SACHAR COMMITTEE REPORT DOCUMENTS DEPRIVATION OF INDIAN MUSLIMS
Radical thinking by Jo Johnson (Financial Times)
- "Commissioned by the prime minister and produced by a committee chaired by Rajinder Sachar, a former justice of the Delhi High Court, the report presents a sharp counterpoint to perceptions of India as a stable, inclusive and multicultural society. Of all the groups yet to benefit from India’s spectacular recent growth - set to hit 9.2 per cent this year - none, apart from so-called dalits (once known as 'untouchables') and tribals, have fared as poorly as Muslims."
- "The Sachar committee found that India’s Muslims, constantly battling perceptions that they are 'anti-national', 'unpatriotic' and 'belong in Pakistan', are reluctantly withdrawing or being pushed into ghettos. Markers of their identity, such as the burkah, the purdah, the beard and the topi, a Muslim cap, invite ridicule and harassment. Bearded men find that they are routinely picked up for interrogation, hijab-wearing women that they struggle to find jobs."
- "Sachar notes that many Muslims are unable to buy or rent property in the area of their choice and find their children rejected from good schools. This has contributed to the sharp growth in the number of madrassas. The phenomenon should not be exaggerated: just 4 per cent of Muslim school-age children now attend full-time madrassas, according to Sachar. But in some states, including the populous northern state of UP, where more than 7 per cent of Muslim schoolchildren are being educated in religious seminaries, madrassas are spreading rapidly."
- "Poorly educated Muslims generally end up working as self-employed, economically vulnerable casual labourers. Relatively few pick up coveted salaried jobs, which tend to be monopolised by high-caste Hindus. And those Muslims who do receive regular salaries tend to occupy the lowest rungs within organisations, with more than 70 per cent having no written contract or social security benefits. Poor work conditions are also reflected in lower earnings. The proportion of Muslims living below the poverty line, at 31 per cent, is higher than the 22.7 per cent for the country as a whole."
- "Sachar found that Muslims had an 'abysmally low' share of prized government jobs, accounting for just 3 per cent of posts in the Indian Administrative Service, the elite corps of the civil bureaucracy, 1.8 per cent of the Indian Foreign Service and 4 per cent of the police. They had such a low profile in the military that the Ministry of Defence denied Sachar the data. The community is only consistently over-represented in the prison population. In Maharashtra, for example, Muslims account for more than 40 per cent of those jailed for less than a year."
- "Of the 700,000 towns and villages in India, the vast majority are free from communal conflict from one year to the next. But the potential for such violence is a terrifying underlying reality. Communal violence left 40,000 dead and injured between 1950 and 1995, according to research by academics Steven Wilkinson and Ashutosh Varshney. The costs of riots have been overwhelmingly borne by Muslims, forced to leave their homes, businesses and land for sanctuary in safe Muslim areas."
- "'Fearing for their security, Muslims are increasingly resorting to living in ghettos,' the Sachar report notes. But access to water, toilets, electricity, schools, clinics, banks and ration shops is often limited or non-existent in Muslim areas. The absence of these services affects women in particular because they are reluctant to venture beyond the confines of 'safe' neighbourhoods to access these facilities from elsewhere, with knock-on effects on literacy and child health."
- "'The root problem is economic,' says M.J. Akbar [editor of the newspaper The Asian Age]. 'If you look at Indian Muslims, their traditional businesses, such as crafts and weaving, have been wiped off the economic map, and there has been no effort to create jobs in the space stolen from them. And now the malls that are coming up across the country are about to eliminate their traditional role as suppliers of meat, wiping out another large source of employment. The impact of all of this will be 10 years of serious violence.'"
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