[GOTFIVEONIT]

Muslim quota & Hindu fear of national disintegration

By Iqbal A. Ansari

Article published in Muslim India, September 2007 issue.

As the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities has recommended, inter alia, reservation of seats and posts for religious minorities in education and public employment the bogey of its unconstitutionality and the slogan of ‘secularism in danger’ is bound to be raised by not only the Sangh Parivar but the secular intellectual and political class, and the judiciary.

In the minute of dissent appended to the main report of Dr. Gopal Singh Panel on Minorities etc. (1983) Shri L.R. Naik, a member of the Panel, observed that “I sincerely hold that anything that is done by way of reservation on grounds of religion is bound to result in disintegration of the country, nay , even its balkanization. Any such tendency cropping up in the country should, therefore, be nipped in the bud. We had enough of it in the past due to two-nation theory. A perusal of the Report shows that we are now embarking on four-nation theory” (i.e. Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh). In 1997 a Gandhian Hindu intellectual Dr. D L Sheth viewed the demand for separate quota reservation for Muslims (voiced since 1994) as indicative of a dangerous symbolic politics of mobilization around ethno-religious nationalism (Times of India, September 20, 1997) and warned that the Indian Constitution is foundationally opposed to any idea of communal quota.

It is this fear of disintegration engendering a sense of siege among Hindu elites, crudely expressed by Naik, which has come in the way of Muslims getting their due share protected under law in education, employment, social welfare and economic development.

That such ‘communal quota’ is not only Constitutionally valid in terms of Artic les 14, 15 and 16, as testified by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, but the legitimacy of such special measures/positive action by the States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the Declaration on the Rights of…. Minorities (1992) and the Durban Declaration & POA (2001) is essential part of international regime for protection of minorities.

Last June at the time of election to the Human Rights Council India has given a pledge to uphold and seek promotion and protection of international human rights standards by all countries and make all States internationally accountable through a periodic review of their performance.

The Indian claim of being already an inclusive democracy and its fairness to minorities as symbolized by Dr. Abdul Kalam’s elevation to Presidency, gets exposed by the fact that he was not allowed by his Hindu teacher to share the bench with a Hindu priest’s son. He was asked to go and sit on the back bench. Dr. Abdul Kalam did not suffer this deprivation (of social status) by virtue of ‘caste’ or class or backwardness or piety but just because of his Muslim community affiliation. It is by this process of exclusion that ‘otherness’ has been imposed upon Muslims who became especially suspect as the ‘disloyal other’ by being held responsible for Partition of India.

Apart from historical sources of their backwardness in the occupational structure of the bulk of Muslims, it is this post-1947 stigmatization of the community that has been a further source of their marginalization. It led to Central government official circulars directing States, not to appoint Muslim on sensitive posts. In 1969 SM Murshid brought to the notice of Jyoti Basu one such circular when he was Home Minister of West Bengal (Times of India, Feb. 16, 1993).

At the time of digging the earth at Ayodhaya by the Court’s order, all the forty-seven labourers employed by the ASI were Hindus. It is only after the Muslim parties’ prayer to the Court being granted that some Muslim labourers were included. Was such a direction anti-secular; as it did not specify backwardness of labourers but community affiliation as reason of exclusion and inclusion?

Besides the association of the ‘sin’ of Partition, the Sangh Parivar’s agenda of hate and revenge against Muslims – as symbolized by the recent U.P election-eve CD Bharat-Ki-Pukar – during the last five decades which got intensified in 1980s & 90s –has helped demonize Muslims (and to some extent religious class of Christians) which has created a social and political climate favourable for violence against them and their social exclusion. It is exemplified by the killing of more than forty Muslims of Hashimpura in 1987 by the PAC and that of Ehsan Jafri (2002) and Sohrabuddin in Gujarat (2004) irrespective of their caste-class status-Socio-economic exclusion of Muslims as Muslims has been continuing in most parts of India, but more blatantly in Gujarat, which as been exposed by media.

Once Kuldip Nayar, the doyen of secular journalists in India, pointed out to me the near absence of Muslims from all posh Delhi residential colonies, though there were some Muslims who could afford the cost. If in the interest of social diversity and integration it is made part of policy measure of all governmental housing schemes and private housing societies that other qualifications being nearly equal, a certain percentage of Muslim and (Christian and Sikh) applicants will receive priority in allotments, will it be an anti-secular/antinational/ unconstitutional measure?

What is required is a paradigm shift from pre-1949 single dimensional polarized discourse on secularism-communalism to one of human rights norms requiring promotion of multiculturalism, social diversity of all institutions and requirement of special measures for disadvantaged vulnerable groups, as Indian Muslims are – irrespective of whether minority-majority segmentation is applicable to India or not.

Special affirmative measures including reservation for religious minorities will not amount to privileging religion, but will ensure due share to under-represented groups by inclusion of the excluded. If the basis of child Abdul Kalam’s deprivation was his religious affiliation, the basis of affirmative action had to be the same religious affiliation that be shared with Babar and Jinnah.

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