[Reader-list] mini pakistan

[anuradha mukherjee]

Another interesting piece from The Dawn

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/18-jawed-naqvi-rulers-the-only-minority-am-05

Rulers the only minority
By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 15 Oct, 2009
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 Let’s look at the problem slightly differently. Let’s assume that the
ruling elite everywhere is the only minority, and the rest of the people are
what they are — people, or what Faiz called Khalq-i-Khuda. –AP/ File photo

*We worry far too much about our minorities. The gamut includes cultural
minorities, religious minorities, ethnic minorities and so forth.*

Let’s look at the problem slightly differently. Let’s assume that the ruling
elite everywhere is the only minority, and the rest of the people are what
they are — people, or what Faiz called Khalq-i-Khuda.

How would such a framework play out in South Asia? As I recently reminded
discussants at a seminar on how it feels to be a Muslim in the country,
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s economic policies have made it easier to
accept the definition of the only minority that matters — India’s
microscopic but all-pervasive ruling elite.

India is roughly divided between 200 million people who buy and sell things
in the expansive yet not quite bustling malls, and the remaining 800 million
that do nothing of the sort. They eke out a hand-to-mouth living, many
millions not even that. Some data analysts suggest that the
buying-and-selling urban middle class is 300 million strong, not 200
million.

Whatever it is, 70 per cent or 80 per cent have-nots, an overwhelming
majority of Muslims will be among them, say almost 90 per cent if not more.
What the secular seminarists and their religious patrons would not readily
see is that an overwhelming majority of Dalits and tribespeople would also
be in the same corner with the have-nots. A good share should be reserved
also for the less endowed caste Hindus and for what are known as OBCs (Other
Backward Castes).

That’s where India’s Muslims stand today — with the dispossessed majority,
which includes more than 90 per cent of its Dalits and tribespeople. It is,
therefore, only a self-absorbed or self-obsessed Muslim who complains, and
he complains too much. It doesn’t make sense to hear from well-heeled film
stars or other prosperous urban Muslims that have not found a house in
Mumbai, Delhi or elsewhere that they are discriminated against. Of course
there is discrimination, but it is not against Muslims alone.

At the seminar I attended, a highly popular, secular and now part-time
social activist who would hardly pass muster as a Muslim was protesting how
he had faced difficulty in renting a house in a ‘proper’ locality of Delhi.
‘They want me to live in a ghetto, and I refuse to do that,’ he told the
audience tearfully, which incidentally included a handful of the ghettoised
victims of Gujarat violence.

Of course there are people, mostly prejudiced Hindus, who want to ghettoise
the Muslims in India, as there are Muslim zealots who have ghettoised the
Christians and Hindus in Pakistan, not to speak of the Sinhalese doing it to
the Tamils in Colombo. There can be no dispute about that. The question is:
have the Indian Muslims ever asked why should anyone at all live in a
ghetto, including the Dalits and others who do?

A quick survey of Nizamuddin district, once a predominantly Muslim locality
but now heavily occupied by post-partition Hindus, would show not a single
Dalit has got a ‘proper’ house there, even though Muslims and Sikhs abound.

Two or three years ago they joined hands — Hindu, Muslim and Sikh residents
of Nizamuddin — to get rows of shanty dwellings near the neighbouring
railway tracks uprooted and their impoverished residents thrown out to
goodness knows which corner of the city. Those evicted included Dalits,
Muslims and impoverished Hindus, all accused of encouraging theft of car
mirrors and break-ins. The prejudice is palpable.

I asked the seminar *wallahs* if the Muslims of India ever felt attacked by
the army and strafed by the air force. Did they ever speak up for the
Kashmiris — the Hindu Kashmiris driven by Muslim zealots from their homes
and for the Muslim residents who were easy prey for India’s unbridled
security forces occupying their state?

Muslims have been killed en masse across India. True. What happened in
Mumbai in 1993 and in Gujarat 2002 was carnage. Did the Muslims squirm
though when the Sikhs were lynched in thousands in 1984? Do they wince in
sympathy when Dalits are murdered and raped at will? I have yet to see
evidence of solidarity among these perpetually aloof have-nots.

There is an exemplary book of record of violence lying for years in my
library — the Justice Srikrishna Commission Report. It is replete with
citations including police wireless transcripts of how the Shiv Sena and the
police colluded to kill Muslims in Mumbai in 1993. Then the Justice Sachar
Committee reported on the hapless state of Muslims. In some respects they
were worse off than the Dalits, the report revealed. If Muslims became
better than the Dalits would the problem be solved?

The ruling elite of India, for that matter of Pakistan and Sri Lanka too,
are the only minority community that need to be dealt with. How come the
Muslims never felt like a minority during the Mughal period or when the
Turko-Afghan sultans were ruling Delhi even though they were numerically
smaller even then? That’s at least partly because they were empowered and
not dispossessed. Yet to say that all Muslims under the Mughals were a happy
lot is tantamount to suggesting that all Muslims in Pakistan are happy.
Likewise with the Hindus in India, or Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

In Pakistan, the breakdown of the people into untenable units assumes
ridiculous proportions. The impoverished Punjabi Christian Dalit of
Yuhanabad becomes an exploiter of Sindh’s water share by virtue of being
perceived as Punjabi. He has been robbed of his natural solidarity and
affinity with a Muslim bonded peasant in Sindh. The entire notion of
jostling classes and castes, the real struggle, has been put on its head by
a deft division of the ordinary people into groups of this or that minority.


In fact this is the real achievement of Narendra Modi’s ilk. He may have
killed 2,000 Muslims. Bal Thackeray may have been responsible for a higher
inventory of the dead. But they are able to carry out their agenda by
splitting the natural solidarity of the have-nots, by turning them into
Hindus, Marathas, Muslims, South Indians, Patels, Dalits, Christians and so
forth. What is their agenda anyway?

These men have tackled the ‘troublesome’ trade unions in one fell swoop.
Similarly, when the helicopters go up to hunt the Maoists there would be
countless other minorities counting their own woes without a care for the
‘collateral damage’ being inflicted on their fellow citizens. The people
invariably stand divided before the only minority that counts.

*The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.*

jawednaqvi at gmail.com

On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Syed Yunus <delhi.yunus at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I would like the group to reflect upon the concept of 'mini Pakistan' ( in
> India). this phrase is used sometimes to define Muslim ghettos so that
> neutral people take side  about a communal issue.
>
> precisely i want to know about your feelings when you hear it.
>
>
> thanks,
>
> Yunus
>
>
> On 7/30/10, Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Some people didn't believe in such a news when I posted earlier:
> > -----------------
> >
> > The banking woes of an “excluded” community
> > Vidya Subrahmaniam
> >
> > Banks have designated red zones where the vast majority of Muslim
> > clusters fall. This fact is confirmed by the rash of banking-related
> > complaints received by the National Commission for Minorities.
> >
> > A little over a year ago, Ali Arshad, a resident of Okhla in Delhi,
> > went to a well-known private sector bank to open a bank account. He
> > thought his case would be fast-tracked because he had a banking
> > background, he worked with a well-known investment and brokerage
> > company and he had the necessary documents: A passport, a pan card and
> > a house rent agreement notorised on stamp paper.
> >
> > He still has not heard from the bank. The manager of the branch
> > informally told him that his passport showed a Patna address and the
> > bank did not accept rent agreement as proof of residence. The Hindu
> > checked the website of the bank and found that the bank did accept
> > house rent agreement as proof of residence. A call placed to the bank
> > confirmed that a passport (proof of identity) and a rent agreement
> > (proof of residence) were enough to start a bank account.
> >
> > Mr. Arshad finally opened a salary account with a bank that had his
> > company's corporate account. “The bank could not refuse me because I
> > came as a package,” Mr. Arshad says. He attributes his banking
> > difficulties to the fact that he stays in Muslim-concentrated Okhla,
> > an unofficial red zone for banks. Indeed, in the Muslim belt of Okhla,
> > Zakir Nagar and Batla House stories abound of residents not being able
> > to open bank accounts and of banks turning down their loan
> > applications. The situation, residents say, has got worse after the
> > September 2008 killing of two alleged terrorists in Batla House.
> > “Landlords here refuse to give residence proof documentation for fear
> > of being tracked down,” says Hasan Shuja, editor of Urdu daily
> > Sahafat. Mr. Shuja, who has gone from bank to bank looking for a loan
> > to expand his business, says, “I gave them all possible documentation
> > but to no avail. But not just Delhi, you will hear the same thing
> > wherever Muslims are in large numbers.”
> >
> > The sense of “exclusion” among Mr. Shuja and others has only
> > heightened with recent reports that in Andhra Pradesh alone as many as
> > 90,000 Muslims students were unable to open bank accounts to deposit
> > their scholarship cheques. The complaints were received by the State
> > Minorities Commission which, in turn, referred them to the National
> > Commission for Minorities in Delhi. The Ministry of Minorities has
> > since taken up the matter with the State's Chief Secretary. The
> > puzzling thing here is that banks have shown the audacity to turn away
> > students despite a standing RBI circular instructing them to open
> > basic, no-frills accounts for people from deprived categories.
> >
> > At the NCM, officials cannot cope with Muslim complaints relating to
> > banking. The Commission receives an average of five banking complaints
> > a day from across the country, with most complainants recording
> > specific details of discrimination. The NCM recently intervened to
> > have a dismissed Muslim official of a leading private sector bank
> > reinstated. The official was found to have been falsely accused of
> > fraud.
> >
> > Up until the Sachar Committee report, which conclusively established
> > unacceptable levels of Muslim deprivation, there were not many takers
> > for Muslim-specific banking complaints which were typically dismissed
> > as an exaggeration. The other commonly held perception was that
> > Muslims were averse to banking because of religious injunctions
> > against receiving interest.
> >
> > Several significant findings emerged in the investigations of the
> > Sachar Committee which analysed access to Priority Sector Advances
> > (farm sector, small-scale industries and small advances to weaker
> > sections) across Socio Religious Communities. To start with, banks
> > confirmed the existence of “red zones” where they offered minimal
> > services. Says Abusaleh Shariff, who was member-secretary with the
> > committee: “We did not use the term discrimination in the report but
> > we did find banks to be unacceptably insensitive. They accepted that
> > they don't like to provide services in the red zones. Unfortunately,
> > most of the areas where Muslims live fall in the red zones.”
> >
> > The committee was also able to bust the myth that Muslims were against
> > banking. Muslims held a 12 per cent share in PSA bank accounts which
> > was rather low considering the high concentration of Muslims in
> > socially and economically deprived sections. Nonetheless, as Mr.
> > Shariff points out, the figure established that given a chance Muslims
> > opened bank accounts.
> >
> > The committee's third major finding was that Muslims did not easily
> > get loans. The community's share of outstanding PSAs was pathetic —
> > only 4.6 per cent as against a population share of 13.4 per cent. The
> > ratio of loans to population was even worse in the Minority
> > Concentration Districts. In 44 such districts, where the Muslim share
> > of the population was 33 per cent, their share of PSAs was an abysmal
> > 7.9 per cent. The share of other minorities, who together constituted
> > two per cent of the population, was 3.7 per cent. In 11 of these
> > districts, where the Muslim share of the population was 51.4 per cent,
> > their share of PSAs was 12.9 per cent. With a 1.2 per cent share of
> > the population in the same districts, other minorities received 3. 4
> > per cent of PSAs while Hindus, who formed 47.4 per cent of the
> > population, got a PSA share of 63.1 per cent. Over all, other
> > minorities fared twice as well as Muslims in the priority sector.
> >
> > When the UPA government came to power in 2004, one of its early
> > priorities was to address the “development deficit” among Muslims. It
> > recast the old 15-point Minority Welfare Programme and established a
> > time-frame for programme-specific interventions. It set up a Ministry
> > of Minority Affairs (MMA), following it up with the first-ever
> > exhaustive study of the community's social, economic and educational
> > status. Simultaneously, it started a programme of financial inclusion
> > through the Reserve Bank. The RBI's charter, reiterated through
> > repeated circulars, included expanding access to banking through “nil
> > balance, no frills” accounts as well as smoothening credit flow to
> > Muslims.
> >
> > Six years later, the government, and the MMA in particular, are still
> > battling systemic resistance to minority welfare. This situation is
> > despite the ministry's exemplary commitment and overall vision.
> > Ministry sources say that with each year, they are getting closer to
> > reaching the target, exceeding it in some programmes such as the award
> > of scholarship. And yet it has been literally a case of inching
> > forward. Take the National Minorities Development And Finance
> > Corporation established 17 years ago. In all this time, it has
> > disbursed loans only to 5.39 lakh minority beneficiaries. A drop in
> > the ocean for a Muslim population of over 130 million.
> >
> > The MMA points out that as against this dismal figure, the corporation
> > achieved a target of 1.46 beneficiaries in 2009-2010. However, the
> > ministry had to move mountains for this, as the States, with some
> > exceptions, simply would not cough up their share of 26 per cent to
> > the scheme. For instance, Uttar Pradesh has so far contributed only 7
> > per cent (Rs. 7 crore) of its share of 26 per cent (Rs. 44 crore). The
> > Ministry offered to set up a separate fund for strengthening the state
> > channels for disbursal. “Not one State has responded to our offer,”
> > said a top ministry source. In the 90 Minority Concentration
> > Districts, too, progress has been uneven, with development plans going
> > back and forth and the States not being quick with their feedback.
> > Need to black list errant banks
> >
> > The MMA was patting itself on the back for its success in the
> > scholarship scheme when reports came in of banks refusing to open
> > scholarship accounts for Muslim students. The ministry has swiftly
> > moved to address the problem but the news has understandably upset the
> > community. As politician Abdul Khaliq remarked: “This situation will
> > not change unless Muslim representation in banking staff goes up. And
> > government must black list errant banks and punish the guilty
> > officers.”
> >
> > http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article540507.ece
> > _________________________________________
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Change is the only constant in life !
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