NATIONAL POLITICS

M.K. Narayanan on Minorities Appeasement

The less than flattering image of the Muslims minority hardly squares with facts as they exist, though this may be what their self-styled leaders wish to project. Members of the community are talented, possess good business acumen and are highly skilled artisans. Many have started their own business ventures and are self- employed. Muslims are, no doubt, less well represented in areas of government and large corporations. To this extent, they are shut from the many new opportunities that have arisen as a result of liberalization. More significantly, their education credentials have suffered by failing to partake of the vast expansion that has taken place in the realm of higher education. They, hence, face the danger of losing out on the benefits that accrue from meritocracy. The community leaders and the religious orthodoxy share a sizeable part of the blame, as also the mainstream parties and successive governments at the Centre, for this state of affairs, and the situation cannot be improved by emphasizing backwardness and putting a premium on dependency.

 Unfortunately, the trends now discernible are far from reassuring. Rather than improve matters, the religious minority seems intent on compelling the polity to effect basic structural changes.

 Nowhere have the more pertinent reasons for so- called backwardness and drop in education credentials of the community been addressed.

Mainstream parties like the Congress must know that while professing to remain faithful to their "mainstream convictions" and secular ideals, their attempts to curry favor with the more communal segments and fringe leaders who claim to speak for the minority, would not (Source: The Asian Age, 11 March, 1996) only mean mocking those convictions but would do irreparable damage to the future interests of the minority or minorities. In the interest of electoral gain or advantage, appeasing the occupants of the margins would be self-delusion and tarnish the credentials of the mainstream parties. A marriage of convenience of this kind will also eventually sour. To respond to any and every available demand on the plea of minority rights would Balkanise sentiments in the polity, creating a groundswell of opposition and backlash from the majority leading perhaps to even greater irrationality on their part.

It is far more important than appeasement or palliatives to see that both the majority and the minority display moderation, tolerance and forbearance Otherwise, the spiral of action and reaction would go on endlessly enabling sectarian and communal forces to gain ground Already, there are concerns being voiced by established parties that extremist elements are hijacking their agenda and altering the course and direction of the party's politics by side-lining and marginalizing its present leaders. This is inevitable given the bitter competition and struggle for votes among both the minority and majority segments, and the more radical and shocking the agenda the more its seductive appeal.

Rather than adopt a conciliatory or appeasement policy (even if it be election time) the government should take constructive steps for improving the quality and status of the minority by channelizing their energies into productive endeavors and upgrading educational opportunities for them. Side by side, the government and other mainstream parties should deal firmly with the so- called "Hindu Agenda" proposed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and take steps to remedy the grievance already caused by the Shiv Sena-BJP government's decree in Maharashtra to wind up the Srikrishna Commission of Enquiry which went into the Bombay riots of 1992-93. Without this, the cycle of minority majority demands would continue unabated.

Indulgence can be a serious, and possibly the ultimate, danger to secular policy. There is hardly any such thing as a temporary appeasement, whether of the minority or of the majority. The real need is to do something substantial to raise the status and standards of the minority communities, but expression, or evidence, of a pronounced "tilt" at election time towards the minority at the expense of the majority can have unfortunate repercussions. If the mainstream parties are not to surrender their initiative to communal and sectarian forces and deny extremist elements in both the minority and majority an opportunity flourish, they need to make major mid-course corrections.

Bonded Labor in Pakistan

Millions of workers in Pakistan are bought and sold as slaves and forced to work by landlords- often for life-to pay off their debts. A BBC report quoted civil rights groups in Pakistan as saying that there are up to 20 million bonded laborers in the country and showed bonded laborers working at a brick kiln under armed guard. "I'll keep them working as long as it takes", the landlord told the BBC reporter. "There's no escape. Each one of them owes me 5,000 rupees ($150).

The workers are prisoners on the farm or factories they are indebted to, the report said "I owe 10,000 rupees and have been here for 35 years", one worker said. "I'll never pay it off and when I die, my children will take over the debt." A man may take out a loan to cover emergencies or simply to survive, but can then find himself bonded for life and passed from one owner to another like livestock, the report noted.