(Deccan Herald
March 9, 2007)
There’s a great need for equal rights
By Teesta Setalvad
Curiously, it was just this cleverly coined word, appeasement, (read tushtikaran) of the Muslim minority, more than any other coinage that can be credited to have resulted in the soaring success graph of the sangh parivar's hate politics into the mind and vocabulary of large sections of India’s largest religious minority through the 1980s and 1990s.
Aggressive, if mindless street politics by a carefully cultivated religio-political leadership among the largest minority that was caught in a time warp when it came to expressions of protest especially in relation to the Indian state’s relationship with one half of its population, the Muslim woman, contributed to the shifting and hardening of stances against all Muslims in general.
When protests on the streets from the minority were seen and heard, they easily took the form and shape of a threat to keep away from personal laws of the community, even if the aim was to empower and enable divorced or deserted Muslim women. The result was that the Indian state passed, in 1986, in Parliament, an Act that in fact disempowered the Muslim woman by keeping her out of the rights guaranteed under Indian penal law to all women but this action of the Indian state, pushed by a belligerent Muslim community leadership, is remembered in public memory as the symbol of Muslim appeasement.
Other protests that often took ludicrous forms especially given the syncretic culture of the sub-continent with its centuries-old Sufi-Bhakti traditions included, for instance, protest against the start of an occasion through lighting the lamp (a pervasive tradition in Kerala and the South, especially) and even for Friday holidays!
All these combined, successfully kept the image of this vibrant minority community that is as diverse, rich and plural as any other Indian community or caste, confined for those among the Hindus and the elite who wished not to look beyond the surreptitious propaganda of the sangh, or those who actually believed it anyway and found, with the propaganda, a convenient anchor to peg their belief.
As the word appeasement threatens to surface once again in the wake of the recently released Sachar committee report, it would be wise for all, politicians and media included, to recall this recent history. For any society, country or nation, the graph of comparative access and development is a matter of collective appraisal, either pride or shame. Just as the denial of space, access and rights for the minority black population in the USA right until the 1960s, the results of the shocking, if not gross findings of the Sachar committee reveal that the Indian state has led the Muslim minority down. Even the communist-run states have questions to answer, with the onus on ‘Hindu’ society to answer.
Global growth rate however inflationary is revelled in, stock market surges are celebrated but have we so lost the capacity to critique ourselves that we accept institutionalised discrimination against our largest minority–that can only be the result of active bias – without so much as the blinking of an eye?
Sixty years of independence as a democracy ought to bring maturity and reason into the polity and searching self-criticism into all institutions of democratic governance.
A question that begs a reply is how come in two fields with mass appeal, Bollywood and sports, it has not been possible to keep the Muslims out? The zippy run-up and in swing of Irfan Pathan, from a bruised and battered Vadodara in Gujarat, who is one of the icons of Indian cricket nationalism today. Or the Aamir, Shahrukh and Salman Khans, who are the heart throbs of millions! Azim Premji, a corporate giant and self-confident Sania Mirza are the icing on this cake.
Clearly in those fields and arenas of free and fair play, Muslims can and do excel, on their own, and need no prop. As high as 55 per cent of India's vibrant artisan class – self-employed and ignored by the present development paradigm – is also Muslim, be they the extradordinary weavers of Benarasi silk, or those that create skilled embroideries on fabric, be it the Kutchi or Lucknowi chicken variety.
Faced with 400 pages of the revealing Sachar committee report, that contains as many as 150 pages of carefully and meticulously tabulated graphs, it is time for India as a whole, especially its articulate, privileged sections to sit up and take notice.
A retired bureaucrat who had covered many a site of bitter communal strife in north India in the seventies and eighties had this to say about the landscape in Uttar Pradesh: “A Hindu area can be spotted or marked with the existence of a school, a Muslim area with the existence of a police station!” Stark words that deserve some serious consideration. Rationally, not through the hysterical dialectic being adopted by the BJP’s think-tank on the eve of the elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Equal rights, equal access and non-discrimination should be the demand of all including minority organisations.
A close monitor on access in and to educational institutions and arenas for employment can only be ensured through a Non-Discrimination Officer who is available to register complaints of denial and discrimination.
A mature and inclusive Indian democracy and polity must not, and cannot let the Sachar committee report, with its findings and recommendations become the victim of narrow, divisive, hate-filled politics.
Implementation of the Sachar committee report is a challenge to all Indian political parties, saffron included. The pathetic status of the Indian Muslim, socially and economically, in areas where there are structural glass ceilings of bias in place is a challenge first and foremost to the secular, Indian state and then to elitist, privileged Hindu India.
(The writer is co-editor of ‘Communalism Combat’.)
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