A Good School For Maqbool

http://www.indiatogether.org/2013/feb/fah-schools.htm

11 February 2013 - A revealing, if unsurprising, observation brings out starkly how marginalised the Muslim community is, and is set to remain over the middle term. I happened to browse through the results of the Class V Aryabhatta Mathematics Inter-School Competition, posted on the website of one of the participating institutions. The competition is an annual event which tests the mathematical skills of students in middle school.

Eighty nine schools participated, including all the elite schools of Delhi. One school, Hamdard Public School, Sangam Vihar, fielded 10 Muslim student participants. Of the other 880 students from 88 schools (each school sending in 10 students of Class V), only eight had Muslim names, making a figure of less than one per cent. All told 13 children with Muslim names participated out of 880, making a total of two per cent. From the list of schools, it is evident that these are the elite public schools in the national capital.

The percentage of Muslims in Delhi is about 12 per cent. This implies that Muslim representation has been one sixth of what it could, and perhaps should, have been in a city-wide competition.

The refrain of late has been that a Muslim middle class is developing, implying that Muslims are beginning to do well in the country. This does not seem to be borne out by this stark statistic. It could have been expected that traces of the so-called Muslim middle class would show up in such data. However, the opposite seems to be true; the touted take off of the Muslim community has not quite begun. Muslims remain marginalized.

It seems that only Muslim-run schools now have Muslim students. That is a double disadvantage. For other schools, it is to deprive them of the diversity that reflects the national composition. For Muslims, it suggests two things. One is that their children do not manage to qualify for such schools. But more pertinently, it is possible that the lack of exposure to Muslims in general and Muslim children, due to underrepresentation, sets up a vicious circle in which schools are reluctant to give Muslim children the benefit of doubt. There could be a more sinister reason to this that regrettably must also be included here: such schools may have an unwritten policy that keeps Muslim children out.

What are the long term implications of this? In case the emerging Muslim middle class is kept out, as suggested by the statistics, Muslims will continue to be disadvantaged for some time to come. Not being represented in this cohort of young children means that they will be underrepresented in the work force in middle class-favoured occupations for at least a score years and more. This means the already existing gap between Muslims and forward communities will expand. In fact, since Muslims of the middle class are not normally covered by reservations, they will lose out to communities in other religions that are so favoured. Marginalisation will only deepen.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE www.indiatogether.org

What needs to be done? 

The administration needs looking at the figures of Muslim children in schools. A finding of 'Nil' would indicate clearly a policy that keeps them out. Such schools must be encouraged to reform, if not penalized. 'Naming and shaming' is one way, but unlikely to work since such schools can brazenly resort to a communal rationale, knowing that the times are such that they will get away.

Change is therefore easier said than done. At least one school in the middle class locality I live in is reputed to have no Muslim children in its rolls. This cannot be by default. It is by design, one in which the management, staff and education department officials are culpable. Parents from my neighbourhood are equally culpable in turning a blind eye at best and at worst condoning and insisting on the practice.

This is not a stand-alone feature. It is linked to the well-known nation-wide malady of Muslims not finding flats to buy or rent in 'respectable' neighbourhoods - note use of the apostrophes here! Not living in such locales, they don't get to send their children to either middle class or elite schools either. This personal aside is entirely unremarkable in terms of amounting almost to a defining feature of modern India.

The representative lists of Aryabhatta prize competitors can be perused for other clues such as the numbers of children with upper caste names or the absence of names that are usually found in lower castes. Allowance can be made for Sanskritisation by way of which the Hindu majority is being rapidly homogenized towards a telling political outcome. The picture could reveal much more than the backwardness of India's largest minority discussed here. It would tell about the warts on India's complexion that even as enlightened a document as the Constitution has been unable to erase over three score years and as many generations of Indians.

One way out could be to sensitise schools to include more children from the marginalised peoples, without compromising merit. This will be to the betterment in terms of well-rounded growth of their students. After all, much learning in school is from peers. Anecdotally, it is fairly evident that having friends and class fellows of other religious and ethnic backgrounds does make for a secular and tolerant outlook among children. This can be done by parents' bodies interfacing with schools and with the management to oversee the change in the best interests of their wards.

Middle class India is a reality that has surfaced unmistakably over this decade. Anti-corruption and a fair treatment of women have been causes that have seen national level assertiveness from this class. One area calling out for its attention is to make school-going a level playing field.
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NOT SO EASY, MR. MODI

http://www.milligazette.com/print/issue/16-31-august-2012

http://twocircles.net/2012aug01/not_so_easy_mr_modi.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Twocirclesnet-IndianMuslim+%28TwoCircles.net+-+Indian+Muslim+News%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

The locus of controversy over Mr. Modi’s remarks has shifted from the contents of his interview to the internal politics of a regional party of which the interviewer was a member. In the melee, there is danger of Mr. Modi’s remarks passing uncontested into history. The risk of dwelling on them any further is in giving them more column space, thereby adding to his original intent in giving the interview of gaining greater political acceptability for himself in his run up not so much for provincial elections due soon, but for national hustings soon thereafter. However, not to engage with them would be to have readers give him the benefit of the doubt.

While it is a truism that unless held guilty in a court of law, a person is to be taken as innocent, the problem with allowing Mr. Modi that status is that the evidence that could have been used in a court of law has in the years of his being at the helm been systematically removed or reworked. As a result even the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team has been unable to gain access to prosecutable evidence. While this should really have triggered a line of investigation into the ‘cover up’, as prompted by some courageous police officers in Gujarat, the SIT has taken Mr. Modi’s administration at its word. That is to give him more than his due.

Thankfully for history, the Amicus Curiae, also appointed by the SC, has a different story to tell. His differing take lends balance to the suspension of disbelief by Mr. Raghavan of SIT fame. Therefore, there is no reason to take Mr. Modi at his word in the interview. He cannot but be expected to defend his case in the manner he has. And yet, the content of the interview is chilling. Take for instance Mr. Modi’s exhortation: ‘think about how many Muslims were protected then! If they were to be killed systematically, who would have been spared today?’ In other words, Muslims, spared of a worse fate, should really be grateful! After all, he insists he stopped the ‘rioting’, stating that, ‘I think I managed to stop the rioting.’ In the same breath, he lets on: ‘I will not admit that I couldn’t.’ In other words, he is a saviour since he tried to stop the ‘riots’ but couldn’t!

Two points bear mention. Firstly, the use of the term, ‘riots’, suggests that the two communities were slugging it out. This is hardly likely in light of his version of the first 72 hours: ‘There hasn’t been even one police gun shot, no lathi charge… But, here people were arrested in advance.’ It bears investigation as to which ‘people’ were arrested. It can be surmised that these were of the minority. In effect, the minority was disarmed. Therefore, the question of a ‘riot’, and its two-sided implication, does not arise. Also, since he says there was not ‘even one police gun shot’, the rioters who should have been stopped in their tracks were instead handled with kid gloves. Had the besieged minority been rioting instead, as national statistics consistently bear out there would have been a deadly toll.

Secondly, this means that space was created for majoritarian supremacists to take center stage. He claims in self-vindication he gave ‘shoot at sight’ order to stop the ‘riots’. The numbers are already in the public domain as to who died in such firing. These were certainly not the ones later caught boasting in a Tehelka sting operation on their bravado.

Mr. Modi brings the abject state of affairs elsewhere to claim that his record is better on two counts: one is on prosecution and sentencing in Gujarat cases as against that meted out in the 1984 carnage against Sikhs; the second is on encounters. There is a difference between what happened in Gujarat and elsewhere. In the anti Sikh carnage in Delhi, there is no allegation of state complicity. As for encounters, in none of the other states were cover up stories fomented with a dual purpose: to embellish the image of the political head as a nationalist strongman, while at the same time tarnishing that of the minority as a subverted fifth column susceptible to infiltration by terrorists. In any case, instances elsewhere cannot legitimize what happens in Gujarat.

To tide over the controversy, the interviewer in a damage limitation exercise, has claimed: ‘I asked him questions that no one has.’ This obfuscates the fact that it was a tame interview amounting to image building for Mr. Modi. Take for instance the poser: ‘But they say you were in the control room.’ It is well known that the ministerial henchmen of Mr. Modi were assigned such duty including one who has served time behind bars subsequently in the false encounters case. Therefore such questions figuring in an interview damns its motives.

Finally, is the question of the military being called out timely. This increases in significance in light of the current day Bodo-Muslim clashes in Assam in which the Assam government has been critical of the new procedures in place for getting the Army to react in internal crisis. The procedures date to the Vohra Committee report recommendations to the GOM in 2001. The cases of over resort to the military in the eighties and nineties had resulted in a hardening of the military’s position against intervening in such crisis. The military was hard pressed by its internal security commitments and over extended by simultaneous calls on it when in peace stations. The older rules that enabled the DC to call out the army in aid to civil authority had consequently been reframed. The current procedures call for such demands for military aid to be routed from the state to the home ministry and thereafter to the defence ministry. A decision is then taken. This can prove too late for victims as evident from the case in Assam lately. More importantly, delay results in deepening of divides with trans- generational effects. Clearly, there is a case to revisit the procedures, particularly since the CRPF that was expanded with the purpose of relieving the army from such duty is itself bogged down in Central India.

In the Gujarat case, the army that was then deployed at the borders in Op Parakram could not be made available in a real time frame. Clearly, the onus of stamping out fires then devolved on Mr. Modi. This gave Mr. Modi and his supporters the time they needed. Therefore even if we are to follow Mr. Modi’s advice, ‘The Supreme Court asked for an investigation to be conducted. We should trust that’; he still needs to answer for incompetence. Since his campaign rhetoric focuses on his competence, revealing Mr. Modi’s record is in order, the latest attempt at embellishment notwithstanding.

Mr. Modi has expressed a preference thus, ‘If Modi has sinned, then Modi should be hanged’. But his only reflects a medieval mindset that conjured up the ‘action-reaction’ thesis. Its implication for his fitness for his current office is for the voters of his state to decide on, but it certainly disqualifies him from aspiring to higher office.