[Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'

Tue Dec 2 13:46:25 IST 2008

Dear Naeem

1. If the position of Muslims in India is as terrible as it is made out to be, why is it that Muslims from Bangladesh in substantially large numbers have made India their home by illegal ingress and continue to do so?

2. There are quite a few Indian Muslims in the Gulf. Many of them are as rich as any Indian from any other faith. If they wanted to, these rich Indian Muslims could shed all their interests in India and emigrate not just with family but whole clans to countries where "residence through investment" can be secured. They do not. I personally do not know of even one such example. Why do they not if the position of Muslims in India is as terrible as is being suggested?

3. When Muslims in India make it to the 'directly elected by people' legislatures and do so not solely on the basis of the 'Muslim Vote', it suggests that things cannot be too terrible for Indian Muslims.

Are Muslims as a minority disadvantaged in India? Of course they are but that is not something peculiar happening with Indian Muslims only. That is true of a minority in any part of the world especially when the 'available cake' is not large enough. 

It is true of Non-Muslim 'minorities' (on the basis of caste or faith) in many parts of India itself. 

The exclusions to this are where a 'minority' grouping has created it's own strong institutional framework to 'look after their own'. Cases in example are the Parsis, Bohris, Aga Khanis.

Minorities in any part of the world in most countries find themselves best catered to through "Self-Employment of Professionals", "Individual Enterprise", "Individual Entrepreneurship". They find themselves exceling where full dividends being realised from the skills of the individual are not slave to governmental or even corporate structures. 

In India this is certainly true in the fields Fine Arts, Performing Arts and Sports apart from Doctors and Lawyers and Accountants etc. But it is also true for India that many Muslims have reached many high positions in government and corporate structures.

These "Oh! my poor suffering Muslim brothers and sisters" articulations from "abroad" such as Asra Nomani's only do harm to Muslims and seek to create divides. They seek to stoke trouble.  We have seen that happening  with the Sikhs and now also with the Hindus. They are enemies of India. 

Kshmendra

--- On Tue, 12/2/08, Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
To: "reader-list at sarai.net" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2008, 9:50 AM

Taraprakash
It's a fair point that perhaps these gruesome attacks are not the best
context to talk about Sacchar Commission. By the way I have been long
advocating a Saccar style report on condition of Bangladeshi Hindus, I
suspect we will see similar results (although the absolute number of
Hindu population is lower).

But, one question: Is it fair to debunk Asra by pinching her about
living in the US. Also, is it fair to say, she should only focus on US
issues? People have multiple homes, and multiple locales of caring. If
tomorrow you got a scholarship to Australia, would you stop caring
about India?

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:30 AM, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Oh yes this is the season for the sale of such publicity seeking articles.
> And those settled in the US are going to get so much more publicity for
> writing what looks different. Isn't this author suggesting that this
> gruesome incidents can be avoided if the Muslims in India are educated,
> brought out of Madrasas to "mainstream" schools, given
employment?
> Such comments will actually hurt the Muslims in India more than it will do
> any good anywhere. Majority of Muslims know that this incident has nothing
> to do with how Muslmis are treated/mistreated in India. The Hindu
> fundmentalists will use such articles to spread more hatred against
Muslims.
> it is fashionable to abuse ones own country in the US. Recently a Sikh
woman
> contesting for the Senate for Republican party said, "I belong to
India. I
> was a minority and you know minorities cannot go out of their houses
without
> being given an ugly look" And this woman had seen nothing of 1984.
She had
> left India in late 60's.
>
> Sacchar committee's report deserves serious attention and affirmative
> action. But is fair to talk about it in the light of this gruesome attack?
> My answer, even that of the majority Muslims, is no. They might actually
> tell her, hey miss. It may be fun in the US; and you may not like in India
> anymore but to us it isn't that bad. Even if it is, we have our own
voices.
> If you really want to improve the lot of Muslims throughout the world, try
> to influence the country which is yours now. Muslims are much more
> comfortable in India than they are in the US. They are happier with India
> much more than they are with the US.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Naeem Mohaiemen"
> <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
> To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 9:25 PM
> Subject: [Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
>
>
>> Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
>> The condition of the country's Muslims has deteriorated, and the
world
>> has overlooked the nation's problems.
>>
>> By Asra Q. Nomani
>> December 1, 2008
>>
>> The news of the attacks in Mumbai eerily took me back to a quiet
>> morning two years ago when I sat in Room 721 of the Taj Mahal Palace
&
>> Tower hotel, reading the morning newspaper, fearing just the kind of
>> violence that has now exploded in the city of my birth. The headlines
>> recounted how the socioeconomic condition of the people of my
>> ancestry, Muslims in India, had fallen below that of the Hindu caste
>> traditionally called "untouchables," according to a
government report.
>>
>> "Muslims are India's new untouchables," I said sadly to
my mother, in
>> the room with me. "India is going to explode if it doesn't
take care
>> of them." Now, indeed, alas it has. And shattered in the process
is
>> the myth of India's thriving secular democracy.
>>
>> Mumbai police said over the weekend that the only gunman they'd
>> captured during the attacks -- which left nearly 200 dead and more
>> than 300 wounded -- claimed to belong to a Pakistani militant group.
>> But even if the trouble was imported, the violence will most certainly
>> turn a spotlight of suspicion on Muslims in India. Already, my
>> relatives are hunkered down for a sectarian backlash they expect from
>> anti-terrorism agencies, police and angry Hindu fundamentalists.
>>
>> India, long championed as a model of pluralism, used to be an example
>> of how Muslims can coexist and thrive even as a minority population.
>> My extended family prospered as part of an educated, middle class. My
>> parents, who settled in the United States in the 1960s when my father
>> pursued a doctorate at Rutgers University, were part of India's
>> successful diaspora. I love India, and on that trip, I wanted to show
>> it off to my son, Shibli, then age 4.
>>
>> But on that visit, across India from Mumbai to the southern state of
>> Tamil Nadu and north to Lucknow, the hub of Muslim culture, I was
>> deeply saddened. Talking to vegetable vendors, artisans and
>> businessmen, I heard about how the condition of Muslims had
>> deteriorated. They had become largely disenfranchised, poor, jobless
>> and uneducated. Their tales echoed those I'd heard on previous
trips,
>> when my extended family recounted their humiliating experiences with
>> bureaucratic, housing, job and educational discrimination.
>>
>> Indeed, the government report I read about in the newspapers two years
>> ago acknowledged that Muslims in India had become
"backward." "Fearing
>> for their security," the report said, "Muslims are
increasingly
>> resorting to living in ghettos around the country." Branding of
>> Muslims as anti-national, terrorists and agents of Pakistan "has
a
>> depressing effect on their p syche," the report said, noting
Muslims
>> live in "a sense of despair and suspicion."
>>
>> According to the report, produced by a committee led by a former
>> Indian chief justice, Rajender Sachar, Muslims were now worse off than
>> the Dalit caste, or those called untouchables.
>>
>> Some 52% of Muslim men were unemployed, compared with 47% of Dalit
men.
>>
>> Among Muslim women, 91% were unemployed, compared with 77% of Dalit
women.
>>
>> Almost half of Muslims over the age of 46 couldn't read or write.
>>
>> While making up 11% of the population, Muslims accounted for 40% of
>> India's prison population.
>>
>> Meanwhile, they held less than 5% of government jobs.
>>
>> The Sachar committee report recommended creating a commission to
>> remedy the systemic discrimination and promote affirmative-action
>> programs. So far, very few of the recommendations have been put in
>> place.
>>
>> Since reading the report, I have feared that Islamic militancy would
>> be born out of such despair. Even if last week's terrorist plot
was
>> hatched outside India, a cycle of sectarian violence could break out
>> in the country and push some disenfranchised Muslim youth to join
>> militant groups using hot-button issues like Israel and Kashmir as
>> inspiration.
>>
>> What has irked me these last years is how the world has glossed over
>> India's problems. In 2006, for instance, former U.S. Defense
Secretary
>> William Cohen, whose Cohen Group invests heavily in India, said the
>> U.S. and India were "perfect partners" because of their
"multiethnic
>> and secular democracies." When I asked to interview Cohen about
the
>> socioeconomic condition of Muslims, his public relations staffer said
>> that conversation was too "in the weeds." But, to me, the
condition of
>> Muslims needs frank and open discussion if there is to be any hope of
>> stemming Islamic radicalism and realizing true secular democracy in
>> the country.
>>
>> India's 150 million Muslims represent the second-largest Muslim
>> population in the world, smaller only than Indonesia's 190 million
>> Muslims. That is just bigger than Pakistan's 140 million Muslims
or
>> the entire population of Arab Muslims, which numbers about 140
>> million. U.S. intelligence reports continually warn that economic,
>> social and political discontent are catalysts for radicalism, so we
>> would be naive to continue to ignore this potential threat to the
>> national security of not just India but the United States.
>>
>> Throughout my 2006 journey, I found the idea of India's potential
for
>> danger unavoidable. On one leg, my son tucked safely in bed with my
>> mother in our Taj hotel room, I went out to watch the filming of
"A
>> Mighty Heart," the movie about the murder of Wall Street Journal
>> reporter Daniel Pearl by Muslim militants in Pakistan. When the
>> location scouts needed to replicate the treacherous streets of
>> Karachi's militant Islamist culture, they didn't have to go
far. They
>> found the perfect spot in a poor Muslim neighborhood of Mumbai.
>>
>> Asra Q. Nomani is the author of "Standing Alone: An American
Woman's
>> Struggle for the Soul of Islam."
>>
>>
>> Please click the following link and read the comments on above
article:
>>
>>
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oew-nom1-2008dec01,0,2169717.graffitiboard
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