Shahabuddin's Response to Naseem A. Zaidi
Prof. Naseem A. Zaidi's article "Employment Paradigm for Educated Muslims" (16 January, 2000) like his earlier writings focuses on the higher administrative services and the corporate sector.
Granted that the number of Muslim candidates for the Civil Service etc. Examinations is disproportionately low, we have no statistics which gives the percentage of Muslim candidates in the various stages: the Preliminary, the Main and the Interview. All we have is the number of Muslims in the list of candidates recommended by the UPSC. Therefore, apart from vague impressions, we cannot objectively surmise at which stage the Muslim candidates face difficulties. This is a serious statistical lacunae which flaws Prof. Zaidi's analysis.
The problem for the average educated Muslim is how to get into even Group C and D posts under the Central and State Government. At these levels, the average Muslim candidate is as meritorious as the non-Muslim and if he is rejected, it is basically on account of communal bias. At these levels, the recruitment process is neither so well-structured nor so organised as to eliminate the bias to the extent possible.
In any case, Muslim youth should be encouraged to apply and prepare for other openings in Government and Semi-Government organisations, including the public sector, at non-gazetted levels. Simultaneously we should endeavour to secure reservation for Muslims.
I agree with Prof. Zaidi that private sector which is expanding fast is likely to be less subject to bias but one cannot rule out linguistic, caste and religious preferences when the candidates are roughly of equal merit.
Prof. Zaidi goes off the track by harping on the poor standard of Muslim minority educational institutions. A vast majority of the Muslim gradates are not products of such institutions. They come from government or even from other private institutions.
In my view, what is essentially needed is expansion of the educational base of the Muslim community. If the enrollment in school is high and the drop out rate is low, the community would be in a position to field millions of qualified secondary, higher secondary products and hundreds of thousands of university graduates. This will throw up thousands of meritorious Muslim youth who will, like the youth from other communities, be in a position to enter the job market successfully. If the educational base remains narrow, the representation of the community at all levels, in all sectors, will remain poor.
The Muslim educational agenda must, therefore, give priority to generate a mass movement with the slogan 'education for all' and to provide opportunity and facilities for higher education for the hundreds of thousands who do well at the secondary and, more so, at the higher secondary level. No elitist approach will work if general aversion to education clouds our social landscape.
Human Sacrifice to Profitiate Durga
Soma, an Adivasi youth is believed to have killed a seven-year-old boy in Ramda Hamlet of West Singhbhum district in Bihar on December 18 to propitiate goddess Durga ... Soma, it is believed, offered Vijay's head as offering hoping that his son Radhe who died at the age of 5 years last year would come back to life.
Such human sacrifice is not restricted to the Hos alone in this largely illiterate area. Other tribes such as Munda and Santhal are also believed to carry on the practice ..
Couple Killed for Inter-Caste Love Affair
A young couple was killed just because they were in love with each other ... In village Rajpura, District Bulandshahr ... family members of both the boy and the girl hanged them to death and made an unsuccessful attempt to cremate them. Police ... took the half-burnt bodies in its possession from the pyre ..
In the village, the officers found most of the males absconding while the females and children were not ready to speak even in a single word about the incident. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 30 January, 2000)
Naved Zahir on Another 'Hindulim' or 'Muslindu' Family
A ... 'Muslim' family in Bihar, which goes by Hindu names and worships Hindu gods, is keeping alive a bizarre tradition of catching snakes that challenges scientific fact.
Suresh Nat (35), also known as Khurshid, is reckoned to be the most skilled practitioner of the art, known locally as saanp kadna or snake hypnosis. It involves mumbling mantras that locals believe have magical powers and force snakes out of their hiding places ... Nat and his family are much in demand in the viper-infested area near Shakrawan village of Nalanda district ...
Rumpus in JNU on Buffalo Meat
. (Some) students (of the JNU) are outraged over the staff allegedly serving beef in the canteen. However, the cooks and another section of students say it is buffalo meat and that they have been savouring the dish for years now ...
Samples of the dish were seized by the Vasant Vihar police ... The forensic report is awaited
Students on the campus have formed three distinct groups over the beef issue. While one group wants beef banished from campus, another is championing student's right to have whatever he or she likes and the canteen's right to serve the same. The third group ... is towing the middle line.
" ... Every Saturday, the canteen has been serving beef unofficially ... However, it has not taken permission from the canteen committee ... Now, the whole thing should be legalised ... "Selling buffalo meat is legal. Cow slaughter is an offence," said P.K. Bharadwaj, deputy commissioner of police, South-West .. (Source: The Indian Express, 23 November, 1999)
