The UPA government’s announcement of a sub-quota for the
minorities within the existing quota of reservations for Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) has understandably created a ruckus in political circles.
It is bad enough to have quotas. The entire system has been turned into
a nightmare. With about 3,000 recognised castes in existence, what has
happened – but has mostly been ignored – is that a handful of the more
vocal among the OBCs have hogged all reservation benefits. It is
injustice at its worst form.
Giving reservations to OBCs – sixty odd years after independence –
reflects poorly on the Indian social structure. What is worse is
allotting a sub-quota of 4 per cent within the reservations for OBCs to
Muslim OBCs. The very concept of Muslim – or Christian, for that matter –
OBCs, makes a mockery of both Islam and Christianity. Once an OBC gets
converted to other religion, it is expected that he sheds his OBC past
and becomes one with his new co-religionists. But the reality is
different. It is rare, for example, for an ‘upper caste’ Christian to
marry into a lower caste family. Conversion does not erase the lower
caste tag. This is for the ‘minority’ communities themselves to handle
and not for any government to interfere in any way, or to appear
patronising. Whatever our other faults we in India attempt to appease
our ‘minorities’ but get no credit for it. One way is to assign quotas
for them in various fields. Does that happen in Pakistan?
In India, Hindus don’t try to kidnap Muslim girls and convert them. In
Pakistan that seems almost standard practice. In India the Muslim
population is growing both percentage-wise and in numbers. In Pakistan
the Hindu population has been reduced to a negligible single digit
around 3 per cent. There are both Hindus and Muslims in Great Britain,
both of whom, one presumes are treated equally by the government. How
come, then, that Hindus have done well there while “Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis live in serious poverty”.
As a website which discussed this issue noted “the explanation of
Muslim backwardness is to be found in the very makeup of the Muslim
mind”. Muslims should not blame Hindus for that in India. That would be
ducking the issue. The average Muslim, especially the OBC among the
community, would do well to indulge in some self-introspection. It may
do him a lot of good. The issue was raised by the Second Backward Class
Commission Report in 1980 – otherwise known as the Mandal Commission
that identified certain groups among Muslims and Christians as
‘backward’ and recommended special dispensation in the form of
reservation of seats for them in education and public jobs.
In a well-research paper published by Economic & Political Weekly
(January 7) the point has been made that the Muslims in Maharashtra, for
example “are internally heteroganous and differentiated” and because a
good proportion belong to “local Marathi-speaking groups” they identify
with the local backward caste communities. Who is to be blamed for that?
Hindus? Aren’t all Muslims equal? Or are some Muslims more equal than
others? This has been subject of much discussion and actually there has
been a movement to rectify the situation but without the support of
mullahs who have charged the social workers with “conspiracy against
Islam”. Apparently the Muslim religious leaders do not want to divide
the Islamic community into ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-nots’. The OBC Muslim
movement received and impetus way back in 1989 with the formation of
Akhil Bharatiya Muslim Marathi Sahitya Parishad under the leadership of
Hasan Kamal and Shabbir Ahmed Ansari who found their efforts at the
ground level “vehemently opposed by the established political and
religious leadership of the community everywhere!” We learn, however,
that Maharashtra is not the only state to witness the OBC Muslim
movement.
According to the Economic & Political Weekly “It has gained
momentum in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu”. No wonder that the Congress wants to
cash in on this development. Actually, according to the EPW paper,
“successive governments in Maharashtra have been open to, and
accommodative of, OBC Muslim demands. Two points made by the EPW in this
connection are worth attention. One is that the “emergence of an
assertive OBC movement outside the framework of recognised religious
organisations and institutions has not weakened the religious identity
of its members”. The other is that “political parties have tried to win
over some of the leaders of the Muslim OBC movement by giving them
tickets to contest elections and have tried to consolidate their votes”.
That is what the Congress is doing now. For both it is a win-win
situation.
The Congress wins the Muslim vote. The OBC Muslims get jobs and other
facilities and never mind if this perpetuates casteism even within the
Muslim fold. In this case it is the role of caste that gets the upper
hand and never mind what Islam says. Under present circumstances the
more addictive one is to the caste system, the more richly one gets
rewarded. So why fight for the abolition of caste as a disuniting
factor? The OBC can thumb his nose at the upper castes. Instead of
working for a casteless society, we are working for a casteist society
in the name of fair play with the so-called upper castes forced to pay
heavily for it and meritocracy being treated as an out-dated concept.
In his well-researched work India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the
Low Castes in North Indian Politics, Christophe Jaffrelot makes a
significant observation. He states: “Three years after Laloo Prasad
Yadav took over, seventy upper caste officials (in Bihar) sought and
obtained their transfer to the Centre, allegedly because of the
humiliation and ill-treatment they suffered… In addition to these
‘voluntary moves’ the state government has transferred 12 out of 13
Divisional Commissioners and 250 of the 324 returning officers in order
to have lower caste people at the helm at local level. Many OBC
bureaucrats were transferred from the sidelines to the main department…
In 1993 an IAS from the Scheduled Castes replaced a Brahmin as Chief
Secretary and an OBC took over charge of Director General of Police from
another Brahmin… In 1996 the University Service Commission of Bihar
recruited 1,427 lecturers for the universities and its constituent
colleges in the state. Protests were immediately lodged because most
candidates were OBCs and, more precisely, Yadavs”. That is what casteism
is doing for the country. Need one say anything more? Those who support
casteism and the quota system are enemies of the country and one cannot
stress it enough. And to think that the Congress is for secularism?
That is the cruellest of cruel jokes.
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