“Jaag mere Punjab ke Pakistan chala” — Habib Jalib

RECENTLY, Prof Christophe Jaffrelot, an authority on India’s Muslims, spoke on ‘The Plight of Minorities under Modi’s India’ at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. He painted a sombre picture.

Since 1947, India’s “democracy” had evolved through the Gandhi/Nehru phase of “conservative democracy”, to a post-Mandal more inclusive democracy, to today’s BJP-dominated “ethnic democracy”. This ethnic democracy had evolved from Savarkar’s Hindu rashtra (Hindu state) to Modi’s Hindu raj (Hindu rule.) Accordingly, India’s Muslims had been marginalised institutionally, economically, and educationally.

Statistics from 1978 to 2016 showed the number of Muslims in the Indian Administrative Service was around four to five per cent, although Indian Muslims were 14.5pc of India’s population. In the Indian Police Service Muslims were a mere 2 to 2.5pc. The only institution where Indian Muslims exceeded their percentage of the population were Indian jails! As for the judiciary, there were only one or two Muslims among the 30 justices of the supreme court of India. Although Jaffrelot did not mention it, Muslims in the Indian military have been reduced from a third at partition to 2pc today. However, he mentioned the bureaucracy of occupied Kashmir as being “de-Kashmirised.”

Indian Muslims have only 9.5pc of India’s wealth, whereas the Hindu upper castes, with less than half the population of the Muslims, have 36pc.

Politically, the ruling BJP which won two landslide electoral victories in a row did not have a single Muslim in parliament. After the BJP defeated the Samajwadi Party........

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