Author: Easwaran Nambudiri
Publication: Organiser
Date: November 12, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=156&page=2
Introduction: The Sachar Committee's findings
are a clear intervention in the criminal jurisprudence system. Those batting
for retaining the personal law for Muslims and are opposing tooth and nail
a uniform civil code must answer why Muslims should not be governed by the
Islamic criminal jurisprudence as well.
Muslims across India are severely under-represented
in government employment, including PSUs, compared to the percentage of their
population in a state.
Be it education, health, transport, or home,
in virtually all departments of state governments, the share of Muslims employed
is way below their share in the population.
If Muslims are worse off than Scheduled Castes
when it comes to education, they significantly trail behind Other Backward
Classes virtually across the board: education, employment, poverty levels
and land holdings.
In sharp contrast to education and employment,
where their share is way, way below their share of the population, Muslims
have a disproportionately high representation when it comes to being in prison.
Some secessionist document this. Or is it
the manifesto of pre-partition Muslim League or propaganda material of Pakistan
Television? Nay, these are said to be the 'findings' of the Prime Minister's
high-level committee headed by Justice (Retd) Rajinder Sachar, which is working
on a national survey of the social, educational and economic status of the
Muslims in India. The Committee was scheduled to submit its report by October
end but has sought an extension till mid-November. But strangely, its contents
have been selectively leaked out to the media through reporters close to the
cause in an apparent attempt to test the waters before making the report public.
Having burnt its fingers with its outrageous
suggestion for a numerical survey of Muslims in the armed forces, which was
outrightly rejected by the three service Chiefs and forced even the Prime
Minister's Office to distance itself from the move following a national uproar,
the Committee knows too well that its so-called findings are bound to boomerang
given its seditious and anti-national contents, which seeks to project the
Muslims as second-class citizens and provoke them to demand further concessions
including communal reservations and subsequently communal electorate.
"In fact, in many states, Muslims even
make up a higher percentage of the population in jail than they do outside".
This data, a key finding of the Prime Minister-appointed
Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee, has major social and political implications.
Such a high figure of incarceration, experts say, means further marginalisation
of the community, deepening prejudice and distrust.
After the hue and cry over the death sentence
handed out to Mohd Afzal, the key accused in the Parliament attack case, this
write-up seeks to suggest that even arresting Muslims in criminal cases would
amount to their alienation and therefore, they should be above law.
If capital punishment for Santosh Kumar Singh
in the Priyadarshini Mattoo murder case is justice, then how can the death
sentence for Afzal, charged with masterminding the dastardly Parliament attack,
be dubbed injustice? Why those seeking to defend Afzal under the garb of human
dignity and opposing capital punishment per se, are silent on Santosh Kumar
Singh? We hold absolutely no brief for Singh and he has got what he deserved,
but pray, why this double standard? Is it because Singh does not represent
any vote-bank? The nation seeks answers.
The Sachar Committee's findings are a clear
intervention in the criminal jurisprudence system. Those batting for retaining
the personal law for Muslims and are opposing tooth and nail a uniform civil
code must answer why Muslims should not be governed by the Islamic criminal
jurisprudence as well wherein most of the aforesaid prisoners would have either
been stoned to death, their hands chopped off and their eyes gouged out.
Now, protection of the religious identity
should not be confined to personal laws alone but penal procedures as well.
If you have the right and privilege to divorce by pronouncing talaq thrice,
you should also have the courage to face death by stoning for committing adultery.
You cannot have the cake and eat it too.
It is indeed sad that an exercise claimed
to be aimed at finding the reasons for the 'plight' of Muslims has ended up
blowing the symptoms out of proportion while ignoring and blacking out the
root causes. While the Committee should certainly suggest remedial measures,
it should have been bold enough to point out to the Muslims their shortcomings
which have hindered their joining the mainstream.
For example, how can you expect a community
to excel in the health sector when its members are refusing to administer
the much-needed polio drops to their children fearing that it could lead to
impotency and infertility?
While other deprived and backward sections
are taking advantage of schemes such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to improve their
educational capabilities, the majority of Muslims continue to send their wards
to obscurantist madrasas where modern education is the first casualty. And
logically enough, there cannot be adequate representation without proportional
educational qualification.
Though the objectives of the panel were skewed
and short-sighted, it could have used the opportunity to analyse the reasons
for the backwardness of the community and suggested remedies both to the government
and to the community leadership.
Unfortunately, the objectives of the ruling
Congress party, which sought to implement job reservation for Muslims in Andhra
Pradesh and Assam, are very clear. They want to divide and rule in their blind
pursuit of power.
A memorandum, submitted to the Sachar Committee
by the Kerala-based Forum for Faith and Fraternity, has demanded among other
things creation of a Ministry of Muslim Affairs at the Centre, reservation
for Muslims in public sector through legislation, mandatory appointment of
Muslims in the Board of all public sector banks, financial institutions, selection/recruitment/departmental
promotional committees, free emigration to Muslim countries and an end to
campus recruitment by both public and private sector institutions.
It would not be surprising if the Committee
recommends these suggestions. The agenda is crystal clear. The objectives
are alienation and separation, not amalgamation and mainstreaming. The experimental
balloon is out. The nation should rise as one man to vehemently oppose fresh
partition moves in the 60th anniversary of its independence.
