"Make separate IITs and IIMs for them." "Construct separate 5000 Kendriya Vidyalayas, including 3000 residential ones, exclusively only for them." "Grant two lakh separate scholarships for them." For whom these demands are being made? Not for the outcastes of India kept in social isolation for centuries. Not for the tribals whom geography has isolated from the rest.

This is for Indian Muslims. In addition, the demand is more campuses of the Aligarh Muslim University. Muslim MPs belonging to different parties handed over this separatist agenda to the Human Resources Development Ministry last week. This move, the media reports, is a sequel to the Sachar panel report recently tabled before the Parliament.

Are such Muslim-exclusive institutions a solution for the problems of Muslims? Or being exclusive is the very cause of their problems? See being exclusive has excluded the Muslims from the mainstream. The Sachar panel's description of Muslim relationship with the rest of the Indian society brings out how isolated the Muslims are as a community from the Rest.

It says that the Muslims are not able to buy or get houses on rent in places of their choice. Their burqah, purdah, beard and topi which identify them only sets them apart in public domain, it points out. Even as the report harps on the isolation suffered by the community, it also, by a slip, unconsciously hints at the reason for its isolation. The clue lies in the panel's remark that Muslims are unable to get admission for their wards in regular mainstream educational institutions. The report thus implicitly diagnoses the disease as isolation of the Muslims from the mainstream. But its prescriptions will not cure, but worsen the disease.

That integration into the mainstream is the surest way to end isolation of Muslims is implicit in the panel's report. But the Sachar panel prescribes more steps to isolate the Muslims _ in fact institutionalised and legitimised separation and isolation. Note the word `mainstream' in the Sachar report. Had this word occurred in a BJP resolution the seculars would have screamed that it smuggles in `Hinduisation'. The truth, which Sachar panel admits unconsciously, is that mainstream national identity eludes Muslims, thus tacitly admitting that Muslim exclusivism does not square with national mainstream identity. No discourse is needed on what is national mainstream. A nation is a heritage rooted in geography and not just a constitutional contract. Indian heritage is timeless.

Secular India sees that ancient Indian heritage as Hindu and sectarian and not common for all. Secular India has imaged all ideas or symbols or literature or heroes and heroines of pre-Islamic India as Hindu and therefore, by definition, unsecular. And for the Islamists, it is, of course, un-Islamic. This is the genesis of Islamic exclusivism in India.

There is nothing of ancient India which Islamic leadership in India will own or be proud of. Pakistan parliament will celebrate Panini as its ancestor. But imagine secular India accepting a Valmiki or Vyasa, leave aside Rama and Krishna, as their ancestor. For Indonesian Muslims, Ramayana and Mahabharata are national epics. For the seculars they will be unsecular and, for the Islamists, un-Islamic! Arabic names are Islamic and Sanskrit or Tamil names are un-Islamic. This is the source of Muslim exclusivism that invariably turns into separatism. See, in contrast, how, at the ground level, Muslims in India share their common bonds with the Hindu society. The Sachar panel admits that 39 per cent of the Muslims have declared themselves as belonging to Hindu backward castes. This was in 1999-2000.

The Muslim identification with the heritage of Hindu caste system seems to increasing by the day and NSSO says that 43 per cent Muslims declared themselves as backward castes in 2004-05. If they would identify with the heritage of caste, a not so good a part of their Hindu past, would they not identify with the better aspects of their parent society? If they would identify with caste would they not identify with Ramayana? They can and will. But Islamic leadership and secular parties will not allow them. Why? Simple. That will integrate them with their parent Hindu society and put an end to Muslim isolation. And with it will dissolve Muslim vote banks.

This will turn the seculars unemployed. That is why the secular anxiety to keep the Muslims distinct from their parent society in the name of minority identity. But as they separate and isolate the Muslims, let them be warned. All that culminated in the Partition of the country in 1947 commenced only with things separate for Muslims. From separate universities to separate laws to separate electorates and finally to separate nation. So secular India must integrate, not separate and isolate the Muslims. The consequences of isolation are bad for the Muslims and for the nation.

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, January 01, 2007