It will be very difficult to establish proof of RAW's involvement in communal violence in India but the same conclusion may be reached by simple deduction. If we accept that RAW is a communal organization having virtually no Muslims within its ranks than it is likely that they have an inbuilt bias towards Hindu organizations and tend to overlook anti-Muslim violence and may even promote the same. If you study the anti-Muslim diatribes on websites like SAAG which is run by RAW than you may conclude that these are an incitement to violence against minorities. RAW has links to many media outlets which promotes prejudiced attitudes to Muslims and thereby provides the incentive for attacks on Muslims and other minorities.
In India, The Wages Of Distrust
By Sudha Ramachandran
15 November, 2006
Asia Times Online
BANGALORE - A recent media report has pointed out that Muslims have been kept out of some wings of India's intelligence apparatus. While the thin presence of Muslims in jobs and education is well known, their exclusion from government agencies by design is cause for concern. Not only is it a blot on the country's secular and pluralistic credentials but it has implications for India's security. It could be detracting from the quality of intelligence the agencies are gathering.
According to a report in leading newsmagazine Outlook, India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing,adheres to an "unwritten code" not to recruit Muslims. Right from its inception in the late 1960s, RAW, which has a 10,000-strong staff, "has avoided recruiting any Muslim officer". This is the case, too, with the National Technical Research Organization, the recently established technical-intelligence wing of RAW.
The report points out that Muslims and Sikhs are not deployed to protect India's VIPs, either. The Special Protection Group (SPG) that is in charge of protecting the prime minister avoids posting Muslims and Sikhs as bodyguards. The few Muslims and Sikhs who are in the SPG are deployed on administrative duties. There are no Muslims or Sikhs in the National Security Guard (or Black Cats), an elite counter-terrorism force that is also responsible for VIP protection.
While distrust of Muslims is long-standing, suspicion of Sikhs, who constitute less than 2% of India's population, can be traced back to the eruption of the Sikh militancy that raged through the 1980s and was aided by sections of the Sikh diaspora and Pakistan. In October 1984, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. The Sikh community came under a cloud and Sikhs were thereafter pulled off the personal security of prime ministers.
Sikh militancy has subsided, but Sikhs continue to be excluded from the personal security of the prime minister. Incidentally, India's current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is himself a Sikh, as is Chief of Army Staff Joginder Jaswant Singh. Yet people from the Sikh community are not trusted to look after the prime minister's security.
It was Sikh officers in the police, the intelligence and the armed forces who ultimately defeated the Sikh militancy. There are lessons in that for India as it shrinks from recruiting Muslims.
Distrust of Muslims is far deeper and more widespread. They are kept out not just from bodyguard duties of India's top leaders but much more.
Muslims constitute 13.4% of India's 1.1-billion-strong population, but their presence in education and employment - both private sector and government - is nowhere near their population share. "From the administration and the police to the judiciary and the private sector, the invisible hands of prejudice, economic and educational inequality seem to have frozen the 'quota' for Muslims at 3-5%," observes Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu.
"For virtually every socio-economic marker of well-being, the Muslim is well below the national norm - not to speak of the level commensurate with her or his share of the national population - and the evidence suggests these inequalities are not decreasing over time."
The thin presence of Muslims in jobs and employment and their abysmal socio-economic status have often been blamed on their community's reluctance to become a part of the Indian mainstream. Muslims don't get jobs because they don't want to get educated, they don't want to work in government, is an argument often heard in India. Muslim clerics and politicians are often accused of keeping the community backward. And there is some truth in this argument.
But there is serious prejudice too against Muslims. And this prejudice is responsible for the reluctance of Hindus to rent houses to Muslims, to hire them or to trust them in "sensitive" positions.
In the eyes of many Hindus, no Muslim can ever truly belong to India. Muslims are seen as "outsiders", descendents of those who invaded India centuries ago. The partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan out of Muslim-majority areas has added to hostility against Muslims. Muslims in India are often regarded as pro-Pakistan and in recent years have been looked upon with suspicion as possible terrorists.
It is this perception that lies behind the reluctance to recruit Muslims into the security forces and the intelligence agencies.
It is estimated that the number of Muslims in India's 1.1-million-strong army is only about 29,000. Since 1947, there have been only three Muslim lieutenant-generals and only eight major-generals, out of several hundred, points out Omar Khalidi, author of Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India. This is the same number as that among Parsis and Jews, who are far smaller minorities in India.
"The reported exclusion of Muslims from RAW isn't a surprise," said a retired bureaucrat. "It is an extension of the systematic discrimination that Muslims in India encounter whether it is in education, jobs or accessing bank credit."
It appears that like RAW, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) - the agency responsible for domestic intelligence - was once reluctant to recruit Muslims. A change in its outlook came in the early 1990s when it decided to recruit Muslim officers. Today, the 12,000-strong IB has what has been termed "a handful" of Muslim officers.
Will RAW go the IB's way and open its doors to Muslims? Some RAW officials remain skeptical about the loyalty of Muslims. "How can they be trusted to represent and protect India's national interests when they are pro-Pakistan or when their loyalty to the community of Muslims the world over is greater than that to the country?" one RAW official asked this correspondent.
Other RAW operatives admit that questioning the willingness of Muslims to represent India's interests is unfair. They recognize that Muslims in the diplomatic corps have done a great job in representing the country's interests. They admit too that there are no doubts over the integrity and loyalty of Muslims in the Indian security forces. And they are willing to admit that Muslims in the IB played a big role in fighting the militancy in Kashmir.
There is growing awareness within RAW too that it needs Muslim officers not just because that is politically correct but because Muslims will be able to fill important gaps in India's world view.
"They might be in a better position to understand the Muslim mind and in gathering and interpreting intelligence from Muslim countries," said an RAW officer. With a major part of India's concerns today focused on the Muslim world, "Muslim officers in RAW would be an asset", he added.
The two obstacles in the way of RAW opening its doors to Muslims are the absence of clear direction on the matter from the country's political leadership and the inertia that has gripped the organization, preventing it from changing its old ways.
It appears that in 2000, when the government was revamping the security setup after the Kargil conflict, the need for recruiting Muslims came up. According to Outlook, a senior bureaucrat approached the then national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, with the idea of recruiting Muslims into the organizations that were being set up. Mishra promised to look into it but nothing was done to take the suggestion forward.
Officials say a policy rethink on the issue of recruiting Muslims into RAW and deploying them as bodyguards to VIPs is "an enterprise fraught with risk". It requires someone to stick his neck out and make a bold decision.
"Since there is a possibility that such a decision could go horribly wrong, nobody wants to take the risk," said a Home Ministry official.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.
In India, The Wages Of Distrust By Sudha Ramachandran
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
What this analysis misses is that RAW is probably excludes Muslims as it has an anti-Muslim agenda and part of its operations involve fomenting violence against minorities.
Folks, I think this will be bigger than the US financial crisis !! 
Time to sell your sell your stocks and batten down your hatches! The badshah of Bangladesh is coming to town
