[Reader-list] Muslim Deprivation: Some Thoughts in the Context of the Sachar Committee Report

[Yogi Sikand]

Muslim Deprivation: Some Thoughts in the Context of the Sachar Committee Report



By Yoginder Sikand

[Paper presented at a conference on the Sachar Committee Report, 19
May, 2007, Trivandrum, organised by the Forum for Social Action]

This presentation is not a rigorously-argued academic paper. Instead,
it seeks to offer stray thoughts on the very complex issue of the
sociology of Indian Muslim deprivation in the light of the Sachar
Committee Report. Rather than focusing on the deep-rooted historical
causes as well as dimensions of Muslim deprivation, about which much
has already been written, I would rather reflect on certain other
aspects related to this question, in addition to making a critique of
some aspects of the Sachar Committee Report and also offering some
suggestions for Muslim organizations to consider.

The first issue that I would like to deal with relates to the
literature and knowledge-base that we have on the subject of Muslim
deprivation. In this regard, reference to an interview I recently
conducted with a senior Muslim leader is pertinent. I asked him what
he felt about the Sachar Committee Report. His reply was that the
overall findings and conclusions of the report were hardly novel. The
same basic findings—that Muslims, by and large, are a deprived
community and suffer from various levels of discrimination and
neglect—have been repeatedly highlighted by Muslims themselves, in
addition to various committees and commissions appointed by the
Central and state governments in the past. After the Sachar Committee
Report was sent to the Government of India, he said, it had done
almost nothing at all, failing to act on the recommendations of the
report. He was not optimistic that the Government would do much in any
case. It had not tabled the Report in Parlimant, a sign that it was
probably not interested in doing anything about it. 'We'll just have
to wait and see', he replied, clearly not expecting much to come of
the report. He rightly made the point that it was quite possible that,
as in the case of numerous such committee reports in the past, this
report, too, would be left ignored by the Government and that it would
simply be used as a means to garner Muslim votes, at best to justify a
few cosmetic sops to some Muslims in order to preserve or expand the
vote-bank of a certain political party. I think that sums up the
feeling that large sections of the Muslims who are aware of the report
have about it.

This Muslim leader I interviewed made some other interesting points
with reference to the Sachar Committee Report. Although the fact of
Muslim deprivation and anti-Muslim discrimination was something that
Muslim organizations and leaders have been constantly repeating, he
said, now it was the Government itself that was acknowledging this
fact, through the committee that it had appointed. Hence, the
complaints of Muslim leaders and organizations could no longer be
taken as exaggerated or false, he said. Nor could remedial measures to
address the issue of Muslim deprivation be dismissed as unwarranted
'minority appeasement', as the Hindutva right-wing argues. Hence, he
said, even if the Government failed to act on the recommendations of
the Sachar Committee Report, at least now Muslims would have with them
an official document issued by the Government which they could use to
argue their case of being a deprived community and, therefore,
deserving of positive discrimination.

Turning the question in a somewhat different direction, I asked this
leader why it was that we have had to wait all these years for a
Government-appointed committee to tell or convince us of the obvious
fact of Muslim deprivation. Why is it, I asked, that Muslim
organizations have not done any sort of serious academic research and
analysis on the subject in order to highlight the fact of Muslim
deprivation and to press the case for greater involvement of civil
society groups as well as the state in addressing the issue. His
answer simply was to say that if any Muslim organization had produced
a document of this sort it would not have been treated as 'reliable'
or 'authentic' by the state or by many non-Muslims simply because it
had been authored or commissioned by a Muslim individual or
organisation, even if it had been entirely accurate—a sign of the
deep-rooted prejudices in our society that are so difficult to
challenge.

This point relates to the broader issue of scholarship on Indian
Muslims, including on the crucial aspect of their overall deprivation.
Obviously, understanding the roots and the various facets and
dimensions of Muslim deprivation and then doing something practical
about it requires serious scholarship, which is seriously lacking
today. There exist relatively few well-researched, empirically based
studies of contemporary Indian Muslim society. Much that has been
written about the Indian Muslims is simply historical. It is as if
Indian Muslim history stops at 1947, at the Partition. And even here
the focus is on the history of Muslim elites, be they various Muslim
ruling dynasties or Muslim princes or ulema who fought the British in
1857 or the leaders of the Muslim League and Muslims in the Congress
Party. 'Ordinary' Muslims, that is to say, the vast majority of the
Indian Muslims, have received find very little attention in the
existing corpus of writings.

Coming to the post-1947 period, here, too, there is a great paucity of
serious scholarship on the empirical realities and conditions of the
Indian Muslims. Much that has been written on the subject has been in
a journalistic mode, lacking sufficient empirical depth, and often
tending to make overly broad and untenable generalizations, thereby
reinforcing negative stereotypes. Further, the limited corpus of
writings on the subject is dominated by the question of secularism
versus communalism, as if this were a unique Muslim concern or as if
Muslims have only this as their concern and that their other crucial
concerns, such as poverty, poor education, unemployment and so on,
were of no importance to them.

Two more themes have received considerable attention in both academic
as well as journalistic writings on the post-1947 Indian Muslims—the
question of the status of Muslim women and the issue of the madrasa
system of education. But even here the focus has tended to be on
certain sensational stories, which were sought to be linked to the
secularism versus communal debate in some way or the other.
Consequently, relatively very little has been written on a range of
other crucial social, educational and economic challenges facing
Muslims in India today, apart from some very broad surveys that using
quantitative data. Detailed, empirical, qualitative studies on these
issues are hard to come by. Few scholars have cared to take the
trouble of doing actual ground-level fieldwork that is essential for
this sort of research.

There are various reasons for this lack of serious social science
literature on these crucial aspects of contemporary Indian Muslim
society, which, as I mentioned above, is essential for us to have a
clearer understanding of the multiple causes of overall Muslim
deprivation and of the means to address the issue. There are
relatively few Indian Muslim social scientists of note who have done
such work. Sociology is probably not considered by many as a means for
a well-paid career that can attract serious students. Scholarship on
the subject by non-Muslim scholars is also, for a variety of reasons,
very limited. Indeed, extremely few non-Muslim Indian social
scientists have devoted their scholarly attention to Muslims in
contemporary India, other than dealing with such issues as women,
personal law, communal riots, and the secularism versus communalism
debate.

While Indian Muslim organizations run numerous research centres and
institutes to do with Islam, there are only a negligible number of
such institutes for research and publication on Indian Muslim social,
as distinct from religious, issues. The only such institution of note
with somewhat of a national profile, presence and reach I can think of
is the New Delhi-based Institute of Objective Studies. This is
probably the only institution in the country that regularly publishes
social science-related works on the Indian Muslims, although even here
there is considerable room for improvement in the quality of its
research output. Considering the fact that the Indian Muslims number
more than 150 million, the fact that we have just one such institution
doing this sort of work is indeed very unfortunate.

The same pattern is reflected in the Muslim publishing industry, at
least in north India, which I am more familiar with. Few such
publishing houses deal in this sort of social scientific,
research-based literature on and about the Indian Muslims. Instead,
the issues they focus on are largely religious, historical or
literary. And so it is virtually impossible to find literature other
than on these issues in any Muslim bookshop.

One of the results of the serious lack of scholarship on and about
contemporary Indian Muslim social reality is that talk about the issue
is often framed in very general terms, with broad generalizations
being made that are, at the empirical level, not really valid. This,
for instance, is the case about the very issue of 'Muslim
deprivation', which this paper purports to discuss. The extreme
paucity of research on the subject feeds the tendency to present the
Indian Muslims as a monolith. This suits the interests of certain
Muslim elites who claim to speak for all Muslims, the state, which
relates to these elites as 'spokesemen' of the community, and,
curiously enough, Hindutva zealots, who, likewise, seek to tar all
Muslims with the same brush. Ignoring the internal diversities of
caste, class, region and gender within the broader pan-Indian Muslim
community leads to certain demands and arguments that claim to reflect
the views and interests of all the Indian Muslims, but, which, in
fact, might benefit only a very small elite of self-appointed
'leaders' of the community. This, for instance, is the case for the
demand, made by some Muslim leaders, for reservations for all Muslims,
based on the fallacious argument that all Muslims are 'backward'.
Obviously, this demand would benefit only a small section of Muslim
elites. In the absence of adequate social science research on the
subject of Muslim 'backwardness', such demands are easily allowed to
pass by uncontested.

Another illustration of the disastrous effects of the lack of
sociological research on the Indian Muslims is the fact that, in the
absence of such studies, the claims by the Central and various state
governments of providing various benefits and schemes for Muslims are
left unproven and so the state is able to get away scot-free, without
being challenged for reneging on its promises. Thus, in recent years,
the Government of India has set up numerous bodies and commissions,
such as the Ministry of Minority Affairs, the National Minorities
Education Commission, the National Commission for Linguistic
Minorities, the National Minorities Finance and Development
Corporation, the Maulana Azad Foundation and so on. One has no idea of
precisely what these organizations have actually done for Muslim
welfare. Presumably they have done but little. Take the case of a body
that has been in existence for years—the National Minorities
Commission. That the annual reports of this Commission have not been
tabled in Parliament for years now speaks volumes of the Government's
supposed commitment to minority rights and welfare. Had we rigorous
documentation and research on these organizations and the work they
claim to have done, we could have been able to argue against the
claims of the state of having done a lot for Muslim welfare. But
because we have no such research, we cannot do this effectively and so
our case for greater affirmative action is considerably weakened.

Of course, the state has a major role to play with regard to Muslim
empowerment precisely because it has played a critical role in
sustaining structures of disempowerment and marginalization. But in
addition to the agencies of the state, civil society organizations
need also to play a far more socially engaged role both in terms of
practical work as well as advocacy and lobbying with the government.
This is something that Muslim organizations, particularly in the
north, have not effectively explored.

The situation in the south may be different, but in the north and the
north-east, where the bulk of the Indian Muslims reside, there appear
to be relatively few Muslim NGOs doing effective work in seeking to
address the issue of Muslim deprivation in concrete terms. Recently, a
friend of mine published a directory of Muslim NGOs. Glancing through
it, I discovered that the vast majority of these NGOs were engaged in
providing religious education and instruction. While this is, of
course, very essential, there appears to be a distinct lack of Muslim
NGOs in the north doing practical work to address the issues of Muslim
poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and so on. A study conducted by the
eminent social scientist Imtiaz Ahmad found that well over 80% of
zakat funds provided by members of the community is given to madrasas.
While madrasa education is, of course, important, one wonders if
community leaders should not also seek to channelise zakat funds to
other sorts of organizations and institutions as well. Serious
measures need to be considered to promote voluntary organizations in
the community for purposes in addition to religious education, to
appraise such organizations of various government schemes and to
promote co-ordination among these organizations and also with
non-Muslim or secular organizations.

Another issue that needs to be urgently addressed in the context of
the question of Muslim deprivation is that of media policy or the lack
thereof. We need to ask if Muslim organizations, including the
Muslim-owned media, are indeed being able to counter anti-Muslim or
Islamophobic discourses that are now so deeply engrained in large
parts of the Indian (in addition to the Western) media. Of course they
are not. What are the reasons for this? What measures need to be taken
in this regard? Insofar as large sections of the non-Muslim media do
refer to Islam or Muslims, it is generally in the context of some or
the other sensational or dramatic news, whether real or imaginary or
exaggerated, often with the intention of further reinforcing negative
stereotypes. So, the media will highlight cases related to Muslim
women, or madrasas or violence committed on or by Muslims, but rarely,
if ever, does it have any positive stories on Muslims. Rarely, if
ever, does it talk about the issue and magnitude of Muslim
marginalization. In this regard, Muslim organizations need to be much
more professional than they are in reaching out to the non-Muslim
media to have their voices heard. They need to have a proper media and
lobbying policy. They need to establish contact and dialogue with
elements in the media that are concerned about Muslim rights and
issues. They are several such people in the media and they only need
to be properly reached out to.

The Muslim media also has a crucial to play in the context of efforts
to address Muslim deprivation.  I don't know what the situation is in
the south, but in large parts of the north, the Urdu media plays
devotes little attention to the manifold social, economic and
educational problems besetting the Muslim masses. Few Muslim
magazines, journals newspapers carry in-depth stories and reports on
the plight of the poor among the Muslims or about efforts by various
individuals and social action groups engaged in trying to practically
address these issues. In this regard, it may be pertinent to mention
that there are just two English-language Muslim periodicals of note in
the country—the Bangalore-based Islamic Voice and the New Delhi-based
Milli Gazette. The former is more concerned with religious issues,
while it does devote some attention to community news. The latter is
more oriented to community issues, but, like the former, does not have
the network and resources needed for regular reporting on social,
economic and educational issues across the country. They are both
urban-centric, and only rarely  do they carry stories about  the
conditions of Muslims living in rural areas—that is to say, the
considerable majority of the Indian Muslim population. Sometime ago I
did a random survey of Indian Muslim online groups and I found the
same pattern being repeated—the discussions were mainly about religion
and elite level politics, with few, if any, references to the complex
social, economic and educational problems of the Muslim masses. This,
of course, is a very important issue that the Muslim media needs to
take up with the seriousness that it deserves.  And in this way, the
Muslim media can work towards getting precisely these issues to be
included in the agenda of various political parties. One possible
creative initiative in this regard would be to start a features
agencies specializing in Muslim social issues. Feature stories could
be translated into various languages and sent out to different
newspapers, Muslim as well as others, so that the concerns of Muslims
are made more public. As things stand today, the Muslim-owned media is
largely a Muslim ghetto, with few non-Muslims reading Muslim-owned
papers or watching Muslim television channels.

To come back to the Sachar Committee Report—while its numerous
recommendations are indeed welcome, it is possible, as earlier
mentioned, that the Government might do little, if at all, to act on
them. In welcoming the report, we must not lose sight of its
limitations. Thus, for instance, while talking of the need for
empowering the Muslim community, the Report speaks precious little
about the insecurity that Muslims suffer in large parts of the
country, often as a result of connivance of the state with Hindutva
forces. The link between this and Muslim economic deprivation is
obvious, but this is something that the report does not deal with in
the manner it should have. The report does not talk of deep-rooted
anti-Muslim biases in school textbooks and the Hinduistic ethos of the
state school system in  several states in the country as a possible
reason for Muslim educational 'backwardness'. The report does not
mention the particular needs of Muslim women and the necessity of
specific provision for them. Nor does it talk about the policies of
rampant exploitation in the garb of globalization and liberalism that
are playing havoc with Muslim artisans and small manufacturers,
driving them out of the market and into the abyss of penury. Likewise,
it leaves out the whole question of land ownership, which is extremely
crucial, given the fact that, as a whole, Muslims suffer from a
considerably higher degree of landlessness than most other
communities.

There is much more that one can say with regard to the complex issue
of Muslim deprivation, but I think I would stop here. Briefly, what I
have tried to argue here is for Muslim organizations to take a far
more active role in commissioning research on the subject, lobby with
the state and political parties based on these issues and findings,
dialogue with the non-Muslim-owned media and encourage the Muslim
media to take the issue of Muslim marginalization much more seriously
and to encourage the setting up of voluntary agencies, not as a
substitute for, but, rather, as complimenting state initiatives to
address the manifold problems facing the community.
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The author is associated with Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies,
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi