Editorial

The Andhra Pradesh Government deserves kudos for reserving five per cent jobs and seats in educational institutions for Muslims. Not alone, the Congress government in Hyderabad has kept its promise made in its manifesto last year, but has taken a genuine and substantial step towards ameliorating the socio-economic conditions of the much deprived minority. That there will be usual murmurs of protests and accusation of “minority appeasement” both from the pursuers of sectarian politics and the advocates of meritocracy is natural and understandable.


The move must be welcomed as the Government did not resile from its stand despite opposition and an adverse court fiat that sought the Government to do more homework and route its decision through the Backward Classes Commission. Undaunted by the hurdle, the Y. Rajashekhar Reddy Government pursued the issue relentlessly and kept the electoral promise. It was rare indeed for a Government to have shown such tenacity in holding on to its promise.


A survey prior to the decision had shown that Muslims were lagging behind all sections of people across the social spectrum in Andhra Pradesh. Rural unemployment among them was double the state average of 8 per cent. Drop-out rate was eating away the educational base at primary stage with only 6.93 per cent children remaining in school at 10th standard level. Muslim representation in engineering and medical colleges ranged between 2 and 4 per cent. Barely 12 out of every 1,000 persons in the community owned four hectares of land. Per capita expenditure was found to be Rs. 113 a month, much lower than the state average.


Fortunately, the community rightly maintained the emphasis on reservation being the only panacea in a situation where traditional backwardness and deeply entrenched discrimination against them were both instrumental in perpetuating their backwardness, poverty and deprivation. Nothing else could have worked.


The reaction of the BJP is nothing unusual. It has expressed its determination to challenge it in the court on the basis of there being no basis for religion based reservation. It only enhances the need for an amendment in the Constitution whereby reservation could be granted even on the basis of religion. Are not the political parties now vying with each other in seeking reservation for women even when gender is no criterion for reservation?


But a greater responsibility falls on the Muslims of Andhra Pradesh to claim their share of quota. The community will be called to mobilise all its resources to feed educated youth for vacancies, like the experience in neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala where 4 per cent and 12 per cent jobs are reserved for Muslims. But surveys point out that quota meant for the community has either to be surrendered or passed over to general pool for filling for want of able and qualified men and women. This should serve as an index of the gap between the fiery rhetoric on reservation and deficient activism witnessed within the community.


With Andhra Pradesh joining the three other South Indian states in extending reservation to Muslims, it would be worthwhile to evolve a sound and cogent basis for reservation in Central Government services. The parties cannot duck under the plea of religion as a criterion being outside the pale of the Constitution. For too long the Leftist in West Bengal have trotted out this familiar excuse to deny quota for 23 per cent Muslims in the state even though the community there figures at the bottom of the socio-economic index.

Muslims must actively engage with non-Muslims in order to ‘promote the good and resist the evil.’


The classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence or fiqh evolved in a context of Muslim political power. Premised on the notion of Muslim political supremacy and having developed in regions where Muslims were the dominant community, they paid scant attention to the possibility of Muslims living as permanent minorities. Some jurists argued that there were only two possibilities before Muslim minorities: migratiom (hijrat) to a land where Muslims were the majority or else launching a struggle (jihad) to establish Muslim political rule in their territories. On the whole, the assumption underlying classical fiqh was that the ideal Muslim life was one that was led in a state ruled by Muslims and in accordance with the Islamic law.


The early scholars of fiqh did not face the problem of the legal status of Muslims living as minorities, but as theoretical equals of people belonging to other faiths. Hence, for Muslim minorities living in secular democratic states today, the existing corpus of fiqh literature provides little guidance, and is, in some respects, clearly inadequate. The problem that this has posed in enabling Muslim minorities to reconcile their faith commitments with their status as citizens has led to the emergence of what is now called fiqh al-aqalliyah or ‘fiqh for [Muslim] minorities’. This project is still in its initial stages, however, with only a few scholarly texts having as yet appeared on the subject. Alongside these efforts to develop new jurisprudential perspectives for Muslims living as minorities, a number of writings have been produced in recent years that seek to provide a general perspective, argued from within an Islamic paradigm, for Muslims living as minorities today.


An interesting view on the question of Muslim minorities is provided in a recently published booklet titled, Ghayr Islami Riyasat Aur Musalman (A Non-Islamic State and Muslims’) and written by a leading Indian Muslim scholar, Maulana Sayyed Jalaluddin Umri. Author of more than two dozen books on a wide range of issues, Umri is the deputy head (naib amir) of the Jama’at-i Islami Hind. He has had a remarkable academic career, having earlier served as the director of the Jama’at’s research centre, the Idara Tahqiq-o Tasneef-i Islami in Aligarh and as the editor of two important Islamic journals, the quarterly Tahqiqat-i Islami and the Delhi-based Zindagi-i Nau.


Umri begins his tract by questioning the oft-made thesis that Muslims living as minorities cannot be loyal citizens and that they cannot live together in peace and harmony with non-Muslims. He insists that this is baseless, adding that ‘Islam means worship and service of the one God’, which, in turn, means that a Muslim is commanded to work for peace and justice for all, irrespective of religion. He then goes on to an elaborate discussion of what he sees as the demands that Islam makes Muslims who live as minorities, and this takes up the remainder of the text.


The foremost concern for Muslims, whether living as minorities or as majorities, Umri writes, is for them to remain steadfast in their faith despite all odds and to lead their lives in accordance with Islam ‘to the extent possible’. In this way, Umri appears to suggest, Muslim minorities can remain committed to a vision of Islam as a complete way of life while living in a state where the Islamic law is not recognised at all, as in the West, or else is legally enforced only in the domain of family law, as in India. As long as they enjoy freedom of religion, Umri argues, Muslim minorities ‘must be well-wishers of their state and country’. To resort to treachery and disloyalty, he adds, are ‘against their basic beliefs and faith’. Muslim minorities, he writes, must seek to play a positive role in the development of their countries ‘in accordance with Islamic teachings’. A major task in this regard says Umri is that they should strive to ‘enlighten’ their non-Muslim fellow countrymen about ‘true ideology’, ‘high morals’ and ‘pure politics’, which, in other words, means to convey to them the message of ‘the way of life revealed by God’ or Islam. Further, they must also work towards establishing the Islamic ‘system of life’ in their own country through preaching, but by using only ‘morally acceptable’ and legal means. In other words, Umri sees the state of Muslim ‘minority-ness’ as, ideally, only temporary, hoping that through preaching work (da’wah), the non-Muslim majority would finally be won over to Islam, after which an Islamic state and society could be established. This is why he sees da’wah as the principal task before Muslims, particularly those who live as minorities.


In other words, as Umri views it, the greatest service that Muslim minorities can render to non-Muslims is to introduce them to Islam, which Umri regards as the only perfect religion, the answer to all the woes of the world as well as the only way to salvation in the hereafter.


At the same time as Muslims must actively engage with non-Muslims in order to ‘promote the good and resist the evil’, they must also be careful not to renege from their Islam or seek to modify it to ‘please others’. This is a possibility that Umri sees as particularly possible in a non-Muslim majority state, where the state itself might seek to promote ‘distorted’ versions of Islam in order to destroy the ‘separate identity’ of its Muslim citizens so that they could then be assimilated into the majority community. Umri adds that just as the Prophet (Pbuh) refused to change even a single letter of the revelation he had received although this might have won over his Qur’aish opponents, Muslim minorities, too, must resist all attempts of the state or majority communities that seek to promote ‘wrong’ interpretations of Islam in order to suit their own interests.


Umri’s vision for Muslim minorities thus provides an alternative to classical fiqh formulations that did not envisage the possibility of Muslims living together as equal citizens in a non-confessional state.
The writer can be reached at ysikand@yahoo.com