Hindustan Times, Patna Platform 27-5-06

Lost in the mainstream

by Firoz Bakht Ahmed

Indian Muslims have been let down by their leaders, who play votebank politics merely to gain State patronage for themselves. No wonder the community is beset by poverty and illiteracy.

SOME TIME ago, Indian Muslims were in the centre of yet another needless controversy over their presence in the Indian army. Let alone the army, they lag behind in all fields, from the academic, administrative and judicial to medical, engineering and management. The community lacks the motivation to stride ahead as they feel that they will be discriminated against because of their religion in any case.

The reality is that the Muslim academic record is far too poor. Since their institutions of higher learning have been neglected and are cut off from the mainstream, they produce students who are misfits in the modern world of information boom. Though Muslims comprise 15 percent of the country’s population, their achievements have never commiserated with their numbers. Even in Aligarh , once a centre of advanced learning, Muslims are seen languishing in ghettoized slums, with literacy rates plummeting. If the nation’s literacy rate is 63.07 percent, Muslims are way behind at 41.27 percent. According to surveys carried out by Friends for Education, only 21.66 Muslim women are literate as against the 40.54 percent among non-Muslim women.

Not more than 2 percent Muslims are in government jobs. Of the 479 judges at an all-India level, only 30 – that is, 6.26 percent – are Muslims. In the IAS, Muslim constitute a mere 2.27 percent. Of the 3,284 IPS officers, just 120, or 3.65 percent, are Muslims.

As far as the Muslim representation in the central government ministries is concerned, the figures are shocking. In the Home Ministry, of the 59 secretaries, joint secretaries, directors, advisors etc., the percentage of Muslims is 0. In the Ministry of Labour, of the 12 officers, none is Muslim. In the Power Ministry, of the 44 officers, none is Muslim. Similarly, of the 38 officers in the Personnel, Public, Pension and Grievances Ministry, not one is Muslim. The Defence Ministry has 100 officers and none is Muslim. Of the 107 officers in the Finance Ministry, the Muslim percentage is 0 again. The External Affairs Ministry has 47 officers and none is Muslim. Of course, the HRD and Information and Broadcasting Ministries do have an officer each out of 26 and 33 respectively, which makes their representation 3.44 percent. There are other ministries without a single Muslim officer. Of the total 426 officers in all the ministries, only nine are Muslim, which means a meager 2.11 percent.

On the electoral front, we find that despite constituting about 20 percent of the population in Uttar Pradesh, 17.4 percent in Bihar, 14 percent in Madhya Pradesh, 65 percent in Jammu and Kashmir, 14.2 percent in Karnataka, 11 percent in Himachal Pradesh, 15.8 percent in Gujarat, 12 percent in West Bengal and about 9 to 10 percent in the remaining states, the Muslims have not really mattered. They are just vote banks for political parties.

There are various reasons for the backwardness of Muslims. Because of their leaders and the petty politicians who represent them, Indian Muslims live in a system of unofficial apartheid. Hindus and Muslims have developed separately, very often wholly ignorant about the other. This ghetto existence has allowed the rise of a class of political middlemen who serve as interlocutors between the Muslim masses and the rest of Indian society.

The sad educational record of Muslims in India will be a perennial source of trouble. Muslims have low school enrolments and suffer a high dropout rate. There is a yawning gap between the Muslims educated in modern classrooms and their more numerous counterparts who are educated at madrasas, khanqahs, Urdu medium schools or simply not at all. This gulf has widened rather than diminished over time.

The Muslim leadership has lost its voice and utility. Most of the leaders are brokers who play the politics of vote banks to acquire State patronage for themselves and their coteries. Their obscurantism is taking the community backward. They are characterized by petty mindedness and a narrow outlook so out of tune with reality as to be irresponsible.

The rest of the community gains little except some rhetorical lip service about its social and economic needs and many exhortations about the will of God. Instead, Indian Muslims are all identified by the actions of clerics and ill-educated youths, whose militancy has done little to free Muslims from the begging bowl.

Recently a Muslim politician from Uttar Pradesh offered anyone who brought him the head of the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Prophet Mohammad Rs 51 crore and the murderer’s weight in gold. I wish he had offered this sum for a medical or engineering college for Muslims.