Everybody loves a good quota

Unless there is a procedure for notification of groups moving out of the reserved category, demands for reservation by groups like the Jats, Gujjars and Patidars will continue

I sometimes feel sorry for the governments of Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan, which are plagued by demands for reservation from powerful and aggressive communities. Patidars, Jats and Gujjars feel that communities that first managed to board the reservation train are uniting to keep them out. State governments would be perfectly happy to include them in the reserved category if they were not worried about the electoral backlash. Other Backward Classes (OBC) classification for Jats brings a similar demand from Rajputs; Scheduled Tribes (ST) classification for Gujjars brings about protests from the powerful Meena community unwilling to share the ST classification. Gujarat seems to have found a novel way to address these demands: be so inclusive that hardly anyone is left to protest. A 10 per cent quota for the economically backward among upper castes— that is, those with family incomes of less than Rs.6 lakh per annum (p.a.) — spreads the net so wide that the excluded group is minuscule.

Data on income

Since income data are hard to come by, let us look at three different sources of data to derive estimates of those with incomes above Rs.6 lakh p.a. First, data on income tax filers in 2012-13 show that only 13 per cent of individual returns have incomes higher than Rs.5.5 lakh p.a.; once we take into account people who do not file the returns at all, this forms about 3.5 per cent of total individuals in the country aged 18 and above. Since incomes may be hidden on tax returns, we must look to alternative data. The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) collects information on consumption expenditure, not incomes. If we apply household savings rate of about 25 per cent, a Rs.6 lakh income p.a. cut-off would result in a cut-off of about Rs.4.5 lakh consumption. NSSO data (2011-12) show that less than 1 per cent of the population falls in this category. A third source of data is the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of 2011-12, organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and University of Maryland. It collects data for both income and expenditure. It shows that less than 2 per cent of the population had household consumption of Rs.4.5 lakh p.a. and about 2.5 per cent had incomes of Rs.6 lakh p.a. in 2011-12. This suggests that whatever statistics we use, a Rs.6 lakh p.a. cut-off will exclude less than 5 per cent of the population from being eligible for reservations if the Gujarat example is followed nationwide.

These statistics should calm the passions around this new wrinkle in the battle for reservation in Gujarat. Appeasement tactics used by the Gujarat government are mostly ineffective; they will neither reduce options for middle-income Indians nor will they really expand benefits for the poor among forward castes.

Can we devise a narrower band that might really benefit the poor among groups currently ineligible for reservations? Here, our spectacular failure in identifying the poor for issuing Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards gives us reason to be wary. The IHDS survey found that in 2011-12, only 50 per cent of the poor had a BPL card while nearly a third of the non-poor had BPL cards. Almost all observers agree that identifying the poor is a difficult task resulting in errors of both inclusion and exclusion. This is particularly the case when incomes are growing rapidly and a household that is poor in one year may well climb out of poverty the following year. So focussing on just the poor among the general category may be more difficult than we anticipate.

Moreover, the demands for expansion of reservation have little to do with the poor among the so-called “general” category. Most of these demands are emerging from angry young men — many of them with college education — among agriculturalist communities that have historically held considerable political clout (for instance, the Navnirman movement of the 1970s, which the Gujarat government is acutely aware of).

Future of reservation

In order to get out of this quagmire, we need to think of the immediate concerns of educated youth and the broader future of reservation in India. What fuels the anger of young men from agricultural communities? As they see it, investing in education has got them only minor monetary benefits. With massive growth in private and distance education programmes of questionable quality, most college graduates today lack the skills for high-paying private sector jobs. They may well be qualified for lower-level clerical or support positions, but for these jobs’ salaries are far lower in the private sector than the public sector. The ratio of government salary to private sector salary for a college graduate has consistently increased; the IHDS data show that in 2004-05, a college graduate earned 62 paisa in the private sector for each rupee in the public sector; by 2011-12 it had dropped to 57 paisa. With implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission, this difference will grow. Not surprisingly, competition for government jobs is fierce. As Prabhat Mittal, Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh, noted, in 2015 nearly 2.3 million applications were received for 368 low-ranking positions in the State government. Is it surprising that frustrated young men try to beat this insane competition by demanding inclusion in the reserved category? If government salaries were more on a par with the salaries of the private sector, it is possible that this strident demand may subside. If current initiatives for increasing employability and creating more manufacturing jobs succeed, this will also reduce the pressure.

A longer-term solution, however, requires re-evaluation of the fundamental nature of India’s reservation regime. Affirmative action to make space for communities that have historically been subject to discrimination fits well with the Indian ethos of creating a level playing field and is part of the Indian Constitution. But the patchwork implementation, particularly for the OBC classification that is currently in place, makes little sense and leaves room for powerful lobbies to unite around demands for inclusion.

One of the ways of dismantling the quota raj is to ensure that the reserved category certificate is not a currency that is hoarded by groups who no longer need it. This involves periodic recertification into the reserved category. Unfortunately, the current system has an established, if imperfect, procedure for notification of new groups into the reserved category but not for moving groups out of the reserved category. A first step towards establishing such a process may be to ensure that we collect data on caste/tribe affiliation along with data on basic demographic and housing characteristics in the 2021 population census. This would allow us to move past the exclusive reliance on the 1931 census and obtain information on the current socio-economic conditions of all castes and communities in India.

Frankly, I have never understood the resistance from the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (ORGI) for collecting caste data in national population census. If the colonial census could do this in 1931, why can’t we do it today? Collecting data on thousands of castes is difficult, but it is by no means impossible. Perhaps, the collection of data on caste is a hot potato that the ORGI hopes someone else will handle. But surely national interest demands that this caution be put aside to develop a long-term solution to an issue that has gained such visibility. While we are destined for periodic eruptions of demand for reservations by groups like the Jats, without timely and accurate data we have no way of developing a rational system for responding to these demands.

Sonalde Desai is Senior Fellow, NCAER, and Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland. Views are personal.

Keywords: Jats, Gujjars, Patidars, Other Backward Classes classification, quota stir

Source: The Hindu, 03-05-2016

Wheel of Existence

OSHO





Pythagoras' is the first experiment in creating a synthesis.Twenty-five centuries have passed since then. There have been great mystics like the Buddha, Lao Tzu and Zarathustra. There have been great scientists like Newton, Edison and Einstein. But it is difficult to find a man at home with both worlds. Pythagoras is a class unto himself. The synthesis was needed then as it is needed today because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel motion.Samsara in Sanskrit means `the world', it also means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in 25 centuries. Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis came to an end because of man's own scientific growth. Without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. Now the wheel has come to the same point.
Uprooted, life loses meaning as values disappear. Everything seems pointless. Chaotic times can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or can prove to be a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.
Ordinary people, the majority, live in unconsciousness; so they can't see even a few steps ahead. If we can create a great momentum for meditation, for the inward journey , for tranquillity , stillness and love, humanity will be born anew. Only a few people will achieve enlightenment. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine.

Well-educated moms have half the no. of kids that illiterates do: Census data

Subodh Varma





With more girls reaching higher levels of education, the average number of children born to them after they get married is falling, Census 2011 data released on Friday shows. India had nearly 340 million married women and the average number of children was 3.3, down from 3.8 in 2001and 4.3 in 1991.But hidden in this average figure is a wide range between an illiterate mother and a welleducated one. Mothers who were deprived of education in their early life and have remained illiterate had 3.8 children on average. At the other extreme, mothers with a graduate degree or above had just 1.9 children. That's half the number of children compared to illiterate mothers.
The average number of children is calculated by counting the number of children ever born to women in the 45-49 age group, which is the end of their reproductive age and thus represents the total children they can have.
While the spread of education is widening with each passing year, school drop out rates are still unconscionably high among girls. An idea of this is gained from enrolment data for 2014-15 put out under the District Information System for Education (DISE), which shows that there were around 13 million girls enrolled in Class 1 but the number went down by 58% to 5.4 million in Class 12. With this kind of massive dropout, it will take many years for the overall fertility rates to decline substantially more. Census data shows that between the two ex tremes of illiterate and graduate+ mothers, there is a continuum ­ as the educational level increases, the average number of children goes down. Mothers who have not studied beyond class 8 (middle school) have three children on an average, those who dropped out between middle and high school had 2.8 children and those who had studied between class 10 and graduation restricted their children to 2.3.
The rates of decline between 1991 and 2001 were 14% for mothers who studied up to middle school but between 2001 and 2011 this decline was more at 18%. It was a similar situation for other educational levels.
Is it just education of mothers that is causing this decline? Experts say that it is a key factor but accompanied by a set of other circum stances that go with mothers' education. More educated women are likely to be from better income households and are also likely to be married to more educated men.So, according to them everything put together is helping.
The Census data also shows that there are still nearly 96 million illiterate married women who are in the child bearing age, that is, 15-49 years. And there also are about 16 million married women in the same age group that have not studied beyond primary level. Presumably, they are yet untouched by the wider trend of having less children.

Source: The Times of India, 3-05-2016

Heart of Asia conference begins in New Delhi

The Heart of Asia (HoA) conference began in New Delhi with the objective of bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan. The conference was attended by officials of a number of countries and is likely to deliberate on a host of issues like combating challenge of extremism and terrorism. Key facts The key elements of HoA process have been to devise a sustained, incremental approach to implementation of the confidence building measures (CBM) in Afghanistan/ It will also seek to speed up reconstruction in Afghanistan with a focus on enhancing investment and connectivity to the country. Energy, infrastructure and investment deals to shore up economic growth of Afghanistan may figure in the talks. About Heart of Asia Conference HoA conference is a part of the Istanbul Process established 2011 which provides a platform to discuss an agenda of regional cooperation with Afghanistan at its centre. The 14 member countries of HoA engage in result-oriented cooperation for a peaceful and stable Afghanistan and, by extension, a secure and prosperous region as a whole. 14 participating countries: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Supporting countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Iraq, Japan, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK and US. Supporting Organisations: UN, NATO, SAARC, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) and OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation).


Source: Current Affairs, 27-04-2016

China’s water hegemony in Asia

It wasn’t geography but guns that established China’s chokehold on major transnational river systems in Asia

Asevere drought currently ravaging South-east and South Asia has helped spotlight China’s emergence as the upstream water controller in Asia through a globally unparalleled hydro-engineering infrastructure centred on damming rivers. Indeed, Beijing itself has highlighted its water hegemony over downstream countries by releasing some dammed water for drought-hit nations in the lower Mekong river basin. In releasing what it called “emergency water flows” to downstream states over several weeks from one of its six giant dams—located just before the Mekong flows out of Chinese territory—China brashly touted the utility of its upstream structures in fighting droughts and floods.

But for the downriver countries, the water release was a jarring reminder of not just China’s newfound power to control the flow of a life-sustaining resource, but also of their own reliance on Beijing’s goodwill and charity. With a further 14 dams being built or planned by China on the Mekong, this dependence on Chinese goodwill is set to deepen—at some cost to their strategic leeway and environmental security.

Armed with increasing leverage, Beijing appears to be pushing its Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) initiative as an alternative to the lower-basin states’ Mekong River Commission, which China has spurned over the years. Indeed, having its cake and eating it, China is a dialogue partner but not a member of the commission, underscoring its intent to stay clued in on the discussions, without having to take on any legal obligations.

LMC, a political initiative emphasizing Chinese “cooperation”, is intended to help marginalize the commission, an institution with legally binding rules and regulations. China’s refusal to join the 1995 Mekong treaty, which created the commission, has stunted the development of an inclusive, rules-based basin community to deal with waterand environment-related challenges.

It was not a coincidence that Beijing’s water release started shortly before the 23 March inaugural LMC summit of the leaders of the six Mekong basin countries in Sanya, China. The LMC project is also designed to overshadow the US-sponsored Lower Mekong Initiative, which seeks to overcome Chinese opposition to the Mekong treaty by promoting integrated cooperation among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Mekong, Southeast Asia’s lifeline that is running at a record low since late last year, is just one of the international rivers China has dammed. It has also targeted the Brahmaputra, the Arun, the Indus, the Sutlej, the Irtysh, the Illy, the Amur and the Salween.

Asia’s water map changed fundamentally after the communists took power in China in 1949. It wasn’t geography but guns that established China’s chokehold on almost every major transnational river system in Asia. By forcibly absorbing the Tibetan plateau (the giant incubator of Asia’s main river systems) and Xinjiang (the starting point of the Irtysh and the Illy), China became the source of transboundary river flows to the largest number of countries in the world, extending from the IndoChina peninsula and South Asia to Kazakhstan and Russia.

Before the communists seized power, China had only 22 dams of any significant size. But now, it boasts more large dams on its territory than the rest of the world combined. If dams of all sizes and types are counted, their number in China surpasses 90,000.

China’s dam frenzy, however, shows no sign of slowing. The country’s dam builders, in fact, are shifting their focus from the dam-saturated internal rivers (some of which, like the Yellow, are dying) to the international rivers. This raises fears that the degradation haunting China’s internal rivers could be replicated in the international rivers.

China, ominously, has graduated to erecting mega-dams. Take its latest dams on the Mekong: the 4,200megawatt Xiaowan (taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris) and the 5,850megawatt Nuozhadu, with a 190 sq. km reservoir. Either of them is larger than the current combined hydropower-generating capacity in the lower Mekong states.

Despite its centrality in Asia’s water map, China has rebuffed the idea of a water-sharing treaty with any neighbour. Against this background, the concern growing among downstream neighbours is that China is seeking to turn water into a potential political weapon. After all, by controlling the spigot for much of Asia’s water, China is acquiring major leverage over its neighbours’ behaviour in a continent already reeling under very low freshwater availability.

In the Mekong basin, China has denied that it is stealing shared waters or that its existing dams have contributed to river depletion and recurrent drought in the downstream region. Yet, by ramping up construction of additional giant dams, it has virtually ensured long-term adverse impacts on the critical river system. Indeed, with Chinese assistance, landlocked Laos also plans to build more Mekong dams in order to make hydropower exports, especially to China—the mainstay of its economy.

China is clearly not content with being the world’s most dammed country, and the only thing that could temper its dam frenzy is a prolonged economic slowdown at home. Flattening demand for electricity due to China’s already-slowing economic growth, for example, offers a sliver of hope that the Salween river—which flows into Myanmar and along the Thai border before emptying into the Andaman Sea—could be saved, even if provisionally, from the cascade of hydroelectric mega-dams that Beijing has planned to build on it.

More fundamentally, China’s unilateralist approach underscores the imperative for institutionalized water cooperation in Asia, based on a balance between rights and obligations. Renewed efforts are needed to try and co-opt China in rules-based cooperation.

Source: Mintepaper, 27-04-2016

A drought of action

ndia has a lasting infrastructure of public support that can, in principle, be expanded in drought years to provide relief. But business as usual seems to be the motto

Droughts in India used to be times of frantic relief activity. Large-scale public works were organised, often employing more than 1,00,000 workers in a single district. Food distribution was arranged for destitute persons who were unable to work. Arrangements were also made for debt relief, cattle camps, water supply and more. The drought relief system was best developed in the western States of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan, but the basic framework was much the same elsewhere even if its implementation often fell short.

This year, nothing like the same sense of urgency can be observed, despite 256 districts being declared drought-affected. To some extent, of course, people’s ability to withstand drought on their own has increased: incomes have risen, the rural economy is more diversified, and water supply facilities have improved. Also, a semblance of social security system has emerged in rural India, with permanent income support measures such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Public Distribution System (PDS), midday meals and social security pensions. This also reduces people’s dependence on special relief measures in drought years.

None of this, however, obviates the need for active intervention in a drought situation. Despite rapid economic growth and some entitlements, the rural poor in India continue to live in conditions of appalling deprivation and insecurity. And in some respects, notably water scarcity, the impact of drought may be worse than before. Recent reports from Bundelkhand and elsewhere confirm that without emergency support, drought continues to plunge millions of people into intolerable hardship.

To some extent, the nature of the required interventions has changed. The simplest way of preventing starvation in a drought situation today is to intensify the permanent income support measures mentioned earlier, for instance by expanding employment under MGNREGS, providing special food rations under the PDS, and arranging for improved school meals. That may not be enough, but it would be a good start.

The MGNREGS funds crunch

There are, however, no sign of this happening. According to official data, the MGNREGS generated 230 crore person-days of work in 2015-16. This essentially restored MGNREGS employment generation to the level it had reached before crashing to 166 crore person-days in 2014-15, when a new government took charge at the Centre. However, the Finance Minister had not provided for this recovery. The result was a mountain of arrears at the end of 2015-16 — more than Rs.12,000 crore. Yet the Finance Minister continued the unspoken policy (initiated by the previous government) of keeping the MGNREGS budget more or less constant in money terms year after year. If last year’s employment level is to be maintained this year, the Central government would need to spend at least Rs. 50,000 crore, rising to more than Rs. 60,000 crore if arrears are to be cleared — a legal obligation since MGNREGS workers have a right to payment within 15 days. Yet the allocation for MGNREGS in this year’s Budget is only Rs. 38,500 crore. Unless the Central government accepts the need for a large injection of funds, MGNREGS employment is all set to contract again, or wage payments will be postponed — both would be a disaster in a drought year as well as a violation of people’s entitlements under the law.

Slipping up on food security

It is arguable that the PDS is even more important than MGNREGS as a tool of drought relief. Monthly food rations under the PDS are more regular and predictable than MGNREGS work. They also cover a much larger fraction of the rural population — 75 per cent under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). A well-managed PDS is a major safeguard against hunger and starvation.

It is no accident that the worst reports of food deprivation come from Uttar Pradesh, which is nowhere near implementing the NFSA. No Indian State has more to gain than U.P. from the NFSA. Before the Act came into force, barely one-fourth of the rural population in U.P. benefited from the PDS under the “below poverty line” (BPL) category. The rest received nothing as the “above poverty line” (APL) quota was routinely sold in the open market by corrupt middlemen. Further, even BPL cards were often in the wrong hands. The NFSA is a chance for the government of U.P. to clean up this mess and cover 80 per cent of the rural population under an improved PDS, as many of the poorer States have already done to a large extent.

Unfortunately, recent reports on the status of the NFSA in U.P. are most alarming. Rapid investigations conducted recently in Moradabad, Rae Bareli and Lucknow districts (the last one just 23 km from the State Assembly) all came to the same conclusion: NFSA ration cards are yet to be distributed, many people are not even aware of the Act, and the same flawed system continues much as before. So much for Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s upbeat statement (made twice, on record, on April 7, 2016) that “we have implemented the Right to Food Act”. One wonders whether he knows that elections are coming up next year in U.P., and whether he thinks that this is the way to win them. Opposition parties, it seems, are equally blind to the situation.

In other States, the status of the NFSA varies a great deal, from dismal (e.g. in Rajasthan) to reasonably promising (in many of the eastern States). Alas, these developments are receiving very little attention. Few issues are more important at this time than the successful roll-out of the NFSA, yet it seems to be off the Central government’s radar. The Finance Minister’s recent Budget speech, for instance, did not make a single reference to it, or for that matter to nutrition in general. In fact, the Central government (led by the Prime Minister’s Office) is making things worse by pushing for Aadhaar-based biometric authentication of PDS beneficiaries. This wholly inappropriate technology has already caused havoc in Rajasthan, and is all set to disrupt the PDS across the country if the Central government has its way.

For the first time, India has a lasting infrastructure of public support that can, in principle, be expanded in drought years to prevent hunger and starvation. Business as usual, however, seems to be the motto. The price is paid by millions of people who are not just exposed to intense hardship but also losing valuable human and physical capital, condemning them to further poverty in the future.

Jean Drèze is Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University.

Keywords: drought conditions, water scarcity, MGNREGS, public distribution system, NFSA, Right to Food Act

Source: The Hindu, 27-04-2016

This reform must begin within

Why I appeal to Muslim leaders to themselves ban triple talaq, polygamy, introduce other gender-friendly reform and bring the practice of Islam closer to its spirit.

Once again the issue of triple talaq and polygamy has surfaced with Shayara Bano, a 35-year-old woman from Uttarakhand, recently filing a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court. Women’s groups, Muslim and non-Muslim, are meeting to discuss the strategy to support the Supreme Court’s intervention in gettingMuslim women their rights under the Constitution. Other Muslim organisations, ulemas and maulanas through their legal counsels have argued that the court’s intervention would be tantamount to violation of their constitutional rights. They state that Islamic law is divine and should not be interfered with. Battle lines have thus been drawn. Underpinning this is the force of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, which has a declared agenda of bringing in the uniform civil code as one of its major election promises.

Let me stop for a recap. In 2000, as a member of the National Commission for Women (NCW), I released a report, ‘Voice of the Voiceless — Status of Muslim Women in India’. It resulted from two years of public hearings I held all over India where Muslim women from poor and deprived sections told me their stories. Woman after woman spoke of her double disadvantage: abject poverty and harsh personal laws. In the report I retold their stories in their own voices and presented it to the government. Its recommendations were placed in three sections addressed to the Muslim leadership, to civil society and to the ulema. At the time the NCW chair was the feisty Mohini Giri, who completed her term before the report was released. I retired in 2000 and the new commission had limited interest in the subject, so the report became a dead letter.

Three years later in 2003 under the banner of Muslim Women’s Forum (MWF) I returned to the field for an impact assessment of the 2000 report. I discovered that nothing had changed on the ground. Obviously no section had taken notice of NCW’s recommendations. The MWF report had an aspirational title, ‘My Voice Shall Be Heard’.

Slow winds of change

Over the years other Muslim women’s organisations were formed such as STEPS in Tamil Nadu, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) and lately Bebaak Mahila Collective. The traditional Muslim organisations are also changing, although slowly, and the MWF must be credited for it. During my NCW tenure and later as co-chair, MWF, I had interacted with two chairs of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Maulana Ali Miyan and Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi. Both were keen to show the world the true face of Islam so far as gender was concerned. The gender-sensitive views of Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq were well known. At the time, the secretary of the AIMPLB was Syed Qasim Rasul Ilyas, who shared our concern and belief. In the years that followed, I became member, Planning Commission, in which capacity I met leaders such as Maulana Fazlur Rahim Mujaddidi. I found them interested in revealing to the world the gendered face of Islam.

A few other things happened. A few women were made members of the AIMPLB. Male spaces opened for women. In 2007 in Lucknow I became the world’s first woman qazi. No one issued a fatwa against me for performing a nikah, other than a maulana from Firangi Mahal in Lucknow. And his word was soon discarded by his own colleagues.

Today the Supreme Court has become active on Muslim women’s rights and the matter is bound to come up soon after the summer break. The case of Shayara Bano gives it urgency. A few groups are planning to intervene in support of the uniform civil code. They represent what is regarded as the ‘liberal’ view. On the other side, the ulemas are preparing to counter them with Islamic arguments.

Time for a reality check

A few days ago, AIMPLB members met at Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow where this matter was discussed. They arrived at conclusions which have been heard many times in the past. Any interference in Muslim personal law, they said, was against the fundamental right of freedom of religion which has been given to all citizens by the Constitution of India. They declared that Muslim women are satisfied with their rights under the Sharia and feel more protected than women of other faiths.

I am deeply concerned about the danger in all these formulations. Muslim clerics’ insistence on the same old arguments will not cut ice with the courts nor within very large sections of the community. Besides being self-centred, this argument is also fallacious vis-à-vis the Constitution. On the other side, the confrontational approach of the ‘secular’ groups in making a claim for state-based intervention might belittle the efforts the community is making towards self-democratisation.

The open fight between the two groups will turn hostile. It will provide masala to the electronic and social media, and stereotypical images of Muslim women and Muslim men will be flashed as the backdrop to sharply divided panels who will engage in mutual acrimony. At the same time, it might bring to the fore the fundamental fact that Muslims are not a monolithic group, they do not think in one voice, and the AIMPLB is less representative of Muslims than it imagines.

However, whichever side ‘wins’, the impact on internal democratisation and reform and on Muslim women who seek to negotiate their rights within the faith would be an unhappy one. Either the ulema will claim rights over all discourse, or the state would intervene to make things right. The agency of Muslim women and men who have been resisting certain practices would be undermined.

And the result? All the players will fall in the anti-Muslim Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh trap — the trap is evident in the daily dose of Muslim hate spewed by their leaders. Another fallout of this unwillingness of parties to engage with each others’ positions would be a crystallisation of gender stereotypes about Muslims. Lately a Member of Parliament, Sakshi Maharaj, has asked the judiciary to save Muslim women who are considered “pair ki jooti” (footwear) by Muslim men; worn when needed and discarded when not.

It is the Muslim awam, men and women, who will pay with their lives when trouble erupts. For close to 70 years we have been witness to leaders, Hindus and Muslims, taking advantage of polarisation to incite communal riots. In distant pockets, far away from places where such rhetoric is born, Muslims are killed, lynched, and burnt for reasons they do not understand. We read about places like Latehar in Jharkhand where one Mohd. Mazloom is strangled allegedly for being a cattle trader. Blood of both communities’ innocents will be shed. Instigators, both Hindu and Muslim, will not be harmed. This should be prevented at all costs.

A viable middle path

There is a middle path. What I am proposing is nothing new. It was stated in the NCW report of 2000. For this middle path, the AIMPLB has a key role because it has many followers. They should step off the old track and project before the world the true spirit of Islam which is avowedly most gender-friendly and gender-sensitive regardless of its heinous distortion by groups like the Islamic State. They should say that we Muslims have never practised what the Koran and the Prophet taught us.

In addition, without being defensive, they should show how over the years there has been an effort to liberalise the Sharia in light of the various schools of Fiqh (jurisprudence). They should say that women are free to use whichever school suits them best. For example Ahle Hadith completely forbids triple talaq. The ulemas should also acknowledge and respect the multiple forums for women such as the All India Shia Personal Law Board, the All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board. Newer Muslim women’s organisations such as the BMMA have developed their own Nikah Namas (marriage contracts). With all this internal churning, there is a movement towards pluralism and democratisation. The old establishment should declare that there is no impediment to women using these various fora. They should have the confidence to say that whether it is the AIMPLB or the Jamiatul Ulema, no one has the exclusive claim to speak for all Muslims.

Muslim organisations should also invoke empirical data such as the Census and National Family Health Survey to prove that in many matters, Muslim women are less victimised than women of other religions. For example, there is empirical data that more polygamy exists in religions other than Islam. That being the fact, it is evident that it is the ‘religious sanction’ given to it which causes the uproar. That sting should be taken away.

Some Muslim bodies and individuals are fighting to bring Muslim women closer to what was enjoined for them in Islam. Just days ago Telangana qazis stated that they have struck down case after case of “one-sided talaq”. This is closer to the core of Islam which gave women property rights hundreds of years ago, in a region where the practice was to bury the girl child at birth. From its very inception Islam created a revolution in giving the highest status to the ‘lowest’ creation.

A uniform civil code is the Directive Principle towards which the country had promised to move. But this is also the election promise of a government that believes in homogenisation rather than pluralism. My appeal to the Muslim leaders is to stop this imminent danger by speaking about their efforts at internal democratisation, and move much faster to bring the practice of Islam closer to its spirit. They can themselves ban triple talaq, polygamy and introduce other gender-friendly reform. By reforming itself in full public view, it will make the Supreme Court’s intervention infructuous, and thereby they would have done exactly what was intended when Islam was revealed.

(Syeda S. Hameed is a former member of the Planning Commission.)

Keywords: public interest litigations, National Commission for Women, AIMPLB members, Muslim women, All India Muslim Personal Law Board

Source: Th Hindu, 27-04-2016