IPT 2.3 | June 2023 | Section 6
In April, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in a gathering in Chevella in the state of Telangana, that the state’s four percent reservation for Muslims would be discontinued if the BJP were to win in the state assembly elections in December 2023. In a campaign speech in Karnataka he supported the state’s BJP government’s decision to remove similar reservations. The Minister called the reservation unconstitutional, claiming that only the Scheduled Castes. Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes were entitled to reservation in India. The Indian constitution allows reservation for socially and educationally backward classes, which was recommended for Muslim Other Backward Classes by the Sachar Committee Report on the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India in 2006.
Non-state actors, especially groups within the Hindutva ideological umbrella, continue to mobilise and incite hostility and violence. Muslims also continue to lag behind Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities in key areas such as education, with Muslim enrolment in higher education declining despite increasing figures for other communities (AISHE Survey 2020-21). Encouraged by statements by senior leaders such as Mr Shah’s, Hindu groups are demanding that Christian and Muslim Scheduled Tribes be excluded from being considered for affirmative action programmes. With these communities being socially and economically underserved, state policies which target poor and marginalised sections also impact Muslims and Christians disproportinately (see here and here as recent emblematic analyses).
The impact of demolitions of cultural sites of minorities and evictions of minority families in reprisals by authorities have left a deep impact on them. In April, Mohammad Saleem (50) and his minor daughter died by suicide after consuming poison after officials in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district informed him that his house would be demolished for being built on government land. While minorities faced the brunt of ‘bulldozer justice’ and eviction drives, illegal constructions by BJP leaders do not seem to face much punitive action. Attacks on cultural markers also continue, with The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) discovering that in January 2023, a 15th century monument, was demolished in South East Delhi by the Delhi Jal (Water) Board, to make way for its CEO’s house. The monument, a ‘Pathan’ period Mahal (palace), dating back to 1418, had been listed by ASI as a historic monument, with ASI seeking permission for possession and conservation.