India and her Muslims

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Could we highlight the important points in the articles being posted please - so that readers know what to take away from them amidst all these articles being posted.

For those that have already been posted, please go back and edt them to highlight important points please.

 

[Omar1984]

From an Indian:

The quality of Muslim human resources must improve


India has very many poor and deprived people. There are large groups like small farmers, landless labourers, urban slum-dwellers and women (especially in low-income families), aborigines and other tribes, lower castes as scheduled in the Constitution and other backward classes among Hindus, Muslims, the indigent elderly, gypsies, and so on. Deprivation is widespread and not a prerogative of a single community or group. However, on some indicators, Muslims are worse off than Hindus, who also suffer serious deprivation. India’s experience with subsidies, dual pricing and specific handouts is that they have not significantly improved the condition of many recipients. It may only have added to their dependence. Since the Nineties, a fast-growing economy has reduced the numbers of the very poor. We must recognize that economic well-being brings in its wake social well-being as well. The deprived must become better-off and for that they need opportunities and the building of their capability.

Governments must improve opportunities for the poor and deprived. Is reservation of jobs in governments, public enterprises, academia and the private sector the best way of improving opportunities? Such jobs are few in relation to the need and in recent years, are decreasing in numbers. Few people from scheduled castes and tribes have benefited, perhaps owing to the lack of enough capable people. Tamil Nadu has offered, for the longest period, mid-day meal schemes to schoolchildren. Nutritious meals for pregnant and lactating mothers have helped the health of mothers and infants. Their beneficial effects on school attendance and on decline in fertility rates are known.

Unfortunately, social services delivery by many governments to the poor is inefficient and ineffective. Delivery of government services in health, education and subsidized supplies of essentials, is badly targeted and handled. They are not delivered at least cost and with minimum wastage, nor are they of uniformly high quality to those for whom they are meant. It is the incompetence of the government delivery system of these services that has resulted in continued deprivation of almost every section of the economically backward in India, despite large expenditures since independence. Children of the very poor get little out of the schools they attend. The quality of delivery of government services must improve. No government has given this the priority it deserves.

In 1992, the National Council of Applied Economic Research commenced the study in detail of human development indicators in each state of India. The sample had a strong rural bias and would get comparable data for Hindus (particularly scheduled castes and tribes) as well as majority-minority religions in each state — for example, Muslims in Uttar Pradesh or Christians in Kerala. The rich data out of this study has been used by many researchers. A key finding was that Muslims were, on many indicators, as badly or well off as the scheduled castes, but the scheduled tribes were the worst off on most indicators. The Sachar committee report has established certain other kinds of deprivation of Muslims that can only be attributed to discrimination.

The Sachar report uses many other data sources, particularly the National Sample Survey and the National Health and Family Planning Survey, and other specially designed studies. Muslims are deprived. So are scheduled castes and tribes in relation to OBCs, uppercaste Hindus and all other minorities. The worst-off Muslims are those in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, which together have 52 per cent of all Indian Muslims. The Sachar committee compares the status of deprivation between Muslims and Hindus (percentages below are in relation to total number of Hindus or Muslims).

In rural India, Muslims are much less represented in agriculture than Hindus and much more in non-agriculture. While 28 per cent of Hindus had no land, the number was 34 per cent for Muslims. Land holdings by Muslims are, on average, much smaller than those held by Hindus. However, rural Muslims match rural Hindus in monthly per capita expenditures. Muslims, and especially women in rural areas, trail even farther behind Hindus on higher education.

In urban India, 53 per cent of Muslims are self-employed versus 39 per cent of Hindus. Muslims have much lower representation in regular wage or salaried employment than Hindus. The proportion of illiterates is somewhat higher among Muslim males, but illiteracy is rampant among Muslim females. The differences become much sharper at higher levels of education. Secondary school education was undertaken by 17 per cent of Hindus and 8 per cent Muslims; while graduates and above were 7.9 per cent Hindus and 0.8 per cent Muslims. Less women than men among Hindus, and even less Muslim women as compared to Hindu women went for higher education. In urban India, at household monthly per capita expenditures above Rs 110, there are 64 per cent Hindus versus 46 per cent Muslims, and below Rs 110 there are 53 per cent Muslims versus 36 per cent Hindus, that is, urban Muslims have much lower expenditures. With higher percentage of all Muslims living in urban areas, Muslims are expenditure-wise worse off.

Female work participation rates among both Muslim and Hindu urban women are low. In rural areas, the work participation of both is more than three times that in urban areas. The differences between Hindu and Muslim women on this indicator are small. On some social indicators, the Muslims do much better. Thus the Muslim sex ratio is better than the Hindu one, and except for Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims are at the same or higher levels than Hindus in every state. Muslims have more live births and higher surviving proportions than Hindus, and this is so at all levels of income. While contraceptive usage among Muslims is lower than among Hindus, the differences are not large in relation to their populations. Perhaps there may be less female foeticide and infanticide among Muslims, and better mother and child care.

Muslims are far fewer in government employment in relation to their population. In key states, Muslims had 6.3 per cent share in state government employment, 7.8 per cent in judiciary and 7.4 per cent in public enterprises, all less than half of their proportions in the population. The flow of benefits under various government schemes to Muslims is very low in almost every state. Habitations with large Muslim populations in the states with large Muslim populations (West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam) also suffer from government neglect in available facilities like schools, healthcare centres, post offices, bus stops and proper approach roads.

Muslims are better than their Hindu counterparts on monthly household per capita expenditures (in rural areas), female sex ratios, infant and maternal mortality, to name a few. The means that achieved these better outcomes must be identified and the community institutions that enabled them to happen must be nurtured.

Muslim deprivation appears to be owing to social mores (poor female education), possible discrimination (poor representation in higher education), and definite discrimination (poor services in predominantly Muslim habitations). Like the deprived among the Hindus, Muslims also require a better quality of school education. More and better-remunerated teachers, better teacher attendance at schools, more school facilities, outreach programmes to improve English and general knowledge, are some aspects that must improve in government schools. This improvement must happen for all communities.

Reservations will not help Muslims as they have not helped the SCs and STs. The quality of Muslim human resources must improve. Institutions that have helped achieve better results on some parameters could be used to improve on the poor parameters as well. New institutions must be developed to improve the delivery of social services from governments to Muslims. Muslim non-governmental groups must be formed to ensure that Muslims get their due share of government services and expenditures.


The quality of Muslim human resources must improve

 

[R.A.W.]

Omar let me know when you are actually done with posting all the articles so that we can actually discuss... because I have already read most of them.... in almost every thread of yours...

 

[ambersjay]

Exactly - how did Musharraf enter the topic?

Now will you guys offer an Indian Muslim's comments on every other issue in the world? Lets not go off on useless tangents.

maulana madani is not just any indian muslim, hes a member of rajya sabha, the upper house of parliament. he represnts a wider indian muslim community hence his comments are very relevant to the topic.

Hogwash - the intent of that post was to flame, and I understood the intent perfectly. Stick to the topic, which revolves around India and her Muslims, not on how Indian Muslims feel about Musharraf, Zardari, Bush, Pakistan, Israel, US etc.

And do recall that I pointed out that an entire thread exists about that exchange with Musharraf Mr. 'truth is bitter' - (insert foot into mouth now please - wait, its already there).

Back to topic.

oh please! you and i both very well know the intent of the post was to show the true feelings of indian muslims instead of twisted pakistani propaganda to portray indian muslims as opressed and second class citizens! the truth is too bitter to handle and you know it! anyways, as i said you're the mod.....do as you please.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Indian Muslims and Education
Asghar Ali Engineer


Indian Muslims constitute more than 12 per cent of Indian population which is quite sizeable by any account and they are more than 100 million in terms of absolute numbers. It is maintained and rightly so that they are next only to Muslim population in Indonesia.

That is incorrect - According to the CIA factbook:

Pakistan
Population: 176,242,949 (July 2009 est.)
Religions: Muslim 95% = 167,430,801

India
Population: 1,166,079,217 (July 2009 est.)
Religions: Muslim 13.4% =156,254,615

India's Muslim population is lower than that of Pakistan by an esy 10 million. Unfortunatly this incorrect view (of India having more Muslims than Pakistan) has become a common narrative, and is mentioned even by Pakistani commentators, and therefore needs to be corrected whenever the opportunity arises.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

oh please! you and i both very well know the intent of the post was to show the true feelings of indian muslims instead of twisted pakistani propaganda to portray indian muslims as opressed and second class citizens! the truth is too bitter to handle and you know it! anyways, as i said you're the mod.....do as you please.

What do Indian feelings about Musharraf, or Bush, or Zardari, or Ariel Sharon, or Michael Jackson have to do with the topic of India and her Muslims? Musharraf is not Indian nor does he represent India.

Stop trolling please, and most of these articles are from the Western and Indian media, not 'twisted Pakistani propaganda'. Take it up with the West or refute them.

And yes, if you wish to discuss that particular episode on that video, go to the relevant thread - don't flame and post off topic comments here because you can't deal with the thread subject without dragging in Pakistan and flaming.

Thanks.

 

[Omar1984]

From Washington Post:

India's Muslims See Bias in Housing
Recent Increase Is Blamed on Islamist Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai Last Fall

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 19, 2009

MUMBAI -- The sunny apartment had everything Palvisha Aslam, 22, a Bollywood producer, wanted: a spacious bedroom and a kitchen that overlooked a garden in a middle-class neighborhood that was a short commute to Film City, where many of India's Hindi movies are shot.

She was about to sign the lease when the real estate broker noticed her surname. He didn't realize that she was Muslim, he said. Then he rejected her. It was just six weeks after the November Mumbai terrorist attacks and Indian Muslims were being viewed with suspicion across the country. He then showed her a grimy one-room tenement in a Muslim-dominated ghetto. She felt sick to her stomach as she watched the residents fight over water at a leaky tap in a dark alley.

"That night I cried a lot. I was still an outcast in my own country -- even as a secular Muslim with a well-paid job in Bollywood," said Aslam, who had similar experiences with five other brokers and three months later is still sleeping on friends' sofas. "I'm an Indian. I love my country. Is it a crime now to be a Muslim in Mumbai?"

In the months after the brazen three-day Mumbai terrorist attacks, stories like Aslam's are common, even among some of the country's most beloved Bollywood actors, screenwriters and producers in India's most cosmopolitan city. The accusations of discrimination highlight the often simmering religious tensions in the world's biggest democracy, where Muslim celebrities can be feted on the red carpet one minute and locked out of quality housing the next.


The phenomenon has become known here as "renting while Muslim." It raises questions that go to the heart of India's identity as a secular democracy that is home to nearly every major religion on the planet. Although India has a Hindu majority, it also has 150 million Muslims, one of the largest Muslim communities in the world.

"The new generation wants a better India that isn't bogged down in religious strife," said Junaid Memon, 34, a Muslim Bollywood director who is trying to promote religious harmony through his films and his Facebook site. "We shouldn't be an India that ghettoizes all Muslims to apartments near a mosque. This is a real test for modern India."

With national elections across India that began Thursday and last a month, some Muslim activists and Bollywood film directors are raising the issue with political parties and trying to form a voting bloc.

"This election, we have to talk about housing discrimination against Muslims," said Zulfi Sayed, a Muslim actor who is outspoken about the issue and is courting Hindus who agree with him. "In a shining India, this shouldn't be still such a common practice."

Muslims have long served as an important swing vote in India, since Hindus are increasingly divided among nearly 200 regional parties. Historically, India's Congress party won elections with the help of the Muslim vote by running on a platform of promoting religious diversity. The opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has, at times, used anti-Muslim sentiment to court votes while pledging to keep Hindu heritage alive.

India blames the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba for the November attack in which 10 gunmen left more than 170 people dead, including 40 Indian Muslims.

Many Muslims here feared the attacks would unleash cycles of revenge killing of the sort that have recurred throughout India's modern history, from the violence of partition between India and Pakistan in 1947 to the 1992 riots in Mumbai. In the days after November's Mumbai attacks, Muslims from all corners of society united, holding candlelight vigils with a message to protest terrorism and pledge loyalty to India. In the end, there was no communal violence.

But across the country, reports of housing discrimination have increased.

Afroz Alam Sahil, 21, a student activist at Jamia Millia Islamia College in New Delhi, said that more than a dozen students from states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar -- which have large Muslim populations -- have been unable to find housing since the Mumbai attacks.

"Some Muslim friends have dropped out of college because they have nowhere to stay," Sahil said. "There is intense suspicion. Sometimes I ask myself why I was born Muslim."

Rana Afroz, a Muslim editor with the newspaper the Hindu, is investigating the issue after spending three months unable to find a landlord willing to rent to her and her husband.

"It is ridiculous that I have to prove to non-Muslims that I am not making bombs in my kitchen," she said. "Is this really the modern India I live in?"

In India, Muslims are often segregated, and they experience high poverty rates and low literacy. Although they make up nearly 14 percent of India's population, they hold fewer than 5 percent of government posts and are just 4 percent of the student body in India's elite universities, according to a 2006 government report.

But there are few issues more emotional than housing, especially in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, India's pulsating city of dreams where aspiring farmers and filmmakers come from across the country to seek fame and fortune.


"The ethos of Bombay is a city open to the world. The Muslims of this city feel that way, too. But the real question is why do we as Indian Muslims always have to be proving our loyalty?" asked Nawman Malik, a popular Bollywood producer who spent months searching for an apartment.

Mumbai has always had tensions over what are known here as "vegetarian buildings," where meat eaters are not allowed to live and are thus seen as devices to keep out Muslims and lower-caste Hindus. Those kinds of buildings have become more common in middle-class and posh neighborhoods as more merchants and industrialists from the neighboring state of Gujarat, where vegetarian Hinduism is the norm, migrate to India's richest city.

Managers of vegetarian buildings say they don't want the smell of meat in their hallways. But they often also explain their rules by saying they are worried about security and want like-minded residents to live together.

"Say you check one renter and they seem okay. But then they go to mosque and bring back their bearded friends and those friends are terrorists," said Raj Pathak, a vegetarian-building manager in downtown Mumbai. "Why do we have to live with such fears?"

Muslims, who have seen housing discrimination and the number of vegetarian buildings spike after every terrorist attack, see the issue as blatant discrimination.

"Everyone knows the vegetarian-only restriction is code language for 'No Muslims,' " said Naved Khan, a Muslim real estate broker who is trying to help Bollywood's Muslims find housing.

On a recent afternoon, Aslam, the producer, hung out at a cafe, as she sometimes does so she doesn't get on the nerves of those she is staying with. She wore jeans and a hooded sweat shirt.

Until January, she was living with a Hindu roommate. Then their lease ended. Her roommate was getting married.

"So I thought I would get my own place as a successful adult," said Aslam, who had come to Mumbai from Kolkata with dreams of landing a Bollywood job. "My mom was really proud of me. Now she's really upset."

A broker recently showed her a house in a working-class neighborhood. "It looked haunted. But I was denied even that," she said.

Another broker gave her advice: "Madam, live with a Hindu roommate. Only then will you get a flat."

India's Muslims See Bias in Housing - washingtonpost.com

IF MUSLIM MOVIE STARS ARE DENIED HOUSING IN MUMBAI, IMAGINE REGULAR COMMON MUSLIMS IN INDIA

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

So, when are you guys going to take a break from posting articles and discuss them?

I think enough have been posted to substantiate what I suspect are your respective positions on the subject.

 

[R.A.W.]

So, when are you guys going to take a break from posting articles and discuss them?

I think enough have been posted to substantiate what I suspect are your respective positions on the subject.

Even I am waiting for the same.... when we can discuss.... Once we are done with "Who posts more articles?"

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

Emraan Hashmi accuses housing society of religious bias
Indo Asian News Service

ians.in

Last Updated: July 31,2009 16:39:22

Mumbai, July 31 (IANS) Wondering why people talked of secularism in India, actor Emraan Hashmi Friday accused a Mumbai housing society of refusing him permission to buy a flat because he is Muslim - a complaint echoed in the past by others in Bollywood.

Emraan has complained to the Maharashtra Minorities Commission (MMC), which says the management of Nibbana Complex, a posh society in Bandra's elite Pali Hill area, is still considering his 'antecedents' before taking a final call.

'This has political connotations, so they don't want to talk about it openly. Yesterday, they told me that I can't get the NoC. I asked them why aren't you giving me the (no objection) certificate -- am I a criminal, or a terrorist or have I done anything illegal?' Emraan told reporters here Friday with his uncle and well-known filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt by his side.

Emraan said: 'It is strange that they don't tell you on your face that you can't get a house because you are a Muslim. It would have been easier if they would have told me openly. What they told me is that they can't allow me to live there because I am a serial kisser and my presence will have a bad influence on the children staying there.'

The actor, who featured in films like 'Murder' and 'Gangster - A Love Story', wanted to buy a house in Pali Hill so that he could stay close to his parents.

In his complaint to the MMC, he said he was refused the NoC despite paying the token amount of Rs.100,000 and the society management ignored his parents' requests to meet them over the issue.

MMC vice-chairman Abraham Mathai said: 'We have been told that the society is considering the 'antecedents' of the applicant (Hashmi) before it can take a final decision in the matter.'

'Accordingly, we have also advised Hashmi to get a Crime Investigation Department (CID) G Branch certificate, which will effectively prove his antecedents and submit it to the housing society,' Mathai told IANS today.

Mathai said if the society is found to have practised communal bias its office bearers could face action.

An office bearer of the Nibbana Complex, however, told mediapersons that certain other formalities had to be completed before Emraan could be granted the NoC. He added that a society meeting was scheduled for next Sunday to take a final decision, but the applicant had raised a controversy before that.

In the past, senior actress and former MP Shabana Azmi alleged religious discrimination when she attempted to buy a flat in Mumbai. Actor Arbaaz Khan, brother of Salman Khan, had also experienced similar difficulties when he attempted to buy a flat here.

Emraan said: 'Being a celebrity if I'm facing problems in buying a house here, I wonder what kind of problems others would have been facing. All the time we are talking about secularism but with such incidents what secularism are people talking about?'

He said someone suggested to him that he purchase the house in the name of his wife Parveen, who is a Hindu. 'I can do that, but why should I do that?' he asked.

Bhatt said such discrimination was a serious problem plaguing the country.

'Even 62 years after independence, the virus of communalism is alive in an area like Pali Hill, which is known as India's Beverly Hills where stars like Sunil Dutt lived and Dilip Kumar is still living there. It's a serious problem and is the country ready to accept that communalism is still surviving?'

'There are also certain societies in the area that do not give NoCs to non-Hindus,' he said.
@ Copyright 2009 Indo Asian News Service.

 

[Omar1984]

From an Indian:

Government report concedes India’s Muslims are a socially deprived, victimised minority

A report prepared by a seven-member committee headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar has conceded that India’s Muslim minority faces appalling socioeconomic deprivation and is the victim of official neglect and frequent police harassment and violence.

The committee, which was charged with investigating the socioeconomic status of India’s 150 million Muslims and recommending means of improving their lot, was appointed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March 2005.

It has long been patently obvious that India’s Muslims are disproportionately represented among the poor and that they have been the target of official discrimination. From 1998 to 2004, India’s government was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which openly espouses the Hindu-supremacist doctrine of Hindutva. In 2002, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed and tens of thousands more left homeless by an anti-Muslim pogrom in BJP-ruled Gujarat.

Nevertheless, the Sachar Committee’s findings constitute a devastating indictment of bourgeois rule in India. In particular, they puncture the claims of the Congress Party, which dominates the current UPA coalition and has governed India for most of the 60 years since independence, to be the architect of a secular democracy.

Representing 13.4 percent of India’s population, Muslims are far and away India’s largest religious minority, living, albeit in varying concentrations, in all parts of the country.

The Congress-led UPA had two major motivations for appointing the Sachar Committee.

Addressing or at least appearing to address some of the grievances of India’s beleaguered Muslim minority is a way the current government can differentiate itself from the former BJP-dominated coalition, while pursuing the same socially incendiary neo-liberal economic agenda. Sections of the Indian establishment have become apprehensive over the politically destabilising consequences of the growing alienation of India’s Muslims, and in particular of a spurt in support for Islamicist organisations, some of them with terrorist affinities.

However, so damaging were the Sachar Committee’s findings to the Congress’s secular pretensions that the UPA government delayed the report’s release for some two months. Discrepancies between leaked copies of the report and the final version indicate, moreover, that the government insisted that some parts be deleted before making the Sachar Committee’s findings public.

The report concedes that India’s Muslims live under a shadow of fear due to a communalised political establishment and state machinery: “Communal tension or any untoward incident in any part of the country is enough to make Muslims fear for their safety and security. The lackadaisical attitude of the government and the political mileage sought whenever communal riots occur has been very painful for the Community.”

The report adds that Muslims have come to fear the police and security forces: “Concern was expressed over police highhandedness in dealing with Muslims. Muslims live with an inferiority complex as ‘every bearded man is considered an ISI [Pakistan’s foreign spy agency] agent’; ‘whenever any incident occurs Muslim boys are picked up by the police’ and fake encounters [between security forces and alleged Muslim terrorists] are common. In fact, people argued that police presence in Muslim localities is more common than the presence of schools, industry, public hospitals and banks. Security personnel enter Muslim houses on the slightest pretext. The plight of Muslims living in border areas is even worse as they are treated as ‘foreigners’ and are subjected to harassment by the police and administration.”

The treatment accorded Muslims by India’s security forces is directly bound up with Indian bourgeoisie’s use of anti-Pakistan and ant-Muslim chauvinism as a weapon of its class rule—as a means to manufacture “national unity” and to divert the social antagonisms and frustrations born of acute poverty, inequality and economic insecurity in a reactionary direction.

Ghetto-isation


The Sachar report points out that communal harassment is increasingly forcing Muslims into impoverished ghettos: “Fearing for their security, Muslims are increasingly resorting to living in ghettos across the country. This is more pronounced in communally sensitive towns and cities.”

This ghetto-isation, in turn, facilitates official neglect and discrimination. “It was suggested that Muslims living together in concentrated pockets (both because of historical reasons and a deepening sense of insecurity) has made them easy targets for neglect by municipal and government authorities. Water, sanitation, electricity, schools, public health facilities, banking facilities, anganwadis [day care centers], ration shops, roads, and transport facilities—are all in short supply in these areas.”

India’s Muslims, reports the Sachar Committee, face “deficits and deprivation in practically all dimensions” of socioeconomic development.

In most socioeconomic indicators that the committee considered, “Muslims rank somewhat above SCs/STs [the historically-deprived former untouchables (Dalits) and tribal (hunter-gather) peoples],” but below all other groups, that is “Hindu OBCs [Other Backward Classes or lower caste groups], Other Minorities and Hindu General [mostly those who come from families that would have traditionally been considered upper caste].”

For some measures of social deprivation, Muslims as a group fell below the Dalits, who more than a half-century after the abolition of untouchability continue to make up a grossly disproportionate share of India’s landless, poor and illiterate. And some particularly disadvantaged Muslims groups fell consistently below the Dalits.

The head count ratio (HCR) of poverty among Muslims is 31 percent—second only to the SC/ST communities whose HCR is 35 percent. The poverty figure among urban Muslims is higher, with 38.4 percent deemed to be living in poverty, as compared with 36.4 percent of urban Dalits and Scheduled Tribes.

Here it needs be emphasised that India’s official poverty line is pegged at the bare subsistence level, the income necessary to meet the caloric requirement to do a full day’s work.

Using data from the 2001 National Census and National Sample Survey, the Sachar committee shows that Muslims are disproportionately poorly housed; that they use less electricity than other Indians, with “the share of villages with no electricity increasing substantially” as the size of the Muslim population rises; and that they have less access to running water. While only 25 percent of households in rural India have running water, the figure for Muslim households is a mere 10 percent.

The share of Muslims having government jobs is just 4.9 percent. Only 4.5 percent of railway workers are Muslim, and of these, 98.7 percent occupy lower-level positions. Muslims constitute just 3.2 percent of those in India’s elite civil service corps.

The situation is worse in states with large Muslim populations. For example, in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam, where Muslims form 25.2 percent, 18.5 percent and 30.9 percent of the population, respectively, their share of government jobs is 4.7 percent, 7.5 percent, and 10.9 percent, respectively.

Less access to education


According to the Sachar report, Muslims in India have less access to education than other religious groups. As a result, the literacy rate among Muslims is only 59.1 percent while the national average is 64.8 percent. School enrollment among urban Muslim boys is only 80 percent, as compared with 90 percent of SC/ST boys. Only 68 percent of Muslim girls attend schools, while the figures for Dalit girls and girls categorised as non-Dalit are 72 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

When it comes to higher education, the Muslim presence is even lower. The report says that in the elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Muslim students constitute only 1.3 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively, of the student body.

One of the means through which the Indian ruling elite has discriminated against the Muslim minority is through its treatment of Urdu—a north Indian language that, like Hindi, is a variant of Hindustani, the major distinction being that Hindi uses a Sanskrit-derived script, while Urdu is written in a Persian-Arabic type script. (As a result of the activities of Hindu and Muslim communalists, Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, was redefined as a “Muslim” language during the first half of the twentieth century.)

Reports the Sachar Committee: Urdu “has been neglected. The fallout of this has been inadequate access to education in the mother tongue for many Urdu speaking children. The neglect has also resulted in poor performance of Urdu medium school students because of poor infrastructural facilities and absence of adequate number of qualified teachers.”

There is evidence that India’s banks, both public and private, also discriminate against Muslims. According to the report, the average bank loan disbursed to a Muslim is two thirds of the amount disbursed to other minorities: “ome banks use the practice of identifying ‘negative geographical zones’ on the basis of certain criteria where bank credit and other facilities are not easily provided.”

According to the Indian Express, the Sachar report also contained statistics showing that Muslims make up a disproportionately high percentage of jail inmates in all parts of India. But these figures have been excluded from the final version of the report.

Citing an earlier draft of the report, the Express says that in Maharashtra, India’s second most populous state, Muslims constitute 32.4 percent out of all inmates even though Muslims represent just 10.6 percent of the state’s population. In Gujarat, also in western India, Muslims account for more than a quarter of all prison inmates although they constitute just 9.06 percent of the population. In Karnataka, in southern India, 17.5 percent of jail inmates are Muslim as compared to their 12.23 percent of the population. In Delhi, the Union Territory that is home to India’s capital city, Muslims account for 11.7 percent of the population but 29.1 percent of prison inmates.

The high presence of Muslims in Indian prisons is a product of the deplorable socioeconomic conditions that they confront and of systematic anti-Muslim bias on the part of the police and judiciary. Thousands of innocent Muslim youths have been caught up in various “anti-terrorism” dragnets—dragnets that have made use of such draconian anti-terrorism laws as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and allow the authorities to hold people for weeks and months without charge.

Meanwhile, the Indian state has done nothing to prosecute those responsible for the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and other anti-Muslim atrocities.

The Congress and the communal partition of India


Despite the claims of India’s ruling elite concerning the secular and democratic character of India’s polity, Muslims have faced systematic and escalating discrimination since independence.

That discrimination has its roots in the 1947 communal partition of then-British India along religious-communal lines into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India. Partition was implemented through violent communal clashes fomented by both Hindu and Muslim chauvinists. These clashes resulted in the deaths of some 2 million, while another 12-14 million people were forced to flee their homes and cross the artificial border that had been drawn across the subcontinent. As a part of this forcible exchange of communities between the newly independent states of India and Pakistan, millions of Muslims were chased out of India.

Although the Indian National Congress (INC), led by Gandhi and Nehru, denied any responsibility for partition, portraying it as entirely the product of the machinations of India’s departing colonial overlords and the Muslim League, the Congress played a pivotal role in implementing partition.

It was the Congress leadership that insisted that partition be taken to its logical conclusion and that the British Indian provinces of Bengal and Punjab be partitioned on communal lines, so as to ensure that the new states were as communally homogeneous as possible.

Even more importantly, it was the Congress that joined forces with the British and the League to reorganise the state structure in South Asia, so as to contain and suppress a mass anti-imperialist movement that between 1945 and 1947 had given rise to a myriad of social struggles—including strikes, peasant land-seizures and challenges to feudal obligations, popular revolts against various princely rulers, and mutinies in the British Indian armed forces—and was assuming revolutionary dimensions.

Organically incapable of leading—and opposed to—a struggle to unite India from below through an appeal to the common class interests of the toiling masses, the bourgeois-led Congress chose to “unite” India from above by accepting partition and inheriting the British-colonial-engineered Indian state.

Moreover, a large section of the Congress leadership led by Vallabhbhai Patel collaborated with Hindu-chauvinist forces such as the RSS and the princely ruler of Alwar in stirring up anti-Muslim communalism, both before and after partition. Within weeks of independence, Patel and other senior Congress leaders were pressing for measures to reduce the use of Urdu in government and restrict Muslim participation in the police and security forces. Patel, in particular, demanded that India’s Muslim minority prove it wasn’t a fifth column for Pakistan.

The subsequent decades of Congress rule failed to address the basic socioeconomic needs of India’s working people. The deplorable socioeconomic conditions facing the Muslim minority are only an extreme expression of the situation facing the vast majority of Indians.

In the 1980s, as the Indian bourgeoisie’s post-independence national economic development strategy began to unravel, the Congress, first under Indira Gandhi and then under her son Rajiv, increasingly resorted to Hindu-chauvinist appeals. This in turn helped pave the way for the Hindu-supremacist BJP to emerge as a major political force.

In December 1992, a BJP-RSS anti-Muslim chauvinist campaign to build a Hindu temple on the site of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya culminated in its demolition by Hindu-chauvinist fanatics and the worst communal rioting since partition. The then-Congress government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao passively allowed this to happen, thereby further strengthening right-wing Hindu communalist forces.

Some six years later, the BJP managed to become the ruling party in India, indicating a further shift of the Indian bourgeoisie and political establishment to the right and its embrace of an explicitly anti-Muslim Indian/Hindu nationalism.

Government report concedes India’s Muslims are a socially deprived, victimised minority

 

[ambersjay]

What do Indian feelings about Musharraf, or Bush, or Zardari, or Ariel Sharon, or Michael Jackson have to do with the topic of India and her Muslims? Musharraf is not Indian nor does he represent India.

Stop trolling please, and most of these articles are from the Western and Indian media, not 'twisted Pakistani propaganda'. Take it up with the West or refute them.

And yes, if you wish to discuss that particular episode on that video, go to the relevant thread - don't flame and post off topic comments here because you can't deal with the thread subject without dragging in Pakistan and flaming.

Thanks.

are you thick? maulana madani is a MP and was talking about how happy and peacefully muslims are living in india....and all indians are ready to fight with them to deal with their problems irrespective of religion!did you even bother to watch the video? i didnt expect a mod to have such poor comprehension skills!

i also noticed how you comfortably avoided replying to the first part of my last post.you seem to be hell bent on proving that i am flaming and yet you fail to respond to my replies with logic.seriously...you couldnt be more obvious. anywas, this will be my last post on this matter....moving on.

 

[R.A.W.]

No, I didn't back track: Emraan Hashmi

Mumbai Emraan Hashmi is not just frustrated, he is also terribly hurt. He would have thought that after a hearing at the Minorities Commission Office on Monday, the matter around an alleged discrimination by a Housing society had finally come to a sane resolution. However, that doesn't appear to be the case as he is continuing to face some (unwarranted) flak. He is being accused of 'back tracking' from his earlier claim of 'discrimination' by claiming that the entire 'controversy' arose due to some 'miscommunication'.

"All this is so disappointing", rues Emraan, "A certain section of the Press has given a statement stating that I back tracked from my word. Sorry, I never back tracked. I did have all the reasons to believe that I was discriminated by the Housing society on religious grounds."

It was being stated that Emraan Hashmi took a U-turn by claiming that there was after all no discrimination against him.

"No, that's not the case", Emraan sticks to his guns, "Yesterday we had a hearing at the Minorities Commission Office. In this hearing, I stuck to what I had said a week back that I had reasons to believe that I faced discrimination by a Housing Society on religious grounds. And I am saying this on the records. I want to clear the air once for and all."

Apparently, the Minorities Commission wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. "Who wouldn't want that", questions Emraan, "It's the right thing to do. Even the Commission felt that that the matter was blown out of proportion and had been widely politicized. The best way to handle it was to follow a peaceful route."

It is expected that the final verdict would soon be announced by Mr. Abraham Mathai of the Minorities Commission. "I abide and respect whatever they have decided. I agree 100% with their verdict. Even the Society members and the Owner have stated that maybe there was a miscommunication. They have also claimed that they had not denied me the flat on the basis of my religion. That's good", Emraan heaves a sigh of relief here.

There were also murmurs that his parents had misbehaved at the Society meeting on 26th July'09. "Give me the names of the people who told you this. Why don't people come out and openly make such statements? Not a single Society member has stated so. I am shocked at such accusations when nothing like this happened at all," he sets the records straight.



If there is anything on religional discrimination you can always speak up In INDIA>>>>

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

are you thick? maulana madani is a MP and was talking about how happy and peacefully muslims are living in india....and all indians are ready to fight with them to deal with their problems irrespective of religion!did you even bother to watch the video? i didnt expect a mod to have such poor comprehension skills!

i also noticed how you comfortably avoided replying to the first part of my last post.you seem to be hell bent on proving that i am flaming and yet you fail to respond to my replies with logic.seriously...you couldnt be more obvious. anywas, this will be my last post on this matter....moving on.

Down to personal attacks now are we - listen to the video again - it is nothing but a some two bit Indian Mullah scoring political points off of Musharraf's engagement - in that context who the Mullah is makes no difference, which is why I saw no point in replying to the first part of your post.

Again, don't drag Pakistan into the discussion because you feel uncomfortable dealing with the subject on its own merits.

 

[ambersjay]

Down to personal attacks now are we - listen to the video again - it is nothing but a some two bit Indian Mullah scoring political points off of Musharraf's engagement - in that context who the Mullah is makes no difference, which is why I saw no point in replying to the first part of your post.

Again, don't drag Pakistan into the discussion because you feel uncomfortable dealing with the subject on its own merits.

i thought my last post would be my final one on this matter....but your extremely derogatory and insulting remark towards maulana madani made me post again. your comment shows your attitude and thinking towards indian muslims and the pakistani psyche towards indian muslims in general. thank you for blowing the cover of fake pakistani "compassion" and "worries" towards indian muslims!

moving on...............