Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: January 31, 2010
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1057
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance has, in successive incarnations,
been determined to give Muslims and Christians extraordinary precedence and
weightage, with a clear long-term objective of driving Hindus out of public
spaces.
The writer has always maintained that Secularism
was imposed upon an unsuspecting nation solely to ensure the negation and
erosion of the Hindu ethos in the nascent Republic. In contrast, minorities
were empowered to maintain their separate identities and pursue their separate
agendas. Initially they enjoyed political weightage as a votebank of the dominant
Congress party, but as they began to experiment with other 'non-communal'
parties to increase their communal powers, the UPA has sought to buy their
loyalty by offering economic precedence as well. Hence Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh's fatuous declamation that 'Muslims have the first claim' on national
resources!
The UPA's accidental ascent in 2004 proved
to be a boom-time for minorities, even though the Italian-born Roman Catholic
Sonia Gandhi failed to become Prime Minister. She became UPA chairperson mentor,
leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, and enjoyed cabinet rank as head
of the National Advisory Committee (till the office of profit controversy
forced her to resign).
Sonia Gandhi moved to implement her minority
agenda with alacrity. Pope John Paul II had previously called for planting
the cross in Asia; in America, President George Bush, Jr., had launched the
Joshua Project 2000 for conversion of the unreached masses world-wide. It
is within this paradigm that we must view UPA's setting up the Rajinder Sachar
Committee and later the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities,
headed by Ranganath Misra, retired judge, Supreme Court.
Given India's current demography, it made
sense to promote the 13% Muslims at the expense of the Hindu majority. But
as we have seen in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Srinagar, evangelists
target Muslim communities as determinedly as they target Hindus and other
non-monotheists. Christians (already believed to be 7-8% of the population)
are confident of using minority provisions to further their interests, and
eventually overtake Muslims in making conversions to the 'true' faith.
The Sachar Committee, set up to evaluate the
social, economic and educational status of Muslims, in its report in 2006,
called for path-breaking efforts to include Muslims in the national mainstream
and address supposed inequities experienced by them. It recommended creation
of an Equal Opportunity Commission, modelled on the UK Race Relations Act,
1976, to look into the grievances of religious minorities. This fallacious
but vicious attempt to equate Race with Religion is now on the anvil, and
can only add to inter-community strains.
Racism is a child of colonialism. When white
Christians went to other lands and enslaved people (Africa) or colonized them,
the discriminatory relationship between the Master Race and the colonized
was called Racism. Based mainly on colour consciousness, it held that the
enslaved / colonized were inferior human species, worthy of subjugation. Racism
is a pervasive western reality (currently experienced by Indians in Australia)
and cannot be equated with strains among peoples of different faiths. Moreover,
how can faiths that conquered and ruled India - Islam and Christianity - suffer
poverty, ill-education, or other forms of discrimination!
The Equal Opportunity Commission will make
normal life impossible. A Muslim unable to buy a house at a favourable price
can level allegations of discrimination against the seller; a bad employee
cannot be dismissed if hailing from a minority group. The fight against terrorism
will become virtually impossible, as every police officer can expect to be
arraigned before this Commission.
True, Sachar does not recommend reservation
in education and jobs for Muslims, as that would be ultra vires of the constitution
and liable to be dismissed in court. But it coyly seeks "multifarious
measures, including reservation" for Muslims with similar traditional
occupations as Scheduled Castes, and wants such groups designated as Most
Backward Classes, with reservations disguised as 'affirmative action' (an
American catch-phrase) so they cannot be constitutionally challenged.
The report reflects preconceived notions:
the Muslim community shows "deficits and deprivation" in almost
all aspects of development; Muslims rank above SCs/STs but below Hindu OBCs,
Other Minorities and Hindu upper castes; and Muslims are most backward in
States with large Muslim populations, such as West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh
and Assam.
Sachar suggests specific initiatives to address
educational, career and political deprivation among Muslims: free and compulsory
education; institutionalising the process of evaluating school textbooks to
better reflect community-specific sensitivities; setting up quality government
schools, especially for girls, in areas of Muslim concentration; and providing
primary education in Urdu where the language is widely used.
The Ranganath Misra Commission, which submitted
its report in 2007, recommended 15% reservation in education and government
employment for minorities; 8.4% out of the existing OBC quota of 27% for minorities;
and inclusion of Muslim and Christian Dalits in the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled
Tribe list for reservation benefits.
In the 2005 winter session of Parliament,
UPA pushed a bill extending SC, ST and OBC reservations to all educational
institutions, including private schools, excluding minority institutions though
education and conversion are both lucrative industries! UPA reacted sharply
when a division bench of the Allahabad High Court concurred that Aligarh Muslim
University is not a minority institution as it was created by an Act of Parliament,
and hence cannot reserve 50 percent seats for Muslim students. Congress also
tried to subvert the Andhra High Court decision striking down five percent
reservations for Muslims in state employment.
UPA-I pushed for caste-based reservations
in the private sector, till Wipro chairman Azim Premji expressed corporate
India's dislike of the measure. The Right to Education has made reservation
in education irrelevant. The Centre annually collects Rs. 6000/- crores as
education cess; setting up the required number of schools will achieve cent
per cent literacy in one decade.
Reservations to converts are a ruse to finance
conversions through the public exchequer. Soon evangelists will demand access
to SC/ST seats in Parliament and State Assemblies - political reservations
by the backdoor!
The critical issue is Caste. The British realised
caste was the iron curtain which frustrated attempts to convert the population,
and hence attacked Caste. But evangelists realised that the best way to increase
their numbers was by gaining access to caste-based reservation benefits. After
Mandal Commission listed some 'Muslim castes' among OBCs, Christians began
to press for SC/ST benefits for 'Dalit Christians.'
But can those who have renounced their Hindu
identity, and ended the so-called social stigma associated with Hinduism,
justly receive the benefits of a caste identity equated with being Hindu?
Christianity and Islam cannot be allowed to use caste to undermine Hindu society
from within. Nor can they mistreat converts and garner reservation benefits
in their name!
Clearly, larger issues are at stake than can
be dealt with in the course of an article. Hindu society must view any move
to extend special political, economic or educational privileges to minorities
as an assault upon India's native religion and culture, its demographic balance,
and its civilisational ethos. The Sachar Committee and Ranganath Misra Commission
are State-sponsored assaults upon the unity and continuity of Hindu dharma
in India, and must be seen as religious persecution on the part of the Sonia
Gandhi-led UPA.
- The author is Editor, www.vijayvaani.com
