Minority Appeasement
BOOK- Indian Muslim(s) After Liberalization (Maidul Islam)
under-representation of Muslim minorities in the Indian parliament after 2014 has now reached an all-time low. Muslims, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes lag behind upper caste Hindus, Hindu OBCs and other religious minorities. higher degree of landlessness among Muslims than any other social groups, while Muslims are second to Dalits in small landholding. Muslim presence in top corporate boards and Muslim presence among the wealthiest Indians is negligible, along with Dalits and Adivasis. The available data on unemployment and monthly per capita consumption expenditures show that Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis are behind other social groups. The RSS-BJP has consistently repeated the charge of Muslim appeasement against Mamata Banerjee. even after Sachar, actual socio-economic conditions of Indian Muslims are completely different from such propaganda. Indian Muslims are one of the most educationally backward and economically deprived groups, like the Dalits and Adivasis, as evident from several government-appointed committee reports, Census data, national sample surveys, and academic studies.
Sachar committee reports says it all. Congress feared charges of ‘appeasement’ and refrained from doing too much for muslims to protect them from riots. However, large number of riots took place during the congress eras as well. Recommendations of sri krishna commission not implemented.
Interviews and reviews:
https://thewire.in/rights/interview-post-sachar-report-condition-of-indian-muslims-unchanged
ARTICLE- The Myth of Appeasement (Christophe Jaffrelot, Kalaiyarasan A)
in most of the states, Muslims earn less than Hindu Dalits: Their per capita annual income represents 68 per cent of that of the Dalits in Haryana, 69 per cent in Gujarat, 79 per cent in West Bengal, 82 per cent in Kerala and 87 per cent in Maharashtra. Since 2004-05, their status vis-à-vis Hindu Dalits has declined everywhere, except in UP . In a report it released on the “aspirational districts”, the Niti Aayog showed that 11 of the 20 most backward districts were Muslim-dominated. the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, known as the Ranganath Misra Commission had recommended positive discrimination policies for the minorities which were losing ground. But its report was not even tabled in Parliament.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/04/20/myth-of-appeasement-pub-76142
ARTICLE- Rajinder Sachar (1923-2018) helped puncture the myth of Muslim appeasement in India (Ajaz Ashraf)
Sachar report showed that they lagged behind other communities, barring the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, on just about every socio-economic index. On some indices, such as education and government employment, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were actually ahead of Muslims by a margin. Muslims constituted just 3.2% of all officers in the Indian Administrative Service, the Indian Police Service and the Indian Foreign Service. Another myth the report undermined was that Muslims were better off in the Left-ruled states. This was not true, it said, providing data to show that Muslims in West Bengal were lagging behind their counterparts in Gujarat. Report underlined the irony of muslims who are perpetually asked to prove their patriotism, but also charged at the same time of being ‘appeased’.
Full recommendations:
Full report:
https://www.minorityaffairs.gov.in/sites/default/files/sachar_comm.pdf
ARTICLE- The myth of Muslim appeasement (Aijaz Zaka Syed)
The Muslims faced the combined onslaught of the Hindu right and the increasingly communal police and administration in recurring religious riots, while the Congress exploited the insecurity and fear psychosis of the community to keep it forever under its thumb.
Paying lip service to the grievances of the community and successfully using the dumb politics of tokenism – throwing an Iftar party here and putting up some Muslim showpieces in ceremonial positions there – the party has presided over the meticulous marginalization and political and economic dispossession of Muslims all these years. No wonder angry Muslim intellectuals insist there’s no real difference between the Congress and the BJP when it comes to this community; one is an open enemy and the other plays games – forever calculating in terms of political constituencies and electoral profit and loss.
Rajiv Gandhi had to turn over Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid to Hindu groups apparently to assuage their hurt feelings over the Muslim Women’s Bill brought in the wake of the Shah Bano verdict.
https://clarionindia.net/the-myth-of-muslim-appeasement/
ARTICLE- Muslims Appeasement: Myth or a Reality? (Sajad Ahmad Dar)
Present-day Muslims are thought to be in the worst position in independent india due to frequent lynchings- but babri masjid demolition age and emergency equally bad. Instead of appeasement, secular parties have actually not been doing much to curb the growth of communalism for fear of hurting the majority community and losing votes.
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/muslims-appeasement-myth-or-a-reality/
ARTICLE- The Fate of Secularism in India (Christophe Jaffrelot)
Instead of muslim appeasement, opposition parties in India has in fact been indulging in ‘soft Hindutva’ to appease the feelings of hardlines Hindus. During election campaigns, Rahul gandhi visits temples, and his camp also speaks about his hindu and brahmin roots. the congress party manifesto in Madhya Pradesh promised to build gaushalas (cow shelters); develop the commercial production of gaumutra (cow urine) and cow dung. In the 2014 general election, it nominated only twenty-seven Muslim candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, a paltry 5.6 percent of its total candidates. The Congress Party nominated very few Muslims to vie for state assembly seats in critical states such as Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu. To date, the party has not moved decisively to implement the Sachar Committee report, at least partially due to pressure emanating from the Sangh Parivar.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/04/fate-of-secularism-in-india-pub-78689
ARTICLE- Condition of Muslims in West Bengal: A reality check (Subhanil Chowdhury, Saswata Ghosh)
Employment figures- compared with the rest of India, greater numbers of Muslims are engaged in precarious casual employment or self-employment in West Bengal. only 3.12 per cent of teachers in colleges were Muslims in 2012-13. The figure increased to 7.8 per cent in 2018-19—a prominent increase in Muslim representation but still way below the community’s population proportion of 27 per cent in the State.the number of Muslim faculty members is abysmally low. Muslim teachers in all the universities of West Bengal accounted for just 4 per cent of all university teachers in 2012-13. The figure increased to 7 per cent in 2018-19.
ARTICLE- "From Rajiv Gandhi to Modi, nobody defines ‘Muslim appeasement’ but all use it for votes (Bilal Ahmed)
Despite being used widely by politicians, ‘Muslim appeasement’ has not been clearly defined by any of its users. Muslim appeasement is referred to at least in two aspects of politics regarding Muslims: biased institutional apparatus and unfair political practices.constitutional provisions related to rights of religious minorities are seen as unfair. It is asserted that minority rights goes against the spirit of religious equality and secularism based on rule of law. Politically, the assurance given to Muslims by the political parties with regard to educational and/or economic empowerment, distribution of tickets to Muslim candidates in elections and even declaration of holidays on Muslim religious festivals are treated as ‘Muslim appeasement’. in post 2014-India, the BJP has successfully established the fact that addressing Muslims as Muslims is an act of appeasement. The impact of this assertion is so powerful that even the so-called secular, anti-Hindutva, and non-BJP parties have gradually started distancing themselves from Muslims, simply to avoid the tag of Muslim appeasement. The unclear, ambiguous metaphor of Muslim appeasement is cleverly employed to create a ‘fear psyche’ among Muslims.