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By: V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
April 30, 2007
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In December 2006, Dr Manmohan Singh made a pan-Islamic declaration to the
effect that Muslims of India - and particularly Muslims only - will have a
knock-down priority in the vital matter of charge on scarce Indian
national resources taken as a whole. Soon after this lopsided and
unwarranted announcement, I wrote in these columns in News Today: "In my
view the Prime Minister's most inglorious statement in our recent history
only amounts to outraging the modesty of Mother India just for the sake of
hit and run and shit and run electoral gains for the Congress Party
through the treacherous quick-sands of Muslim vote-bank politics in the
ensuing Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2007 and the Lok Sabha
elections in 2009".
I am delighted to note that my initial assessment on the Sachar
Committee's dubious and political interpretation of core available data
relating to the socio economic status of Muslims in India vis-à-vis the
Hindus in majority made in December 2006 has been totally and factually
born out by the recent report of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO)
which says that it is the Christian Community, not Muslim that is most
unemployed. Justice Sachar has been guilty of national sabotage when he
fraudulently declared that Muslims are the most unemployed. This NSSO
Survey has also said that in urban areas 49 per cent of the Muslim
households are self-employed as against 36 per cent Hindu households and
27 per cent Christian households. This Survey covered 7,999 villages and
1,24,680 sample households.
All the enlightened Hindus of India know that Dr. Manmohan Singh's (which
means Sonia Gandhi"s) specially chosen hangman for achieving this Pan-
Islamic Pseudo Secular objective on the eve of Assembly Elections in UP
has been Justice Rajinder Sachar who has given his infamous report based
on half truths, fable, fiction, contrived and manipulated statistics to
hide the blatant truth at all costs with transcendental pseudo-secular
fervor. His only focus has been to advance the political fortunes of the
dying Congress Party. The entire Sachar Committee Report has been
overturned not by the RSS or the Sangh Parivar but by the recent report of
the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO).
Now the question is what was the provocation for the appointment of
Justice Sachar Committee? The answer can be given in the trenchant words
of Dr T H Chowdary, a great technocrat and humanist: "In order to gain the
block votes of Muslims to boost the sagging fortunes of Sonia-led
Congress, the UPA Government directed by the Italy-born Dr. Sonia Maino
Gandhi and kept in power by the non-Indian communist parties, the Prime
Minister, who has been reduced to a rubber-stamp by the ADHINAYAKI of
Congress appointed the JUSTICE RAJINDER SACHAR COMMITTEE to study and
report on the economic and social conditions of Muslims in the "secular"
democratic republic of India. "In profusion of his sympathy, Justice
Rajinder Sachar had advocated the adoption of proactive measures that
could bring up Muslim representation in proportion to their population in
every sector of India's economic and government activities. There is a
suggestion that the budget of every government department and development
project should set apart 15 per cent for helping Muslims".
A Notification was issued by the Prime Minister's Office on 9 March, 2005,
whereby a seven member High Level Committee, chaired by Justice Rajindar
Sachar, was constituted to prepare a report on the social, economic and
educational status of the Muslim community of India. In a country teeming
with the poor and the indigent, the reasons for appointing a Committee
solely to assess the socio-economic conditions of only one community,
namely the Muslims, while ignoring the deprived segments of other
communities, appeared quite mysterious, if not motivated.
R K Ohri, IPS (Retd), Secretary General, PATRIOTS" FORUM, New Delhi sent a
letter on 19 May, 2006 to the Justice Sachar Committee Office in New Delhi
in which he stated as follows: "The terms of reference of the Committee
included a specific provision requiring it to conduct "an intensive
literature survey to identify the published data, articles and research on
relative social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India", as
reiterated in para 2 (a) of the aforesaid notification.
At the same time, Para 5 of the Notification authorized the High Level
Committee to co-opt or invite such persons (s) at it deems appropriate, to
participate in any of its meeting as special invitee's). Prima facie, the
aforesaid two provisions were intended to empower the Committee for
arriving at the truth after considering the views of all those who wanted
to submit facts and figures. This was also clear from that fact that the
Committee had issued advertisements in a number of newspapers inviting
representations from all those who wanted to make both written and oral
submissions.
Our study group (known at that time as Concerned Patriots Think-tank wrote
two letters on 20 September, 2005 and 3 October, 2005 respectively,
requesting, the Chairperson of the Committee, to give an opportunity to
meet him personally for presenting our viewpoint on the subject along with
a written submission.
We were advised by Dr S Zafar Mahmood, Joint Secretary to Govt of India
and Officer on Special Duty, vide his letter dated 6 October, 2005, to fax
or send by post our representation "which the Committee will be happy to
consider". A facts-and-data packed Memorandum dated 26 October 2005 was
submitted to the High Level Committee by Speed post Acknowledgment Due on
31 October, 2005, because our effort to deliver the document by hand in
the Committee's Secretariat, against a proper receipt, did not succeed. It
was received in the office of the Committee on 10 November, 2005, as is
evident from the signatures on the Speed post Acknowledgment Due Receipt.
Another request seeking a personal audience was made vide our letter dated
7 November 2005, while forwarding a copy of the inadvertently left behind
Annexure 5 of our Memorandum (ie, Statement 7 of Census 2001 Religion Data
Report).
After waiting for Committee's response for nearly 24 weeks, a d.o.
reminder was sent to Justice Sachar on 18 April, 2006, drawing attention
to our long pending Memorandum and again seeking a personal hearing. On 17
May 2006, we received a communication from Shri Atam Prakash,
Administrative Officer of the High Level Committee, advising us to send
another copy of our Memorandum dated 26 October, 2005 submitted to the HLC.
Taking this opportunity, we slightly revised our submission and
accordingly sent another Memorandum, a revised one, on 18 May, 2006, to
the Committee. It was sent by Speed post on 19 May 2006 and contained yet
another prayer seeking a personal hearing.
Subsequently, three more reminders were sent to the High Level Committee
on 12 July, 2006, 23 October, 2006 and 9 November, 2006 fervently seeking
a personal hearing. In the last two reminders dated 23 October, 2006 and 9
November, 2006 some additional inputs were sent to the High Level
Committee in support of the facts stated in our revised Memorandum dated
18 May, 2006."
On 1 December, 2006, The Patriots" Forum learnt from media reports that
the Sachar Committee's Report had been tabled in the Parliament. It
transpired that the report had been submitted to the Prime Minister on 17
November 2006.
After going through the voluminous report, The Patriots" Forum was shocked
to note that their Memorandum was not considered at all by the Sachar
Committee despite a written assurance given to their Forum in Dr Zafar
Mahmood"s letter dated 6 October, 2006 that the Committee "will be happy
to consider" our representation. What is disgusting to note is that they
were not given any opportunity either to meet the Committee, though many
other Muslim groups, Muslim individuals and NGOs, were given an
opportunity to meet and interact with the Committee members - a fact
admitted in the Report on page XV (Acknowledgment). This denial of
opportunity to The Patriots" Forum can be viewed by any Court of Law in
India as a clear violation of the mandate assigned to the Committee in
terms of Para 2(a) of the Notification and the implied promise to consider
every viewpoint, as announced through advertisements in dozens of
newspapers. I am firmly of the view that the Sachar Committee did not want
to hear the submission of The Patriots" Forum because it had stated
clearly in its Memorandum that in terms of four important human
development indicators, namely Infant Mortality, Child Mortality,
Urbanization and Life Expectancy at Birth, the Hindus are more
disadvantaged than the Muslims and that the real cause of social
backwardness of the Muslim community, prevalent all over the world, lies
in their regressive social system and stranglehold of obscurantist clergy
and religious scholars.
It is strange and somewhat extraordinary that instead of reaching the
truth through objective inquiries and proper analysis, the Committee
started by recording what seems to be a pre-conceived value judgment given
to it as a directive by the UPA Government in the beginning of the report
in Para 4 of Chapter 1 by stating "Among these, the Muslims, the largest
minority community in the country, constituting 13.4 per cent of the
population, are seriously lagging behind in terms of most of the human
development indicators".
Since The Patriots" Forum consisted only of Hindus, the Office of the
Justice Sachar Committee treated them with Islamic (!!) contempt as
stateless citizens. If only the Imam of Jamma Masjid or some group of
motely Mullahs had sent a representation, either Justice Sachar himself
would have gone to meet them or at any rate he would have definitely
deputed Dr S Zafar Mahmood Joint Secretary to Govt of India and Officer on
Special Duty to their places of habitation to give a super-compassionate
Pseudo secular hearing with the full Roman Catholic benediction of Sonia
Gandhi, with the supplicant surrogate pathetic Prime Minister ever
in-waiting.
In these columns yesterday I had referred to the Historic Memoran dum
highlighting the wretched Social, Economic and Educational status of the
Hindus in majority in India presented by R K Ohri IPS (Retd), Secretary
General, PATRIOTS" FORUM, New Delhi on 19 May 2006 to the Office of the
Justice Sachar Committee in New Delhi which was put deliberately into the
waste paper basket by Justice Sachar with the full cooperation of his ever
servile Islam-embracing and Hindu-hating Office. R K Ohri and all the
Office Bearers and Members of the Patriots" Forum have to be congratulated
by more than 800 millions of Hindus in India for having displayed such a
tremendous public spirit and unsullied patriotism in these decadent days
when high treason, ever vigilant national sabotage and national subversion
have become the whole time official occupation of men at the highest
levels of authority in the UPA Government in New Delhi. Subsequently the
Patriots" Forum sent a more detailed Memorandum to Justice Sri Rajindar
Sachar, Chairperson, Prime Minister's High Level Committee on 226 October,
2006 about the socio-economic and educational status of Hindus vis-à-vis
Indian Muslims and followed by several subsequent reminders which were all
treated by Justice Sachar and his Committee with Islamic Anti-Kafir fervor
in the same manner as they had done in regard to the earlier Memorandum
sent by Patriots" Forum on 19 May, 2006.
The great public spirit shown by R K Ohri and his other patriotic
colleagues in the Patriots" Forum reminds me of the work done by The
Servants of India Society established by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, political
mentor of Mahatma Gandhi, in 1905. Gokhale defined its objectives in the
following burning words: "The claims of public life are everyday receiving
wider recognition and attachment to the land of our birth is growing into
a strong and deeply cherished passion of the heart". The great work of
rearing and raising the national superstructure as yet to be taken in hand
and the situation demands on the part of patriotic workers devotion and
sacrifices proportionate to the magnitude of this task. The Servants of
India Society has been established to meet in some measure these
requirements of the situation. One essential condition of success in this
work is that sufficient number of our country men must now come forward to
devote themselves to the cause in the spirit in which religious work is
undertaken. Public life must be spiritualized. Love of country must so
fill the heart that all else shall appear as of little moment by its side.
A fervent patriotism which rejoices at every opportunity of sacrifice for
the motherland, a dauntless heart which refuses to be turned back from its
object by difficulty or danger, a deep faith in the purpose of Providence
which nothing can shake "equipped with these, every patriotic worker must
start on his sacred mission and reverently seek the joy which comes of
spending oneself in the service of one's country".
I have no doubt whatsoever that great public spirited men like R K Ohri
and others in the Patriots" Forum, New Delhi, are today endeavoring under
very difficult and treacherous conditions to translate the grand vision of
Servants of India Society into a reality.
In his detailed Memorandum to Justice Sachar Committee on 26 October,
2006, R K Ohri, Secretary General, Patriots" Forum wrote as follows: "For
decades a myth, or an unsubstantiated belief, has been propagated across
by partisan politicians that as a community the Muslims in India are more
backward than the Hindus. In recent years this impression has gained
considerable credence thanks to the sustained efforts of vote-bank
besotted politicians and not-so-informed opinion-makers, including in some
the mainstream English media. No one seems to have ever cared to
scientifically analyze and compare the standard human development indices
of the two communities".
"On 25 August, 2005, a delegation of 26 Muslim MPs and 3 Muslim Ministers
of the UPA government had met the Prime Minister in an inelegant bid to
mount pressure for getting a quota of communal reservations sanctioned for
their community. Responding to the growing demands of the fundamentalist
lobby, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, constituted a High Level
Committee, under your chairmanship. The sudden appointment of the
Committee by the Prime Minister, apparently succumbing to the political
pressure, stirred some of us to undertake an in-depth study for assessing
the comparative socio-economic status of the two communities in a
scientific manner. The result of the research, which was entrusted to me
by our study group, startled even us. It revealed that in respect of
several major globally accepted determinants of socio-economic status, the
Hindus are more backward than the Muslims. These determinants are: I.
Incidence of Infant & Child Mortality II. Degree of Urbanization III.
Average Life Expectancy at Birth
I. Incidence of Infant & Child Mortality -- The Patriots" Forum submitted
the following data compiled by S.Irudaya Rajan which gives an overall
picture of Infant and Child mortality for Hindus and Muslims of India.
II. Degree of Urbanization--
"Degree of urbanization, or the relative proportion of a community's
population living in urban areas, is the second important global norm for
assessing socio-economic status of a community, or group. According to
Census 2001 (Religion Data Report), the proportion of Hindus living in
urban areas is 26 percent while that of Muslims living in urban areas is
36 percent - far ahead of Hindus by almost 40 percent. Thus Muslims of
India are ahead of the Hindus"
III. The Average Life
Expectancy at Birth -- "The average life expectancy at birth is another
important determinant of socio-economic status. According to NFHS-1, held
in 1992-93, the crude death rate per 1000 was 9.6 for the Hindus and 8.9
for the Muslims.
The foregoing facts clearly show that there is no justification for
classifying the Muslims as a socio-economically backward religious group,
especially when they have better human development indices than the
Hindus. This fact has been conformed in an interesting Seminar Paper
presented by Shri Sanjay Kumar (Fellow, Centre for Study of Developing
Societies) in a Workshop-cum-Seminar organized by the Indian Institute of
Public Administration on Sept. 2, 2006, it was pointed out that according
to the findings of the National Election Study (conducted by the CSDS
after interviewing 27,000 respondents, post 2004 general elections),
"there is hardly any difference among the level of educational attainments
among Hindus and Muslims". Justice Sachar Committee treated these research
findings with suave Soniaic contempt.
When I spoke to R K Ohri personally he told me that the Justice Sachar
Committee has only indulged in a cheap and vulgar game of Resurrection of
Convoluted Muslim Grievance Politics. I have spoken to more than 30 IAS
and IPS Officers who have held the highest posts in the Government of
India and all of them have endorsed the view of R K Ohri.
A detailed study of Justice Sachar Committee's Report will show that it
has extensively tried to ignore facts and taken recourse to extensive
misinterpretation of statistical data. A few instances are listed below:
1.There is a lop-sided over emphasis on the so-called fear of lack of
security which has been cited in more than one place as the cause of lack
of education and social backwardness of Muslims. Justice Sachar and his
Committee Members seem to be greater psychoanalysts than poor Sigmund
Freud! 2.In Chapter 2, it has been asserted without any data or
reasoning that the "popular perception that religious conservatism among
Muslims is a major factor for not accessing education is incorrect".
3.One striking instance of suppressio veri suggestio falsi is the
unfounded assertion made in Chapter 2 on page 3 that "the poor rate of
success of the polio vaccination drive in Muslim majority areas is one
such response arising out of the fear of an alleged plot to reduce the
Muslim birth rate". 4.There are many more instances of suppressio veri
suggestio falsi in the Report all of which need not be elaborated here,
e.g., the simplistic explanation given for the causes of lower infant and
child mortality among the Muslims vis a vis the Hindus by calling it as an
"enigma" rather than admitting that the indices showed better nutritional
intake by the children of Muslim community than the Hindu children.
5.For sheer pro-Islamic and Pseudo- secular effort not to look at facts
straight, some observations in Chapter 5 dealing with Economy and
Employment will take the cake. Instead of diagnosing the prevalent gender
discrimination, the custom of mandatory veil and scriptural orthodoxy as 3
basic reasons for low work participation by Muslim women (which factors
also keep the household incomes substantially lower), the Sachar Committee
invented an argument that cannot stand the test of any scrutiny, such as:
"One of the reasons for lower participation rates of Muslim women may be
higher dependency rates due to relatively higher share of younger
population in the community resulting in women staying at home".
6.In Chapter 4, while pleading for the cause of Urdu for being considered
as an elective subject in schools , the Sachar Committee trains its guns
on the teaching of Sanskrit. For reasons best known to its members. Going
off at a tangent, it finds" fault with the "importance attached to say,
Sanskrit, which is offered in a majority of schools". It pontificates on
page 83 that "the importance given to Sanskrit in the educational
framework in Delhi and many north Indian States has tended to sideline
minority languages". This unwarranted diatribe against Sanskrit will be
viewed as an unprovoked endeavour to outrage the cultural modesty of
Bharat Mata or Mother India.
Against this background it will be clear that gigantic fraud and Justice
Sachar Committee are indeed inter-changeable and synonymous terms. In my
view the time has come to relay and broadcast the wake up call given by
the Patriots" Forum, New Delhi, across the country to highlight the fraud
being perpetrated on the Indian people by the UPA Government by using the
petty, puerile, partisan and pernicious INJUSTICE (!)Sachar Committee"s
Report for winning a few seats in the on going Assembly Elections in UP.
Prima facie, the mainstream English print media and TV media have joined
hands with Justice Sachar and Dr. Sharrif to spread the vilest form of
politically orchestrated falsehood far and wide in modern Indian history.
In these columns yesterday, I had pointed out that Insolent INJUSTICE (!)
Sachar Committee's Report contains innumerable instances of suppressio
veri, suggestio falsi, which have been clearly documented and presented by
the R K Ohri, IPS (Retd), Secretary General, Think-tank of the Patriots"
Forum, New Delhi in their rejoinder to Sachar Committee. A copy of their
Rejoinder was sent to Justice Sachar by R K Ohri, IPS (Retd), Secretary
General, Patriots Forum, on 29 January 2007 and copies were endorsed to
the Prime Minister, Minister for Minority Affairs, Home Minister and
several government functionaries, as also Shri L K Advani, Leader of the
Opposition in Lok Sabha. Justice Sachar was "humbly" requested to clarify
patented falsehood pointed by them and he was also requested to join for a
discussion on any public platform. It is a matter of national shame and
national disgrace that neither Justice Sachar, nor the Secretary of his
Committee Dr Abu Saleh Sharrif, nor the Prime Minister's Office, nor the
Minorities Minister, nor the Home Minister, nor the Home Secretary, have
cared to send any reply till today (!) to the Rejoinder (which can stand
any ordinary Judicial scrutiny based on Equity, Natural Justice, and Fair
Play) presented by R K Ohri, Secretary General, Patriots" Forum on 29
January 2007. Are not these Islam-embracing and Hindu-hating VVIPs (!!),
shining symbols of fraudulent and sanctimonious humbug, guilty of gross
dereliction of their allotted public duties? Do they view public acts of
shame as highly secular, non-communal and honorable and public acts of
honor as highly non-secular, communal, and dishonorable?
There was a symposium on 25 February 2007 at India International Centre to
which Justice Sachar was invited. But he did not come, nor did he dare to
send his Man Friday, Dr Abu Saleh Sharrif, who wrote that false document
(containing worst deception ever practiced in the history of post
independent India) to befool the somnolent Hindu leadership and take the
gullible Hindus for a ride. I am presenting below a few extracts from the
SUMMARY OF REJOINDER OF PATRIOTS FORUM:"In a country teeming with the poor
and the indigent there could be no justification for appointing a
Committee exclusively to look into the socio-economic and educational
backwardness of one single community, namely the Muslims, who in terms of
many human development indicators are better placed than the Hindus. In
accordance with the Notification dated 9 March, 2005, the Sachar Committee
had invited representations from all interested groups by issuing
advertisements in newspapers. The Committee was further required to
conduct "an intensive literature survey to identify the published data,
articles and research on relative social, economic and educational status
of Muslims in India", as reiterated in Para 2 (a) of the aforesaid
notification".
"Sachar Committee, however, failed on both counts. It took no notice of
the detailed facts-packed Memorandum submitted by our Forum on 18 May 2006
(after the original one was lost in Committee's office) and despite a
written assurance given to our Forum vide their letter dated 5 October,
2005, did not consider our Memorandum. Six reminders were never replied
to. The Committee did not take into account many important documents,
especially the 2 off-beat seminar papers read on 2 September, 2006, by
Shri R K Ohri and Prof. Sanjay Kumar (Fellow of Centre for Study of
Developing Societies) in a Seminar held in the prestigious Indian
Institute of Public Administration which highlighted the fact that the
Muslim community was not disadvantaged at all vis-a-vis Hindus. The
findings of two researched seminar papers established that actually the
proportion of "very poor" people was higher among Hindus than among
Muslims. This fact has been confirmed now by the latest survey conducted
by NSS which showed that the poorest 10 percent population of India lives
in rural areas on a pittance of Rs 9 per day. On pro rata basis it would
mean that 74 percent of these les miserable happen to be Hindus. The
proportion of the poorest in Hindu community comes to 13.6 percent, while
among Muslims it is 10.5".
"The Committee, despite harping repetitively on its pet theme of Muslim
poverty, dare not delve deep into the true reasons for this globally
prevalent malaise, namely the high birth rate and poor female work
participation, as established by our research. The intention obviously is
to hide from the gullible public the knowledge about the politically
inconvenient truth of abnormally high birth rate and poor female work
participation in Muslim community".
More than 800 millions of deemed "impotent" Hindus in absolute majority in
India would like to democratically challenge the Anti-Hindu Government in
New Delhi and ask the reasonable question as to who authorized the
INJUSTICE (!) Sachar Committee not to give a public hearing to R K Ohri,
IPS (Retd), Secretary General, Patriots" Forum, New Delhi and its Members
during the last 2 years? If only the Members of this Forum had been
Islamic terrorists from peace loving Pakistan or Bharat-embracing
Bangladesh, they would have been treated as VVIPs and invited for a
dialogue as a sacredly secular part of the on going Peace Process by all
the busy bodies of Government of India.
Shailesh Dobhal and Bhanu Pande in their article titled "Hindu, Muslim
equal in income" in Economic Times on 5 April 2007 have woken up the
people of India to the following stark facts in these words: "Forget all
half-baked opinions you may have heard on the economic state of religious
communities in India. Truth be told, at the national level, Hindus and
Muslims are closer than you thought as far as average household income,
expenditure, savings and even ownership of select consumer goods go. In
fact, in rural India, the gap between the two communities" narrows
appreciably and even reverses in some cases in favor of Muslims. Not
surprisingly, the Sikhs are the most prosperous lot in India, with highest
household income, expenditure and ownership of cars, two-wheelers, TV sets
and refrigerators. Christians and other smaller communities don't lag too
far behind either".
Shailesh Dobhal and Bhanu Pande have come to this conclusion after taking
note of the first ever exercise mapping the economic contours of different
religious communities in India. Rajesh Shukla has presented the following
statement relating to the Average annual household income (Rs At 2004-05
prices) in the light of the National Council of Applied Economic
Research's (NCAER) data analysis from its National Survey of Household
Income and Expenditure (2004-05). The survey collected primary data from a
sample of approximately 63,000 households out of preliminary listed sample
of 4,40,000 households spread over 1,976 villages (250 districts) and
2,255 urban wards (342 towns) covering 64 National Sample Survey (NSS)
regions in 24 states/UTs.
Anyone who thought Muslims alone were steeped in poverty, can see from the
above statement that Hindus and Muslims, at a national level, run
neck-and-neck on Average Annual Household income (AHI) of Rs 61, 423 and
Rs 58,420, respectively. On income parameters, at least, Hindus and
Muslims are, indeed, bhai-bhai.
Shailesh Dobhal and Bhanu Pande have concluded that Marketers planning an
ethnographic pitch to grab mindshare or policy makers preparing ground for
affirmative action may do good to remember that an average Muslim
household, at the national level, spends more than a Hindu one, with
annual household routine expenditure (AHRE) at Rs 40,327 compared to Rs
40,009 for the latter. Sikh household AHRE is highest at Rs 60,475 with
Christians at Rs 45,291. In rural India, Muslim AHRE (Rs 33,711) is higher
than Hindu (Rs 32,555) and compares well with Christian (Rs 38,068).
Penetration of cars is highest among Sikhs (17.3 per cent households),
followed by Christians (10.95 per cent). In rural India and Muslim
households have an edge on not just AHRE, but even car ownership (2.6 per
cent versus 2.4 per cent of Hindu households). The only oddity in
ownership between Hindus and Muslims is on television, with national
penetration at 62.8 per cent and 54 per cent, respectively. Even rural
Muslim household lag here with penetration of just 39.1 per cent compared
to 52 per cent for the majority community.
Justice Sachar Committee was a highly empowered Committee and it had the
power to seek and obtain all possible assistance and information from all
Ministries/ Departments and other bodies under the Government. The
Committee thus was, for all practical purposes, an organ of the Indian
State. And yet this disgraceful Committee, founded on the long established
Congress principle of political jobbery and communal nepotism shown to
chosen court favorites and eunuchs, functioned only as an election agent
of the Congress party to gather Muslim votes. The wretched report on the
Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslims of India that the
Justice Sachar Committee has submitted with Islamic fervor, however,
hardly reads like an objective Official Document expected of such a high
body, in fact from any body of the State, high or low.
JK Bajaj, an outstanding scholar and brilliant searcher, has produced an
unanswerable critique of the fraudulent "Injustice" "Not-In-Justice"
"Never-In-Justice" "Avoid Justice At All Costs" Sachar Committee Report
under the title "A Resurgent Muslim Community Asserts Itself: Sachar
Committee provides the Forum". I have no doubt that the anti-national,
anti-Hindu, anti-Santana Dharma pseudo-secular vermin (not men !) mafia of
print and electronic mass media in India would be scared away by the
simple but brutal truths which can stand any judicial scrutiny even in III
Class Court Of Law, so effectively brought out by J K Bajaj. In this
context, it is my bounden national duty to remind our readers that it was
J K Bajaj who had teamed up with A P Joshi and M D Srinivas who produced a
landmark book under the title "Religious Demography of India" in 2005,
completely incorporating the data and information from the latest Census
of India conducted in 2001. This book was published by Centre For Policy
Studies, Chennai. Even a cursory reading of this book will clearly show
that several parts of India would become Mini Pakistan's like the Marxist
planted Malappuram District in Kerala by 2100. The top men in the
surrogate UPA Government in New Delhi and the petty men in the
pseudo-secular mafia of mass media in India � all established measureless
liars and Sonia-courtiers � are more worried about the introduction of "Surya
Namaskara" in schools in Madya Pradesh than about the ongoing
dismemberment of India ( ! ) through the ruthless process of creation of
more and more Mini Pakistan's now being monitored closely every day and
every moment from the PMO"s office in New Delhi!
I fully endorse the view of J K Bajaj, a fearless and outstanding scholar
and researcher in this context: "The Sachar Committee seems to have
modeled itself on the lines of a non-governmental sectional advocacy
group. Like most such NGOs, the Committee has selectively used and
interpreted the enormous data it commanded to present the worst possible
picture of the supposed disadvantage suffered by the object of its
advocacy, in this case the Muslims of India. Where the data proves
inflexible to such manipulation, and obviously shows an advantage in favor
of the Muslims rather than disadvantage against them, the Committee offers
peculiar interpretations or begins casting doubts on the data and suggests
further study. Like the sectional advocacy NGOs, the Committee is so
committed to the interests of its own object group ( Muslims only! ) that
it sees all other groups in the society as competitors. Throughout the
Report, the Committee seems to be minutely searching for instances where
some other groups may have done somewhat better than the Muslims. Even in
instances where the data indicates Muslims doing very well, the Report
records a grouse that some other group, sometimes the Scheduled Castes,
sometimes the Other Minorities, and almost always the Upper Caste Hindus,
has done even better. The Committee does not even care to refrain from
making snide remarks about the ways of other social and religious groups;
the Report is littered with such uncharitable, and mostly irrelevant,
remarks about Hindus".
I am summarizing below the more important aspects of the condition of
Muslims that the shameless Sachar Committee has looked at and the way it
has handled the mischievously chosen data in these cases.
POPULATION OF MUSLIMS-- The Sachar Committee begins by studying the
population size, distribution and health conditions of Muslims in India.
The significant aspects of this analysis are the following
(a) Rising Share of Muslims in the Population
One of the most significant facts about Muslims in India is that their
population has been growing much faster than other communities. According
to the census data compiled by the Committee, in the 40 years between 1961
and 2001, the population of Muslims has grown by 194 percent, while the
total population of India has grown by only 134 percent. Consequently, the
share of Muslims in the population has risen from 10.7 percent in 1961 to
13.4 percent in 2001. While presenting this data, the Sachar Committee
emphasizes the fact that during the last decade the absolute decline in
the decadal growth in the Muslim population has been more than that of the
total population; Muslim growth has come down from 32.9 percent in the
previous decade to 29.5 percent during the last decade. I call this
quasi-criminal political manipulation of statistics.
The more important fact that emerges from the Census Data and which has
been has been politically ignored with Islamic fervor is the growing gap
in the growth rate of Muslims Vs Non-Muslims as percentage of the total
population. This gap was of the order of about 15 percent in 1951-1961, it
widened to about 25 per cent during 1961-71 and 1971-1981, and during the
last two decades of 1981-1991 and 1991-2001, it has widened further to
nearly 50 percent. The yawning gap in the growth of Muslims and others is
very clearly visible in the Figure 3.1 that the Committee has provided;
yet the Committee makes a patently wrong statement that the growth
differential between Muslims and others has narrowed.
(b) Higher Muslim Fertility
The Committee, of course, finds that Muslims have the highest fertility
amongst all major religious groups. One of the common measures of
fertility is Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which measures the average number
of live births by a woman over her lifetime. The TFR for Muslims is higher
than the average by 0.7 to 1 points according to different data sources.
The second National Family Health Survey, NHFS-2, estimates the TFR for
Muslims at 3.6, while it is 2.9 for the total population of India, 2.8 for
Hindus, 2.4 for Christians and 2.3 for Sikhs. The gap for Muslims and
others is even higher according to the estimates of Census 2001.Thus even
according to the best case political scenario sketched by the
Islam-embracing Sachar Committee, the Muslim share in the Indian
population is going to be twice what it was in 1951 following Partition.
The Committee, of course, does not find it to be a matter of any concern.
It refers to the often asked question about the time when the Muslim
population will become the largest group, given the differential in the
growth of Muslims and others. And the Committee offers the counter
proposition: "how does it matter which population is the largest?"
J.K.Bajaj sums up with saffron zed communal and pagan sarcasm (!!) : "So,
we have this Sachar Committee, with a self-image of a Muslim advocacy
group and carrying the authority of the Indian state, telling the nation
that it does not matter whether the mainstream of Indian civilisation
survives or is extinguished as the mainstream". Thus behind the sworn
deadly enemy of Hinduism in general and all the silent Hindus of India in
particular In-Justice Sachar � this repository of some of the most
virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast � looms large
the defacto political authority of non-Hindu Sonia Gandhi and voluntarily
embraced dejure imbecility of Dr.Manmohan Singh.
(c) Lower Muslim Mortality
The fact that Muslims have relatively high fertility is fairly well-known.
What is not so well-known is the related fact that they also have
relatively lower mortality. According to the data of the second National
Family Health Survey (NFHS), Infant Mortality (IMR) amongst Muslims is 77
compared to 90 per thousand for the Hindus. This differential exists both
in urban areas; urban IMR for Muslims is 51 compared to 64 for the Hindus;
the corresponding numbers for rural areas are 90 and 97. Muslims show even
more marked advantage in mortality amongst children below 5 years of age
(U5MR). And, these lower mortality rates for Muslims are seen in all
regions of India except the northeast.
Thus on all measures of survival, Muslims seem to be doing better than
others in India. They have higher fertility, lower infant mortality, lower
child mortality, lower maternal mortality and better life-expectancy. And,
their advantage on the measures of survival seems to have distinctly
improved during the 1990s. The Sachar Committee is politically surprised,
if not disturbed at this distinct advantage that Muslims have in terms of
survival, in spite of their economically and otherwise disadvantaged
position, which the Committee holds to be "given" and has to be made known
to the private political household of Sonia Gandhi and the public
household of Dr.Manmohan Singh!
As an officially paid spokesman of the dying Congress Party, Justice
Sachar, politically aided by his Muslim advisers, talks like a prospective
Congress candidate contesting in a Muslim majority constituency in the
on-going Assembly Elections in UP!! Am I talking through my hat? No,
definitely not. Let us hear the thawing words of Justice Sachar whose
noble heart is moved to flights of pity and compassion by the pathetic
plight of Muslims in India (which does not even exclude Union Cabinet
Mister Antulay and Chief Minister Gulam Nabi Azad!): "....the Muslims
carry a double burden of being labeled as "anti national" and being
"appeased" at the same time; that for a large number of Muslim women in
India today, the "safe" space is within the boundaries of the home and
community; that "whenever any incident occurs Muslim boys are picked up by
the police; that Muslims live with an inferiority complex as" every
bearded man is considered an ISI agent; that social boycott of Muslims in
certain parts of the country has forced them to migrate from places where
they lived for centuries; that the perception of being discriminated
against is overpowering amongst a wide cross-section of Muslims resulting
in collective alienation; that the education system appears to have given
up on Muslim girls; that the "communal" content of school textbooks as
well as the school ethos has been a major concern for the Muslims; and so
on and so on".
That a high level Government Committee should indulge in such an elaborate
listing of mere hearsay and rumors, to say the least is not only strange,
but wickedly partisan, officially reprehensible and socially condemnable.
V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
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