Source: TwoCircles.net
Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood,
In the holy Quran (17.70) God says that on each human being He has bestowed equal dignity. Elsewhere (49.13) He reveals that, for the sake of facilitating mutual cognitive and interactive convenience, He has apportioned the humanity into nations and tribes. That way, both individual and group existence has been accorded divine recognition and patronage. From several other verses spanning about a dozen chapters we can discern God’s message of expediency, wisdom, and constancy being the sine qua non for both individual and societal purposefulness and prosperity. While saying all of this, God’s addressees include the entire humanity – extending to all classes of human race. Let’s explore how best we can use this triple divine mandate for rectifying the social discrimination against the scheduled castes and ‘other backward classes’ and, taking them along, unitedly restore justice and fairplay to the disadvantaged Muslim and Christian communities in India.
The recent 65 years of Indian history since Independence in 1947 unambiguously evidences that Muslims are extremely backward and lag behind the followers of all other religions in every field of progress. This has become particularly conspicuous since the documented reports of Sachar Committee and Mishra Commission appeared in the public domain. These reports also bring to the fore the following factors behind such backwardness: (1) Since 1950 Muslims & Christians have been excluded, through a central executive order defining Scheduled Castes, from 15% of the membership of parliament and state assemblies, government offices and educational institutions. (2) Most of those electoral constinuencies which have substantial Muslim population even though Scheduled Castes (SCs) are non-existent or numerically insignificant there have been earmarked for SCs. (3) Anti-Muslim prejudice is deeply ingrained as a part of the national sentiment. And, (4) Successive ruling establishments consider it enough to handpick a few Muslims and sprinkle them over some innocuous government positions without caring to restore ground level rights and justice, institutionally, to the larger Muslim population. Read more