Shed these blinkers

With due respect to the armed forces and their secular stance, and with due respect to the views expressed by Shekhar Gupta on the subject ...

With due respect to the armed forces and their secular stance, and with due respect to the views expressed by Shekhar Gupta on the subject 8216;Kitne Musalman hain?8217;,IE, February 18, one is compelled to raise a small question. Why should a mere paper exercise filling a questionnaire be feared to have such impact? Or have the authorities woken up to the fact that employment of Muslims in the forces, in proportion to their population, is indeed very insignificant? But if it is so, so what?

If it is feared that public knowledge about the minimal employment of Muslims in armed forces would raise questions about the secular nature of the Armed Forces. That would be wrong. Let us accept one hard fact. The last few decades 8212; have witnessed a revolutionary change in the minds of Indian Hindus and Muslims towards each other. The pro-Pak hang-up, earlier linked with Indian Muslims, is hardly relevant to the new generation. It is tragic that some of those still hung up on partition-phobia have yet to accept this.

Shekhar Gupta has also written that the setting up of a committee is 8220;perfectly justified8221; to probe into whether minorities are able to access that 8220;great equalising opportunity in a democracy8221;. It cannot be ignored that a large population of this country is conservative, poor and rural. In this context, should religion be used as a defining parameter as to why a particular group is illiterate or conservative? For instance, if Muslims of a particular area, in say Rajasthan, are found to be illiterate, should only their religious status be assumed to be responsible for this? No. Categorisation of such a nature would be acceptable only if the same areas had the needed avenues of education to which people belonging to other communities and/or religions had access. Going by this logic, if Muslims of, say, one particular area in any state are suffering from illiteracy, it is not because they are Muslims but because such avenues are not available for the population of the region as a whole.

Given this hard reality, it would be illogical to think of creating further avenues only for Muslims and also approaching the issue only from the angle of Muslims. The communal stance in this very approach can have dangerous repercussions. Rudimentary analysis suggests that not just Muslims, but communities belonging to the same economic and geographical stretch, are likely to suffer from similar problems.

Given this, planning development projects only for Muslims has its own negative ramifications bordering on communalism. Conducting research on Muslims, without comparing it to facilities available to the members of other communities, would amount to the same thing. Let8217;s accept this is a national problem that is not just confined to Muslims. If we are to move ahead in this nuclear age, it8217;s time to shed old stereotypes, whether with regard to Muslim employment in the army, or opportunities available to them elsewhere.