What it Means to be a Muslim in India

Today
Findings and Recommendations of Delhi Meet

A national meet was organized on ‘What it Means to be a Muslim in India

Today’ by Anhad in collaboration with Siasat and other organizations in
Delhi from October 3 to 5.

The following persons were members of the Jury that heard and evaluated
the testimony presented at the meet: Ahmad Saeed Malihabadi, Asghar Ali
Engineer, Admiral Ramdas, Colin Gonsalves, Gagan Sethi, Ghanshyam
Shah, Hanif Lakdawala, Harsh Mander, Kavita Srivastava, Mahesh Bhatt,
Prashant Bhushan, Ram Punyani, Rooprekha Verma, Sukumar Muralidhran,
Tarun Tejpal, Uma Chakravarthy, Zafar Agha, Zahid Ali Khan, Zoya
Hassan

Reproduced here is a report which contains the major findings and

recommendations that emerged from the hearings.

Overall

There is an intense, almost universal sentiment of fear and growing despair

among Muslim citizens. Many who testified at the meet declare they felt
reduced to second class citizenship. They shared their mounting
disillusionment with all institutions of governance, and more so with the
police and judiciary, as well as with political parties and to some extent the
media.

There is on the one hand the constant dread of being profiled as a terrorist,
or of a loved one being so profiled, with the attendant fears of illegal and
prolonged detention, denial of bail, torture, unfair and biased investigation
and trial, and extra-judicial killings. There is on the other hand the lived
experience of day-to-day discrimination, in education, employment, housing
and public services, which entrap the community in hopeless conditions of
poverty and want. This is fostered in a situation of pervasive communal
prejudice in all institutions of the state, especially the police, civil
administration and judiciary; and also the political leadership of almost all
parties; large segments of the print and visual media; and the middle classes,
and the systematic manufacture of hate and divide by communal
organisations.

It was repeatedly emphasised that this is not simply a problem of victimhood

of or injustice to a particular community. It is a grave challenge to the basic
values of the Indian Constitution, including democracy, secularism,
fraternity and the rule of law.

Major Findings

1. The pervasive sense of insecurity reported from various corners of

the country derived greatly from the prejudice, illegality and impunity
with which police forces across the country deal with the challenges of
terror. This is a regular pattern that occurs after every terror attack, and
sometimes even when there have been no actual terror episodes but the
state authorities claim that there was a conspiracy which they detected
and prevented. Testimonies from many states in the country outline this
chilling pattern, of Muslim, mostly male youth, usually with no criminal
records, being illegally picked up by men in plain clothes, and taken
blind-folded in unmarked vehicles to illegal locations like farm houses
which are not police stations. There they are tortured to coerce them to
confess to terror crimes. Many men testified in the meet to brutal and
terrifying torture. A few are killed in extra-judicial killings or
‘encounters’. The rest are ultimately produced after several days of illegal
detention before magistrates, who ignore injuries that suggest torture.
They are then officially remanded to extended police custody, and
ultimately charged with a range of crimes of terror and treason. Many are
charged with multiple crimes of terror, sometimes 20 or even 50, in many
states, making it impossible for the youth charged with these grave
crimes to defend themselves. Even if the legal justice system worked
efficiently, it would take many years, sometimes decades, for these cases
to be heard and concluded against each of the individuals. For all these
years, the youth would continue to be held in detention. Almost no one
who bears a Muslim identity is exempt from the fear that they, or
members of their families, can be subjected to the same allegations of
terror links, and to similar processes of detention, torture, encounter
killings or prolonged, multiple and biased trails. It was noted that
completely different standards are applied in the cases of the Hindutva
terror organizations which have come to light.

2. The testimonies underlined the aspirations of the people of the

community to participate in economic and social development in the
country, as equal partners as people of other communities. Many women
and men who testified in the national meet spoke of the importance to
them of modern and high quality schooling and higher education, and
sought much higher levels of public investment in their education. There
was careful and thoughtful analysis of the design and implementation of
measures announced by the Central government to address the low social
and economic indicators documented by the Sachar Committee. It was
pointed out that the per capita levels of investment for the community are
still low. The scheme for investment in districts with high minority
population, at best cover 30 per cent of the total population. The
programmes are for area development rather than programmes focussed
on the minorities; therefore they prove blunt instruments as much of the
expenditure is on general infrastructure and little to directly benefit
deprived people of the community. They are not consulted about their
priorities. The scholarship programme is welcome, but also suffers from
infirmities of procedure and targets which limit its impact. Financial
institutions including nationalised banks are still reluctant to extend
credit to Muslims.

3. There were many testimonies about open prejudice and bias of

public institutions towards Muslims, but it was confirmed that these
prejudices are equally evident outside government as well. There were
also reports of profiling against Muslims by the criminal justice system
even beyond terror crimes, reflected in disproportionately high Muslim
populations in jails. Many sensitive and senior positions in both central
and state government departments, including in the home, education,
social welfare and information departments, continue to be held by
officials with sympathies with communal ideologies and organisations,
and the UPA government has done little to identify and replace them. In
particular, sections of the media were examined for their role in
reinforcing communal stereotypes, as well as for uncritically
broadcasting the police version in terror-related arrests and encounter
killings. Textbooks often show similar bias, and this is particularly
dangerous because for millions of poor and especially rural children, the
textbook is the only source of the printed word which they can access.
 4. People reported from many parts of India of difficulties in getting
homes on rent or on sale in non- Muslim localities, or admissions in
schools and institutions of higher education. People spoke in many
corners of the country of systematic efforts to destroy and boycott the
livelihoods of Muslims. Sustained decentralised hate campaigns are
organised which portray Muslim men as predators against Hindu girls,
and people who slaughter the cow which is sacred to the Hindu
community, and vigilante groups supported tacitly by the police target
Muslims for these alleged social violations. There were reports, again
from many corners of the country, about ejection from cemetery and
waqf lands. The latter are valued at billions of rupees, and if managed
with efficiency and integrity, could yield large resources for education
and livelihoods for the community.

Recommendations

1. There should be a high-powered judicial commission headed by a

former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appointed to examine all cases
of terror across the country. Those that seem doubtful or fabrications
should be handed over to a Special Investigation Team appointed and
supervised by the high-powered judicial commission. It should complete
its task in one year, so that prolonged detention of persons against whom
there is little convincing evidence is not prolonged further.

2. In cases in which it is obvious that false cases were framed and

evidence fabricated, the police officers should be prosecuted (tampering
with evidence in cases which can result in capital punishment is itself a
capital crime). Victims who were detained and ultimately found innocent
should be paid compensation by the state for the suffering and lost years
of their lives.

3. There is a perceived slowdown in investigating and prosecuting

cases of alleged terror activities by right wing Hindutva organizations.
These investigations should be resumed, and placed under the leadership
of officers of impeccable secular credentials and integrity.

4. There should be a concerted drive to recruit much larger numbers of

Muslims to all levels of the police, civil administration and judiciary. For
this, all the recommendations of the Sachar Committee for affirmative
action should be notified in 6 months, and implemented in 3 years.

5. The UPA government must immediately redeem its pledge and

enact the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of
Victims) Bill, but not in its present form. It must incorporate the major
elements suggested by civil society groups. Communal violence is, by its
very nature, a targeted crime and a mass crime, perpetrated on a
community of persons. As such these crimes do not find themselves
reflected in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and other extant penal laws.
Because of their nature as `targeted mass crimes’, they need to be
recognized as such, drawing upon the concepts of genocide and crimes
against humanity.

6. When persons in positions of official power deliberately fail to

prevent the eruption of communal violence, or to stop its continuation,
the responsibility for the eruption, or continuance, in the penal law as is
stands, does not provide for prosecuting or punishing them. ‘Command
responsibility’ has to be built into the law if the perpetrators of violence
are to be drawn into a legal scheme of punishment and deterrence. The
law should explicitly recognize and punish communal crimes that result
not just from active participation or abetment of state authorities, but also
crimes of omission, or what may be described as ‘culpable inaction’.

7. Any proposed law on communal violence must use the concepts of

restoration, reparation and compensation, depending on the scale and
nature of mass communal violence, which includes rescue, relief
(including establishing relief camps for as long as affected people feel
insecure), compensation, restitution, rehabilitation including assistance of
soft loans and land allocations to rebuild livelihoods and shelters to levels
not less than before the violence and in conformity with the wishes of the
affected persons, and the reconstruction of places of worship destroyed in
the violence. It should also contain internationally accepted norms for the
internally displaced. These should be inviolable, legally enforceable
rights of the victim-survivor, and extended according to national
framework/policy of entitlements for victim-survivors of communal
violence, rather than leave it to discretion at the state level.

8. Strong action should be taken under Section 153A of the Indian

Penal Code against organisations which indulge in hate campaigns and
communal propaganda. The requirement of prior sanction of the state
government before a complaint in registered under this Act should be
waived.

9. A law against communal discrimination on the lines of the SC ST

Act should be enacted to recognize specific crimes of discrimination
against minorities and punish these severely. Such crimes of communal
discrimination would include organising social and economic boycott,
communal propaganda, propagating communal stereotypes in textbooks
and the media, and denial of housing and employment on communal
considerations. The Act would contain provisions for compensation, and
punishment of public officials.

10. Officials who carry communal prejudices should be identified, and

removed from sensitive positions in which their decisions have bearing
on minorities, such as in the departments of home, education, welfare,
information, and in financial institutions.

11. The Prime Minister should nominate a 10-member committee to

undertake a nationwide campaign against the communalisation of
society, akin to the literacy campaign and temple entry campaigns of the
past. The features of discrimination in everyday life have not been
sufficiently acknowledged, let alone studied, by government, even in the
otherwise laudable Sachar Committee. This committee should also study
and document these social processes of discrimination, some of which
came to light in the national meet.

12. The Prime Minster’s 15-point program should be given statutory

status. The government should constitute a high-level Empowered
Committee in the Prime Ministers’ Office with senior non-officials who
have worked on this issue constituting at least half the membership, to
monitor implementation of measures to improve the socio-economic
conditions of Muslims, including implementation in letter and spirit the
recommendations of the Sachar Committee.

13. Allocations should be sufficient to cover the large deprived

population, in a Minority Sub Plan - like the Tribal Sub Plan and the
Special Component Plan – which is proportionate to the population of the
communities. The Plans should be not to simply develop districts with
high minority population, but directly benefit them with high quality
education at all levels, health care, and support for livelihoods and
employment.

14. The Committee should be empowered also to ensure the Waqf

properties are managed in ways that their incomes are converged with
public investment to ensure further topping up of resources for the
development and benefit of the deprived members of the community,
with special focus on children, youth and women. We should build
institutional mechanisms to use Waqf property incomes also to protect
human rights.