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Solid
facts presented by the NSSO report prove that the much published concept
of 'appeasement' to
minorities is misplaced as it does not show up in any factor like
literacy, land access, employment and consumption expenditure, where the
Muslims could be seen to be in an advantageous position compared to the
Hindus.
The idea of
"appeasement" is strongly embedded in public debates about the privileges
that India's religious minorities are supposed to be enjoying. It has
become such a powerful political idea that it has percolated into popular
discourse as well. To a lesser extent, this notion is used also in
discussions on caste — appeasement is an accusatory description of the
constitutional system of reservation for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes and the Other Backward Castes. The political jousting about
appeasement on a caste basis is still a delicate issue. But as Indian
society has become increasingly divided on communal lines, such delicacy
does not visit discussions about the so-called privileges enjoyed by
India's Muslim citizens.
But does the idea of appeasement have any basis in fact? Like all powerful
but divisive ideas this too belongs to the realm of imagination. Ever
since the Rajiv Gandhi Government cynically modified Muslim personal law
after the Shah Bano judgment in the mid-1980s (which was equally cynically
balanced by the opening of the locks on the Babri Masjid), the accusations
of `reverse' discrimination have been legion. Article 370 on Jammu and
Kashmir, the absence of a common civil code and the special rights of
minority educational institutions are some of the examples dredged up to
fan the communal debate. No mention here, of course, of the privileges
enjoyed by the majority community, the best example being the tax
advantages conferred on Hindu Undivided Families.
One way to subject this notion of appeasement to critical examination is
to list the special rights enjoyed by each religious group and assess the
rationale of, or its absence for, each privilege. Another is to ask if the
members of the religious minorities — especially Muslims — now enjoy a
superior social and economic position, as they must be if the state has
been "appeasing" them while discriminating against members of the
religious majority. It only takes a naked eye to observe that Muslims on
the average are not by any standard at an economically higher level than
the Hindus. No reference to the retail outlets and restaurants that are
owned by the Muslims or the remittances that they receive from relatives
working in West Asia or even to refurbished mosques can distort the
picture of a community that as a whole is disadvantageously placed in
comparison to Indians who belong to all other religions. Of course,
prejudices cannot countenance honest observation.
The lies about appeasement could be dispelled if there was information
about the economic conditions of the members of each religious group, in
each State, by gender and by place of residence (rural and urban).
Unfortunately, until recently such socio-economic data was not generated
by Government agencies. This is consistent with the refusal to collect
information on a caste basis. The basic and false premise is that you can
wish away differences by just refusing to measure them. Differences
according to religion and caste simply do not exist then. Just as
unforgivable is the unwillingness of the Indian academic community to
explore these issues in detail, especially at a time when `created' facts
about the majority and minority religious communities are commonly used in
political discourse. The only exceptions are attempts to study the
demographic behaviour of religious groups (itself a subject of immense
falsification and the root of outlandish fears in the public imagination).
Social science researchers have been irresponsible by refusing to study
where the members of India's many religious groups stand in a variety of
social and economic indicators. There has been some change recently. In
1999, a team of researchers at the National Council of Applied Economic
Research, led by Abusaleh Shariff, published the results of a nationwide
survey of 33,000 households. This study (India: Human Development Report)
collated information according to socio-economic status, caste — and
religion. But what is more remarkable is that the National Sample Survey
Organisation, an autonomous Government agency, has compiled and published
the socio-economic data according to religion that it collected during the
course of its national surveys of consumption expenditure during the 50th
and 55th rounds in 1993-94 and 1999-2000. (This was done on a smaller
scale even earlier for 1987-88.) It is a measure of how seriously the NSSO
takes its autonomy that even in the communally charged decade of the 1990s
it went ahead and published its estimates of literacy, employment and
consumption expenditure for both rounds.
The socio-economic profile that the NSSO estimates paint of the Muslim
Indian is a depressing one. In all major socio-economic indicators, the
members of India's biggest religious minority are, on the average, worse
off than members of the majority community. First, they spend less on
items of daily consumption because they apparently earn less. The
incidence of poverty is therefore likely to be higher among Muslims than
Hindus. Second, literacy rates are substantially higher among the Hindus.
And a Hindu boy or girl who goes to school is more likely to go on to
college than a Muslim. Third, working Muslims are to be found more in
casual labour and seasonal occupations than Hindus. Fourth, among those
with access to land a Hindu household is more likely to be cultivating
larger plots. Fifth, unemployment rates are higher among Muslims than
Hindus. This overall profile is true of both men and women, in rural and
urban India and in all States. Moreover, the disparity between the
majority and minority religious groups in most cases widened during the
1990s. The only positive feature is that the sex ratio among Muslims is
better than among the Hindus.
The story then is that in a poor society, the members of this minority
religion are more likely to be at the bottom of the heap. Their economic
conditions are as remote as possible from living off the fruits of state
"appeasement". The NSS does not provide information on shelter, health,
nutrition and other socio-economic indicators. If such information was
available the larger picture would be in more black and white terms.
Official data tell us that during a decade which saw a growing
geographical ghettoisation of the Muslim community, it was also living in
economic ghettos. (There is also the caste factor that one must recognise.
According to Satish Deshpande of the Institute of Economic Growth, the
same NSSO estimates suggest that 90 per cent of India's poor are members
of the scheduled castes and tribes, the Hindu OBCs and Muslims.) With such
comprehensive information as we now have about the profile of members of
the main religious groups (the NSSO also provides data on Christians), it
is no longer possible to spread canards about appeasement of Muslims and
reverse discrimination of Hindus. Moreover, with the kind of detailed
information that is now available, official policy can — if the Government
wants to — easily identify the groups most in need of state intervention
and support.
It is a measure of how poorly the Indian academic community has done its
job that while the NSS reports were published in 1998 (for 1993-94) and in
2001 (for 1999-2000), no researcher to the best of knowledge of this
writer has even done a cursory analysis of this rich source of
information. (The situation is only slightly different in analysis of
caste data compiled by the NSSO. These were analysed by Dr. Deshpande in
The Hindu on December 6 and 7, 2001.) The generation of more
information on socio-economic information according to religion, caste and
economic status and a detailed analyses by researchers may just clear the
common misconceptions that are excellent fodder for social and political
forces that thrive on creating divisions
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