Myth: India is a paradise for Muslims, Pakistan is hell for Muhajirs

There is a belief in the Indian circles that Muhajirs (refugees from India) live under terrible circumstances and discrimination. They claim that Muslims in India are infinitely better off than Pakistani Muhajirs.

To debunk this myth: Let us read the account of a brilliant and highly conscientious young man (a non muslim) from India regarding his observations about the state of Muslims in India. He does not feel minorities in Pakistan are in a perfect situation but nor does he subscribe to the popular belief about conditions of muhajirs in Pakistan.

Mayank Austen Soofi is a bit of a scholar with a massive library of 25000 books. He blogs at pakistanpaindabad.blogspot.com

Here is his posting - I invite Pakistanis, Indians and others to visit all of his thoughtful blogs.

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All Muslims are not Terrorists, but all Terrorists are Muslims
by Mayank Austen Soofi

After the death of more than 200 commuters in the coordinated Mumbai train blasts in July, 2006, the city police in an effort to prove that no stone is being left unturned to catch the culprits raided the shanties and flats of the Muslim ghettos throughout the metropolis. Houses were searched, cupboards were emptied, and mattresses were turned upside down. While the women were spared, the men in the house - fathers, sons, uncles, cousins - were taken to the nearest police station for further interrogation. Almost all of them were later released.

It is believed that Islamist terrorists were behind the blasts and this logic gave a moral license to the country's authorities to put an entire community to suspicion.

Muslims in India

Islam is the second largest religion in India. True. India has the largest number of Muslims after Indonesia. True. Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world who are fortunate to repeatedly caste votes in free democratic elections in their native lands. True. Some of India's top film stars are Muslims. True. There have been three Muslim Presidents in India, including the present one. True. India's richest man is a Muslim. True. The Indian whose company manufactures cheap AIDS medicines for the world's poor is a Muslim. True. India's greatest ornithologist was a Muslim. True. Taj Mahal was built by a Muslim. True.

So what's the problem?

Muslim Pie in India

According to the 2001 Census of India, Muslims constitute 13.4% of the country's population. But they account for just 3% of government employees, and an even smaller percentage are employed by private Hindu businesses. Meanwhile, in the cities, 30% of Muslims are illiterate, vs. 19% of Hindus. Literacy rate of Muslims is 59.1, vs. 65.11 of Hindus. Work participation rate is 31.3%, vs. 40.4 of Hindus. The statistics of the Hindus, who constitute more than 80% of the total population, should be kept in perspective while comparing these figures.

Islam in India's Domestic Politics

Muslims are generally sympathetic to the country's apparently secular political parties. They are advised to vote for these parties if they do not wish to be eaten alive by the Hindu fundamentalists, who happen to have a very impressive following in the country.

Sadly, these secular parties have done nothing to lift Muslims from their pothole of primitive madrasa education and abject poverty. They treat Muslims as mere vote banks.

Muslims Not Wanted

Salman Rushdie in his novel The Moor's Last Sigh observed that if somebody hates India, he just needs to destroy Mumbai. We Indians are quite up to the task.

Mumbai is considered to be the most cosmopolitan city of India. In a land where everything is ancient and thousand-years-old, Mumbai stands out as a New World where old identities can be jettisoned to shape a new one. What New York City is to the world, Mumbai is to India. People from all corners and communities of the country are attracted to this dream city for the realization of a better future. Mumbai is said to accept all in its arms.

Do not believe it. It is a myth. If you are a Muslim, no matter how much money you have, you will find it difficult to rent a flat in any respectable middle-class locality. A Muslim in an otherwise-cosmopolitan Mumbai is bound to end up in a ghetto. The story repeats itself in cities like Delhi, too.

Those Dirty Muslims

Muslims are generally deemed by a majority of Hindus as minorities in bigoted nations are usually considered to be: unclean, uneducated, and unpatriotic. But if anyone in the community tries to get himself out from this cliché, he is quickly dumped back to his old place.

So, why not continue to live within the frames of the stereotype picture?

The Culture of Riots

Indian spirit, if vaporized down to its essence, consists of four essentials: Politics, Bollywood, cricket and Hindu-Muslim riots.

According to a 2005 report in the TIME magazine, in all the communal riots since independence, official police records reveal that three-quarters of the lives lost and properties destroyed were Muslim.

It would be seriously biased to only blame the Hindus but it is the Muslim community which always suffers the most.

One of the worst tragedies that could have befallen on independent India was not Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, but the 1992 destruction of the abandoned Babri Masjeed in Ayodhya, which many Hindus believed and still maintains so, was built on the ruins of an ancient temple. The event led to riots breaking out between the Hindus and Muslims throughout the country. Thousands of Indians lost their lives. Muslims were the worst victims. The Hindu fundamentalist leaders who were responsible for this tragedy nevertheless reached to power during the later years. In spite of the blood of innocent people sticking on to their hands, they remain as some of the most respectable politicians today.

Lesson of the story: In India, you could kill innocent Muslim men, rape their women, burn their children and still could become the country's prime minister. A Musslamaan's life, or death, do not matter in this country, where everybody's life is cheap anyways.

Justice to Muslims? No!

When Bombay was still not renamed Mumbai by Hindu conservatives, a riot, as a repercussion of the mosque demolition mentioned above, erupted in the city in 1993. Mr Bal Thackeray, the former cartoonist, was believed to have used his speeches to inflame the 'sentiments' of his thuggish partymen who took up the hint by massacring the Muslims in the streets. The Mussalmans were told to go to Pakistan or else...

More than 1000 innocent Muslims were killed.

One could be sure that some semblance of justice would be delivered to the recent blast victims who happened to be mostly Hindus. Some show of punishment would be accorded, this year, next year, or after fifteen years, to the perpetrators of that heinous attack. But as for the daylight murder of the 1000 Muslims, no justice has been provided yet. There has been not even a single conviction for the murder of thousands of Muslims. Mr Bal Thackeray has meanwhile retired from active politics and is expected to die a respectable natural death.

More Stories of Inhumanity and Injustice

In 2002, the wealthy state of Gujarat witnessed the first live televised riots of Indian history. More than 2000 Muslims were killed in order to avenge the burning of 58 Hindus in a train compartment. The then political party that was governing the state during the time of riots and which had encouraged this massacre was later re-voted to power by the Hindu majority as a thank-you gift for teaching a fitting lesson to those Muslims.

It was like Adolf Hitler being re-elected after the Final Solution by the jubilant Aryan Germans.

The Gujarat government, which markets itself as the icon of Hindu Asmita, had even went so far as to price Muslim lives below those of Hindus, offering Rs 1 lakh in state compensation for Muslims killed but doubling that amount to Rs 2 lakhs for those 58 Hindus.

Besides, the government of that state continues to adopt aggressive postures to deny justice to the Muslim victims of the riot.

If these are not giving reasons to the Islamists terrorist to increase their rank and numbers, then what else could be?

India Shies Away

Following the London subway blasts, the British authorities there prepared a comprehensive study titled Report of the Official Account of Bombings in London on 7 July to find out the conditions and causes which prompted otherwise decent middle-class young Muslim men to carry out terrorist attacks. The effort was not to serve an excuse for the Muslims but to identify the areas that create a breeding ground for such acts.

However India doesn't want this kind of introspection. Any public personality who tries to reason the possibility of violent discrimination against Muslims as a cause for the induction of Muslim men among the Jehadi terrorist groups are instantly hooted as pseudo-seculars, Muslim-appeasing and unpatriotic citizens who are bent on destroying the country's fair name.

It is like as if the country doesn't want to remind itself that its earlier sins could come back to haunt its soul.

Strictly For Dummies - A Chemical Formula for Detecting Terrorism

So, according to the accepted wisdom in India, a train blast is always a terrorist attack. But the killing of innocent people by swords and tridents is not. The Hindu massacring of the Muslims is merely a communal riot, an internal problem. But the Muslim blasting of Hindus is of course one more instance of international terrorism.

Problems simplified.

But the Accepted Wisdom is turning to Reality; Our Muslims are Changing...Now

Indian columnists always boasted that their Muslims are decent and civilized. They do not associate themselves with Al Qaeda. They were not in the 9/11 hijack team. They were never a part of the Talibani barbarians. They were not terrorists.

The country could teat them like a doormat but they would still be tame and loyal like the ugly luckless wife of a philandering man who has nowhere to go.

However, the world is changing, and so are our Muslims. Pakistan could be blamed for every terrorist act taking place in Indian cities but it so happens that educated, English-speaking, computer-literate, Muslim men are nowadays planting the bombs and setting the timers in trains and buses. And they are home-grown Indians. And no, they have never traveled to Pakistan or Afghanistan for indoctrination.

India itself suffices.

The Coming Scare

Indian Muslims have begun to pay attention to bin Laden broadcasts in Al Jazeera. They think he makes sense when he rants about injustice and powerlessness and arrogance of the empires. They look around and they nod their heads understandingly. Muslim children are being killed. Haanji. Islam is in danger. Sahi bola. Muslims are the victims. Haan haan. The roots of the rage are growing right under the bloodied soil of this nation. How True.

Indian passport is destined to be a problem in the airports of the western world. Very soon.

THE END

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== India's extra-judicial killings and human rights violations in Kashmir and elsewhere
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The Amnesty International in its report dated 10-08-2001 about torture in West Bengal observed, "Police are being urged to use whatever means necessary to deal with crime and are often allowed to use torture as a substitute for investigations, while action is rarely taken against the perpetrators. This system of policing is having little if any impact on crime." CPI (M) leader Benoy Konar, defending police brutality once said, "It must be viewed whether police is carrying out torture with a correct aim or an incorrect aim...In a class divided society, the police has the duty of carrying out repression.... You [journalists] have the pen in your hands, the police has the stick." Hence, it would be a mistake to view human rights abuse from an ideological perspective.

The wide prevalence of encounter deaths or extra-judicial killings at the hands of the police has been documented by human rights organizations and remains a part of our dark history in post independent India. A study conducted by the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network noted that encounter killings were not isolated incidents but occurred throughout India. They are part of a "deliberate and conscious state administrative practice" for which successive Indian governments must bear responsibility. Indeed, successive Indian governments have adopted a de facto policy sanctioning extra-judicial killings by members of the police forces, army and security personnel.

The most horrific examples include the operations against Naxalite movements in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and the operations against Punjab extremists. Tamil Nadu and Kerala committed the excesses of encounter killing during the days of Emergency. The Vimadlal Commission took the lid off so-called encounters in Andhra Pradesh during the mid-1970s. Uttar Pradesh is noted for it's encounter deaths and this has assumed alarming proportions in recent times. The paramilitary operations in Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur and Assam cause grave concern as human rights activists report wide spread instances of encounter killings, rape and torture of militant suspects.

The complicity of State and Central governments in encounter killings could be gleaned by the fact that they do not vigorously conduct prosecution of the guilty nor is the investigation thorough to bring the guilty to book. The National Human Rights Commission has not proved very effective in checking encounter killings, as it's recommendations are not implemented by the State and Central governments. The guidelines issued by the NHRC in matters regarding encounter killings are rarely followed. The long delays in courts in prosecuting the guilty police personnel creates a climate of impunity for such crimes to flourish. The governments also reward policemen or paramilitary personnel, which actually encourage encounter killing. The compensation paid to the surviving members of the victims murdered by the police personnel remains a pittance.

The use of torture and third degree methods against suspects in police lockups remains standard operating procedure in post-Independence India. Human Rights organizations note that torture is used against secessionist groups, against suspects belonging to the poorer sections of our society for extracting confessions and bribes and also used as extra-legal punishment (teach you a lesson).

In areas such as Jammu & Kashmir, there exist a number of detention cells where militant suspects are beaten and electric torture is meted out as routine punishment and to extract confessions or information. The methods of torture vary. For instance, in Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab (particularly in areas where the Punjab police or Punjab paramilitary units operate) dislocation of ball and socket of the suspect appears to be the preferred mode of torture. Sometimes the choice is more eclectic with a judicious combination of aeroplane treatment (tying the hands of the suspect behind his back and suspending him over a beam, leading to shoulder dislocation), electric torture with cattle prod and roller treatment (crushing the muscles of the suspect with a wooden log being rolled on his leg). Of course, beating of suspects with belts and lathis is standard fare in most police lockups. Human Rights groups have recorded cases involving rape and sexual humiliation of woman suspects.

While the reported cases of custodial deaths are increasing in India, statistics are difficult to come by, as there is government apathy to transparency. However, on 12th May 2006, The Indian Evidence (Amendment) Bill, 2006 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha with a view to curb custodial deaths. The amendment provides the presumption that when a suspect dies in police custody it is presumed that the police have caused the death and the onus of proof rests on the policemen to prove their innocence. While the amendment is certainly a welcome change in official attitude towards custodial deaths, it remains to be seen whether it would be effectively implemented in the courts.

Human Rights activists have also warned against Anti-terrorism and security laws in India as facilitating human right abuse by primarily targeting lower castes and minority communities. The security laws abuse specially targeted groups by prolonging detention without trial and by inflicting torture, which is responsible for custodial deaths. On September 25, 2006, the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association released a report, Anti-Terrorism and Security Laws in India, calling on the Indian government to limit its application of anti-terrorism laws. The report notes "Attentiveness to these human rights concerns is not simply a moral and legal imperative, but also a crucial strategic imperative. As the Supreme Court of India has recognized, 'terrorism often thrives where human rights are violated' and '[t] he lack of hope for justice provides breeding grounds for terrorism.'"

The report chillingly concludes that the sweeping powers given to the authority in such enactments as TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act], POTA [Prevention of Terrorism Act], and UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act], were used predominantly not to prosecute and punish actual terrorists, but rather as a tool that enabled pervasive use of preventive detention and a variety of abuses by the police, including extortion and torture. Another unpopular act called the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has been sharply criticized for its 'oppression and high-handedness' by the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee and has asked for the scrapping of this draconian law. This act (AFPSA) was the rallying point of widespread protests in Manipur and in other parts of North East as it offered immunity to the army personnel guilty of indiscriminately killing innocent people.

Legislation to eradicate torture, encounter killings and custodial deaths may be effective up to a point and may decrease human rights abuse marginally. But laws need the backing of robust public opinion to be fully effective. Here, Sunshine India is seriously flawed. The middle class and the upper class seem to be totally self-absorbed in greed creed and its consumerist pretensions. Moreover, there is wide acceptance of 'tough police tactics' by the middle and upper classes. The issues of liberalism, values for a just and humane society do not resonate well with this class. Instead there is, in the words of Praful Bidwai, a social commentator, "growing illiberalism and intolerance... lack of moral clarity among large sections of middle class on issues of justice, fairness, pluralism, secularism and other constitutional values, leave alone compassion for the underprivileged."

With public opinion fragmented, human rights violations would continue unchecked with the brunt of abuse borne by the marginalized poor. A prospect, which we must admit, bodes ill for our Republic.