Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Study: Indian Muslims Worse Off Than Untouchables and Falling Further

A recent Dartmouth study by three researchers has reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) today than both Scheduled Castes (37.4–37.8) and Scheduled Tribes (32.5–32.7). The comparable figure for African Americans is 34."

The research paper titled "Intergenerational Mobility in India: Estimates from New Methods and Administrative Data" says that "higher caste groups (in India) have experienced constant and high upward mobility over time, a result that contradicts a popular notion that it is increasingly difficult for higher caste Hindus to get ahead".

Dartmouth researchers' analysis focuses on two mobility measures: (i) the expected outcome of a child born into the bottom half of the parent outcome distribution (upward interval mobility, henceforth referred to as upward mobility); and (ii) the expected outcome of a child born into the top half of the parent distribution (downward interval mobility).

Indian Muslims at Bottom in Social Mobility. Source: Dartmouth College


Panel A  in the above figure presents bounds on trends in upward interval mobility, or the average rank among sons born to fathers in the bottom half of the father education distribution. Panel B presents bounds on trends in downward interval mobility, or the average education rank among sons born to fathers in the top half of the father education distribution. Panel C presents bounds on trends in the proportion of sons completing primary school, conditional on being born to a father in the bottom half of the education distribution. Panel D presents bounds on trends in the proportion of sons attaining a high school degree, conditional on being born to a father in the bottom half of the education distribution.

The Dartmouth paper by Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin confirms what an Indian government commission headed by Justice Rajendar Sachar found back in 2006 by saying that "Muslim disadvantage has been widely noted, including by the well-publicized federal Sachar Report (2006)".  Here's an excerpt of the paper:

"India’s Muslims constitute a similar population share as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (14% for Muslims vs. 16.6% for SCs and 14% for STs). Muslims have worse socioeconomic outcomes than the general population (Sachar Committee Report, 2006). While Muslim disadvantage has been widely noted, including by the well-publicized federal Sachar Report (2006), there are few policies in place to protect them and there has not been an effective political mobilization in their interest. Muslims have also been frequent targets of discrimination and even violence."

The discrimination and violence against Muslims that the paper refers to has only gotten worse since the election of Hindu Nationalist leader Narendra Modi to India's highest office in India in 2014.

Earlier this year, an 8-year-old Muslim girl Asifa Bano was locked in a Hindu temple, drugged, gang-raped for several days and then bludgeoned to death in Indian occupied Kashmir, according to a report in a leading American newspaper.

Gang Rape Victim: 8-Year-Old Asifa Bano
Support of Rapists: 

The horror of a Muslim child's rape and murder was made even worse when the ruling BJP-affiliated right-wing Hindu lawyers marched in defense of her attackers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reluctantly condemned the crime after waiting for several days. His belated acknowledgment came in response to international outrage.

Is this just another rape in India? Did the child's Muslim faith make her a target? Has Islamophobia gone mainstream in India?  To answer these questions, let us put some context to what is happening in Modi's India.

India saw about 39,000 rape cases reported in 2016, a 12% jump over the prior year, according to Indian crime statistics.  Children were reported as victims in 42% of the cases.

It is hard to say how many of the rape victims were Muslim.  What is known, however, is the exhortation by iconic Hindutva leaders to rape of Muslim women.  Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the founders of right-wing RSS who Prime Minister Modi describes as "worthy of worship", is among them. After getting elected to the highest office in India, Modi paid tribute to Savarkar by laying flowers at his portrait that hangs in India's Parliament.

VD Savarkar, in one of his books titled Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, elaborates on why raping of Muslim women is not only justified but encouraged.

Savarkar has used revisionist Hindutva history to exhort his followers to rape Muslim women as payback for historic wrongs he believes were committed by Muslim conquerers of India. “Once they are haunted with this dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women too, stand in the same predicament in case the Hindus win, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women,” he writes.

Hindutva Revisionist History: 

American history professor Audrey Truschke, in her recently published book "Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King" has argued that colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India.  These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by Islamophobic Hindu Nationalists but also by at least some of the secular Hindus in India and Muslim intellectuals in present day Pakistan, says the author.  Aurangzeb was neither a saint nor a villain; he was a man of his time who should be judged by the norms of his times and compared with his contemporaries, the author adds.

Truschke says the original history of the Mughal rule was written in Persian. However, it is the English translation of the original work that are often used to distort it. Here's what she says about it in her book:

"The bulk of Mughal histories are written in Persian, the official administrative language of the Mughal empire but a foreign tongue in India today. Out of necessity and ease, many historians disregard the original Persian text and rely instead on English translations. This approach narrows the the library of materials drastically, and many translations of the Mughal texts are of questionable quality, brimming with mistranslations and abridgments. Some of these changes conveniently served the agendas of the translators, especially colonial-era translations that tend to show Indo--Muslim kings at their worst so that the British would seem virtuous by comparison (foremost here is Elliot and Dowson's History of India as Told by Its Own Historians). Such materials are great for learning about British colonialism, but they present an inaccurate picture of Mughal India."

Modi's Record: 

In 2002 when Narendra Modi was chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, hundreds of young Muslim girls were sexually assaulted, tortured and killed.  These rapes were condoned by the ruling BJP, whose refusal to intervene lead to the rape and killing of thousands and displacement of 200,000 Muslims.

Since his election to India's top elected office, Modi has elevated fellow right-wing Hindu extremists to positions of power in India. Yogi Adiyanath, known for his highly inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, was hand-picked in 2016 by Modi to head India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Adiyanath's supporters brag about digging up Muslim women from their graves and raping them. In a video uploaded in 2014,  he said, “If [Muslims] take one Hindu girl, we’ll take 100 Muslim girls. If they kill one Hindu, we’ll kill 100 Muslims.”

Yogi wants to "install statues of Goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque”.  Before his election, he said, “If one Hindu is killed, we won’t go to the police, we’ll kill 10 Muslims”.  He endorsed the beef lynching of Indian Muslim Mohammad Akhlaque and demanded that the victim's family be charged with cow slaughter.

Madhav S. Golwalkar, considered among the founders of the Hindu Nationalist movement in India, saw Islam and Muslims as enemies. He said: “Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindusthan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting to shake off the despoilers".

In his book We, MS Golwalkar wrote the following in praise of what Nazi leader Adolf Hitler did to Jews as a model for what Hindus should do to Muslims in India: "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Social Hostility Against Minorities in South Asia. Source: Bloomberg

Rise of Hindu Nationalists: 

The situation for India's minorities, particularly Muslims, has become a lot worse in the last two years with Hindu mobs raping and lynching Muslims with impunity. The 2016 election of anti-Muslim radical Hindu priest Yogi Adiyanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, is seen as a clear signal from Mr. Modi that his anti-Muslim policies will continue.

Mohammad Akhlaq is believed to be the first victim of Hindu lynch mobs claiming to be protecting the cow. He was accused of consuming beef. For more than a week Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained silent over the incident and even after he spoke about it, he did not condemn it outright. The ruling BJP officials even tried to explain it as the result of the genuine anger of the Hindus over the slaughtering of a cow.

Pew Research Report:

A Pew Research report from data collected in 2015, about a year after Modi rose to power, found that the level of hostility against religious minorities is "very high". In fact, it said India scores 9 for social hostilities against religious minorities on a scale of 0-10.   Other countries in "very high" category for social hostilities include Nigeria, Iraq and Syria. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh is 5.5.

Pew Research Report on Religious Freedom

History of Anti-Muslim Riots in India:

Paul Richard Brass, professor emeritus of political science and international relations at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, has spent many years researching communal riots in India. He has debunked all the action-reaction theories promoted by Hindu Nationalists like Modi. He believes these are not spontaneous but planned and staged as "a grisly form of dramatic production" by well-known perpetrators from the Sangh Parivar of which Prime Minister Modi has been a member since his youth.

Here's an excerpt of Professor Brass's work:

"Events labelled “Hindu-Muslim riots” have been recurring features in India for three-quarters of a century or more. In northern and western India, especially, there are numerous cities and town in which riots have become endemic. In such places, riots have, in effect, become a grisly form of dramatic production in which there are three phases: preparation/rehearsal, activation/enactment, and explanation/interpretation. In these sites of endemic riot production, preparation and rehearsal are continuous activities. Activation or enactment of a large-scale riot takes place under particular circumstances, most notably in a context of intense political mobilization or electoral competition in which riots are precipitated as a device to consolidate the support of ethnic, religious, or other culturally marked groups by emphasizing the need for solidarity in face of the rival communal group. The third phase follows after the violence in a broader struggle to control the explanation or interpretation of the causes of the violence. In this phase, many other elements in society become involved, including journalists, politicians, social scientists, and public opinion generally. At first, multiple narratives vie for primacy in controlling the explanation of violence. On the one hand, the predominant social forces attempt to insert an explanatory narrative into the prevailing discourse of order, while others seek to establish a new consensual hegemony that upsets existing power relations, that is, those which accept the violence as spontaneous, religious, mass-based, unpredictable, and impossible to prevent or control fully. This third phase is also marked by a process of blame displacement in which social scientists themselves become implicated, a process that fails to isolate effectively those most responsible for the production of violence, and instead diffuses blame widely, blurring responsibility, and thereby contributing to the perpetuation of violent productions in future, as well as the order that sustains them."

"In India, all this takes place within a discourse of Hindu-Muslim hostility that denies the deliberate and purposive character of the violence by attributing it to the spontaneous reactions of ordinary Hindus and Muslims, locked in a web of mutual antagonisms said to have a long history. In the meantime, in post-Independence India, what are labelled Hindu-Muslim riots have more often than not been turned into pogroms and massacres of Muslims, in which few Hindus are killed. In fact, in sites of endemic rioting, there exist what I have called “institutionalized riot systems,” in which the organizations of militant Hindu nationalism are deeply implicated. Further, in these sites, persons can be identified, who play specific roles in the preparation, enactment, and explanation of riots after the fact. Especially important are what I call the “fire tenders,” who keep Hindu-Muslim tensions alive through various inflammatory and inciting acts; “conversion specialists,” who lead and address mobs of potential rioters and give a signal to indicate if and when violence should commence; criminals and the poorest elements in society, recruited and rewarded for enacting the violence; and politicians and the vernacular media who, during the violence, and in its aftermath, draw attention away from the perpetrators of the violence by attributing it to the actions."

Summary:

A recent Dartmouth study by three researchers has reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) today than both Scheduled Castes (37.4–37.8) and Scheduled Tribes (32.5–32.7). The comparable figure for African Americans is 34."  The Darthmouth paper adds that " (Indian) Muslims have also been frequent targets of discrimination and even violence."

India is seeing a spate of gang rapes and lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs who have been emboldened by the rise of anti-Muslim Hindu Nationalist leader Narendra Modi since his 2014 election to the highest office in India.  In their writings, iconic Hindutva leaders like Savarkar have encouraged rape of Muslim women. The elevation of radical Hindu Yogi Adiyanath to the top job in Uttar Pradesh by Mr. Modi has further alarmed India's Muslim minority. University of Washington's Professor Emeritus Paul Brass, who has documented the history of anti-Muslim violence in India,  describes it as "a grisly form of dramatic production" by well-known perpetrators from the Sangh Parivar of which Prime Minister Modi has been a member since his youth. Pew Research report on religious violence confirms India's status as a country with "very high" levels of social hostilities against religious minorities.  There appears to be no relief in sight for them at least in the foreseeable future.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Islamophobia Goes Mainstream

700,000 Indian Troops vs 10 Million Kashmiris

Muslim Lynchings in Modi's India

Yogi Adiyanath as UP CM

Hindu Nationalists Admire Hitler

Hinduization of India Under Modi

Muslim Victims of Gujarat 2002

India's Superpower Delusions: Modi's Flawed Policies

18 comments:

Shams N. said...

Sometimes these statistics are not a true depiction of facts. There are over 11 USD billionaires in India, all with legit income. Wipro's owner Azim Premji is worth $200 Billion. India's biggest pharma's owner is a Muslim with $6.3 Billion worth.

With a matching Muslim Pakistani population, there are more Indian Muslim film actors, more engineers, and more doctors. Indian top nuclear scientist, their atom bomb maker, as well as the top aerospace man behind their rockets were both Muslims.

Riaz Haq said...

Shams: "There are over 11 USD billionaires in India, all with legit income. Wipro's owner Azim Premji is worth $200 Billion. India's biggest pharma's owner is a Muslim with $6.3 Billion worth."

The status of a few successful token Indian Muslims is not representative of the vast majority of them in India.

Indian Muslim deprivation is born out by Indian government's own data as reported by Sachar Commission.

Read the following:

https://www.riazhaq.com/2014/05/maulana-azads-grandniece-says-muslims.html

Nayyer Ali said...

India has failed to live up to its promise of being a truly secular state where religion does not disadvantage you. This was Jinnah's concern, that Muslims would always be second-class citizens in a unified India and why he demanded an independent Pakistan. For all its problems, the socioeconomic status and the future prospects of the Muslims of Pakistan or Bangladesh is far higher than in India, where they are sliding further down the ladder. While there are anecdotal successes, and Bollywood has a high share of Muslims, for the vast Muslim masses India has failed them. With Modi and the BJP, it is sliding further into anti-Muslim bigotry and bias.

Nayyer Ali said...

BTW, Azim Premji's net worth is about 16 billion dollars, not 200 billion, which would have made him the richest person on the planet. Premji has set up an educational foudation that he has funded with 2 billion dollars, hopefully that will do some good assuming it is directed at the disadvantaged Muslims of India.

Riaz Haq said...

#Hindu Nationalist saffron brigade is working tirelessly to scrub #Modi’s #India clean of vestiges of the #Mughals by writing them out of school textbooks, renaming cities and roads, and neglecting Mughal monuments monuments.http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/mughal-lite

INDIA IS GRIPPED by Mughal fever these days. Seemingly obsessed with premodern India’s most famous empire, the saffron brigade works tirelessly to scrub Modi’s India clean of vestiges of the Mughals by writing them out of school textbooks, renaming cities and roads, and neglecting Mughal monuments. When Hindu nationalists are not marginalising the Mughals, they villainise these long-dead kings as proxies for modern-day Indian Muslims. All actions provoke a reaction. And so popular curiosity about the Mughals has expanded apace with Hindutva’s anti-Muslim exertions. The political abuse of Mughal history raises the stakes of popular knowledge about this dynasty and their legacies in India.

Parvati Sharma’s Jahangir : An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal (Juggernaut; Rs 599; 319 pages) and Ruby Lal’s Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (Viking; Rs 599; 304 pages) are among the most recent efforts to wade into these fraught waters and educate the public about key Mughal figures. Sharma tracks the life of Jahangir (1569-1627), the fourth Mughal king, while Lal devotes her attention to his favourite wife, Nur Jahan (1577-1645). Jahangir and Nur Jahan were only married for 16 years (1611-1627), but their alliance defined much about both of their lives. They were the ultimate power couple. He sat on the throne, and she wielded power behind the scenes (how much power is the subject of scholarly debate and a question that animates Lal’s book). Still, neither author has written about this pair, but rather each has chosen to write a narrative biography of a single royal figure.

Biography has been a late-bloomer in the discipline of history, and the jury is still out on its ultimate acceptance as a productive way to analyse the past. For decades, most professional historians wrote off biography as a crummy way to do history. Things began to shift in the 1980s and 1990s as some historians saw anew in biography a way to produce social history. Still, the genre has its share of detractors. Writing in 1999, Stanley Fish slammed biography as ‘minutiae without meaning’ and ‘a bad game’ that is less edifying to readers than watching professional wrestling. In recent years, historians have characterised biography as ‘the bastard child of academe,’ ‘the [historical] profession’s unloved stepchild’ and, quite simply, ‘a lesser form of history.’

While many professional historians have long turned up their noses at narrative biography, everybody else feels differently. As Richard Eaton has observed: ‘People are profoundly drawn to the personalities and life-stories of others.’ Seeking to quench or at least address this popular thirst for biography, William Dalrymple—who has done more than any scholar to awaken public interest in Mughal history—wrote in 2005 that more historians ought to write ‘serious biography or narrative history’ of India’s pre-colonial rulers. Historians have responded to this call. For instance, Sunil Khilnani told the history of India through 50 lives as a radio programme, set of podcasts, and a book (Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, 2016). In addition, non- historians have attempted to produce narrative histories.

Riaz Haq said...

How #India Is Benefiting in the #Trump Era. India policymakers often seem not only comfortable with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, but enthusiastic about it. #Islamophobia #Modi #BJP https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-india-benefiting-trump-era-38067

Over the last fifteen years or so, no area of American foreign policy has been more promising than U.S.-India relations. The relationship has gone from strength to strength since the end of the Clinton administration. Today, India policymakers often seem not only comfortable with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, but enthusiastic about it.

No doubt this has something to do with his tough approach to Pakistan. But it’s also about China. The Indians finally have a partner in Washington who sees China in the same geopolitical terms they do. More than that, they see an American administration willing to risk its relationship with China in furtherance of a balance in the region.


New Delhi should understand, however, that there are limits to the benefits they can expect from American geostrategy. Access to American military technology, yes. Ever closer security cooperation, yes. Exemption from America’s pressure on Iran, yes. Even, eventually, exemption from sanctions for Indian military cooperation with Russia.

But not trade concessions. Appealing to the China threat will not call off the Trump administration’s pressure on longstanding trade complaints. There may have been some uncertainty about this early on in the new administration. Not now. New Delhi must come to grips with American trade concerns on their own terms—unrelated to broader strategic convergence.

This relates directly to current trade negotiations. In a nutshell, India wants continued access to the General System of Preferences (GSP), i.e. duty-free treatment for roughly $6 billion of the $50 billion in goods India ships to the United States every year. And the United States wants better access to Indian markets.

These discussions cover several product areas—such as medical devices and dairy products. They also encompass issues not directly related to exports, such as differences over where investors store their digital data. That’s a big issue for American credit card and Internet companies, and part of a major global debate.

At this point, however, the key to unlocking a deal is India’s tariffs on high tech goods—seven tariff lines, including smartphones, smart watches and telecommunications networking equipment.

The impasse stems from the “Make in India” initiative. As the name implies, this is an effort to encourage the manufacturing of more products in India. It is industrial policy—no different, except perhaps in effectiveness, than Beijing’s “China 2025” program. No different, except in terms of scale, than America’s use of tariffs to promote its steel and aluminum industries—something India has rightly protested.

In the specific cause of promoting investment in the information and communications technology (ICT), New Delhi has enacted a series of new tariffs. The problem is that this violates commitments it made under the WTO’s 1996 Information Technology Agreement.
----------------

The fact that final assembly for many of these products is in China does not matter. Appeal to common U.S.-India geostrategic interest vis à vis China is not going to win the day. American companies support the administration’s push for market access. Their interests and the interests of the people they employ will shape the Trump administration’s approach. If India wants to become a leader in ICT manufacturing, it should do so in keeping with its WTO commitments. It will not find in America a partner willing to help it compete with China to the detriment of Americans’ own commercial interests.

Riaz Haq said...

Stats on destruction of lives and property in #India Occupied #Kashmir

Killings: 94,479
Custodial killings: 7,048
Disappearances: 10,125
Gang rapes: 10,283
Civilans blinded: 188
Kids orphaned: 20,085
Women widowed: 20,005
Buildings destroyed: 106,071

https://medium.com/@cjwerleman/why-the-world-ignores-indias-violence-in-kashmir-c49f51bb21f9?fbclid=IwAR2mwyxGBg84B8agBtXkeEsu8fuaz-pyVUSSXdHKoN7bR6NSXP5BMC6UsX0

Riaz Haq said...

Book titled "Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story" claims #Delhiriots were a conspiracy by Muslim jihadists. The fact is #Hindu mobs roamed the streets attacking #Muslims and burning their homes. Bloomsbury has now withdrawn it. #DelhiRiots2020UntoldStory https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/bloomsbury-india-pulls-delhi-riots-2020-book-after-anti-muslim-controversy

The book, titled Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story, claims that the riots were the result of a conspiracy by Muslim jihadists and so-called “urban naxals”, a derogatory term used to describe left-wing activists, who had a role to play in the riots. The claim contravenes reports by organisations such as Amnesty International and the Delhi Minorities Commission that Muslims bore the brunt of the violence.

The decision to withdraw the book has prompted many in India to accuse Bloomsbury India of censorship and the book’s author, Monika Arora, denounced the publisher for allegedly falling prey to “leftist fascists”. Delhi Riots 2020 will now be published by the Indian publishing house Garuda Prakashan.

The book began to draw controversy after it emerged that Kapil Mishra, a leader from the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), would be the guest of honour at an online launch event this weekend. The BJP’s national general secretary, Bhupendra Yadav, was to be the host.

Mishra is accused of instigating the riots that ripped violently through the north-east of Delhi in February and left more than 50 people dead, after he made a fiery public speech calling on his followers to clear away Muslim protestors.


What followed was three days of the worst religious violence in the capital in decades, where Hindu mobs roamed the streets attacking Muslims and burning their homes. Muslims retaliated but three quarters of those who were killed were Muslims, and thousands of Muslims lost their homes in their violence.


The decision to have Mishra as a guest of honour at the launch provoked an outcry in India. Bloomsbury quickly issued a statement denying any involvement in the event but a backlash began to grow against the book.

Among those who voiced concerns was the prominent British writer and historian William Dalrymple, who is published by Bloomsbury.

“I alerted Bloomsbury to the growing online controversy over Delhi Riots 2020, as did several other Bloomsbury authors,” Dalrymple said. “I did not call for its banning or pulping and have never supported the banning of any book. It is now being published by another press.”

Writing on Twitter, the poet Meena Kandasamy said “the literary world must take a stand” to stop Bloomsbury publishing the book. “This is not about cancel culture,” she said. “This is about defending literature from fascism. This is about standing up against religious divide, hate speech, islamophobia and false history.”

Sudhanva Deshpande, a celebrated theatre director and author, was among those who condemned Bloomsbury and accused them of failing to carry out “elementary fact checking”.

“Make no mistake about it, this book has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge … this book is part of a multi-pronged attack on India’s secular fabric, on the idea of natural justice, on ethics, on rationality, on humanity,” said Deshpande, adding: “The book has blood on its hands.”

On Saturday, Bloomsbury India released a statement confirming that it was withdrawing publication of the book. “Bloomsbury India strongly supports freedom of speech but also has a deep sense of responsibility towards society,” said the publisher.

However, Bloomsbury’s announcement was met with derision and accusations of censorship from some quarters.

Arora, the book’s main author, claimed that Bloomsbury India had previously had no issues with the book, that it had been cleared by their legal team, and that the publisher had been well aware of the launch event with Mishra, despite its public denials. She accused Bloomsbury of bowing down to “digital fatwas by international leftist lobbies”.

Riaz Haq said...

Book Excerpt (Aakar Patel's Price of the Modi Years): The Many Anti-Muslim Laws Brought in By the Modi Government
While the Citizenship Amendment Act rightly was criticised around the world for specifically targeting Muslims along with the NRC pincer, other laws India has passed since 2014 have not received as much notice.

https://thewire.in/politics/price-of-the-modi-years-book-excerpt


These are those laws the Modi years have given us:

1. The Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2015


Under this law anyone found in possession of beef would be jailed for up to five years. It also banned the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and calves in addition to the existing ban on cow slaughter.

2. The Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act, 2015

Possession of beef punishable by up to five years in jail. Sale of cows for slaughter to another state punishable by seven years in jail. Cow slaughter would attract jail of up to 10 years. The burden of proof would be on the accused.

3. The Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2017

This law extended the punishment for cow slaughter from seven years to life. It allows permanent forfeiture of vehicles transporting animals except under prescribed conditions. It also increased the fine from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. Minister of state for home Pradipsinh Jadeja said the logic was to equal cow slaughter with murder.

4. The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Ordinance, 2020 repealed the 1964 law which allowed the slaughter of bullocks.

It made cow slaughter punishable by up to seven years. Purchase, sale, disposal or transport of cattle outside the state except in prescribed manner would be punishable by five years in jail. Fines of up to Rs 10 lakh are also imposed.

The Maharashtra law has this clause: “9B. Burden of proof on accused. In any trial … the burden of proving that the slaughter, transport, export outside the State, sale, purchase or possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullock was not in contravention of the provisions of this Act shall be on the accused.”

Meaning that you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. If you are found with a bloody knife next to a corpse, you are presumed innocent. It is the State that has to demonstrate that you committed murder. But if you are found with or found near meat and accused of possessing beef you are presumed guilty of possessing beef till you disprove this to the satisfaction of the State. This is an invitation to violence. Two weeks after Maharashtra, on 17 March 2015, Haryana under the BJP passed its law criminalising possession of beef. The law has this section: ‘No person shall directly or indirectly sell, keep, store, transport or offer for sale or cause to be sold beef or beef products.’ Burden of proof was reversed here also. Punishment is up to five years.

While the Citizenship Amendment Act rightly was criticised around the world for specifically targeting Muslims along with the NRC pincer, other laws India has passed since 2014 have not received as much notice. The judiciary has been supine and allowed a de facto Hindu Rashtra to emerge through legislation. These laws have been written and passed and are being applied across India, targeting Indian Muslims, brutalising them constantly, while a demented media and a bored public have looked away.

Aakar Patel is Chair of Amnesty International India and author of Our Hindu Rashtra. His Price of the Modi Years will be released on November 14.

Riaz Haq said...

Study reveals social mobility booming in Pakistan

https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/10/29/study-reveals-social-mobility-booming-in-pakistan/

The Standard Chartered Bank (SCB-Pak) has conducted a study on ‘Emerging Affluent Consumers’ in eleven countries including Pakistan, in which it found that nearly two-thirds or 64 per cent of emerging affluent consumers in Pakistan are experiencing upward social mobility while 11 per cent are enjoying ‘supercharged’ social mobility.

The Emerging Affluent Study 2018 – climbing the prosperity ladder – examines the views of 11,000 emerging affluent consumers- individuals who are earning enough to save and invest – from 11 markets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Commenting on the study, SCB Retail Banking Head Syed Mujtaba Abbas said, “Ambitious consumers are on an upward social trajectory; they are surpassing their parents’ success in education, careers and home ownership. As their ambitions and aspirations grow, they are demanding convenient financial services and digital technology to broaden their access to money management and advance their financial wellbeing. It is an exciting journey where they are not only improving their own lives, but they are also fuelling growth in some of the world’s most exciting markets.”

According to the study, the average figure for social mobility among the emerging affluent consumers across the markets is 59 per cent, and of these 7 per cent are experiencing supercharged social mobility.

Pakistan’s socially mobile consumers, as identified by the study, have had impressive earnings growth, with almost half (44 per cent) enjoying a salary increase of 10 per cent or more in the past year, and more than a third (34 per cent) seeing their earning jump by 50 per cent or more in the past five years.

In Pakistan, the socially mobile people are also better educated and achieving higher levels of employment and homeownership than their parents. As many as 89 per cent went to universities, compared to 66 per cent of their fathers and less than half (49 per cent) of their mothers, while 83 per cent are in a management position or running their own businesses compared to 65 per cent of their fathers and 28 per cent of their mothers. Similarly, as many as 88 per cent of the socially mobile people own their own home, compared to 81 per cent of their parents at the same age.

Levels of optimism among the emerging affluent in Pakistan are even higher than reality, with 79 per cent believing they are in a better financial position than their parents compared to the 64 per cent in the study that are actually socially mobile.

More than two-thirds (70 per cent) of the emerging affluent in Pakistan say their familiarity with digital tools have been vital to their personal success, while 73 per cent say online banking makes them feel that they have more control over their money and investments, and 67 per cent say digital money management has helped them get closer to achieving their financial goals.

Pakistan’s emerging affluent is comfortable going online for financial advice, with the majority (60 per cent) saying they would invest in financial products online if an on-demand adviser was available. Risk is not a problem for the emerging affluent if strong rewards are possible 58 per cent would accept a high level of risk for a high level of return when investing their money in online financial products.

Riaz Haq said...

AT 9.4 out of a maximum possible score of 10, India’s Social Hostilities Index (SHI) in 2020 was worse than neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan, and a further increase in its own index value for 2019, the Pew data showed. A higher score is worse. The report covered 198 countries.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/communal-rift-highest-in-india-says-pew-study/amp-11669743517440.html


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Indian American Muslim Council
@IAMCouncil
A latest
@pewresearch
report notes that India’s Social Hostilities Index (SHI) in 2020 was worse than Afghanistan, Syria & Mali.


https://twitter.com/IAMCouncil/status/1598143658796412928?s=20&t=rRgJr5qTL0sB-p9yW014gw

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In India, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced in April 2020 that more than 900 members of the Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat and other foreign nationals (most of whom were Muslim) had been placed “in quarantine” after participating in a conference in New Delhi allegedly linked to the spread of early cases of coronavirus. (Many of those detained were released or granted bail by July 2020.)

Pandemic-related killings of religious minorities were reported in three countries in 2020, according to the sources analyzed in the study. In India, two Christians died after they were beaten in police custody for violating COVID-19 curfews in the state of Tamil Nadu.

In India, there were multiple reports of Muslims being attacked after being accused of spreading the coronavirus. In Argentina and Italy, properties were vandalized with antisemitic posters and graffiti that linked Jews to COVID-19. In Italy, for example, authorities found graffiti of a Star of David with the words “equal to virus.” And in the U.S., a Mississippi church burned down in an arson attack about a month after its pastor sued the city over public health restrictions on large gatherings. Investigators found graffiti in the church parking lot that said, “Bet you stay home now you hypokrits.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/29/how-covid-19-restrictions-affected-religious-groups-around-the-world-in-2020/

Riaz Haq said...

Pew talks about how Muslims were blamed and targeted during the COVID pandemic.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/29/how-covid-19-restrictions-affected-religious-groups-around-the-world-in-2020/

In India, Islamophobic hashtags like #CoronaJihad circulated widely on social media, seeking to blame Muslims for the virus.

In India, there were multiple reports of Muslims being attacked after being accused of spreading the coronavirus.

In India, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced in April 2020 that more than 900 members of the Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat and other foreign nationals (most of whom were Muslim) had been placed “in quarantine” after participating in a conference in New Delhi allegedly linked to the spread of early cases of coronavirus. (Many of those detained were released or granted bail by July 2020.)

Pandemic-related killings of religious minorities were reported in three countries in 2020, according to the sources analyzed in the study. In India, two Christians died after they were beaten in police custody for violating COVID-19 curfews in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Riaz Haq said...

Anti-Muslim bigotry that blamed the Tablighi Jamaat but allowed much bigger Kumbh mela gathering to go forward in the middle of India's worst COVID outbreak killed 4.7 million Indians.

https://qz.com/india/1996084/modi-governments-silence-over-kumbh-mela-shows-its-bias

What is much more evident is how the incident and the BJP’s rhetoric fueled hate speech and bigotry against Muslims in the early stages of the pandemic. Muslims were blamed for deliberately spreading the virus across India by waging what Hindutva adherents claimed was a “corona jihad”.

For months, headlines, incendiary statements, and viral videos sought to convey the idea that the spread of the virus in the country was the responsibility of a single community.

----------

Imagine if the Tablighi Jamaat gathering had been happening right now, with India in the grip of a brutal second wave of Covid-19 and daily case counts hitting numbers far higher than the worst days of 2020. Imagine the response of the BJP and India’s pro-government news channels if a police person had said something like this:

“We are continuously appealing to people to follow Covid appropriate behaviour. But due to the huge crowd, it is practically not possible to issue challans today. It is very difficult to ensure social distancing… A stampede-like situation may arise if we would try to enforce social distancing at ghats so we are unable to enforce social distancing here.”

It is not hard to imagine the anger and demands for accountability that might have been unleashed by a comment like that, from a senior police officer.

So what explains the relative silence of the government and the BJP when the same comment comes from the Inspector General of the Kumbh Mela currently taking place in Uttarakhand?

This was what Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said on March 20:

“I invite all devotees across the world to come to Haridwar and take a holy dip in the Ganga during Mahakumbh. Nobody will be stopped in the name of Covid-19 as we are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus.”

While claiming that all Central guidelines would be followed and that only those with a negative RT-PCR would be allowed to come, Rawat repeatedly said there would be no “rok-tok” or obstacles. “There is no strictness,” he said. “But Covid-19 guidelines should be followed… It’s open for everyone.”

Riaz Haq said...

Indian culture and civilization have been enriched by Muslims. The biggest draw of tourists to India is the Taj Mahal built by a Muslim king. The Red Fort where Modi stands every year to deliver Independence Day speech was built by Muslims. Indian musical instruments like sitar and tabla were developed by Muslims. Choli and lehenga worn by Indian women were brought to India by Muslims. Biryani, samosa and nan came to India with Muslims. Indian language has been enriched by Arabic and Farsi words added by Muslims. Even the words Hindi and Hindu are of Arabic/Persian origin.

Now Hindutva rulers are trying to erase Muslim history in India. They can not succeed.

Muslims have given the world algebra, calculus, scientific method, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, social sciences and a whole lot more.

Watch Prof Roy Casagranda explain it in detail in the following video:

https://youtu.be/C8M4i9fvq1M

Riaz Haq said...

#Indian court acquits 69 people of murder of 11 #Muslims during 2002 #Gujarat riots, overseen by current PM #Modi who was Chief Minister of Gujarat State. Former minister from ruling #BJP party among Hindus acquitted of killings in city of #Ahmedabad https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/indian-court-acquits-69-people-of-of-11-muslims-during-2002-gujarat-riots?CMP=share_btn_tw

The case related to the deaths of 11 Muslims who were killed after their homes in the city of Ahmedabad were set alight by Hindu mobs who rampaged through the streets during communal riots that took place in February 2002. According to an investigation into the attack afterwards, “there was no police help received by the Muslims and they were simply at the mercy of the miscreants”.

Thursday’s verdict by the special court dealt another blow for those still fighting for justice for the Gujarat riots. Over the past two decades, the state has been accused of protecting alleged Hindu perpetrators – including those who now hold some of the most powerful political offices in the country – as well as obstructing justice, intimidating Muslim victims and recently releasing some of the few who had been convicted of rape and violence against Muslims in the riots.

Shamshad Pathan, who represented the victims, said they would challenge the court’s decision in a higher court. “Justice has eluded the victims once again,” he said.

The Gujarat riots began after Muslims were suspected of setting alight a train carriage carrying Hindu pilgrims, sparking revenge attacks by Hindu groups in what became one of the worst outbreaks of religious bloodshed in India’s post-independence history. Officially about 1,000 people died in the violence, mostly Muslims, but civil society groups say the number was much higher.

India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, who leads the Hindu nationalist BJP government, was chief minister of Gujarat at the time and was accused of complicity in the bloodshed by allowing the Hindu groups to carry out the revenge attacks and encouraging police and authorities not to intervene to stop the violence. Modi denies any role and a supreme court panel found there was not enough evidence to prosecute him.

In this particular case, 86 Hindus were accused but 17 had died during the trial. Among those acquitted was Maya Kodnani, a former minister for Modi, who was a lawmaker at the time of the riots. She was also an accused in a case relating to the murder of 97 people during the riots and was convicted but later cleared by a higher court.

Those involved in rightwing Hindu vigilante groups Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which both have close links to them BJP, were also among the accused cleared of charges. As the verdict was announced, cries of “Jai Sri Ram”, a Hindu religious greeting that has been increasingly co-opted and weaponised by Hindu nationalists as a battle cry, were shouted outside the court.

“We have been saying from the first day that they were framed,” said the defence lawyer Chetan Shah. “Some of the accused were not present at the scene on the day of the incident.”

The acquittal of the 69 comes after the Gujarat government, which is still ruled by the BJP, recently decided to give early release to 11 Hindu convicts who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang-rape of a Muslim woman and the murder of members of her family, one of the few convictions successfully made in the Gujarat riots.


Riaz Haq said...

#Indian #Muslims in higher #education: Enrollment of Muslims in #India fell by 8% in 2019-20, while that of #Dalits, #Adivasis & #OBCs rose by 4.2%, 11.9% & 4% respectively. Upper caste #Hindus saw highest growth rate of 13.6%. #Islamophobia #Casteism https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/lower-in-higher-education-8598739/

The recently released All India Survey on Higher Education 2020–21 shows some contrasting trends. On the one hand, enrollment of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in higher education has increased by 4.2 per cent, 11.9 per cent and 4 per cent respectively compared to 2019-20. The upper castes, whose share in enrollment had been declining with the implementation of Mandal II since the late 2000s but who have come back with the highest growth rate of 13.6 per cent. On the other hand, the enrollment of Muslim students dropped by 8 per cent from 2019-20 – that is, by 1,79,147 students. This level of absolute decline has never happened in the recent past for any group.

UP accounts for 36 per cent of that total decline followed by Jammu and Kashmir, which accounts for 26 per cent, then Maharashtra (8.5 per cent), Tamil Nadu (8.1 per cent), Gujarat (6.1 per cent), Bihar (5.7 per cent) and Karnataka (3.7 per cent). Except in Tamil Nadu, Muslims alone witnessed an absolute decline in their enrollment. While the states that have a larger share of the Muslim population account for the higher share of decline, small states too show similar trends. For instance, between 2019-20 — 2020-21, Delhi lost about 20 per cent of its Muslim students while J&K lost about 36 per cent.

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Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, emeritus professor, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawahar Lal Nehru University and former chairman, University Grants Commission(UGC) said that financially weak Muslims may go for higher studies if they are helped through scholarships.
Speaking on a lecture ‘Where do the Muslims lag behind in higher education?: Lessons for policies’ on the occasion of the 25th Foundation Day of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Manuu), Thorat said, “There are internal disparities among Muslims in attainment of higher education based on income level, gender and medium of education and institutions like Manuu must give preference to such groups through scholarships, differential fee structure, hostel facility and remedial coaching classes.”
He reiterated that Muslims have the lowest Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at 16.6% in higher education among all the communities in the country (national average is 26.3%). He also pointed out that Muslim students depend highly on government institutions (54.1%) as compared to other communities (national average 45.2%) and only 18.2% Muslim students go to private aided higher education institutions and 27.4% go to private unaided higher education institutions against a national average of 24.4% and 30.1%, respectively.


https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/muslims-have-lowest-ger-in-higher-education/articleshow/88808430.cms

Riaz Haq said...

#India’s deadly #traincrash: Forget the truth, blame it on #Muslims. It’s the latest instance of how in an #Islamophobic India, justice and accountability have themselves been derailed. #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Modi #BJP https://aje.io/dqenql via @AJEnglish

By Apoorvanand

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. He writes literary and cultural criticism.

It happens only in India that even a train accident is used as an opportunity to demonise Muslims.

Just after the recent terrible train crash near Balasore station in the eastern state of Odisha, in which more than 280 people died, posts started circulating on different social media platforms and WhatsApp groups, blaming Muslims for the accident.

Could it be a coincidence that it was a Friday when three trains collided with each other in Odisha? As if the Friday angle was not sufficient, a lie was invented that the station master was Muslim. To make it look more sinister, the photo of a religious shrine near the railway track where the accident had taken place was spread on social media claiming that it was a mosque, suggesting that there must be some link between the mosque and the accident.

It was immediately exposed as a lie. It was a Hindu temple and not a mosque. But imagine if it had actually been a mosque – the baseless conspiracy theory would have received fresh wings.

Sadly, fact-checking only cements doubts created by fake news in minds that are already prejudiced against Muslims and are being told day and night that Muslims are conspiring against the nation. These are minds trained to think that there is a need to keep an eye on Muslims and to subjugate them using laws and, if necessary, violence.

The railway minister ordered an inquiry into the accident by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has long given up the pretence of acting as an independent investigative agency and is principally used to target political opponents and probe cases along ideological lines laid down by the country’s ruling masters.


In this case, handing the case over to the CBI circumvents the normal process in such situations, which is an investigation by the commissioner of safety. The result: Instead of paying attention to flaws in safety measures, which could raise uncomfortable questions for the government, the investigation into the accident will now keep alive a criminal conspiracy theory. It aligns with the rumours spread just after the accident.

Close on the heels of this accident, the chief minister of the state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, made a speech to discourage the use of chemicals in farming. Giving it an anti-Muslim twist, he vowed that “fertiliser jihad” would not be allowed. He was using this occasion to target Bengali Muslims in his state, whose main occupation is farming. Suggesting that they were spoiling the land by using chemicals, he was giving yet another justification for evicting Bengali Muslims and taking away their land, building on a campaign he has relentlessly pursued in recent years.

Sarma is recovering from the defeat of the BJP, his party, in the legislative election for the state of Karnataka, where he was a star campaigner. He, along with other leaders of the BJP, turned the election into an anti-Muslim hate campaign, saying that he had closed hundreds of madrasas and would ensure that all are closed. He also parroted familiar tropes about Indian Muslims, portraying them as against family planning. Statistics show that rates of polygamy are almost identical among Hindus and Muslims in India, and Muslim fertility rates have fallen sharply in recent decades. But facts are inconvenient when the aim is to spread lies about a religious minority community.


Riaz Haq said...

Muslims are the poorest religious group in India
By
Abhishek Jha
,
Roshan Kishore
Jun 30, 2023 09:22 AM IST

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/muslims-in-india-the-poorest-religious-group-with-high-inequality-and-limited-opportunities-data-analysis-reveals-101688097160955.html

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India
The first of this two-part data series looked at intra-religious inequality among Muslims and found that they are as unequal a society as Hindus in India. These measures of inequality do not tell us about the material well-being (or lack of it) of Muslims as a whole vis–a-vis other religious groups in India. An analysis of the relevant numbers shows that they are the poorest religious group in the country. Here are four charts which explain this in detail.
Muslims have the lowest asset/consumption levels among major religious groups…

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) shows that they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India. Average consumption and asset values for Muslims are 87.9% and 79% of the all-India average and 87.8% and 79.3% of the average values for Hindus. Religious groups which have a population share of less than 1% have been clubbed in the “others” category.

Which means that they over-populate the ranks of the poor in India

There is often a lot of dog-whistling about the population of Muslims increasing at a higher pace than other religious groups in India. While most such commentary is ill-informed – this was discussed in detail in these pages (https://tinyurl.com/2mhjxnn2) — Muslims do have an overrepresentation problem when it comes to their relative share in population among the poor. A comparison of relative share – among every decile class by assets ; it basically measures the share in a given decile class divided by overall share in population – shows that Muslims are concentrated in the bottom half of India’s population and outnumber the Hindus in relative terms in each of the bottom six deciles.

Even Muslim upper castes are poorer than Hindu OBCs

A comparison of average asset/MPCE values across social groups among Hindus and Muslims shows this clearly. The average asset value for non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims – they are the non-Pasmanda Muslims – is not just lower than the average value for non-SC/ST/OBC Hindus but also lower than that of Hindu OBCs, which shows that the claims of Muslim upper castes enjoying disproportionate economic power are just not true.

Poor employment and educational opportunities seem to be the primary cause of economic backwardness for Muslims

The PLFS gives data on both the status of workers (whether regular wage, self-employed, or casual) and the type of enterprise (such as government, public and private limited companies) at which a worker is employed. This shows that even non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims have a low share in regular jobs (the average wage in such jobs is the highest) compared to other religions. A comparison with caste groups among Hindus shows that non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims only do better than ST and SC Hindus. The disadvantage for Muslims becomes even bigger if one looks at their share in government jobs, a fact which has been pointed out by the Sachar Committee among others. To be sure, the low share of Muslims among the better jobs in India need not necessarily be a result of discrimination in the hiring process. Rather, it could be the result of Muslim job-seekers lagging in terms of educational qualifications, which is bound to have a big role in employability.