Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s assertion during his independence day speech that taking welfare measures for the minorities is not appeasement is a welcome development. Undoubtedly a lot many people would raise their eye-brows that it was Congress’s shameless attempt to win back the Muslim community which had deserted the party in the wake of Babri Mosque demolition. Not in a distant past the PM was criticized for having said that the minorities had the first claim on nation’s resources.
We Indians have got in the habit of looking at every thing from a political prism. Therefore, the PM’s concern for minorities can’t be seen as genuine, but only as a gimmick for political gains. Here the question must be asked if there is anything apolitical in the country?
Dr Manmohan Singh is heading a Congress government and the party must do a great deal to atone the wrongs it has done to the Muslim community. Members of Congress were in great majority in the Constituent Assembly which took away political, economic and educational reservations which was promised to the Muslims in the draft constitution. It was the long uninterrupted 30-year rule of the Congress Party from 1947 to 1977 which brought about the all round decline of the Muslim community. It was the Congress government in U.P. that issued a secret circular instructing officers to deny jobs to the Muslims in the police force. Elsewhere, it was open practical discrimination which robbed Muslims of many gifts and benefits that others received as of right.
According to 1940 Census the Muslim population of undivided India was 94.4 million which may have crossed the 100 million mark in 1947. Some 60% Muslims were in the areas that formed Pakistan and the remaining 40% remained in India. They had the option to go to Pakistan but they preferred to stay in India believing in its age-old golden tradition of tolerance, accommodation and cooperation.
But the Muslim hopes and aspirations began to be frustrated immediately after independence. They discovered to their surprise and horror that many Congress leaders, who earlier believed in composite politics, became brand communalist overnight. They shocked the Muslims when they blamed the community for partitioning the country. Soon they began maltreating Urdu language and culture. They gave Muslims the right to establish and manage their own educational institutions but threatened and undermined the minority character of Aligarh Muslim University. They allowed the community to practice its religion but hanged the sword of uniform civil code over its head. In sum, they did and undid things which harmed Muslim interests in one or another way.
The Muslim leadership did not help the Muslim cause either, especially immediately after independence. They held a convention in U.P. in 1948 which was attended, among others, by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Some two lakh Muslims gathered to hear their leaders who told and advised them in unambiguous terms to shun “Muslim politics” and espouse “composite politics”. Maulana Hifzurrahman advocated to join the Congress Party, for he considered it to be the best for Muslims. For thirty years the Muslim community followed the advice of their leaders in spirit and letter and voted for Congress in election after election. It required the Emergency and its excesses to shake the Muslim belief in Congress.
The point to be made here is that while Muslims continued to be loyal to the Congress, the party, or at least a section of its leadership, presided over its speedy decline. Today the Muslim condition is the worst in the country. The majority of Muslims live below the poverty line. Their share in white-colour jobs is less than three per cent and in industrial loan it is even less than 2%. Politically, too, the Muslims are under-represented both in Parliament and state assemblies. And their poor literacy record is a universally acknowledged fact.
What is, then, wrong if the Congress has chosen today to address the Muslim problems. In view of the facts presented above, the Muslim community deserves special welfare measures. May be, it is a political gimmick, so typical of Congress. We shall welcome such political gimmicks by the BJP and other political parties as well as long as it serves our purpose. The Muslims are in dire need of help to get out of the situation they have fallen in. Please do not give us the boring advice that under the constitution every one has got equal opportunity. Is it not BJP’s political gimmick to keep the Muslims in perpetual backwardness.
[August, 2009]
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