A Critical Review of the Muslims under the UPA Raj-I     
The Congress formed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in May 2004 in coalition with like-minded parties and with the support of the Left. The pre-election Manifesto of the Congress and the post-election Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the UPA raised high hopes among the minorities, particularly in the biggest but the most deprived and most backward, the Muslim Community. Muslims had played a critical role in the victory of the UPA and in the defeat of the NDA and expected immediate and concrete steps from the UPA government on a priority basis to raise their educational, economic, social and political level. Unfortunately, three and a half years later, the hopes have not been fulfilled. A pervasive sense of disappointment, with a strand of frustration has filled the vacuum. For the first time since independence, sections of the community have begun thinking in terms of withdrawing from the political process and even boycotting elections. A general feeling has emerged that if the BJP was bad for them, the Congress has proved to be no better.
Soon after the formation of the Government the Muslim leaderships took note of the heart-warming assertion by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in private to a representative Muslim delegation, that he would measure his success by what he is able to achieve to uplift the minorities. Subsequently, the Community noted, in every pronouncement by the Prime Minister for the first time the term ‘minorities’ had been explicitly added to the list of deprived groups namely, SC’s, the ST’s and the OBC’s. Once the Prime Minister went to the extent of telling the nation that the minorities being backward, had priority claim on development resources. This was ungivable ‘blasphemy’ in the eyes of the communal forces, an ultimate exercise in appeasement.
With only a year and a half to go before the next general election the Muslim community finds to its shock and disappointment that there is no visible change at the ground level, no increase in the recruitment of Muslims to government jobs, even at Groups C and D levels, or in access to education, even at the school level, or in flow of bank credit, even at the mini-entrepreneur or the self-employed artisan level, or in benefit from social development schemes at the operational level.  Since very few Muslims have been nominated to key posts under the Union Government or in the Judiciary or in the Public Sector, the Muslim face remains as conspicuous by its absence in the corridors of power as it ever was. Even in the political field the UPA has been no more generous in selection of Muslim candidates for successive assembly elections or in appointing them in the party machinery.
Change in Ambience
The Muslims, however, recognize that there is a change in the ambience. There is less fear in the air, more acceptances at the administrative level, more freedom to express their feelings and to mobilize themselves for redressal of their grievances. At the same time the police and intelligence authorities have increasingly identified of Muslims with terrorism. Whenever a terrorist act occurs, without any investigation, without any evidence, immediately an accusing finger is pointed at the Muslims; their localities are put under siege, their youth and even respectable members of the community are detained and tortured, sometimes to extract fake confessions.  Also there is an ironical tendency to relate attacks on Muslim religious places to long-standing sectarian differences. Terrorism has no religion and Muslin Indians have repeatedly disowned terrorism but ever since the USA declared its War against Islam giving rise to a surge of Islamophobia throughout the West, our authorities have been branding the Muslims as terrorists and thus blackening their image as the ‘hostile adversary’ in the mind of the opinion-makers and the common Hindus alike. 
Institutional Innovations
No doubt there have been a number of innovations by the UPA. For the first time, a Ministry of Minority Affairs has been created at the Union level. Unfortunately, it has received a step-motherly treatment; its area of operation and authority has been limited. It has not received adequate resources. It has not even been given full control on all programmes, schemes and institutions of the Government which are exclusively for the benefit of the minorities. It has been denied an effective oversight in the distribution of fruits of development so that the minorities receive due share in of benefit of all common schemes, programmes and institutions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Ministry has been a non-starter. Three years later, it is yet to prove its worth in terms of providing conceptual framework or an effective machinery for assessing the changing status of minorities and assertively monitoring the results achieved by other Ministries and departments, whose policies and actions affect them. The fact is that the Ministry does not yet have a Consultative Committee of the Parliament or a Standing Parliamentary Committee. The Parliament has not yet established a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of the Minorities as it has for the SC’s & ST’s. There is no explanation why there has been no discussion on the floor of the Parliament on minority situation or on the annual reports of various bodies concerned with their welfare like the National Commission for Minorities, the Linguistic Minorities Commissioner, the Maulana Azad Educational Foundation and the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation, the Haj committee or the Central Wakf Council. The Ministry of Minority Affairs has not been able to breakthrough the traditional resistance of the other ministries and departments to maintaining statistics, relating Muslims as in the case of SC’s/ST’s.
The Ministry therefore, doest not even keep a tab on benefits to Muslim and other minorities from the universally applicable schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Public Distribution System, the Central Pension Scheme for the aged and the indigent or welfare schemes for children. It has not been able to persuade the other Ministries and Departments that the benefits of all non-universal schemes should reach the Muslim community at the ground level in proportion to their population in the zone of operation, or to introduce parallel schemes for minorities.  An average Muslim feels the Ministry not only needs a more assertive Minister at its head but due complement of committed officers.
Some other institutions and programmes have been revived by the UPA Government. The National Integration Council has been reconstituted but has remained toothless and ineffective. It was supposed to meet twice in a year but in three years it has met only twice. The first was its formal inauguration. The second was devoted to a consideration of the proposal for a comprehensive law for effective control of social violence. The Bill, as drafted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, did not incorporate suggestions from the major target community namely the Muslim. It was criticized by the Muslim intelligentsia and has been pending in the Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of the Minorities has been revised and reintroduced with much fanfare. But even after two and a half years there is no quantitative target, no allocation, no implementation machinery and no monitoring mechanism. In fact, only recently the empowered Committee of Secretaries met for the first time to review the ‘progress’ of the Programme and to remind the state governments. The Government is hardly in a position to present in good conscience a progress or achievement report to the nation or to the minorities. Like its two previous incarnations under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi the third under Manmohan Singh is destined to be a talking point and show piece, and no more.
In fulfillments of its promise in the CMP the Government has proposed constitutional status for the National Commission for Minorities. The amendment however does not envisage increase in its power or authority. In any case, the Bill has been lying dormant in the Parliament.
The Government has also set up a National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (MEI) as promised in the CMP. But how far it has fulfilled its basic purpose of removing obstacles in the path of recognition and affiliation of the MEIs is not know because no annual report has yet been tabled in the Parliament.
Unfortunately, the NCMEI has been actively engaged in promoting a nebulous and vague proposal for creating a Central Madrasa Education Board. The idea has been, for various reasons, universally rejected by all Madrasas of national eminence primarily because of the sour experience of the community with government- regulated Madrasas in West Bengal, Bihar and UP which have not produced a single recognized Alim over decades. The community fails to understand why the Government shows so much anxiety for improving the quality of the madrasas attended by merely 4% of the Muslim children of school-going age and improve the employability of their products and not for providing equal and quality education to the other 96% and finding avenues for gainful employment of millions of an employed educated Muslim youth.
Fiasco of Sachar Report
Then came the Sachar Committee which laboriously compiled and masterfully analysed all available data on the economic, social and educational backwardness of the Muslim community in record time. The Sachar Committee engaged representative cross-sections of the community in various parts of the country in a dialogue to get a feel of their perceptions and expectations. But its Report showed that while the Committee had made an excellent diagnosis of the malaise, it had failed to provide effective remedy. To sum up its diagnosis, it found the Muslim community, as a whole, almost as backward as the SC/ST and more backward than the non-Muslim OBCs. Of course, this was no news to the community but it was disappointed that it did not recommend that this backward community be declared  a Backward Class within the meaning of the Articles 15 (4) and 16(4) of the Constitution and that it did not suggest a separate sub-quota for it in proportion to its national population and its level of backwardness which was legally and judicially permissible and an essential requirement to combat the communal bias to which the Muslims have been consistently subjected. Obviously, there was a political reason, considering that even creation of the Sachar Committee had lead to a furore by anti-Muslim and that the Report had been greeted with cries of appeasement and threat of Hindu backlash.
A year and a half have elapsed. There have been many conferences, symposia and seminars organized both by the drum beaters of the establishment as well as by Muslim organizations, big and small. Indeed the streets have resounded with the slogan of “Sachar Report ko Lagoo Karo”. But the Report is yet even to be discussed in the parliament which would have provided an opportunity to the Government to responds politically to the anti-muslim forces, helped it to evolve a national consensus and produced a momentum for doing something concrete and positive and immediate for the Muslim community which has been wallowing in backwardness for the last 50 years. But the government just had a preliminary discussion in the Cabinet and later placed an ‘ATR’ in the Parliament. This was not an Action Taken Report but a confession of inaction; with an inadequate and misdirected plan for the future.
Before we discuss the flaws in the conceptual approach and draw the balance sheet of the Report in our next editorial, let us have a quick look at the fate of the Report of the National Commission on the Economic and Educational Backwardness of the Minorities headed by Mr.Justice R.N.Mishra submited in May 2007. This has not even been released but simply filed away. It is learnt reliably that it has made two far-reaching recommendations, the first, 15% reservations for the minorities, of which 10% exclusively for the Muslims, plus the unutilized part of the remaining 5%; the second, deletion of the ‘Hindu’ clause from the Constitution (SC) Order 1950, which will open door for the inclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims who follow the same vocations as their Hindu counterparts in the SC List.  The Mishra Report not only supplements the Sachar Report but goes beyond it to prescribe a panacea.
Reason for Inaction
The reason why the Government has frozen the Mishra Report and even the secular parties and the Left have remained silent is obvious: no political party is intellectually or psychologically prepared to recognize the Muslim community as a Backward Class and to extend it the benefit of reservation; the secular establishment is paralysed by the fear of ‘Hindu backlash’, the political parties contesting elections in a communally polarized ambience make electoral gain- and -loss accounts and  conclude that on balance they will lose votes if they do anything positive for the Muslims. They have also lost the political courage to take head on the demon of Hindu communalism, thus the opportunity to educate the Hindu masses and win their support by exposing the hollowness of the anti-Muslim propaganda and convincing them that in the national interest, to take the country as a whole forward, like the other Backward Classes, the Muslims must also be taken on board and given their due. 
No doubt, the Government has maintained the subsidy on Haj which has now reached the figure of nearly Rs.400 crores. No doubt, the Prophet’s birthday is recognized as a public holiday. No doubt, for the first time a representative of the IUML has been included in the Council of Ministers. No doubt the UPA government is responsive on many petty questions but these are symbolic. The Muslim community is more concerned about why the 11th Plan practically finalized, has killed the idea of Muslim Sub-Plan, why the government is mortally afraid of implementing reservation for Muslims on the Kerala and Karnataka model promised in the Congress Manifesto, why those displaced in communal violence cannot go back to their homes, why the Shrikrishna Report which indicted political leaders and police officers for the Mumbai Killing of 1992-93 remains unimplemented; why the term of Liberhan Commission has been extended time and again, perhaps to enable it to rewrite its report, why the National Integration Council remains a lifeless body, why  there is no discussion in the Parliament on Muslim situation, why the Sachar Report has been reduced to a dead letter, a  toy for the Muslims to play with, and why the Mishra Report has been locked up.
The UPA has still one and a half year to go. The euphoria has already evaporated. Let the hopes not turn to ashes!
New Delhi
1 December, 2007

Muslims under UPA Raj- A Critical Review-II
Part I of this editorial published in December, 2007 concluded with the statement that ‘Muslim euphoria on the formation of the UPA government had already evaporated; the UPA government should wake up and ensure that Muslim hopes do not turn to ashes in the remaining one and a half years’. The assembly election and its aftermath in Gujarat have shown that the Congress which is the core of the UPA has unfortunately not learnt any lesson and did not change its strategy and tactics or approach towards resolving Muslim problems, redressing their grievances and fulfilling their legitimate aspirations, on one excuse or the other.
As already explained, the much- trumpeted Sachar Report has proved to be the proverbial rat emerging for the digging of a mountain. Indeed, apart from the provision of scholarships for the minorities, proposed upgradation of some backward districts of Muslim concentration and planned establishment of some educational institutions in the deprived areas (which, without any reservation, can contribute little to Muslim uplift) nothing substantial is likely to reach the Community.
11th Five Year Plan
The 11th Five Year Plan simply brushed aside the idea of a Muslim Sub-Plan. It also failed to give any direction for equitable distribution of the benefits of all non-universal social development and welfare schemes targeting individuals at the ground level to eligible Muslims, as to other deprived groups, in proportion to their population in the distribution area.
The Prime Minister has constantly reiterated his plea for the uplift of the weaker sections and graciously included the minorities. The BJP galvanized by its victory in Gujarat and having revived its old Hindutva line has condemned the idea of allocation of 15% of the plan outlay for minorities, even under a few specified schemes, as ‘communal budgeting’ and put the government on the defensive. Perhaps the BJP wants to deny the Muslims any development benefit.  The fact is that neither had the Prime Minister set a goal of 15% allocation across the board for Muslims in the overall annual outlay nor has the 11th Plan anywhere mentions it. But the BJP has once again adopted the Goebbelsian technique of inventing a lie and go on repeating it till it sounds like truth. And the authorities remain silent. As, on the major question of constitutionality of reservation for Muslim, not on the basis or religions but as a Backward Class on ‘the Karnataka and Kerala’ model, or as recommended by Justaice Ranganath Mishra Commission, with a separate sub-quota in accordance with judicially approved principle of categorization.
Political Under-representation:
The main reason for persistence of status quo is failure of the UPA to link Muslim backwardness to their political powerlessness. No steps have been taken to raise their level of representation within the coalition parties or within the decision-making bodies, for less in the legislatures.
The second reason is the conspicuous absence of Muslims in the administration, even at the bottom of the ladder, when unemployed Muslim graduates are not in short supply. The placement of a few hand-picked individuals, close to the establishment, in the charmed circle does not change this abysmal reality.
Thirdly, Muslim cries of anguish do not penetrate the corridors of power. They have never engaged in violent agitation but their peaceful and non-violent mobilization, through letters, memoranda, meetings and rallies never wakes up the keepers.
Fourthly,  the political establishment, the government and the administration continue to be monopolized by high castes and the elite. With their growing anti-Muslim bias, Muslim problems do not receive the attention they deserve and even government policies and programmes for their uplift are subverted.
Fifthly, Government remains so allergic to reservation that it has placed the Mishra Report in the freezer and forgotten it. Even the latest address by the President to the Parliament (25 Feb.) omits to mention it.
Religious Grievances:
Muslims in any case, survive but they are pained that the calumnies heaped upon their religion and the Holy Prophet through deliberate vilification and demonisation are all ignored by the state. The same government which raises the question of Sikh turban with France, of Hindu temples with Malaysia, extends residence visa to a second rate foreign writer who has found a flourishing market in India for her filth in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ because she bears a Muslim name. It is a pity that a secular government is so insensitive to the religious dignity of 150 million citizens while catering to the tantrums of a foreigner!
Their religious grievances have been growing under UPA notwithstanding constant lip service to secularism and misconceived and token gestures like the Haj subsidy. Government ignores their legitimate demands relating to Masjids & Madrasas & Qabristans, illegal occupation of wakf properties, detention, torture and custodial killing of Muslim youth, branded as terrorists, forcible displacement of Muslims from their slums, Hinduisation of school culture and text books and, what is worse, projection of their institutions as cradles and shelters of terrorism. Indeed, in the public eye, Muslims have today become synonymous with terrorists.
Judicial Over-reach:
Of late, some judges have adopted a rather hostile attitude towards minorities like redefining ‘minority’ and denying that Muslims or Jains are minorities. Minorities are angry but have no option but to live with their rulings. Muslims have come to feel that the Judiciary has replaced the Executive and the political establishment as the instrument to erode Muslim identity and to promote religious assimilation. One reason is that Muslims have remained poorly represented in the higher judiciary; just a few have been appointed since 2004. The Muslims simply fail to see the logic of the Supreme Court in admitting a misconceived PIL against the centuries old system of Dar`ul Quza  to deal with marital and succession disputes through arbitration with the consent of parties and ruling on replacement of their more or less national system of registration of marriages. They do not see why it cannot be woven into the government-sponsored compulsory registration system. Amazingly the SC ruling which virtually nullified the Muslim Divorcees Act, 1986 burdened the former husband with life-time alimony, has rewritten history.
Parliament, a Silent Spectator:
The great failure of Government lies in that institutions created for the welfare of the minorities have remained inactive and dormant.  Practically all of them have failed to make any impact on the public mind or worthwhile contribution. This is because their allocations are small and their annual reports, tabled in the Parliament, simply gather dust and are never taken up for discussion. People, thus, remain unaware of the injustice and discrimination suffered by the Muslims and thus open to the anti-Muslim propaganda about ‘pampering’ and ‘appeasement’. Government has never allocated Parliamentary time even for one annual review of the minority’s situation. There is no Parliamentary Committee to goad the Government into action on Minorities, not even a separate Standing Committee or Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Minority Affairs, which has turned into a sleepy hollow.
Educational Standstill:
On the educational front, the AMU followed by the JMI, has de facto lost its minority character. On one hand a substantial number of Muslim educational institutions remain unrecognised or unaffiliated and deprived of grant-in-aid. It is doubtful whether Muslim enrollment in government ‘model schools’, colleges, technical institutions and universities will register any rise under the UPA.
Urdu : Exiled from Schools :
Fewer schools than needed to meet the deficit have been opened under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in Muslim areas. Indeed, no area-wise survey has been done, no targets have been set and there is no monitoring system. Government does not realize that the siting of higher institutions in Muslim areas is a cruel joke as they do not ipso facto impact its backwardness.
Urdu remained exiled from the school system, even from the Central Schools, under the UPA. It is treated as a foster-child for all practical purposes. Urdu speaking children have been denied primary instruction through Urdu. The Three Languages Formula which had been distorted has not been revived and Urdu has been replaced by Sanskrit in Hindi states and by state languages in others. Govt. has done precious little to preserve Urdu both as a spoken and written language and as a great cultural heritage for the coming generations.
Public Employment :
Government having discarded the promised Kerala/Karnataka pattern, Muslims stands exactly where they were in 2004. They continue be barred from all avenues of gainful employment. The Armed Forces and the Central Para Military Forces have kept their door shut. Government shamelessly defended the refusal of the Army even to admit the low level of recruitment of Muslims which stands at 2-3 %. What is worse, Muslims continue to be distrusted and cannot enter the CBI, the IB and the RAW. State police and intelligence remain out of bounds for Muslims.
Government has failed to recognize its consequences; the deep-seated hostility of police, even in normal times, the immediate attribution of all acts of terrorism to Muslims, exclusive surveillance and search of their Mohallas and detention and torture of their youth, despite Prime Minister’s personal assurance to the contrary. Police force is neither composite nor is compositely deployed. So, it has become communalized, with honourable exceptions.  The result is that all Central and state agencies generally ignore other leads that may point away from the Muslims, and towards the Hindu extremists, while SIMI continued to be banned, without a single-case against it. 
Major Issues- Little Progress:
Important issues like settlement of the Babri Masjid dispute, prosecution and punishment for the national crime of Demolition, legislation to control and contain communal violence, implementation of Srikrishna Report, release of POTA detainees, prosecution of criminal cases related to the Gujarat Genocide, 2002 and the Hashimpura Massacre, 1987 have registered no progress. National Commission for Minorities is yet to be given Constitutional Status. In Kashmir, the heart and mind of the people, have not been touched though peace has partially returned and militancy is down. But the army stays where it was with the special powers, it enjoys, and resultant tension continues. 
External Relations-Bonding with USA & Israel:
An over-view of the course of external relations over the last 4 years cannot but bring into focus the palpable deviation from, even renunciation of the policy of non-alignment. Strategic partnership with the USA is growing. So, is technological, economic and defence cooperation with Israel, with the natural attenuation of our traditional support for the people of Palestine. India has accepted US/NATO military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, down- graded relations with the Muslim and the Arab worlds. No doubt, a minority in any democracy cannot dictate foreign policy but our country has boarded the US band-wagon at a time when the Muslims all over the world hate it.
What has gone Wrong?
Today Muslims feel helpless; they cannot even protect their identity and dignity. They have no place in the corridors of power because without reservation they have no share power in governance. They live in a state of siege and face the mounting pressure of assimilation . Government does not show sympathetic understanding or take positive action. It appears to stand paralysed, gripped by its misperception of the mind of the common Hindu.
UPA government has no doubt become apathetic and indifferent. But has it become hostile and turned communal, as some people feel? No, but it has become ideologically bankrupt and politically spineless. It lacks the guts to defend the secular order, the courage to challenge the Sangh Parivar. But why? Because it does not trust the people of India, because it misperceives the Hindu as anti-Muslim.  The Hindu is not intolerant and unfair or unjust; he will support the government if the latter takes on the communal forces head on. Government has given liberty to Hindu chauvinists to misguide and incite the masses; at the same time,  it itself fails to counter the lies, falsehoods, untruth and half truths. Burdened with its own presumptions it is unable to take resolute steps to curb criminal incitement and resort to violence.
Government is lost in computing possible electoral impact, counts possible loss and gain of votes before uttering a word, before raising a finger. Caution blurs its vision and kills initiative. Inaction vitiates social environment and encourages the adversary to make inroads in the public mind.
Also, government and leadership have lost touch with Muslim masses. And the darbar is flush with ideas on why and how to ignore Muslims, put them in their place, in order to regain Hindu support which it sees as shifting to the BJP.  So it adopted pale saffron strategy in Gujarat, which twice proved its hollowness; the gainer has been the hard saffron. People always flock towards A team and not B team.
Can Government Turn a New Leaf ?
Government has lost precious time and in its remaining period it can do  little in the face of political opposition, electoral constraints, bureaucratic resistance and its mortal fear of Hindu backlash.
Government must shed its pale saffron strategy, adopt zero tolerance towards communalism and introduce distributive justice and become sensitive to the urges and aspirations of all deprived and marginalized groups including the Muslims.
Perhaps, the UPA shall take the support of the minorities for granted with the BJP as the main adversary. But the Muslims are beginning to ask how long shall they continue to be bluffed and taken for a ride every five years.
Today there is no hope left in the Muslims that at the end of the 5 years of UPA rule they would register any upward movement, visible and quantifiable, by any economic, social or educational index. Indeed, as a social group 84.5% of the community shall continue to figure, as indicated in the Nitish Sen Gupta Report, among the extremely poor, poor, marginally poor and the vulnerable.
 The common Muslim suffers deprivation like other common people. But he doubly suffers because he a Muslim. For him, Democracy has been transformed into Majoritarianism. Secularism has become a farce; Social justice, a distant dream. Discrimination and humiliation have become his lot.  Parliament has become a spectator, permanent executive is hostile; political parties are apathetic and wear multiple masks to suit the occasion.
The common Muslim is showing reluctance to play the old game .  Since his faith in the UPA lies shattered, there is growing alienation from the political system. Willit drive him towards electoral boycott? Will he take to the streets?