The economic plight of minorities, particularly Muslims, has been a very disturbing factor for all those who would like society to strive for equality and justice. If we look at the origins of the Muslim community in India, apart from the spread of Islam through Arab traders from the 7th century AD along the Malabar Coast, the majority of conversions took place among the victims of caste oppression, who were also economically deprived sections of society. During what is called the Mughal period, Muslim kings ruled from Delhi and Agra. During this period, in a social structure where landlords were predominantly Hindus, the economic plight of large sections of Muslims remained similar to that of poor Hindus.

After the 1857 uprising, the backlash from the British was directed more against Muslims, as Bahadur Shah Zafar was the leader of this rebellion. The Muslim community had to bear the brunt of British wrath to a greater extent. Post-Independence, the biases and myths against Muslims were highlighted, and gradually, they became major targets of communal forces. As other communities were coming forward and lifting themselves through education and jobs, Muslims lagged behind due to multiple reasons, including the prevalent propaganda against them and the inheritance of their economic backwardness.

Our Constitution recognized the social and economic backwardness of Dalits and Adivasis, providing them with reservations that helped these communities in some way. While OBCs at the national level received 27% reservation in 1990, some states had introduced such reservations earlier as well. By and large, these OBC reservations were strongly opposed by organizations like “Youth for Equality”.

Even reservations for Dalits and other sections began to face widespread opposition, as seen in the anti-Dalit and anti-caste violence of the 1980s and then in mid-1985 in Gujarat. Meanwhile, as the Constitution did not recognize reservations on the basis of religion, minorities continued to languish in economic backwardness. Some states did try to incorporate Muslims into the OBC quota, but any move to uplift this community through quotas was strictly opposed by Hindu nationalist forces. The economic status of this community was a terrible mix of insecurity due to violence and economic deprivation due to a lack of jobs and ghettoization, which was a direct outcome of violence. Every time the issue of reservations for Muslims came up, it was strongly countered by Hindutva politics, and its proponents cried hoarse about the ‘appeasement of Muslims’. This also put some brakes on the state’s intentions to implement the recommendations of the committees.

One recalls that after the Sachar Committee came out with its report in 2006, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister of the country, stated his intention to undertake reforms to improve the lot of this hapless community. “The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad of other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the overall resource availability.”

The state did try to understand the economic plight of Muslims through the Gopal Singh Committee, the Ranganath Mishra Commission, and finally, the Sachar Committee. Most of these reports pointed out that the economic condition of Muslims was pathetic and had worsened over the preceding decades.

This was propagated by the BJP and its associates as follows: “This is what the Congress manifesto says,” he (Narendra Modi) claimed. “They will take stock of the gold that (our) mothers and sisters have, they will count and assess it, and then they will distribute that wealth, and they will give it to those people that Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government had said—that Muslims have the first right to the nation’s wealth.”

It is in this light that one welcomes a new report from the US-India Policy Institute and the Centre for Development Policy and Practice, Rethinking Affirmative Action for Muslims in Contemporary India. The report has been prepared by Hilal Ahmad, Mohammad Sanjeer Alam, and Nazeema Parveen. This report takes an approach that moves away from quotas specifically for Muslims. The authors recognize that the Muslim community has different economic layers. While a few members are prosperous and do not need to be considered for reservations, they suggest a religion-neutral approach for the majority of Muslims, focusing more on caste. Here, caste and occupation are what should be examined.

An increase in the reservation ceiling is already being advocated by many. With such an increase, among other things, more Muslim categories could also be accommodated within OBC and Dalit quotas. The report uses CSDS-Lokniti data. The authors also consider the perceptions of Muslim communities. As reservations for Muslims are like a ‘red rag to a bull’ for the BJP and its ilk, the report focuses more on accommodating these sections within occupation-based OBC categories. Pasmanda Muslims (‘lower-caste Muslims’), the most deprived among Muslims, fall within the category of Dalits. Many Christian communities also fall into this category and need state support for a decent livelihood.

The report also considers the changing nature of the state and calls it a ‘charitable state’, which uses the word Labharthi for those who benefit from state schemes. According to Hilal Ahmad, one of the authors of the report, as far as the state is concerned, there is a shift from a “group-centric approach” to “space-centric” welfarism.

The authors recommend a rational, secular subcategorization of OBCs. Existing schemes and programmes need to be scaled up. Affirmative action is the need of the hour. Here, with all other qualifications and experience being equal, preference is given to marginalized groups (based on caste and gender) in job selection. There are many artisans in these communities; upgrading their technology should help them.

The report is comprehensive and takes into account the limitations of the present situation, in which the ruling political establishment treats minorities as little more than second-class citizens. The million-rupee question is: will the current dispensation, following sectarian nationalism, implement such a report sincerely, overcoming its political biases?