Separate and unequal

Unfortunately the reaction to the report will, predictably, enact all the processes that have led us to this pass. There will be a small group in denial: as if the existence of a few Muslim film stars is compensation for the real deprivations of Muslims. Many will engage in a blame game. But, as Hamid Dalwai pointed out with unsurpassed prescience in his Muslim Politics in India 1969, a whole cocktail of political forces conspired to keep Muslims backward. The Congress had an interest in keeping them a supplicant minority, progressive elements among Muslims were too meek to seize leadership of the community, obscurantist elements would thrive on a narrative of victimhood and prevent substantive social reform, and threats from Hindu communalists would only reinforce a vicious cycle of marginalisation and violence.

It is a sad reflection on modern India that this basic cocktail has not changed much. But the report will also expose other forces as well. On most objective indicators, it will turn out that West Bengal is the worst state for Muslims; they fare even lower than SCs/STs. So much for the Left8217;s credentials for caring for the marginal and dispossessed. Other forces like the Samajwadi Party have basically traded in the insecurities of Muslims, rather than craft policies to empower them.

Although there are some concerns from the data, Muslims do somewhat better in states like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, at least in terms of economic opportunity and education. This is both mildly good and catastrophically bad news. For, on the one hand, it shows the truth in the conventional wisdom that rapidly growing states may not lift all sections evenly, but they nevertheless do lift them. There is no substitute for conventional growth and employment generation and income enhancement. But the bad news is that mere economic progress does not seem to bring about a conception of citizenship so that we can all inhabit public institutions and spaces freely. Gujarat is a strikingly grim reminder of what a vitiated public culture can do even in the face of expanding economic opportunity.

But the report will pose challenging questions for those of us who see ourselves as blameless, exempt from the opportunism of the Congress, the hypocrisy of the Left, the obscurantism of clerics, the meekness of Muslim leadership, the fanaticism of the BJP. The committee8217;s data throws up the subtle, pervasive and complicated ways in which Muslim exclusion is produced. Do we think twice before renting a place to Muslims? Where is our outrage when the cardinal principle that individuals are innocent until proven guilty is violated when minorities are arrested? More subtly, are we all comfortable practising only a secularism of distance that never wonders why public institutions are not shared? Even when not overtly hostile, what are the different ways in which we, consciously or unconsciously, produce our own exclusions?

The data needs careful analysis for a fuller diagnosis. But early signs are that the policy response will be narrow 8212; variations on the blind alley of reservations. But it would be a shame if the profound moral challenge posed by this report was reduced to another cat fight over the distribution of government goodies. The real message of the data is that we need to restore meaning and passion to the term 8216;public8217;. Nothing has done public policy more harm than the idea that to be effective it must be particularistic in character, targeted to groups by virtue of their particular identity. Programmes that are group-specific are likely to be more symbolic than substantive, a way of expatiating guilt rather than solving the problem. Second, statism has corroded society8217;s energy in a peculiar way. Expanding opportunity, combating prejudice, restoring the romance to modern education, openness to social reform are usually not done very effectively by the state alone. It requires a veritable social movement, but we have abdicated these functions to the blunt and ineffective legal instrumentalities alone.

Gandhi said the test of our citizenship will be when Muslim or Hindu concerns are no longer concerns only for Muslims or Hindus, but become our concerns. The report suggests that the effective social distance has grown, not diminished. The real challenge is creating a different kind of politics, one that is about generating truly effective social policy, not just maintaining equilibrium between groups. The issue is not distribution of state largesse; it is the creation of spaces that are diverse and shared by all. Shared educational institutions are the only crucible through which such spaces can be forged. Unfortunately, we may well be beyond the point where anybody trusts the state to facilitate the delivery of public goods that all can equitably access. If we have reached that point, then India8217;s future is indeed bleak.

As the PM ponders his response, he will do well to remember that what is at stake is not just uplifting this or that group, but the very idea of India itself: whether it has the capacity for transcending the cant, indifference and identity traps that have brought us to this pass.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Researchprata