Even as insecure Congress leaders push for Muslim reservations, bolstered by some irrelevant statistics trotted out by the rajinder Sachar Commission, there is a serious question whether Muslims themselves are desirous of taking help of an arrangement that Dr BR Ambedkar had described as a "crutch".

A significant section of opinion-makers in the Muslim community is wary of falling into what it sees as a Congress plot to bitterly polarise the country on communal lines. The Congress has been past master at this. It fed Muslim insecurities for decades after Partition and treated the community as a docile votebank while doing nothing to improve their social and economic condition.

But since 1989, Muslims have drifted away and the Sonia-led party, realising that the ground is fast slipping under its feet, is looking to the community as its only saviour at the hustings.

It is a fact that the vast majority of Indian Muslims live in abysmal poverty, their educational levels are pathetic and India's recent economic surge has bypassed them. But nobody in his right mind would advocate reservations for them as a community because that would touch a raw nerve among non-Muslims, including beneficiaries of the prevailing quota raj. A Muslim MP of a party widely regarded as aggressively pro-Muslim confided to me earlier this week that he has been steadfastly opposing the idea both within and outside his party forum.

"It is a recipe for disaster. The Supreme Court will throw it out of the window as its judgement in the Andhra Pradesh case clearly shows. But in the process, Hindus will get highly agitated and the anti-Muslim prejudice of the middle class will get reinforced. We will be the losers on both counts," he lamented, adding that self-serving Hindu politicians, however, are unlikely to relent on the issue.

Another prominent Muslim intellectual said that he was now convinced that the "secular" politicians do greater disservice to his community than their "communal" counterparts. "The so-called secularists are single-handedly responsible for the growing appeal of Hindu communalism," he asserted.

I cannot agree with them more. If a Muslim quota eventually comes through, or is even seriously proposed, the Muslims will be its first victims. I am certain any such move will invite the wrath of SC/STs and OBCs even more than that of the upper caste Hindus. Besides, the idea of reservation for Muslims is totally misconceived and only seeks to exploit widespread ignorance about the existing system. As anybody familiar with the Mandal Commission's report knows, Muslim OBCs are already beneficiaries of the quota in Government jobs. BP Mandal did painstaking work using Census reports of the colonial era (since the last authentic caste-based Census was conducted way back in 1931) to identify backward Muslim communities.

He put them at par with Hindu OBCs because the caste system pervades all communities in India, including those who converted to Islam or Christianity. As a result, most Muslim OBCs are already entitled to quota benefits. And converted OBCs account for almost 80 per cent of Indian Muslims, the rest comprising a smattering of upper caste Hindus or original migrants from countries in Central Asia, Turkey and Iran.

That is why the idea of extending quota benefits to "Dalit" Muslims is hare-brained. Virtually nobody outside the Hindu Chaturvarna system converted to Islam, largely because the Muslims considered their professions "unclean". While the Muslim clergy is not being realistic when it says that Islam forbids casteism (in theory yes, but in India caste is all-pervasive), it is right in claiming there exists no Dalit category among Muslims. This is not a happy example to give, but the fact is that during communal riots it is the Dalits who have been the most aggressive in confronting Muslims across North India, with the exception of Bhagalpur in 1989 where it was essentially a conflict between Yadav and Muslim agriculturists.

So whom are we talking about? I am quite baffled by the failure of myopic Congressmen to recognise these ground realities. If Muslims have failed to take advantage of quotas already available to them, it is due to their educational backwardness, not the absence of opportunities. Obviously, job seekers with madarsa degrees will get ruled out of the ambit of modern employment, irrespective of reservations. The proposal to recognise madarsa degrees as adequate qualification is not only preposterous, but has also been sharply criticised by Saifuddin Soz, a leading Muslim member of the Union Cabinet.

The Congress is hard put to explain why Muslims are in this pathetic condition when it has ruled the country for 47 of the 60 years since Independence. Was it necessary to commission one rajinder Sachar to identify what a contemporary calls "The Missing Muslim" and get everybody's hackles up? What Sachar has "discovered" at a cost of several crore rupees of taxpayers' money was perfectly well known, at least to policy-makers. The sole purpose of setting up the Commission was for the Congress to shed crocodile tears over the Muslims' plight and set the stage for proposing community-based reservations.

The Commission has, however, brought out some embarrassing facts. It is now established that the Communists' breast-beating on the issue is hugely faked since West Bengal, which has been ruled by them for 30 years, is at the bottom of the list of Muslim empowerment.

Tamil Nadu, ruled by non-Congress regional parties for almost 40 years, tops the table. And much-maligned Narendra Modi's Gujarat, governed by the "Hindu communalist" BJP for over a decade, is second in terms of Muslim empowerment. Admittedly, though, these statistics are of little practical use and do not in any way suggest necessary measures to rectify the situation.

Actually, the key to the rectification lies in the hands of the community, not vote-seeking politicians. But who will bell the cat? The obscurantist Indian Muslim ulema have a vested interest in keeping the community backward in order to preserve its leadership over ignorant followers. What an irony that the Saudi authorities have directed India to ensure that every Haj pilgrim this year is vaccinated against polio! And back home, fatwas are routinely issued from the pulpit directing Muslims not to accept the polio vaccine allegedly because it is a Hindu plot to make Muslims impotent!

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims have no time for such obscurantist falsehood. Most of them aspire to follow the examples set by President Abdul Kalam, IT baron Azim Premji, celluloid icons of Mumbai cinema and numerous talented sportspersons including Sania Mirza. But to achieve their true potential, the Indian Muslim has to be liberated from the bondage of the rabid, ignorant ulema and cynical politicians who are leading them to an intellectual and economic slaughter-house. If quota is brought in now, it will prove to be a cast iron obstacle in the way of Muslim emancipation. It is time the Indian Muslim stood up.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, November 26, 2006