Muslim India has nearly tripled in population from about 40 million to about 120 million over the last 50 years. It has thrown up 2 Presidents of the Republic, 2 Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, 3 Vice-Presidents, dozens of Union Ministers and scores of State Ministers, including a few Chief Ministers (Abdul Ghafoor, Barkatullah Khan and Abdur Rahman Antulay, not to mention the successive Prime/Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir). Several of them have been elevated to Governorship and Ambassadorship. Quite a few have been appointed as Judge of the Supreme Court and the High Courts. Hundreds have been elected to the Parliament and to the State Assemblies. One has risen to the meritorious rank of Air Chief Marshal. Many have been decorated with National Awards in every field and their achievements have been recognised. If Muslim India has produced the Akbar of Jaisalmer, it has also produced a Dilip Kumar, a Bismillah Khan, an Ali Akbar Khan and a Maqbool Fida Husain.
The list is long and can well be cited by the optimist and the apologist alike not only as evidence of the progress of the Muslim community after independence, but also as proof that the Indian State - an experiment in secularism - has been a success.
Yet, there is discontent and frustration, giving rise to insecurity, to the feeling of being neglected and ignored, to the feeling of ineffective and thwarted participation in social and political management, to the concern at having been short-changed in the distribution of the fruits of development, to the sensation of going down the economic ladder with every passing year and of being targeted for deliberate humiliation and social degradation, in a word, of being subjected to inequality and injustice.
Yet, Muslim India has made a remarkable transition from the state of subjugation, of helplessness in which it found itself on the morrow of independence, to stability through still encumbered by masses of existential problems. Above all, Muslim Indians have been transformed into Indians with the knowledge that India is their home, it is their homeland, that their territorial commitment is total, and much more, that their commitment is unchangeable, that their destiny is inseparable from that of their motherland and of their co-patriots, that they have nowhere else to go, that no foreign power or country can help them, that they cannot be physically liquidated or pushed across the border or thrown into the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal, that they have to invest their knowledge, experience, skill and strength in the spirit of self-reliance to serve this multi-faceted community, of which they form an indivisible part and all its people.
This transition became evident in 1974, which forms a watershed in their psychological journey. It has helped them to dig in their feet, to grow roots, to stop the efflux, to seek knowledge, to acquire skills, to raise themselves with their bootstraps, to engage in self-help, to look around for opportunities in a developing milieu.
It has also made them more assertive in demanding their legitimate share and their due place, in seeking participation. This has brought them into inevitable collision from the anti-Muslim forces; their fate has been and cannot be different from that of those who earlier fought and long suppressed, now seeking identity, equality and dignity. The rise of Hindutva and the saffron brigade is an attempt to highjack the secular order, finally to throttle it and to install the Hindutva state in its place.
Muslim India has survived the years of agony and is going through the years of hope without a "sole leader", but it is throwing up leaders at every functional level, in every segment of national endeavour, for every common cause, in every common struggle for equality and justice. The political leadership which sought refuge under the umbrella of "power" or which served as the fig-leaf for the secular order and which acted collectively as window-dressing or decorations has been bypassed by the community. They have been reduced to non-entities even in the eyes of their patrons.
Muslim India has been disappointed by the political parties, which swear by secularism and act communally, which in elections beg for Muslim votes and then do precious little to promote their legitimate interests, individual or collective. They have tried and tested every political formation and found to their dismay that Muslim grievances are not their concern though they form their backbone; that all parties have their distinct social constituencies to serve and in the process they neglect and even encroach upon the interest of other social groups. Muslim activists are bypassed not only in the organisational structure but in election lists to the point that their representation in the legislatures has been subsequently in the political arena has steadily gone down to the current dismal level. In a segmented society, the Muslims have become conscious by the silence in the highest form of the land. Unless the electoral system is changed, in the present state of communalisation, when secular parties are unable to deliver their non-Muslim votes to Muslim candidates even with Muslim concentration constituencies, the situation is not likely to improve in the foreseeable future. The fact disenfranchisement of the second biggest community in the country is a serious challenge to our democracy. While joint electorate is not negotiable, proportionate reservation in legislatures as proposed in the Draft Constitution, appears to be the only way to restore the confidence of the Muslim Indians and, to ensure their full participation at all levels from the Union to the Panchayat.
However, Muslim Indians have prospered with social stability and self-enterprise. Indeed a recent UNDP-sponsored study has shown that as a community, Muslims have a higher level of self-employment than any other social group. This is natural since they have traditional skills and since the avenues for public and private employment have been virtually shut in their face. But it is also a fact-supported by statistical surveys - that the Muslim share in every other economic activity is disproportionately low. It is no one case that Muslims have suffered total denial and deprivation but it is a fact that they have not received their due share in the fruits of development. It is also no one's case that all other social groups have been treated justly but the Muslim Indians have been remorselessly at the receiving end, because the Hindu mind has not shed its image of a historic adversary, the memory of "Muslim" invasion and of "Muslim" rule; the Hindu mind not having come to terms with the creation of Pakistan continues to take it out on the Muslim Indians. Muslim Indians, being educationally backward, economically deprived and subject to religious prejudice and discrimination, all at the same time, generally find it impossible to cross into the charmed circle, individual exceptions apart.
In a developing society, government service carries social prestige and opens avenues of education and advancement for the next generation. Here the situation is indeed dismal, in the gazetted services including All India, Central and State Civil Services, Muslim share, in the country as a whole, is of the order of 4-5% but Muslim profile further declines as one goes down the ladder. Educational backwardness may explain the under-representation in the high reaches with an organized system of recruitment but there is no explanation for persistent under-representation in the clerical and messengerial grades, except religious or caste discrimination.
Nearly 60% of the Muslim Indians have Urdu as their mother tongue but for lack of facilities for teaching Urdu as a language from the primary upto the high school or for teaching through the medium of Urdu at least at the primary level, the younger generation has very low proficiency in Urdu. Urdu is dying as a written language though expanding its horizon as a spoken language. Urdu is gaining ground on the electronic media and losing in the print media. The Indian State, specially the Hindi-speaking States, having discarded the Gandhian formula of Hindustani in Devnagri and Urdu scripts, has adopted well-crafted methods to "impose" Hindi on those whose mother tongue is Urdu. Unfortunately unlike other MIL's, Urdu and Sindhi are the only two national languages without a "homeland"; they form a linguistic minority everywhere. Still more unfortunately Urdu-speaking zones largely coincide with the Hindi-speaking States (with the exception of AP, Karnataka and Maharashtra). Urdu has, therefore, to contend with psychological and deep-seated antipathy and hostility and a mental block. Urdu Akademis, Mushairas, official awards, government advertisements, even university level teaching are no substitute for denial of instruction in and through the medium of Urdu in schools. It has been well-said that the official Urdu policy consists in cutting at the roots and sprinkling water on the leaves!
Urdu is more than a language; it is a culture; it is also the repository of the finest expression of literary, theological and philosophical creativity of the Muslim community. Nothing has kept the fear of cultural submergence and religious assimilation alive in the Muslim mind more than the treatment Urdu has received after independence. It is this fear which led to the parting of ways as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had foreseen in the 80's of the 19th Century when Hindu-Urdu confrontation began, and ultimately to the tragedy of Partition. A second Partition is out of question but can India achieve national integration and communal harmony and attain cultural heights when the second largest religious group suffers such cultural genocide in silence?
Since 1947 Muslim India's main concern has been religious and cultural security, the preservation of its social identity. Massacre after massacre, one violent episode after another, sometimes perpetrated by the agents of the state, sometimes with its collusion and connivance and under its protection, Muslim Indians took in their stride, Jabulpur, Moradabad, Biharsharif, Nellie, Bhiwandi, Meerut, Bhagalpur, it is a long litany of shame. But madness passes, life soon resumes its normal flow. Stranded neighbours again become friends; they need each other; their lives are intertwined. In course of time, the Muslim Indians learnt not to rely on government forces and sometimes organised their own defence. Happily the level of violence which had reached a crescendo in the 80's and the early 90's has come down and throughout the country Muslim Indians are breathing in peace. But what is more important is that as a community, they never permitted themselves to be psychologically overwhelmed or demoralised.
Muslim Indians understand that the purpose of atrocities is not to liquidate them, for that is impossible but to soften them for the historic purposes of assimilation. (To be concluded)
