Amid Delta-IV onslaught, Muslim persecution in India continues unabated. A Kashmiri truck driver, Rayees Ahmed, and his conductor, Salman Dar, were beaten by a fanatical Hindu mob in Damtal area of Himachal Pradesh. What was their offence? Their offence was that “Islam zindabad” was written on their truck. The phrase looks innocuous to the ordinary passerby, But, it sounded incendiary to the fanatical Hindu.
The Indian Muslims have little say inside or outside the Indian parliament. They dare not raise questions about their plight inside the parliament or outside. Their leaders are corrupt and fiddle the government’s line barring indulgence in pettifoggery on non-issues. Even questions devoid of political implications, such as those about Haj or other modes of worship, are asked by non-Muslim members of the legislatures. Never did they dare say a word in support of Kashmir’s freedom movement or rights of other persecuted minorities in India.
The Muslim are uneducated. They are unlike the Christians who have had their chief ministers and defence ministers. They have created a niche in Hindu society by sheer dint of their education, competence, and participation.
The miserable condition of the Muslim is well documented in several studies. Muslims are one of the six minorities (14.2 per cent in India’s Census 2011). But, they are underrepresented in every realm of life.
The Muslim in India are resigned to their fate. They consider persecution in Hindu majoritarian India as natural. Aside from persecution from the fanatical Hindu, they suffer persecution from their own upper-caste Muslim leaders who are the government’s stooges.
The ascendance of majoritarian Hindutva since Narendra Modi first came to power in 2014 “compounded the Muslim’s socio-economic misfortune, arguably born of chronic neglect by the state, with a new sense of deliberate political marginalisation and active persecution.”
The Sachar Commission report in 2006 highlighted that Muslims lagged in terms of such parameters as income, employment and literacy, as compared to other minorities.
The report pointed out that some 31 per cent (about one third) of Muslims fell below the poverty line. Twenty-five per cent of Muslim children did not go to school. Their representation in Indian Administrative Service and Police Service was a mere 1.8 per cent and four percent in provincial police services.
According to the Sachar Committee Report, conditions of the Muslim in India are worse than those of dalits (Untouchables).
But, the Muslim community itself is to blame for its current plight. The Muslim literacy rate ranks well below the national average and the Muslim poverty rate is only slightly higher than that of the low-caste Hindu. Muslims make up only four percent of the undergraduate student body in India’s elite universities. They fall behind other groups in terms of access to credit. This is despite the self-employed Muslim population exceeding other groups.
Sedition laws have become handmaidens of India’s government under Narendra Modi to stifle dissent, incarcerate political opponents or persecute minorities, particularly the Muslim. Shouting a slogan, wall chalking, a social post of azadi (liberty), wearing a prayer cap, or offering prayer on adjoining roads when a mosque is overcrowded, could attract sedition charges. Even interfaith marriages or cow-related offences could be tried as sedition. The Hindu-monk chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, had directed his administration to try cow-related offences under the National Security Act.
Some states have passed love-jihad laws to prevent interfaith marriages. The over-ebullient Hindu extremists even haul such people to the police stations as have been happily married long before enactment of the law banning inter-faith marriages. We look upon the Indian Muslim as a homogeneous caste-free community. But, they too are stratified on the lines of the Hindu caste system. Fifteen percent ashrafia or nobility (Syed, Sheikh, Mughal, Pathan, etc or native upper caste converts like Rangad or Muslim Rajput, Taga or Tyagi Muslims, Garhe or Gaur Muslims, etc), descendents of the Arab or the Afghan, dominate 85 per cent low-caste Muslim ajlaf (backward muslim) together with arzal (dalit Muslim).
The ‘high-caste’ Muslim, hand in glove with ruling political Brahmin-dominated parties, reap benefits. The low castes are left in the lurch. In case of communal riots, the low-caste Muslims bear the brunt.
The low caste Muslim suffer double persecution. One at the hands of the fanatic Hindu and secondly at that of the ‘syeds’.
During the 1990s, All India Backward Muslim Morcha of Dr Ejaz Ali, and the All India Pasmanda Muslims Mahaj of Ali Anwar from Bihar, and the All India Muslim OBC Organisation of Shabbir Ansari from Maharashtra, highlighted baneful dichotomy of the Muslim society into two broad groups.
Voracious readers may go through Ali Anwar’s Musawat Ki Jang (2001) and Masood Alam Falahi’s Hindustan Mein Jaat Pat aur Musalman (2007). These books document the over-representation of the “syeds” in Islamic organisations and institutions (Jamat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, Jamat-e-Islami, All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Idaara-e-Sharia etc.), government-run institutions for minorities (Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Maulana Azad Educational Foundation, and Urdu Academy). In the forefront of rebellion against “syedism” are Muslim Dalit and tribal Muslim communities — Kunjre (Raeen), Julahe (Ansari), Dhunia (Mansuri), Kasai (Qureishi), Fakir (Alvi), Hajjam (Salmani), Mehtar (Halalkhor), Gwala (Ghosi), Dhobi (Hawari), Lohar-Badhai (Saifi), Manihar (Siddiqui), Darzi (Idrisi), and Vangujjar
The caste structure of the Muslim in India mocks the typical model of an egalitarian Muslim society. The ‘Syeds’, like the Brahmin, practise segregation and social distancing from the low castes. The abhorrence to low-caste Muslims is manifested in the existence of separate burial grounds, the practice of forcing lower Muslims to stand in the back rows during congregational prayers in certain regions, and the practice of untouchability against Dalit Muslims.
As per 2011 Census, Muslims constitute about 14.2 per cent of India’s population. This means that Ashrafs should have a 2.1 per cent share in the country’s population. But their representation in the Lok Sabha was around 4.5 per cent. On the other hand, backward Muslim’s’ share in the population was around 11.4 per cent but they had a paltry 0.8 per cent representation in Parliament.
Of the 7,500 elected representatives from the first to the 14th Lok Sabha, 400 were Muslims. Of them 340 were from Ashraf communities. Only 60 backward-caste Muslims were elected in 14 Lok Sabhas.
The BJP has no space for Pasmanda Muslims. The situation will be the same in the 17th Lok Sabha, too. For instance, only one out of seven Mahagatbandhan’s Muslim candidates in Bihar is a Pasmanda and both the BJP-led NDA’s candidates are Ashraf. In Bihar, the population of Ashraf community is about four percent of the state’s entire population. Yet they were given 15 per cent representation among the Mahagatbandhan candidates. In Uttar Pradesh, only one of the nine Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress is a Pasmanda. The Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded two Pasmanda candidates out of six Muslims and one Pasmanda is fighting on a Samajwadi Party ticket (out of four Muslims).
The so-called high castes like Syeds, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pathans do not want the subordinated Muslim castes like Ansaris, Dhuniyas or Qureshis to rise to their level. Whenever Pasmanda Muslims try to contest an election, the Ashraf Muslims taunt them as Dhunia, Julaha, Kalal, Kunjra or Kasai. They conspire to ensure their defeat. The Ashraf candidates preach that it devolves on Muslims to vote for them by way of Islamic duty.
The Muslim in India are resigned to their fate. They consider persecution in Hindu majoritarian India as natural. Aside from persecution from the fanatical Hindu, they suffer persecution from their own upper-caste Muslim leaders who are the government’s stooges.
