The Bogey Of Muslim Reservation

One of the important ways inwhich democracy is measured has to do with ways in which democratic societiestreat their minorities. The democratic index of any society therefore, shouldnot only encapsulate legal protection of minority rights but should also enablethose conditions that facilitate the participation of minorities in public life.The Sachar Committee Reportis one such document, which highlights that theIndian state has not kept its promise to its largest minority, theMuslims.

This is certainly not the onlyor the first instance when the Indian state has been reminded of dereliction ofits duty towards Muslims. The Gopal Singh Committee Report, 1983, and thefindings of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) from 1990s onwardshave been grim reminders of the educational and economic conditions of IndianMuslims. Only time will tell if the Sachar Report will meet the same shelvedfate as the Gopal Singh Report did.

However, given the enormousinterest that this report generated in both the media and the publicat large, one hopes that some policy decisions will be made onthe basis of the report once the new government is sworn in. We saw some action through the PM’sfifteen-pointprogram for minorities, the establishment of Ministry of Minority Affairsand talk of separate budgetary allocations for Muslims. Without soundingcynical, one hopes that such newfound sensitivity of the government outlasts theelection results.

However, it is disconcertingto note that much of the debate since the publication of the Report has made the casethat ‘Muslims as a whole’ are a marginalized community. In other words, thedebate about the ‘Muslim condition in India’ has neglected the state ofinternal differences among the Indian Muslims. As a result, the debate on SacharCommittee has been silent about internal inequality among Muslims andconsequently about the unequal access of various Muslim castes and classes tothe state’s resources.

This debate has beenadequately matched by a demand for Muslim reservation by a section of Muslimleadership. They argue that the data provided by the Sachar Report qualifies theentire Muslim community to be categorized as a backward class. It follows fromthis argument that, as has been the practice for ameliorating the socio-economicconditions of backward classes, a certain percentage be earmarked for Muslims inthe state’s resources. Largely coming from upper caste Muslims, this demand ishardly new. Similar demands have been heard before even in the 1990s. Thepublication of the Sachar Committee Report has seen renewed articulation ofthese demands.

What is, however, differentnow is that the considerable media interest that the Report generated hascreated favourable conditions for widespread, and often sympathetic, disseminationof such a Muslim demand for a separate quota. Also the demand during the 1990s didnot have any sound empirical study to back up the assertion of Muslimbackwardness. Today, those who demand Muslim reservations have something to wavein their hands. They claim that Sachar Report has only confirmed what they hadknown for long.

A closer look at the SacharReport, however, tells another story altogether. In fact the Sachar Report is one of thefew documents which has brought out the internal differences within the IndianMuslims in much detail. The data presented in the Report resists any attempt tohomogenize the Muslims as one backward mass of people. Rather, it points outthat sociologically Muslims are varied and that there are layers of marginalisationwithin the Muslim society. One of the important dimensions along which SacharReport probes the internal differences among Muslims is by looking at thequestion of caste, which has long being dismissed by elite Muslims asalien to Muslims despite increasing sociological evidence to the contrary. It isinteresting to look at the findings of Sachar Committee on caste differencesamong Muslims and what it means to their location in the economic andeducational sector.

The Report distinguishes fourcaste groups within the Indian Muslims:

• Those claiming foreign descent such as the Saiyyids, Sheikhs, Pathans and Mughals

• Those Muslims who are converts from the high caste Hindus

• The middle caste converts whose occupation are considered ritually clean and

• The converts from the erstwhile untouchable castes.

The Report then collapsesthese four divisions in two categories:

• The Ashrafs and

• The Ajlafs.

Ashrafs, which means‘noble’, includes all Muslims who claim to be of foreign descent. It alsoincludes converts from high caste Hindus. They are the upper caste Muslims inIndia.

The second category of Ajlafs,meaning degraded, comprises of ‘ritually clean’ occupational groups and lowcaste Hindu converts to Islam. They are the low Muslim castes of Ansaris,Butchers, etc and primarily make up the bulk of Muslim OBCs.

(It must be mentioned herethat the Report, following the Census of 1901, also talks of another Muslimcategory called Arjal (which means of no use), who are coverts to Islam fromex-untouchable castes but still continue to follow ‘unclean’ occupations.However, for the purpose of analysis and also because the population of ArjalMuslims is very low, the Report clubs it together with the Ajlafs.)

Chapter X of the Sachar Reportgives the position of Muslim OBCs and compares its socio-economic profile withthat of the upper caste Muslims or General Muslims. Let us look at some of thecomparative findings:

Education: The literacyrate of Muslim OBC is 62 percent, which compares unfavourably with GeneralMuslims at 66 percent and Hindu OBC at 65 percent. Thus there are more number ofilliterates within the Muslim OBC category as compared to the other two.Similarly General Muslims by far outnumber Muslim OBCs in terms of access tohigher education.

Employment and Economy: 9.2 percent Muslim OBCs are unemployed as compared 7.7 percent of GeneralMuslims and 7.5 percent Hindu OBCs, thus making it the highest category in termsof unemployment. In both rural and urban areas, unemployment rate is highest forMuslim OBC. In terms of their respective shares in formal sector, the MuslimOBCs are at a mere 3.4 percent, while General Muslim are at 6percent in ruralareas. For the urban areas the figures read 3.5 percent and 7 percentrespectively. The marginalized situation of Muslim OBCs is also reflected in thefact that a much smaller proportion of worker in this category are engaged inregular wage/salaried jobs, especially in the urban areas. Thus while only 20.4percent Muslim OBCs are employed in regular wage/salaried jobs, the figures forGeneral Muslims are 31.2 percent and it is 36.4 percent for Hindu OBCs. It isnoteworthy that Muslim OBC employees receive salaries that are significantlylower than General Muslims and Hindu OBC. The Report also points out that MuslimOBCs are poorer than General Muslims and that their monthly per capitaexpenditure is the least among all the three categories. Moreover, within theMuslims, a larger percentage of Muslim OBCs fall in the low-income category ascompared to General Muslims.

Representation: Inpublic employment, except for central security agencies, Muslim OBCs lag behindGeneral Muslims and Hindu OBCs. Thus in Railways there are 4.5 percent GeneralMuslims as compared to mere 0.4 percent Muslim OBCs. In Central Public SectorUndertakings, Muslim OBCs similarly have a meager presence of 0.6 percent whileGeneral Muslims comprise 2.7 percent of the workforce. And in universities, inboth teaching and non-teaching staff the General Muslims are far ahead than OBCMuslims. Poor representation of Muslims in public employment has been touted asone of the main reasons for demanding Muslim reservation. It is important torecognize, however, that Muslim OBCs are much more marginalized than the GeneralMuslims. Moreover, as the Report itself points out, it is not just Muslims, buteven Hindu OBCs are under-represented, although it rightly points out thatMuslim OBCs are nearly absent from the higher echelons of public services.

Theabove facts culled from the Report makes it amply clear that there are differentlevels of marginalization within the Muslim community. Muslim OBCs are much moremarginalized as compared to General Muslims as well Hindu OBCs. But the extentof Muslim OBC deprivation is perhaps not fully captured by the Sachar Report dueto its own methodological limitations. According to the Report, based on 61stround of NSS survey, Muslim OBCs account for 41 percent of the total Muslimpopulation while General Muslims are 51 percent. However, this cannot beconsidered accurate since the Report itself makes it clear the above calculationis based on self reporting data and hence is contingent upon a number offactors, more importantly on the self perception of the respondent. It is forthis reason that the percentage of OBCs has fluctuated from 32 percent in1999-2000 to the present level of 41 percent in 2004.

Thereare some genuine problems with this figure of 41 percent. For one it is nearly10 percent short of the Mandal Commission estimate. Moreover, if one looksclosely at the tables provided by the Sachar Report, it is clear that in twostates having considerable Muslim population -- Bengal and Assam -- the OBCMuslim population is only 3 percent of the states’ total Muslim population.This is simply inconceivable. Let’s take the case of Bengal as an example.Studies have shown that Muslim presence in this region has been a result ofconversions from low caste Hindus. Over a period of time, the process ofAshrafization, akin to Sanskritization among Hindus, has seen many of these lowMuslim castes taking on caste titles of upper Muslim castes. The most commongroup to which Ashrafizing low Muslim castes joined was the Sheikhs, making thissocial category very numerous and fluid. Thus in the Census of 1872, the totalMuslim population of Bengal was 17.6 million, out of which only 232,189 werereturned as Sheikhs. However, by 1901, out of a total Muslim population of over21.5 million, 19.5 million were returned as Sheikhs! Partly due to the way theupper caste Muslims have been defined in the Sachar Report, the caste of Sheikhshas been included among the category called General Muslims. This means thatnumerous low caste Muslims are treated in the Report as belonging to upper casteor General Muslim category. It is for this reason that OBC Muslims in Bengalconstitute only 3 percent of Muslim population while in reality they wouldconstitute the overwhelming majority of Muslim population in Bengal.

Andthis is not the case in Bengal alone. Sociological common sense regards thatlower caste Muslims or the Ajlafs constitute roughly 75-80 percent of the totalMuslim population in India, an estimate which is also backed by various OBCorganizations. Now with this ratio in mind, if we revisit the data provided bythe Sachar Report, it becomes clear that the deprivation levels of Muslim OBCsfar exceed that compiled by Sachar Report. Thus with this ratio in mind,poverty, unemployment, etc will be more acute for the lower caste Muslims. Andthis is just one aspect of the problem. The other is that the category ofGeneral Muslims will not appear as under-represented and deprived as it is madeout to be by some Muslim intellectuals and politicians. If one computes theAjlaf-Ashraf distribution at the ratio of 80:20 percent, then the Ashrafs/GeneralMuslims would roughly comprise 4.5 percent of the population of the country. Andit becomes amply clear that in terms of representation in public sector etc.,they are not as marginalized as they appear at first sight in the Report. Thereal story of Sachar Report then is not that Muslims as a whole are marginalizedbut that OBC Muslims are the most deprived and under-represented category whencompared to Hindu OBCs and General Muslims.

Ironicallyenough then, the Report which is one of the few documents which brings outinternal caste differentiation among Indian Muslims, is being cited to bolsterclaims of Muslim reservation. Primarily driven by the Ashraf elite, such ademand of Muslim reservation rests on bogus claims that hardly get substantiatedthrough the data present in the Sachar Report. If the demand of Muslimreservation is met due to political exigencies, then a handful of well-placedMuslims will corner all the benefits to the detriment of Muslim OBCs. Moreover,there is a real danger that the gains that have accrued to certain OBC Muslimcastes through their inclusion in the Mandal Commission list will be nullifiedin the long run.

Thequestion then is: What can be done to ameliorate the conditions of low casteMuslims? It is a canard spread by the elite Muslims that being classifiedas OBCs hasn’t helped the lower caste Muslims at all. On the contrary, it isonly through their inclusion in the OBC category that we are able to see eventhe marginal presence of Ajlaf Muslims in public representation. But there is aneed to strengthen this process. The Sachar Report makes it amply clear that itis very difficult for Muslim OBCs to compete with their Hindu counterparts.According to their own estimates, Muslim OBCs comprise 15 percent of the totalOBC population (although the percentage is much higher) of the country, which isnowhere reflected in terms of their representation. There is therefore an urgentneed to think of strategies that may lead to the betterment of socio-economicconditions of the most deprived section of Muslims.

In terms of existing policyframework, two things can be done. The first is to do away with the existinganomalies in the OBC lists both at the Central and the state levels. According tothe Sachar Report, there are a number of Muslim castes, which have not beenincluded in the central list. For example in Madhya Pradesh, 10 Muslim casteshave not been included in the Central OBC list, in Bihar 17 such castes have notbeen included and so on. Moreover, there are also various low Muslim casteswhose names do not figure either in the central or the state list. In Gujarat,for example, the People of India project found 85 Muslim communities out ofwhich 76 were non-Ashrafs. However, in the Central list only 22 have beenincluded while in the state list only 27 groups are included. Similarly in Biharand Uttar Pradesh there are a number of Ajlaf groups who have been left out ofthe purview of affirmative action. Inclusion of such groups will go a long wayin ameliorating the present pitiable condition of Muslim OBCs.

The secondmeasure, which should be pursued simultaneously with the first, should considerbi-furcating the Central OBC list into OBC and MBC (Most Backward Classes)category, as is the practice in many states like Bihar. After empiricallyverifying the extent of deprivation of particular Muslim castes within theoverall OBC quota, they can be placed in the MBC list, thus giving them a morelevel playing field.