The mirage of Muslim reservation

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Exactly 12 days after India achieved independence, the Scheduled Castes and the Muslims were given political reservation. Following a debate on 'Report on Minority Rights', they were classified as 'minorities' and the Constituent Assembly passed a bill giving them reservation proportionate to their population. The next day, some members intelligently brought an amendment to the bill stating that the SCs were part of the Hindu community.

A day after the bill was passed (on 28th August 1947), Maulana Hasrat Mohani, a member of Constituent Assembly, objected to the use of word 'minority' for 'Muslims'. "I refuse to accept Muslims to be a minority. Now you say you have done away with this communalism. Are we not calling a minority to refer only to Muslims? The Muslims refuse to be called a minority if parties are formed on political line," he said. Maulana was not allowed to speak further on the subject as the bill was already discussed and passed.

However, two years later, Muslims were removed from the list of reservation beneficiaries. While the SCs, who were technically members of the 'Hindu community', are reaping the benefits of reservation till date, the Muslims are forced to live with just the tag of being a 'minority'.

After showing it a mirage of reservation immediately after independence, the political parties continued to lure this 'minority' community by promising reservations of a different kind, especially before elections. In some cases, the parties boldly replaced the word 'minority' with the Muslims. The Congress party promised 5 per cent reservation to the Muslim community in education institutions and government jobs before 2004 general elections. After coming to power the YSR Government tried to fulfill the promise. But the policy was struck down by the courts in 2005.

Later, it referred the matter to a Backward Classes Commission which recommended reservation for 15 economically and socially backward 'castes' of Muslims. On 23rd July 2007, the Andhra Pradesh Government passed a legislation giving four per cent reservation to the identified 'castes' under BC-E category. However, a seven-member constitutional bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down this legislation too on three different grounds.

It is surprising that the legal department of the Andhra Pradesh Government has failed twice to identity the lacunae in the legislation. Or may be, the politicians want to keep the Muslim reservation issue alive for every election, and therefore, they implemented imperfect orders. At the time of drafting of legislation itself, some experts have questioned the very existence of 15 'castes' within the Muslim community as Islam does not endorse casteism.

My surname is 'Shaik' and it does not represent any 'caste'. But, as per the law (which has been struck down now), I was eligible for reservation. There was no mechanism in place to check whether a Muslim really belonged to the identified caste, if it really existed. But such factors were not taken into consideration by the government.

Further, not many Muslims were convinced with the legislation as it had the potential to split the community. In future, Shias, Sunnis or Mehdivis would have demanded categorisation of reservation as it is being demanded now by the Malas and Madigas of Scheduled Castes in Andhra Pradesh. Though some Muslims enjoyed the reservation benefit in the last two years, but for all others it is still a mirage.

Now the West Bengal Government is showing a similar mirage of 10 per cent quota in employment for the Muslim community under the OBC category. Since the government is still in the process of identifying the educationally, socially and ecumenically backward Muslims, it is not yet certain whether this promise would be fulfilled before the 2011 assembly elections.

While the Andhra Pradesh Government is preparing to contest the High Court order in the Supreme Court, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi came up with a bigger mirage of promising 12 per cent reservation to Muslims in the proposed Telangana state.

There is no dispute that a majority of Muslims are still backward, but they should stop chasing the mirages. The four per cent or even 10 per cent reservation would only confine the Muslims, and I believe they would not try hard to get a share in the remaining 96 or 90 per cent of share that they deserve to get as Indians.