by
Girish Nikam
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When the UPA Government set up the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee, which was known as the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee for preparation of Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, it raised the hackles of many people in this country, both political and non-political.

These voices took some time to gain stridency. It was only in February this year, though the Committee was constituted in April 2005, that controversies reached a peak, forcing the Prime Minister’s office to issue a clarification that it had nothing to do with the work of the committee.

But that did not stop the BJP from dubbing the committee’s work “dangerous”, and its ideological parent, the RSS on Feb.26 this year, at its Nagpur meeting, dubbed it as “height of appeasement of Muslims”. The RSS also passed a resolution demanding the disbanding of the Committee, as it felt that it was “posing a threat to the country’s unity, integrity and true secularism”.

Meanwhile, V. K.Malhotra, the voluble spokesman of the BJP, in his typical style grandly announced that his party was asking all its five party-led State Governments not to cooperate with the Sachar Committee.

It was another matter that by the time Malhotra was making this “grand announcement” on Feb.18, the BJP governments in both Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, had already met and “cooperated” fully with the Sachar Committee. In fact in Gujarat, their “star” Chief Minister Narendra Modi himself met the Committee on Feb.8, a full ten days before Malhotra’s fulminations, and the Madhya Pradesh Government had also “cooperated” as far back as November 2005.

Apart from the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates, the opposition to the Sachar Committee had also been heard in several quarters and especially the army, which felt that its “glorious” history of being a non-religious, non-casteiest, non-sectarian force was under threat.

It is another matter that a recent magazine story exposed how it is difficult for a Muslim or a Sikh now to enter certain military and intelligence forces. And this is strictly because of the bias and stereotypical outlook towards these communities.

Now, with the Sachar Committee, having submitted its report to the Prime Minister, and the report scheduled to be tabled in the Parliament next week, the debate will hopefully be more balanced, with the benefit of the figures. Talking of figures, Indian Express has already scooped some of the committee’s findings and its series of articles on it, has sent shock waves through the country.

As Sachar himself said while presenting the report to the Prime Minister on Friday, ” the Muslim community is lagging behind other religious groups of India in most development indicators. The community is relatively poor, more illiterate, has lower access to education, lower representation in public and private sector jobs, and lower availability of bank credit for self-employment. In urban areas, the community mostly lives in slums characterized by poor municipal infrastructure. However, there is considerable variation in the condition of the Muslim community across states and regions”.

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The Sachar Report will no doubt lead to intensifying of passions and arguments and counter-arguments about the various steps needed to lift the 150 million odd Muslim population out of the ghettos they find themselves in.

There are bound to be differences and vehement at that, about the figures itself and the reasons for the Muslims’ abysmal backwardness. However, what no one can anymore trumpet is the “Muslim appeasement” theory.

Justice Sachar and his seven-member committee have successfully blown the appeasement theory to smithereens. What is now clear from this report, is that all the political parties through all these years, have successfully managed to use the Muslims as vote banks, and done virtually nothing for them.

The Sachar figures should open the mind of the Community itself, and also lead to some deep introspection among its own leaders, as to where they have gone wrong, that on all the indicators except child mortality and sex ratio, they are lagging behind even the SC and STs. Be it education, girls’ education, representation in government services, their economic level and what you may.

So if the propaganda all these years that the Muslims are the most appeased of the lot, was true, they should not be in these appalling conditions that they find themselves in today. In a way, those who had opposed the setting up of the Sachar Committee, were obviously smart enough to understand that their decades-long propaganda will blow up on their face, and no wonder they opposed the survey itself.

Now that the findings are going to be before us, and there is no iota of doubt that a large majority of the Muslims are the worst off in this country and it is time for action now.

This is where we can get stuck in the familiar refrains and arguments, which is already being heard.

Many, and especially the BJP, have already raised hackles about granting reservation to Muslims in education and employment. Whereas others like former Prime Minister H.D.Deve Gowda, Veerappa Moily, and Sharad Yadav among others, have recommended reservation on the Karnataka model, where certain Muslim castes get four percent reservation, as part of the OBC quota.

The OBCs in the north are not too happy to share their quota, and are suggesting a different formula, where the Dalit Muslims get a quota under the SC category. The issue is complicated and is unlikely to be resolved easily.

But it is not just reservation, which will pull the Muslims out of the abyss in this country.

Primarily the large majority of people in this country should overcome the stereotype of the Muslims they have internalized in their mind. Unless that happens, creating an inclusive society, where a Muslim student will easily find a PG accommodation, without being spurned after hearing his name, will be a chimera.

The lessons of Sachar hopefully will not be lost not just on the majority Hindus, but also on the Muslims themselves.

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20-11-2006