"Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true." - Swami Vivekanand

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Is Gujarat Govt. anti-Muslim?


To this modern day, in our ugly socio-politics, it has become necessary to criticize Narendra Modi and attack Gujarat Govt. to show how secular we are! That has become a fashion for self-claimed secularists who are in reality pseudo-secularists.

The Congress Govt. speaks much about religious minorities and makes a show to woo them. It has started building new(or continued with building of) Haj Houses despite Supreme Court Judgment (by Shri. Aftab Alam and Smt. Ranjana Desai JJ) to stop the Haj subsidies in phasewise manner. UPA Govt’s ‘spineless head(!)’ Mr. ‘Moun’mohan Singh depicts the famous character of ‘Dhrutarashtra’ under whose nose all sins are being committed. He went ahead in saying that Muslims of this country have first right over the resources.

Also, it has been an old and overused trick to appoint Committees and get favourable reports. It is necessary to remember few like Rajinder Sachar Committee, Rangnath Mishra Committee and U. C. Bannerjee Committee among others. Govt. acts upon such reports immediately and comes out with welfare schemes, scholarships, policies, freeships based on religion! Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down such a policy of AP State Government. For Maharashtra a similar policy was challenged in the Bombay HC; but Bombay HC failed to contemplate the dangers of the policy and could not envisage the divisive politics behind it. Now both the matters are sub-judice in the Supreme Court by way of Special Leave Petitions for ultimate decision.

But when we come to the Sachar Committee Report and Gujarat State, a very interesting piece of information I found, which is worth sharing with my readers.

Sachar Committee and its suggestion: Sachar Committee was established on March 9, 2005 under the chairmanship of Justice Rajinder Sachar to prepare a comprehensive report on the social, economic, and educational status of Muslims in Bharat. The Committee submitted its findings in November 2006.

It has suggested various measures to be taken by the Governments at Central as well as State level to elevate Muslims to a better position. The recommendation relevant here was that ‘posting a minimum of one Muslim inspector or sub-inspector in police stations which catered to a sizeable number of the minority community. This, the Sachar Committee said should be done to “not eliminate discrimination but as an initiative to build confidence”.

Thus State Governments were supposed to endeavor for this goal and implement other ideas or suggestions of the Sachar Committee.

Reality check by TOI under RTI: When Times Of India (TOI) filed and RTI query before the Home Ministry to know ‘what is the percentage of Muslims in states’ police forces’, some interesting and astonishing information has been revealed.

The highest number of Muslim police personnel is in the state of Gujarat! Then follows Assam, Kerala, W.Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. The picture will be clear by a look at following image. The main thing is that, states like Assam, Kerala etc. having more Muslim percentage in population than Gujarat have less percentage of policemen as compared to Gujarat. Fortunately Kerala, Assam have no BJP rule in it.

Gujarat has 5,021 Muslim police personnel in its 501 police stations compared to 2,210 Muslim cops in 451 police stations in Kerala.

State
No. of police stations
No. of police personnel
Gujarat
501
5,021
Kerala
451
2,210
West Bengal
525
2,048
Rajasthan
773
930
Jharkhand
417
616

The point which is being made here does not wish to justify the view that Sachar Committee report should be implemented. Infact on scores of issues mentioned in the Report, this author finds himself in disagreement. Many suggestions are vulnerable to criticism and rejection. The point here is to give due credit to a person who was severely blamed for spreading communal hatred. Without advertising for secularism, nearly 10 years of continuous rule in Gujarat has proved what can be a role model for other states to follow.