TAKING SIDES
Author: Rudolf C Heredia
Publisher : Penguin, Rs 499
Islam does not discriminate among its followers. So, the idea of reservation for poor Muslims, as suggested by the author, is wrong, say Prafull Goradia and KR Phanda
The book under review, Taking Sides, by Prof C Heredia is an attempt to show that Muslims and Christians have been given a raw deal by the Government since 1947. Chapter 6, ‘Equality Without Uniformity’, makes this very clear. In the author’s words: “In a large country like India, internal ethno-religious conflicts leave the minorities wounded and traumatised. The poisoned legacy of the divide-and-rule policy of the colonial Government seems to have acquired a new dynamic with a momentum of its own... In attempting to enforce majority dominance, it precipitates minority consolidation... The Constituent Assembly of India made an honest attempt to break with this divisive past. Following the logic of protective discrimination, the Constitution guaranteed specific rights to minorities as a reassurance against their fear of being overwhelmed by a tyranny of the majority... Yet today these rights are under severe strain. On the one side, they are contested by those promoting a cultural nationalism, who challenge minority concessions on the ground of appeasement, and deride state secularism as pseudo. The lower strata in these religious communities experience a double discrimination both religious and social and so often suffer as much if not more deprivation as backward and scheduled castes. Indeed, since reservation quotas were extended to the Sikh SCs in 1954 and neo-Buddhists in 1990, religious minorities today see little justification in not extending these benefits to them as well.”
At the outset, it should be pointed that the author’s main thesis is that reservations should be provided to Muslim and Christian minorities on the same lines as those available to SCs/STs. It is no scholarly work. It is a crude attempt at providing justification for giving reservation to Muslims as would be apparent from the following lines: “The marginalisation of the Muslim community illustrates the worst in identity politics; the Muslim community has been caught in the vicious girth of an aggressive Hindutva demonising them, and their own defensive response, this isolating themselves.”
Prof Heredia does not place his argument in proper context and thereby distorts historical facts. Several Muslim leaders claim that their coreligionists constitute India’s most backward community and should be treated on par with SCs and STs. This is nothing short of sacrilege. It is an insult to Muslims who were, not so long ago, rulers of large tracts of India. Despite being the dominant rulers if Muslims are lagging behind or are less educated today, the blame must be borne by the Ashrafs or the privileged class. The Islamic brotherhood believes in the equality of all Muslims before Allah. The institution of zakat and wakf were created to take care of the downtrodden. In most urban areas, wakfs are reputed to be the largest urban landlords in India. Why are then Muslims backward and less educatedIJ Is it because wakf property is being misused by the mutawallis (the controllers), or is it that the ulema are discouraging Muslim youth from pursuing secular studiesIJ As for the position of women, discrimination appears to be rampant. little wonder that Prof Bernard lewis, the outstanding Western scholar of Islam, writes in his book, What Went Wrong, in 2002: “The slave could be freed by his master; the unbeliever could at any time become a believer by his own choice, and thus end his inferiority. Only the woman was doomed for ever to remain what she wasIJ”
Muslims were a minority of 10 per cent or even less when they persecuted the Hindu majority for over six centuries, AD 1206-1857. Muslims then regarded themselves as rulers. With the coming of the British rule, they were gradually deprived of their privileged position. They refused to learn English and modern sciences. They considered it below their dignity to study a foreign language. Mullahs heaped insults on Sir Syed Ahmad Khan when he suggested to them that their future lay in adapting to the needs of the time.
They asked for special concessions such as separate electorates, and reservations in government jobs in 1906 when they presented an ‘Address’ to Viceroy Minto in 1906. Muslims always regarded themselves as a qaum (community) or nation. The word minority did not occur in the ‘Address’ presented to lord Minto. Come 1940, Indian Muslims declared themselves a nation and demanded a separate homeland for the Indian ummah (community). In September 1944, Mohammed Ali Jinnah in his 14-day meeting with Mahatma Gandhi at Bombay, asserted that the Hindu-Muslim problem would come to end once India was divided into Hindustan for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. In the 1945-46 elections, Muslims of India overwhelmingly voted for the creation of Pakistan. In August 1946, the Muslim league resorted to Direct Action Day that led to the Great Calcutta Killing.
VP Menon, the legendry last Reforms Commissioner of India, has written that the British rulers and the Congress leadership thereafter agreed to divide India for two reasons: One, it would end the civil war between Hindus and Muslims. Two, it would lead to an early freedom of the country. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, in his book India Divided (1946) wrote that all Muslims in India would become aliens on August 15, 1947. Mohammed Ali Jinnah and seven other Muslim league leaders had declared in 1946-47 that Partition should be accompanied by an exchange of population. Had Indian leaders treated Muslims in the same fashion as the Christian West, there would have been no issue of reservation for Muslims or the occurrence of Hindu-Muslim riots. Prof Heredia has conveniently ignored these historical facts.
Islam does not discriminate among its followers. If Muslims are backward, the blame lies with their leaders. Hindus, as a community, cannot be expected to subsidise another community which had forced the division of India. Any other country would have declared Muslims foreigners on the day of Partition. There is, therefore, no question of providing for reservation for Muslims or Christians on the lines of SCs/STs. Prof Heredia should have taken the trouble of going through the Note of Dissent given by the Member Secretary of the Mishra Commission on Religious and linguistic Minorities.