THE Muslim population in India is growing, according to the Pew Research Centre. Their population was 195 million in 2015—nearly twice as many as in 1991—due to high birth rates. However, a dismal picture of Indian Muslims in India has recently been presented by Prof. Christophe Jaffrelot, a French political scientist and ideologist with expertise in South Asia, specifically India and Pakistan.
Since 1947, India’s democracy has evolved through the Gandhi/Nehru phase of conservative democracy. In today’s India, Muslims have been marginalized institutionally, economically, politically, educationally, and linguistically. Statistics from 1978 to 2016 showed that the number of Muslims in the Indian Administrative Service was around four to five per cent, although Indian Muslims constitute 14.5% of India’s population.
In the Indian Police Service, Muslims were a mere 2 to 2.5%. As for the judiciary, there were only one or two Muslims among the 30 justices of the Supreme Court of India. Muslims in the Indian military have been reduced from a third at partition to 2% today.
Indian Muslims possess only 9.5% of India’s wealth, whereas the Hindu upper castes (Brahmin and Bania), with less than half the population of Muslims, have 36%. Politically, the Bharatiya Janata Party—two times victorious in elections—has not a single Muslim in parliament. After the BJP victory over the Samajwadi Party in UP, the Muslim representation in its Assembly decreased from 17% to 6%.
Educationally, Muslims are also losing ground. In Kerala, graduates among Hindu upper castes are 22%, whereas among Muslims, it is 4%. In UP, the percentage for Hindu upper castes is 50%, whereas, for the first time ever, graduates among upper-caste Muslims have declined from 14% to 12%. Muslim students have the fewest scholarships, prohibiting their access to an adequate education.
The lack of access to government jobs is a prime reason for the poverty of India’s Muslims. Accordingly, 64% of Muslims are either self-employed or work as casual labourers. Indian Muslims are, by and large, not part of the ‘salariat’ of India. Linguistically, Urdu is dying in India. Only half of the Muslims in UP—the home of Urdu—speak and read it.
Urdu has become the language of the South because of Hyderabad and of West Bengal because Mamata Banerjee panders to her Muslim voters. The only institution where Indian Muslims exceed their percentage of the population is Indian jails.
In Pakistan, we often tell each other that we must save Pakistan as it is our only country. In Modi’s India, the vast majority of Muslims have no country to call their own. This is their plight. The international community is well aware of Modi’s India.
The West, particularly the US and the UK, while critical of India’s genocidal human rights violations against Muslims, ignores them because India is considered an ally against China. This Islamophobic hypocrisy needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Kandhkot, Sindh.
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views expressed are writer’s own.
