Muslims in India: Discriminated, Decepted and Terrorised

Noorus Saleheen

Faculty of Humanities, Coimbra University

ISLAM AND THE MUSLIMS IN INDIA

Islam is the second-most practiced religion in India. The Indian judicial courts have ruled that Shariah law for Muslims holds precedence over Indian civil law in matters related to marriage, inheritance and wakf properties. The matters of such jurisdiction are governed by All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Historically, there has been significant integration between the cultures of Hindus and Muslims across India. Muslims have played a prominent role in India's overall development in terms of economic growth and cultural influence.

RELIGIOUS CONFLICT: MUSLIM-HINDU CONFLICT

The conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India has a complex history.

The aftermath of the Partition of India in 1947 saw a large-scale violence between sections of the Hindu and Muslim communities. Since its independence, India has always maintained a constitutional commitment to secularism.

BABRI MASJID DEMOLITION: A BLOT ON SECULARISM IN INDIA

The sense of communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims was compromised greatly by the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya that took place in 1992 under the supportive banner of a prominent national political party Bharatiya Janata Party and its allied organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Shiv Sena, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. This evil act ignited the religious sentiments countrywide and was followed by the communal riots and the 1993 series of bomb blasts in Mumbai.

«There are sharp stones there. The Ground has to be levelled.» These were the words of former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee on a day before Babri Mosque demolition in Lucknow on 5 December 1992.

GUJARAT RIOTS: A BLOT ON HUMANITY (2002)

According to the sources, there were approximately 2,000 Muslim deaths during Gujarat riots in 2002. The riots were in retaliation to the Godhra Train Burning. The Bannerjee commission declared that the fire was an accident.

In widespread communal violence that followed Muslim communities suffered a lot. In these riots, the role played by chief minister of Gujarat, and some of his ministers, police officers, and other right wing Hindu organizations has been criticized. The Chief Minister was even accused of genocide.

UNITED NATIONS COMMITTEE AND ITS FINDINGS (IHRR, DEC-OCT, 2010)

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women considered the exceptional report of India at its 960th meeting, on 15 October 2010. The Committee noted with great concern that the dominating features in the communal violence which took place in 2002 were acts of violence, including torture, murder, gang rape, forced nudity, parading women naked, mutilation of breasts and other body parts, insertion of wooden and metal objects into genital parts and other forms of sexual violence specifically targeted women and girls.

Many Muslim children’s educational certificates were destroyed during the Gujarat riot attacks and the government has not replaced the certificates neither facilitated the resumption of the children’s education.

While noting that some information has been provided in the supplementary material on the State party’s resettlement measures in place, the Committee regrets the lack of disaggregated data on the approximately 5,000 Muslim families displaced by the violence in Gujarat. It also notes with great concern that eight years after the Gujarat violence, the displaced persons are still living in the temporary and makeshift colonies in remote and abandoned areas with poor access to livelihood and employment.

DISCRIMINATION AND EFFECT ON COMMUNITY

The discrimination carried out against Muslims is well-planned and is being carried out systematically, be it the case of recruitment even in government organizations. The after-effects of such practice have reached to such an extent that in a recent report published on 31^st October 2012, a renowned Australian journalist reported that Indian Muslims pose as Hindus to get jobs. The woman mentioned in the report is a Muslim woman, who adopts Hindu identities to avoid discrimination in the workplace. She says, "For the whole day I shall maintain this Hindu appearance. My name is Laxmi, you know it's also the name of the Hindu goddess.”

She tried unsuccessfully to find a job for many years before deciding to hide her Muslim identity. Posing as a Hindu woman, she got her current job as nursemaid in a private hospital.

SECRET RECRUITMENT POLICIES

Many recruitment agencies help Muslims find menial jobs in sectors where identity documents are not usually sought, by introducing them as Hindu. According to an agency manager, out of 95 percent of his clients who were Hindu seeking domestic helps, as much as 80 per cent of them informed that they would not employ any Muslims. He affirms that many placement agencies on mutual interest maintain secret policies to introduce Muslims as Hindus and help them get jobs.

ANTI-MUSLIM BIAS AND MUSLIMS AS UNTOUCHABLES

Despite Muslims making up 14-15 percent of India's population and country's largest minority, the community leaders have long alleged that an anti-Muslim bias exists in different levels of society. In 2005, the government-appointed Sachar Committee concluded in its report that the socioeconomic condition of most Muslims was worse than that of the 'untouchables' in Hindu caste system. According to a minority rights activist, it’s not just in the unorganized sector but even in the government sector where Muslim jobseekers face the hurdle of discrimination. For example, in the state of West Bengal where Muslims constitute 27 percent of the population, their representation in government jobs is as low as four percent.

According to a professor at the North Eastern Hill University in Meghalaya, many Hindus count Muslims as untouchables. He says that it is at the root of the anti-Muslim discrimination in India.

Although discriminating against Muslims is illegal, it is almost impossible for those affected to provide proof. Therefore, such Muslims are forced to bear with this repressive system- in many cases by disguising themselves as Hindus, in attempt to seek work and live as equals in the society.

Asian Centre for Human Rights is an organization dedicated to promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Asian region.

In its quarterly journal June 2011, it observed that Minorities are continued to face discrimination. The chief economist at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Dr Abusaleh Shariff conducted a study on “Relative Development of Gujarat and Socio-Religious Differentials”. His study concluded that in Gujarat among high levels of hunger among its citizens, Muslims are the worst. Urban poverty among the Muslims is eight times more than high-caste Hindus. They also face high levels of discrimination and deprivation in jobs and were not even enrolled under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which is an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005.

There is also indifference in compensating the 2002 riots affected victims. On 3 March 2011, Gujarat’s Revenue Minister (Anandiben Patel) informed the State Assembly that out of Rs 507.69 crore received from the Centre to be distributed as compensation to the kin of the 2002 riots victims, the state government disbursed only Rs 409.61 crore and the remaining Rs 98 crore was yet to be disbursed.

The Narendra Modi government allegedly even refused to provide scholarships to the Muslims under Centrally sponsored pre-matric and post-matric minority scholarships. As a result, more than 52,000 students belonging to Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh and Buddhist communities have been deprived of minority scholarships.

According to the report by Sachar Committee (which was setup by the UPA government on March 9th, 2005 to study the Socio-Economic and Educational status of the Muslims), it is estimated that as of 2006 the Muslim population in India must have crossed 150 Million.

(The committee was headed by Justice Rajender Sachar and had six other members (Shri Sayyid Hamid, Dr T.K. Ooman, Shri M.A. Basith, Dr Akhtar Majeed, Dr Abu Saleh Shariff and Dr Rakesh Basant.)

The community has the most favourable child sex ratio among all Socio-religious communities in the country with an average of 986 females to every 1000 males as compared to 927/1000 for the general population. The majority of the Muslims in India are living in four states UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra which had at least ten million Muslims each.

The muslim share in government employment is 4.9% (against a population of 14%); among India’s Security Agencies (viz., CRPF, CISF, BSF, SSB etc.) muslim representation is 3.2%;

Muslims represent only 4 per cent in the total armed forces in India, out of which 96 per cent belong to lower level jobs. Just 2.7% are placed among District Judges.

Interestingly, if muslims do outnumber majority hindus in any statistics, it is predictably as a proportion of the prison population, much like the blacks in America.

Noting that Muslim participation in electoral bodies is known to be small, the Sachar Committee report tabled in Lok Sabha in November 2006, said of the 543 Lok Sabha members, only 33 were Muslims. The panel made out a strong case to put mechanisms in place to enable Muslims to engage in democratic processes and governance.

It also noted that the minorities do not have the necessary influence or the opportunity to either change or even influence events, which could enable their meaningful and active participation in development process.

Referring to educational opportunities for Muslims, the committee recommended mechanisms where madrasa can be linked with a higher secondary school board so that students wanting to shift to a regular/mainstream education can do so after having passed from a madrasa.

MUSLIM YOUTH AND TERRORISM

The attitude of police, administration and judiciary towards Muslim youth, arrested in connection with terror cases, shows the double standard in the dispensation of justice. Every year, in the name of terror, hundreds of Muslim youths had been arrested for past some time but the trend got momentum soon after the blasts in courts in Uttar Pradesh in 2007, and it is still going on. Some independent investigations by NGOs and other private organizations of the cases show that the police and administration have deliberately implicated Muslim youth in scores of cases. In addition to that the unwanted delay in disposal of court cases, it is more likely that they perhaps will never be released.

BIASED POLICE INVESTIGATION

The way in which police investigates terror cases involving Muslims is also questionable. The process of arrest of Muslim youths implicating involvement in terror cases also gives the impression that it is all part of a big conspiracy. In most of the disposed cases implicating such false involvement of Muslim youth, they have been acquitted by the court as the police could not prove charges.

CONTRADICTION AMONG INVESTIGATING AGENCIES

Mumbai Crime Branch made a 38-year old mechanical engineer Sadiq Sheikh as main conspirator of all blasts in recent past. There are 54 cases against Sheikh in Ahmedabad, Surat, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. He has also been accused, along with his nine friends, for 11 July 2006 Mumbai local train bombings. After being accused of alleged forced confession, the Mumbai Crime Branch handed over the case to Maharashtra ATS. The ATS gave clean chit to Sadiq Sheikh and told MCOCA court that he had no role in the July 2006 train bombings.

Another Muslim youth, 23-year old Saif, was doing MA in History in Delhi. He was also doing courses in English speaking and computer application. After the controversial Batla House encounter in New Delhi, the police arrested Saif from that flat. He is accused in 45 cases in Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Surat with charges of planting bombs in these cities. Interestingly, UP police has claimed his involvement in UP court blasts also. Then they took him in their custody in connection with the blasts at Sankat Mochan Mandir and railway station in Varanasi but so far they could not file a chargesheet against him.

Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy of Pune was arrested for sending mail in the name of Indian Mujahideen before the blasts. Just one month before arrest, Peerbhoy had joined Yahoo as principal engineer on an annual salary package of Rs 19 lakh (1.9 Million). More than 40 cases have been slapped against him in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Delhi and Hyderabad to blast conspiracy under cyber crime.

Mufti Abul Bashar was arrested jointly by Gujarat Police and UP ATS from his Beenapara village in Azamgarh on August 14, 2008 but police claimed he was arrested from Charbagh Railway Station in Lucknow. He was declared as the mastermind of Ahmedabad blasts and chief of Indian Mujahideen. He is facing 40 cases in Ahmedabad, Surat, Hyderabad and Belgam.

STRATEGIC PLAN FOR LIFETIME CONFINEMENT

The 38-year-old Arif Badruddin Sheik of Asroli village in Azamgarh, according to Mumbai police, is an expert of bomb making. Father of 3, Sheikh has been accused of almost all terror blasts since 2005.  Arif's father, mentally challenged, passed away a couple of months after the arrest of his son. His mother is blind and is living with her daughter-in-law in a dilapidated house in the village. Atif is also facing 41 cases in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Surat.

Saifur Rahman was arrested by Madhya Pradesh ATS from Jabalpur in April 2009 when he was taking his sister from Azamgarh to her in-laws in Mumbai. They were travelling in Godan Express. ATS kept his sister also in custody for 12 hours. Saifur Rahman has been accused of blasts in Jaipur and Ahmedabad. He confessed his involvement in the blasts before the Magistrate in Bhopal but retracted before the Jaipur magistrate saying he was under pressure from Madhya Pradesh ATS. He told the Jaipur magistrate that ATS tortured him and threatened to rape her sister who was in their custody. Then Jaipur ATS requested the Jaipur court for narco test on Saifur Rahman but the court declined.

There was a dramatic turn in the Jaipur blast case when an accused Shahbaz Hussain pleaded the court to order narco and other test on him so that he could be proved innocent. This was the first instance in the history of the country that an accused himself was demanding narco test on him. Prosecution opposed the demand and thus the court rejected Hussain's appeal.

According to Manisha Sethi, who teaches comparative study of religions at Central University in New Delhi Jamia Millia Islamia, “imported concept of War on Terror is being encouraged and it is being used as a weapon against the Muslims."

The ATS officials were also accused of torturing the accused of the May 2008 serial blasts in Jaipur, Rajasthan. In April 2010, a five-member delegation of Muslim groups met Otta Ram Rohin, Superintendent of Central Jail Jaipur, Rajasthan to register protest against the ill-treatment being meted out to the blast accused even though their alleged role in the blasts could not be established and forced to make fresh confession despite the completion of investigation. One of the accused of the serial blasts complained that the Anti-Terrorism Squad officials, being given access to the inmates in the jail, were forcing them to put signatures on plain papers. Further, the accused were being kept at the Central Jail without basic amenities.

*(Torture in India 2011, Asian Centre for Human Rights)

Families and relatives of the accused are speechless seeing the gravity and number of cases. The police have also broken records in filing charge sheets. The police have filed 60,000-page chargesheets in 35 cases of Ahmedabad and Surat. Mumbai Crime Branch has filed 1800-page chargesheet. Similarly Jaipur has filed 12,000-page chargesheet in 8 cases. All charge sheets are in Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi. If case reaches Supreme Court, translation of these charge sheets will be another expensive and time taking job.

Advocate Shahid Azmi says charge of conspiracy is a weapon that police uses to implicate anyone in any case. Talking to Afkar-e-Milli he revealed: "Afzal Muttalib Usmani whose arrest was shown in Mumbai on September 24, 2009 was actually arrested on August 27 from Lok Manya Tilak Terminus. Advocates admit that no trial in these cases will take place within two years. It will be much longer as several individuals are accused in different cases at different places.

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A MAJORITY OF THE POLICE FORCE IS BIASED

The police investigations into the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blast (2007) cases have floundered. The investigation went in one direction blaming the Harkat-ul-Jihadi for two years and now it is going in another direction where the right-wing Hindu organizations Abhinav Bharat and the Sanathan Sanstha are being blamed. Several persons have often wondered why the police bungled this probe so badly that the courts had to release all those who were arrested initially and in some cases even ordered the state to pay compensation.

S R Darapuri, a retired Inspector General of Police (1972 batch IPS), has been fighting for several innocents picked up and tortured by the police in several cases of terrorism, including the Ajmer case. The former top cop says, "Being a part of the establishment for 25 years, I fail to understand how the police can go so horribly wrong. The problem is that a majority of the force has a communal bias towards the minorities."

In this interview with an online web-journal rediff.com, Darapauri explained how the police force is beset with bias and what needs to be done to tackle it. For him, it looked like a complete frame up from the start. The Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and Goa blasts are all interlinked. He strongly suspected the role of Abhinav Bharat and the Sanathan Sanstha in these incidents, thanking (former Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad chief) Hemant Karkare who blew the lid off this phenomenon. The police were under the impression that it was the Muslims who were involved in all cases of terrorism. However Mr. Karkare exposed them. He agreed that there was a communal bias in the police department as majority of the officers had a communal bias towards the minorities.

Moreover there was no action against those police personnel who booked innocent people in wrong cases. In Hyderabad case, many people were let off by the court. He believes that RSS has been infiltrating the force and also the administration for a long time. Through this infiltration, they pretty much control a large part of the system.

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There are many instances where Police first arrests a Muslim youth and then tries to implicate him in some terror related cases. Affirming this trend, SR Darapuri made some sensational revelations that Script to entrap Muslim youths is written first and then the arrest comes into effect!

(Excerpts from an article from an Urdu daily newspaper INQUILAB published from Mumbai and New Delhi on 21 June 2012)

During a convention organized on the topic based on continuous arrests and harassments of Muslim youths in the name of Terrorism “Communalism and Terrorism of Security Agencies” (20.06.2012), he said that be it IB or ATS, STF and Special Branch, all follow the same methodology – first the script is written and then innocent people are fitted in accordingly. A serious concern was raised against the harassment of Muslim community by Security Agencies as ATS and STF people harass the Muslim families for months in the name of interrogation and suddenly they pick one of them in the manner of abduction. Later on, several charges of non-bailable offences are imposed on them so that they cannot get bail throughout their entire life.

Being a police officer, he himself had seen how atrocities were carried out. He said that whatever was done by police or security agencies had the consent of the government. Senior journalist Siddharth Kalhans said that media publishes and broadcasts news received by police and agencies without verifying the facts at its own level. He named this trend as “Cataract of Media” and appealed that the verification of such news is necessary considering the fact that most of the time police personnel frame false allegations against the arrested person in order to justify their act.

Another retired IPS officer S.M. Naseem said that STF, ATS, and other agency people are allegedly involved in the business of extortion and when they fail to get the money, they frame false charges against innocents. He said that the people from intelligence write the script of the entire story and get applause from the government. There is no control of the government over the police harassing innocent people. Shadab Ahmad, father of arrested youth Mohammad Saif during Batla House encounter, said that when a non-Muslim is caught they say him to be mentally unstable whereas when a Muslim is caught, he is declared as a mastermind. He alleged that agency people themselves manage to arrange RDX and AK-47 and RSS people are helping them openly. He said that at one hand ATS declared Mohammad Taqi and Mohammad Naqi to be their informers; on the other hand IB framed charges against them.

CONCLUSION

India is very proud to declare that it is one of the leading developing countries in the world and capable of emerging as the most developed country after twenty years, surpassing the USA, Japan etc. But how is it possible when some sections of its population are lagging behind in all spheres. There is no doubt about the role of government. At the same time the Sangh Parivar is more responsible for the worst condition of the Muslims. Indian Muslims are vulnerable to Sangh Parivar ideology of Hindutwa, which mainly intends to capture power. As a result, they let loose reign of terror in different parts of India to suppress the Muslims with an eye on majority Hindu votes. Hence the Muslims were denied justice and were isolated from the mainstream of Indian polity. There has been no attempt on the part of government to look after the condition of the Muslims. They were branded as communalists and terrorists. Those who supported the Muslim’s cause were termed as appeasing the minority.

Some remarked that the Muslims became backward due to the backwardness of their religion. Then in the whole world, Muslims would have been the poor and backward. Islam as a religion promotes all types of modern development. However, Islam was treated as a religion promoting violence. It is utter nonsense, as there is no such wording in Quaran. Even the Jihad was misinterpreted. Jihad was used only as a last resort for protecting one’s belief. But there is a tendency among some Muslim groups to preach Jihad for promoting their political interest. It has nothing to do with Islamic faith. Moreover, many so called Islamic terrorists have no affiliation towards following the principles of Islam such as, to offer pray five times a day, to observe fast during the month of Ramdan and pay Zakah to poor. According to Islam, an Islamic name does not accord the status of Muslim unless and until one should follow all the norms of Islam. Hence, those who follow these norms cannot use violence since there is no religious sanction behind it.

Whether we are secular or religious, theist or atheist or anywhere in between, we are all impacted by what happens in one tiny corner of the world as every incidental impact now reverberates globally. We must come forward and act, beyond making any stereotypes, beyond coming to snap judgments, beyond considering beard and headscarf as the symbols of terror.