SACHAR Report:

The report of the “ Prime Minister's High Level Committee For Preparation of Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India (Chairperson: Justice Rajindar Sachar)” was made public in end Nov '05, and as expected, it showed only a fraction of the problems faced and troubles borne by the Muslim community in ‘secular!' India . Nevertheless, it exposed to some extent, the appalling conditions of this minority community under the reign of governments of different shades for nearly six decades including three decades of ‘left' rule in WB, and smashed the Muslim-appeasement' misinformation campaign of the BJP, as well as the ‘secular' image of the CPIM led govt of WB. It invited, naturally, big howls from the arch-Hindu BJP, plus, at the other end, fake tears and conspiracies-packaged-as-promises, etc from pseudo–secular Congress, CPIM, etc. Nobody from these quarters could contest the accuracy of the data analysis part, as the member-secretary of this committee was Dr. Sharif, who is an elite of this present system and heads the HD wing of NCAER. We shall present here only a few of the facts revealed by this committee and then shall look into the recommendations of the committee and the conspiracies made after the report was made public.

The misinformation drive of the arch-Hindus regarding “a Muslim marries 4 and reproduces a lot, they will become majority…” went kaput when expert statisticians calculated that in the start of the next century the Muslim population may become at maximum 17-21% of the total Indian population and will stabilise there. Their “Muslim-Appeasement” theory broke down by unpleasant facts regarding the Muslim masses in India: the Muslim in India tails behind people of all other S ocio- R eligious C ategories , with the only ‘ consolation ' that in some fields they are a bit better off than the Dalits [so-called Scheduled Caste people] and the Adivasis [so-called Scheduled Tribe people]. The committee had to admit: “They carry a double burden of being labelled as “anti-national” and as being “appeased” at the same time. While Muslims need to prove on a daily basis that they are not “anti-national” and “terrorists”, it is not recognized that the alleged “appeasement” has not resulted in the desired level of socio-economic development of the Community.”

The literacy level, a very dubious count made by the govt and UN also, puts the Muslim much lower, only a bit more than the SC/ST; whereas in the ‘mean years of schooling' (abbreviated MYS ) measure they fared the least. “ The poor performance of Muslims is also observed in almost all the states, particularly in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh . In these two states, the MYS among Muslim children is the lowest among all SRCs.” “Enrolment rates are above 90% in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and satisfactory (above 80%) in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi . The difference in enrolment rates is also small in states like Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra . … On the contrary, there is a significant difference in enrolment rates in states like West Bengal , Uttar Pradesh , Assam , Andhra Pradesh, and some smaller states.” Some snaps of all-India level: #About 62% of the eligible children in the Upper Caste Hindu and other religious groups (excluding Muslims) are likely to complete primary education followed by Muslims (44 %), SCs (39%) and STs (32%). # While 26% of those 17 years and above have completed matriculation, this percentage is only 17% amongst Muslims. Here too, West Bengal ranks lowest in India – with a dismal figure of 11.9%; Bihar can ‘boast of' having 35% more score than WB in this respect! However, WB beats Bihar in this count for ‘SC' people – Bihar here stands lowest at 11.1%, and WB has 13.1% standing just above Bihar and MP, as a shabby ‘third from the bottom' ! #As per Census data, while only about 7 per cent of the population aged 20 years and above are graduates or hold diplomas, this proportion is less than 4 per cent amongst Muslims. # NCAER figures indicate that only about 4 % of all Muslim students of the school going age group are enrolled in Madarsas .

But backwardness in literacy and education are minuscule with respect to the lack in development in totality. The committee concluded, “Our analysis shows that while there is considerable variation in the conditions of Muslims across states, (and among the Muslims, those who identified themselves as OBCs and others), the Community exhibits deficits and deprivation in practically all dimensions of development. In fact, by and large, Muslims rank somewhat above SCs/STs but below Hindu-OBCs, Other Minorities and Hindu-General (mostly upper castes) in almost all indicators considered. Among the states that have large Muslim populations, the situation is particularly grave in the states of West Bengal , Bihar , Uttar Pradesh and Assam . …In addition to the ‘development deficit', the perception among Muslims that they are discriminated against and excluded is widespread, which exacerbates the problem.” What a strange expression it is from such eminent writers of the report, as if the Muslims are to be blamed for a wrong perception that only ‘exacerbates the problem'!

The said “perception among Muslims” is not at all imaginary. Other than J & K the only Muslim majority state (Muslims are two third of total population) there are 9 states (excluding Delhi) which have 10% or more Muslim population, and more than 75% of Indian Muslims inhabit these 10 states (excluding Delhi) [the first figure in parentheses after the state's name is the % of population of the state who are Muslims, and the second figure is the absolute number of Muslims in the state, as per census 2001]: WB (25.2%, 20.24million) Kerala (24.7%, 7.86 million), Assam (30.9%, 8.24 million), UP (18.2%, 30.74 million), Bihar (16.5%, 13.72 million), Maharashtra (10.6%, 10.27 million), Karnataka (12.2%, 6.46 million), Jharkhand (13.8%, 3.73 million). Now let us see how various governments have ‘favoured' or ‘appeased' the Muslims.

In the All India Level we find: Whereas Muslims constitute 13.4% of Indian population, in the Railways out of total employees and workers only 4.5% are Muslims; in Banks and RBI they have 2.2% share in employment; in Security Agencies (CRPF+BSF+CISF etc and excluding Military) they are only 3.2% of total personnel and in Postal Service they have a ‘high' share of 5.0% of total employees! The presence of Muslims is only 3% in the IAS, 1.8% in the IFS and 4% in the IPS. Big parties like the BJP vehemently opposed any such probe in the Military fearing that figure will be so revealing that it would explode the already tainted ‘secular' image of India, where in the pre-partition period the Muslims constituted more than one third of the Indian Army. In the govt-job field, the Muslims, naturally, lag far behind SC-ST people.

Let us now see what the States have in store for the Muslims. The Sachar Report gives a small table at page 391 (of 425) which shows: In West Bengal 25.2% of population are Muslim whereas only 2.1% of State Govt employees are Muslim, after 30-years of CPIM led ‘left' rule!! It is indeed surprising why many eminent persons wrote in well-known journals and wherefrom they got the ‘data' that the same figure for WB is “about 4 percent”, “4.2%”, …etc!!! If we make a “Non-Discrimination Co-efficient” NDC = percentage of State employees who are Muslim divided by percentage of State population who are Muslim based on that said table: the non-discrimination co-efficient is most horrible and lowest in WB, standing at 0.08! (Where 0 means total unfairness and 1 means no bias at all.) Karnataka fared best in terms of this non-discrimination co-efficient standing at 0.69! Even the so-called ‘4.2%' figure cannot save the face of WB govt as then also it will rank lowest with a miniscule 0.16 marks! In UP 18.2% people are Muslim and 5.1% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.28). In Assam 30.9% people are Muslim and 11.2% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.36). In Maharashtra 10.6% people are Muslim and 4.4% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.41). In Bihar 16.5% people are Muslim and 7.6% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.46). In Jharkhand 13.8% people are Muslim and 6.7% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.49). In another ‘left' and ‘elite' Kerala, 24.7% people are Muslim and 10.4% of Govt employees are Muslim (NDC=0.43), putting Kerala behind Bihar and Jharkhand! But no state comes anywhere near the most deplorable condition in this sphere as in WB.

From govt employment if we go to the sphere of self-employment, we see that only 4.57% of amount loaned out by banks as ‘priority-sector loans' go to the Muslim in India. There are scores of other data in the Sachar Report that only reveal the wretchedness in which the Indian Muslims are plunged. In the Private Sector employment too, the Muslims lag far behind and they have harsher working condition with less benefits.

Some of the states have other ploys too to keep Muslim representation low, and such a ploy is ‘reserved constituencies' in election. It is the same British imperialist like trick of pitting one section of the oppressed against the other. As examples, the report cited: in WB, there are 10 such assembly constituencies where Muslims outnumbers SC population but which are reserved for SC candidates, whereas, there are 10 other constituencies, which have larger SC populations than the previous ones but are not reserved at all! In case of UP and Bihar those numbers are 8 and 9 respectively.

Besides, the Sachar Committee has probed into a few other areas of biased state of affairs of Indian Muslims of which we take only two important things for want of space: # Ghettoisation of the Muslims, community, in the language of the report, “ Fearing for their security, Muslims are increasingly resorting to living in ghettos across the country. ” # Official Slow-Poisoning of one of Asia 's most beautiful language Urdu: “ While Urdu was never exclusively a Muslim language, it is said to have suffered because of its identification with the Muslim community. The communal divide that has emerged over the issue of Hindi and Urdu has been the major factor contributing to the decline of Urdu since Partition. Overnight the knowledge of Urdu has become more a liability than an asset. This was brought into sharper focus by a constitutional provision (article 351) which prescribed that Hindi should draw increasingly upon Sanskrit for its vocabulary. This Sanskritisation of Hindi and the perversion of the three language formula in many Hindi speaking states (providing for only Hindi, Sanskrit and English) has practically put an end to Urdu instruction in most government schools, … ” But the Committee being ‘Indian-Bourgeois' in class character dared not call spade a spade. It did not divulge official expenditure for the development of languages, where all non-Hindi languages together account for less than 1%; it did not challenge the Indian Rashtra-Bhasha (National-Language) theory and practice, the degradation of all other languages by concerted effort of govt, film industry, media, etc… all of which contributed to the harm of ‘other languages', particularly marked in cases of closer-to-Hindi languages like Urdu, Marathi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, etc. Here Urdu faced double burn getting bracketed with Islam and, to certain extent, a counter-move of ‘Arabicisation' by some. In case of Ghettoisation, there are other factors too besides ‘fear' psychology: they are never allowed to live alongside, they never get house-rent in non-Muslim areas, etc. Some years back a part of the Media flashed a report from WB: a prominent Muslim-by-birth secular member of the intelligentsia had a Hindu-by-birth wife who was also an eminent singer; wife rented a house in a Hindu neighbourhood; a hue and cry was raised in the neighbourhood when the religious identity of the husband came to light. If the affected couple were ordinary ones media would not have bothered at all, but still, they had to shift to Calcutta Ghettos with disgrace. All this happened in Calcutta , whom the Bengali Babus proudly proclaim as the cultural capital of India !

The Sachar report has another flaw and that is very important – it did not probe and/or any study for the state of Jammu & Kashmir. They could have presented how J&K fared in the same parameters and that would have exploded the whole of the ‘Muslim-Appeasement-In-Kashmir' myth .

The committee, naturally, could not go a single step beyond their Indian-Bourgeois vision when they jotted down their dull-n-drab recommendations. Need for Transparency, Monitoring and Data Availability; Enhancing the Legal Basis for Providing Equal Opportunities; Enhancing Participation in Governance: Formulating and Implementing New Nomination Procedures; Establishing a More Rational Procedure for Delimitation of Constituencies…; Facilitate Creation of Common Public Spaces; etc – all such dreary and blunt words came at the end. Even such ‘imaginative' proposal was formulated: “… Incentives to builders for housing complexes that have more ‘diverse' resident populations to promote ‘composite living spaces' of SRCs.” But it would be unfair to say that Sachar Committee recommended reservation for Muslims, a rumour that is now in the air.

Much political drama awaited the publication of the report. “ With the UP elections in mind, the BJP has indicated that it will make a big issue of the Sachar Committee report. Rejecting it, party leader Sushma Swaraj said it was “ full of prejudices ” and would create disharmony in society” writes Hindustan Times on Dec1, “Much effort has gone into it but… in the wrong direction. This report reflects a pseudo vision and is full of biases,” she said, adding that the intention of the report was to lay the ground for religious-based reservation. “Ironically, 100 hundred years after the first seed of a separate electorate for Muslims was sown in India , which ultimately led to the demand for Partition, a report has come talking of nomination for Muslims,” she said. “We are a democracy and to talk of nominations on the basis of religion is to pave the way for communal divisiveness.” (http:// www. hindustantimes.com/news/181_1856935,0008.htm) What an irony indeed – talking of nominations on basis of religion is paving way for communal divisiveness as per BJP, whereas, actually practising discrimination for decades on the basis of religion is perhaps ‘secularism' according to them!!!

On the other hand, the Congress has taken this election-card with full care and said that the govt would implement the recommendations. That such a committee would be formed was already hinted in drafting during the formation of UPA combine led by Congress and backed by CPIM. This UPA-Left combine was desperate in gathering as much ‘Muslim', ‘minority' votes as possible in the last parliamentary election after a 6-year BJP led NDA rule! And the Committee was formed on March 9, '05, shortly after the formation of the UPA govt. This vote-and-hoodwink-motive, though, did not stand as the sole reason for the committee formation; the ‘perception of discrimination against Muslims, and other minorities too' was becoming clear day in, day out to the Muslim people and other oppressed sections of the population and it was worrisome for the ruling classes. Scornfully many writers wrote – in only one sphere in India the Muslims are in clear majority: in the Indian Jails!!

When the Sachar report was out, the CPIM type ‘lefts', to hoodwink the Muslim masses from their ugliest-in-India performance, shouted for ‘reservations', and their WB CM had hurriedly promised at a not-so-important gathering that 15% of some govt funds/spending would be earmarked for Muslims. What is more insulting, CPIM still propagates that the Muslims is WB are at least in safer custody than in other states of India – is it not a covert way of threatening the Muslim people that ‘if you abandon CPIM, you'll face the same fate as in other states'! Quite recently, getting a bit cornered on the issue of abysmally low Muslim employment in govt services, the state govt is trying to show its concern in such a way which only nakedly portray the ongoing ‘bias' factor in state employment procedure – the govt is going to propose that interview boards etc for employment of 10 or more candidates will have at least one minority-community member, a thing obviously unusual so far!

Revolutionary communist activists working in WB, many of whom come from Bengali-Hindu-upper-caste background and unwittingly suffering from outlooks inherited from their background, must probe deeply the case of Muslim-Discrimination in West Bengal , its history in different periods, e.g., pre-1947, 1947-1977, 1977-2007, etc. A very subtle and not-so-visible bias, overlooked and strongly disclaimed by self-flattering ‘cultured' Bengali-Hindu-upper-caste gentlemen, must be there and is there. And there is not just anti-Muslim bias or Muslim-sneering; the dalits and adivasis are also marginalized there. But Bengali-Hindu-upper-caste people seldom acknowledge the fact that Bengali-Hindu-upper-caste people are, in a sense, minority in WB. Whereas Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis together constitute more than 60% of the State's population, and more than perhaps three-quarter of working class and peasantry in WB! In undivided Bengal too the Muslims and Dalits were overwhelming majority but typically a toiler; an exemplary Bengali peasant meant a Muslim, or if not, a Dalit – one may recollect Bankimchandra's intelligent and pointed portrayal of Bengali commoners as “Hashim Sheikh & Rama Kaibartya” in one of his essays on ‘Development' talks of the Bengali-Hindu-upper-caste ‘Babu' society that time, the ‘society' to which Bankimchandra himself belonged!

Muslim toilers should reject with wrath any Congress and/or Left sops like nominations, affirmative actions, reservations, etc; they know what is BJP, and they should know what Congress and Lefts are. That reservation did not and could not solve problems is amply clear from that very Sachar report: the abject conditions of the Dalits and Adivasis (so called SC, ST) are portrayed in this same report. Only a revolutionary transformation of the South Asian societies can usher in new days and hope for Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, oppressed nationalities and all deprived, exploited people of India .

 

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