplating. The whole chorus of gender reforms gives an impression that the civil code is the prime urgency and that it is a magic bullet for its multiple problems. Most Muslims see these social reforms as a subterfuge for deflecting attention from the most pressing discriminations that the community is facing on the economic front.The mood among India’s Muslims is despondent and they see their position being undermined steadily by the new nationalism that has gripped the country. By passing the triple talaq bill, the Modi government has dared to effect changes in the Muslim personal law.
The bogey of a Uniform Civil Code has already raised its head again and the apprehensions of the Muslim orthodoxy about the possible radical changes to the Shariat Act of 1937 no longer appear farfetched. Its concern is pertinent because recent events demonstrate the complete breakdown of the consensus that had deemed that changes in personal laws would happen only when the community voiced a need for them.
Most Muslims see social reforms as subterfuge for deflecting attention from discrimination the community faces on economic front
“The Sachar Report broadly showed Muslims to be stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social heap. Though heavily urban, Muslims had a particularly low share of public (or any formal) jobs, school and university places, and seats in politics. They earned less than other groups, were more excluded from banks and other finance, spent fewer years in school and had lower literacy rates. Pitifully few entered the army or the police force.”
The Post Sachar Evaluation Committee headed by Prof Amitabh Kundu, in its report of 2014, highlighted the fact that the state of Muslim education is a matter of great concern. The Graduation Attainment Rates (GARs) and Mean Years of Schooling (MYS) amongst Muslims are very low, and dropout rates are very high the Committee stated. Kundu has documented that, although caste-based discrimination has fallen considerably in the last few decades, discrimination against Muslims is on the rise.
Despite an influx of people into urban centers across India, the rate of Muslim migration is decreasing, because they are largely shut out of the labor market. Their names are also frequently removed from voter rolls. These events can have long term adverse effect for the community which in turn will have overall impact in the larger national economy. It can also engineer inter generational economic stress.
Muslims have traditionally been craftsmen and Hindus traders. Most craft skills have been overtaken by mechanization which has rendered skills of most Muslim craftsmen as obsolete. These people have lost their traditional livelihood. On the contrary Hindu traders and businessmen have prospered from the country’s booming economic growth. Over the last six years, the gap between the two communities has further widened, says a comparative study of two surveys of the government.
The NSSO Report (Periodic Labour Force Survey – PLFS-2017-2018), conducted between July 2017- June 2018, reveals that in comparison to Dalits, Hindu OBCs and Hindu upper castes, the percentage of Muslim youths (Age 21-29) who have graduated is lowest. The gap between Muslim and Dalit is 4 percentage points. Six years back (2011-2012), the gap between the two had been just 1 percentage point.
Besides Dalits, Muslims have also fallen behind their Hindu OBCs and Hindu Upper Caste peers – from 7 percentage points to 11 in the case of Hindu OBCs. The data about 2011-2012 is based on NSS-Employment and Unemployment Situation in India – EUS 2011-2012.
The Muslim community’s best position is in South India. Tamil Nadu has 36 per cent Muslim graduates followed by Kerala (28 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (21 per cent) and Karnataka (18 per cent). In these states, the community is giving a close competition to SCs.
The Muslim community has not only fewer graduates compared to other communities, the percentage of their youths currently in educational institutions is also low. In the year 2017-18, only 39 percent of Muslim youths in the age group of 15-24 were in educational institutions while this percentage was 44 among Dalits, 51 among Hindu OBCs and 59 among Hindu Upper Castes.
The report shows that 31 per cent of Muslim youths are neither in education, nor training or employment. The SCs have fewer such youths (26 per cent), followed by Hindu OBCs (23 per cent) and Hindu Upper Castes (17 per cent).
However, there are several ways in which the backwardness of the community can be addressed. Since the Constitution and the courts have ruled out religion to be any sort of criteria for assessing backwardness, minority groups were not identified as “backward” for the purpose of special safeguards for the disadvantaged.
Since the Constitution and courts ruled out religion to be a criterion for assessing backwardness, minority groups were not identified as backward
There are three main reasons advanced: First, it was not compatible with secularism. Second, since Muslims don’t have a caste system it was difficult to use the benchmark of social backwardness for providing them special relief. Third, it would be antithetical to the principles of national unity.
In India, reservations have been formulated on the principles of social justice enshrined in the Constitution. The Constitution provides for reservation for historically marginalised communities, now known as backward castes. But the Constitution does not define any of the categories, identified for the benefit of reservation. One of the most important bases for reservation is the interpretation of the word “class.”
Experts argue that social backwardness is a fluid and evolving category, with caste as just one of the markers of discrimination. Gender, culture, economic conditions, educational backwardness, official policies among other factors can influence social conditions and could be the cause of deprivation and social backwardness.
Moreover, the notion of social backwardness itself could undergo change as the political economy transforms from a caste-mediated, closed system to a more open-ended, globally integrated and market-determined system marked by high mobility and urbanisation. We are seeing this transformation at a much more exponential pace than our Constitution-makers may have visualised.
In one of its recent and well known judgment, the Supreme Court has made an important point about positive discrimination in India. Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton F Nariman of the Supreme Court said:
“An affirmative action policy that keeps in mind only historical injustice would certainly result in under protection of the most deserving backward class of citizens, which is constitutionally mandated. It is the identification of these new emerging groups that must engage the attention of the state.”
We must actively consider evolving new benchmarks for assessing backwardness, reducing reliance on its caste-based definition. This alone can enable newer groups to get the benefits of affirmative action through social reengineering or else, the tool of affirmative action will breed new injustice. Muslims can become eligible for at least some forms of positive discrimination among new “backward” groups.
India has 3,743 “backward” castes and sub-castes making up about half the population. So the potential for caste warfare is endless. The result, British journalist Edward Luce wrote in his book “In Spite of the Gods”, is “the most extensive system of patronage in the democratic world.” With such a rich gravy train, it’s no wonder the competition turns lethal.
Citizenship Amendment Bill is an attempt to scare minorities and make life miserable for them with a sinister message of an ethnic purge
“India is not a country of the Hindus only. It is a country of the Muslims, the Christians and the Parsees too. The country can gain strength and develop itself only when the people of India live in mutual goodwill and harmony.”
“It is tremendous (he wrote); it is obvious; it lies on the surface and anybody can see it… It is fascinating to find how the Bengalis, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs, and the great central block comprising of Hindustani-speaking people, have retained their particular characteristics for hundreds of years, have still more or less the same virtues and failings of which old traditions of record tell us, and yet have been throughout these ages distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities.”
“Some kind of a thread of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of beliefs and customs was practiced and every variant acknowledged and even encouraged.”
*Development sector expert