Quotas for Indian Muslims?

They earn less, less educated and are underrepresented in the government, the administration and private sector.

Affirmative action for religious minorities isn’t a new idea. In India, its time comes as important elections approach — and then its time passes. We now have proposals from two sections of Indian polity competing for the Muslim vote, that job and education quotas should be put in place for Muslims.

Before we get any further, let’s be clear that Muslims in India consistently emerge as deprived, however, their progress as a group is measured. They earn less, are less educated and are underrepresented in the government, the administration and the organised private sector.

Surely, these inequalities could not have come about without a generous contribution from the one factor that determines whether affirmative action is appropriate: discrimination. And surely, an argument that Muslims face religious discrimination in India can be made out just on the basis of development indices.

But it isn’t that simple. Job and education quotas are primarily caste-based in India. It is argued that there is no caste system in Islam, so the question of discrimination along those lines does not arise.

However, this is completely untrue in practice. For instance, the Manganiyar community in Rajasthan, who make their living playing music, were lower caste Hindus who converted to Islam some 400 years ago. Today’s Rajputs are happy to sit around and have a drink with these entertainers, but they carry their own glasses. Neither do the Manganiyars aspire to marry higher caste converts.

Several Indian states have recognised this reality and put quotas in place for sections of Muslims. The southern state of Andhra Pradesh has listed what it calls “15 backward” Muslim communities who are eligible to take advantage of reservations.

But Buddhists and Sikhs reject the caste system as well — how is it that they can avail the quotas? Well, they fought for the rights of the socially backward among them to begin with and were helped by the Indian Constitution, which says that any reference to Hindus includes Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, in other words, those who practiced religions rooted in India.

This is a tricky situation, not just for the ‘foreign’ religions — Christianity and Islam — that are left out, but even within the supposed Hindu fold. ‘Inclusion’ in this grand all encompassing ‘everyone is a Hindu’ view has its consequences. In practice, it erodes the identity of smaller groups. Under the surface, it promotes a Hindu nationalist agenda.

This can happen in the strangest ways. It is ironic to bring the case of the Satsangis up in this context, but it tells the story. In 1966 the Satsangis (followers of Swaminarayan, who decided that he was the Supreme God) went to court saying they could not come under the purview of an Act that stipulated that all temples had to be open for entry to Harijans or untouchables. Their religion was distinct from Hinduism, they argued, so laws that applied to Hindu temples could not cover them: if they wished to keep Harijans out, they should be allowed to do so. The Supreme Court rejected the claim and in effect included the Satsangis in the Hindu fold, saying Hinduism defied easy definition and was a “way of life.”

If you flip that argument around to reservations, the same principle applies. And inevitably, there will be noises from the right to the effect that the minorities were one with the Hindus when expedient and separate when convenient.

If you take the case of Muslims as a whole in India, they aren’t ‘one’ as a community to begin with. Every seventh Indian (approximately) is a Muslim, and there have been calls to declare the whole community “backward”. This doesn’t go down well with the historically deprived lower caste converts to Islam.

Like everywhere else in the world, the benefits of affirmative action, such as the ones in India, go disproportionately to the elite within so-called “backward” communities.

The reason why the idea of quotas along religious lines is always given the pass (at least nationally) isn’t because it is against the secular spirit of the Indian Constitution. It is because this is an issue that polarises the vote: if a political party decides to push through reservations for all Muslims, it can forget the Hindu vote in many parts of India, and have it divided in others. If it provides reservations for only “backward class” Muslims, then it alienates the influential elite in that community and splits the vote.

There is only one way to get around this (and some Indian states have done this already): have strict economic criteria to go along with social ones. Think a little more of the need and a little less about the vote.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd,  2011.