Muslims being Abused and discrminated in India скачать в хорошем качестве

Muslims being Abused and discrminated in India

A report prepared by a seven-member committee headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar has conceded that India's Muslim minority faces appalling socioeconomic deprivation and is the victim of official neglect and frequent police harassment and violence. The committee, which was charged with investigating the socioeconomic status of India's 150 million Muslims and recommending means of improving their lot, was appointed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March 2005. It has long been patently obvious that India's Muslims are disproportionately represented among the poor and that they have been the target of official discrimination. From 1998 to 2004, India's government was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which openly espouses the Hindu-supremacist doctrine of Hindutva. In 2002, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed and tens of thousands more left homeless by an anti-Muslim pogrom in BJP-ruled Gujarat. Nevertheless, the Sachar Committee's findings constitute a devastating indictment of bourgeois rule in India. In particular, they puncture the claims of the Congress Party, which dominates the current UPA coalition and has governed India for most of the 60 years since independence, to be the architect of a secular democracy. Representing 13.4 percent of India's population, Muslims are far and away India's largest religious minority, living, albeit in varying concentrations, in all parts of the country. The Congress-led UPA had two major motivations for appointing the Sachar Committee. Addressing or at least appearing to address some of the grievances of India's beleaguered Muslim minority is a way the current government can differentiate itself from the former BJP-dominated coalition, while pursuing the same socially incendiary neo-liberal economic agenda. Sections of the Indian establishment have become apprehensive over the politically destabilising consequences of the growing alienation of India's Muslims, and in particular of a spurt in support for Islamicist organisations, some of them with terrorist affinities. However, so damaging were the Sachar Committee's findings to the Congress's secular pretensions that the UPA government delayed the report's release for some two months. Discrepancies between leaked copies of the report and the final version indicate, moreover, that the government insisted that some parts be deleted before making the Sachar Committee's findings public. The report concedes that India's Muslims live under a shadow of fear due to a communalised political establishment and state machinery: "Communal tension or any untoward incident in any part of the country is enough to make Muslims fear for their safety and security. The lackadaisical attitude of the government and the political mileage sought whenever communal riots occur has been very painful for the Community." The report adds that Muslims have come to fear the police and security forces: "Concern was expressed over police highhandedness in dealing with Muslims. Muslims live with an inferiority complex as 'every bearded man is considered an ISI [Pakistan's foreign spy agency] agent'; 'whenever any incident occurs Muslim boys are picked up by the police' and fake encounters [between security forces and alleged Muslim terrorists] are common. In fact, people argued that police presence in Muslim localities is more common than the presence of schools, industry, public hospitals and banks. Security personnel enter Muslim houses on the slightest pretext. The plight of Muslims living in border areas is even worse as they are treated as 'foreigners' and are subjected to harassment by the police and administration."