Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari recently called upon the Indian government to take affirmative action to address the discrimination faced by minorities, especially Muslims, in India. In his address at the 50th anniversary of the Majlis-e-Mashawarat, he talked about the discrimination faced by Muslims and asked for corrective measures that were admissible in the Constitution but were denied to Muslims. The vice president’s statement triggered a prompt reaction from a Hindu extremist organisation that is a representative of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which criticised the statement, arguing that the vice president had uttered a political and communal statement that did not suit the office of the vice president. It further added that Muslims in India had greater rights than Muslims in many Muslim countries.
India, the so-called secular state, has not transformed the spirit of secularism. The Indian Constitution declared India a democratic republic and the word secular was incorporated by the 42nd Amendment in 1976. The secular provisions of the Indian Constitution envisaged that the state by itself was not to establish or practice any religion, public revenue was not to be used to promote any particular religion and every individual person was to be given an equal right to freedom of conscience and religion. Notwithstanding the spirit of secularism enshrined in the Constitution, the Indian state’s practices are very challenging and counterproductive in dealing with minorities.
The issues of identity, security and equity are some of the main problems that are faced by minorities in India. Due to a different history and socio-cultural practices, minorities have to deal with the issue of identity everywhere in their relations to the majority population. This identity issue and sense of being in a relatively smaller number gives rise to perpetual insecurity that is further enhanced from time to time in the case of communal violence or during strained relations with the majority. The third important issue for minorities in India has been the denial of opportunities in development.
Muslims — the largest minority in India — have been experiencing discrimination since partition. They not only faced the wrath of the Hindu right but have also been blamed for partition as communal forces time and again assert that Muslims are foreigners and the right place for them is Pakistan. Since the 1990s, communal violence in India has increased due to hateful sentiments of the majority population.
To understand the socio-economic problems of Muslims, the government of India appointed the Sachar Committee, which submitted its report in November 2006 and identified that socio-economic indicators show that the Muslim minority lagged far behind in social development. Its economic backwardness, representation in jobs and representation in the political process manifested a gloomy picture. In this backdrop, the Sachar Committee recommended setting up an Equal Opportunity Commission that would take measures to ensure Muslim participation in public bodies in order to promote religious tolerance and a procedure to evaluate text books to incorporate social values among the people.
The Sachar Committee was not the only committee to identify the problems faced by the Muslim minority; earlier in 1982, the Gopal Singh Committee Report, which revealed the socio-economic deprivation of Muslims, was ignored and communal issues such as the Ram Temple matter got attention. Another such attempt was made when the National Commission on Religious and Linguistic Minorities, led by the former Chief Justice (CJ) of India, Ranganath Misra, submitted its report to the Prime Minister (PM) on May 22, 2007. It confirmed the findings of the Sachar Committee on the socio-economic backwardness of Muslims and suggested 10 percent reservation of seats for Muslims in education and employment to improve their condition.
The Kundu Report of 2014, which was given the task of evaluating the implementation of the Sachar recommendations, highlighted that work had been started in this regard but could not gain momentum. The above-mentioned committees did identify the problems but when it comes to implementation of proposals, lack of political will becomes the main hindrance. Congress has been criticised by the hardline Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for appeasing the Muslims for votes. Though Congress has not been a pro-Muslim political party, its secular orientation did not create such fear and anxiety in minorities as the BJP’s policies have been creating. Quite recently, the killing of a man by a Hindu mob on the allegations of eating beef has further enhanced the insecurity of Muslims and has created an environment for communal violence. This led PM Modi to announce that Hindus and Muslims should fight against poverty, not with each other. Such statements are not enough to create communal harmony; the government of India needs to accept that India is a multicultural, multi-religious society and denial of freedom of speech and expression to minorities could threaten the very existence of the secular state.
The writer works at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and can be reached at [email protected]