Mahua Moitra's iconic speech in Parliament

Sir, I rise to oppose the Motion and to speak in support of the amendments made by our party. First of all, let me begin by humbly accepting the resounding mandate that this government has got. But, it is the very nature of the overwhelmingness of this mandate, of the totality of this mandate, that makes it necessary for us to be heard today, the voice of dissent to be heard today. Had the mandate been any less, there would have been a natural checks and balances woven into the narrative. That is not the case. The House belongs to the Opposition. So, I stand today to reclaim this inch that has been guaranteed to us.

Let me start by quoting Maulana Azad, whose statue stands tall outside this great hall. He once said of this country that he was fighting to build. He said, “It is India’s historic destiny that many human races and cultures should flow to her, finding a home in a respectable soil, and that many a caravan should find rest here. There are cultures, our languages, our poetry, our literature, our art, the innumerable happenings of our daily life shall bear the stands of our joined endeavour.

This is the ideal that was carved into our Constitution. This is the very Constitution each of us has sworn to protect. But, this Constitution is under threat today. Of course, you may disagree with me. You may say, acche din are here and the sun will never set on this Indian empire that this Government is seeking to build. But, then you are missing the signs. If you only would open your eyes, you would see that there are signs everywhere that this country is torn apart.

In the few minutes that have been allotted to me, let me list out these dangerous signs. The first sign – there is a powerful and continuing nationalism that is being sphered into our national fabric. It is superficial, it is xenophobic, it is narrow. It has a lust to divide. It is not a desire to unite. Citizens are being thrown out of their homes and are being called illegal immigrants. People who have lived in this country for 50 years have to show a piece of paper to prove they are Indians. In a country where ministers cannot produce degrees to show that they graduated from college, you expect disposed poor people to show papers as proof that they belong to this country?

Slogans and symbols are being used to test religion. There is no one slogan, no one symbol that ensure any Indian that they are patriot. There is no one test, Sir. No one test.

Sir, the second sign – there is resounding disdain for human rights that is permeating in every level of governance. There has been a ten-fold increase in the number of hate crimes between 2014 and 2019. This is like the valuation of an e-commerce start-up, Sir. There are forces in this country that are sitting there just pushing this number up. The lynching of citizens in broad daylight is being condoned. From Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan last year to Mr Ansari in Jharkhand yesterday, the list is not stopping.

The third sign – there is an unimaginable subjugation and control of mass media today. Five of the largest news media organizations in India are today either indirectly controlled or indirectly debted to one man in this country. TV channels spent a majority of airtime broadcasting propaganda for the ruling party. Coverage of every Opposition party is cut out. Let the government come out with facts and figures to show ad-spend per media house. What are they spending the money on and which media houses are they blocking out? The Information and Broadcasting Ministry employs over 120 people solely to check the content on TV channels every day to make sure that there is no anti-government news being put out.

Fake news is the norm. This election was not fought on the plank of farmer distress. This election was not fought on unemployment. This election was fought on Whatsapp, on fake news, on manipulating minds. Every piece of news that this government, I repeat, every piece of news that this government have put out, every lie that you put out, you repeat and repeat and then it becomes the truth. This is the Goebbels doctrine.

You talk about naamdar and kaamdar? Let me tell you the Congress party might have put up 36 dynasts since 1999 in parliament but the BJP put up 31. Every time you put out one figure anything that is not the truth, you are destroying the fabric of India. Yesterday the floor leader of the Congress party said that the co-operative movement has been a failure in Bengal and I urge him to check his facts. The one co-operative that he is referring to – Bhagirathi – in Murshidabad is now in profit. Every little misinformation that we put out serves to destroy this country.

The fourth sign is that there is an obsession with national security – identification of enemies. When we were children our mother used to tell us to do this and do that or kala bhoot will come. It is as though all of us in this country today are in fear of some nameless, shameless kala bhoot. There is fear pervading everywhere. The achievements of the army are being usurped in the name of one man. Is this correct? New enemies are being created every day and the irony is that over the last five years terrorist attacks have gone up manifold. There has been a 106 per cent increase in the death of jawans in Kashmir.

The fifth sign is that the government and religion are now intertwined in this country. Do I even need to speak about this? Need I remind you that we have redefined what it means to be a citizen? With the NRC and the Citizenship Amendment Bill we are making sure that there is only one community that is the target of anti-immigration laws. Members of Parliament these days are more interested in the fate of 2.77 acres of land than in the 812 million acres of the rest of India.

Yeh sirf 2.77 acre janmabhhoomi ka mudda nahi hain. Yeh sara desh, 80 crore acres, ko akhand rakhne ka prashna hai.

The sixth sign is the most dangerous. There is complete disdain for intellectuals and the arts. There is a repression of all dissent, funding is being cut for liberal education, scientific temperament which is enshrined in Article 51 of the Constitution. There is Article 51 of the Constitution, which demands a scientific temperament. Everything we are doing is pushing India back to the dark ages. Secondary school textbooks are being manipulated and distorted in order to indoctrinate.You don’t even tolerate questioning, let alone dissent.

I wish to quote the great Hindi poet, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar. I wish to tell you this, that the spirit of dissent is integral to India. You cannot shatter us.

“Haan haan duryodhan baandh mujhe, 

baandhne mujhe toh aaya hai. 

Zanjeer bari kya laya hai? 

Yadi mujhe baandhna chahe man, 

pehle toh baandh anant gagan.

Sune ko sadhna sakta hai,

woh mujhe kab baandh sakta hai?”

I ask you this, you cannot keep us down.

Number seven, the last sign; there is an erosion of independence in our electoral system. The Election Commission was used to transfer key officials. Rs 60,000 crore was spent in this election; 50 percent by one party, Rs 27,000 crore.

In 2017, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum put up a poster in its main lobby and it contained a list of all the signs of early fascism. Each of the seven signs I have pointed to you featured in that poster. There is a danger of fascism rising in India. It is incumbent upon all of us to stand up to it. Let us, the Members of this 17th Lok Sabha decide which side of history do we want to be on. Do we want to be upholders of this Constitution or do we want to be its poll bearers?

I do not dispute the resounding mandate that this Government has got but I have the right to disagree with your idea that ‘there was no one before and that there should be no one after you.’

In conclusion, I quote the poet Rahat Indori:

"Jo aaj saahibe masnad hain kal nahin honge 

Kiraaydaar hain jaati makaan thodi hai, 

Sabhi ka khoon shaamil yahan ki mitti me 

Kisi ke baap ka hindustan thodi hai?"

Trinamool Congress MP Ms. Mahua Moitra's 

maiden speech on rising fascism wins cheers

In a Parliament tarnished by heckling, sexist jibes, and blatant misogyny displayed by the old boys’ club, Mahua Moitra just blew their cockiness to smithereens. And the best part is, she did it with so much grace, dignity, and fierceness, that the men, mostly her political rivals, were evidently flummoxed. -- Author and journalist Chandrima Pal

Poverty, human rights & dignity

Poverty is not an original state, nor are the poor the victims of their own faults and weaknesses. Nor is it due to shortcomings in personality or morality, or failures in family or upbringing. Poverty is about exclusion, physical and economic insecurity, fear of the future, a constant sense of vulnerability. Poverty is created by societies and governments. Poverty is experienced as individuals, family and communities. Poverty is embedded in complex of policies, interactions and relationships.

• Poverty is self-sustaining. In the modern economy, once a person or group is caught in its trap, it is hard to escape the cycle of poverty. It destroys self-confidence and the capacity to organize collective action and response. 
• Economic globalisation, which include the privatisation of state resources and functions, and the introduction of charges even for the most basic needs reinforce the cycle of poverty by cutting off possibilities of social mobility. 
• A powerful economic and political class emerges on the back of this poverty, with no interest in social reform, creating further obstacles to equitable distribution of resources. In this way poverty leads to social exclusion.
• Poverty negates the realisation or enjoyment of human rights. The purpose of human rights, a life in dignity, is rendered impossible by poverty. The daily struggles of the poor constantly humiliate them. 
• There is no real possibility of poor people enjoying rights, whether civil and political or social, economic and cultural, without resources such as education, physical security, health, employment, property, participation, and due process - all of which poverty negates. In poverty there can be no control over one’s life chances or even everyday life.
• Existence in hovels without the basic amenities of life allows no time or ability for self-reflection, essential for identity, self- realisation, or making moral judgments. Poverty generates habits of subservience and docility that denies the premise of the equality and dignity of all persons. 
• Poverty also forces persons into slavery and bondage, and stories of parents selling children into slavery out of desperation are now common place in states like India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria - and many other parts of the world. 
• A poor man cannot support his family and tends to draw away from it, burdening the wife with additional responsibilities to sustain the family.
• Poverty creates or reinforces divisions within the family, in which the male members get priority over scarce family resources. In this way poverty subverts decent and fulfilling family life. 
• Family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society which is entitled to protection by society and the state.
• Poverty not only deprives and demeans the poor but also affects the affluent and society. It sharpens inequalities and leads to crime, law and order, as the poor resort to various forms of self-help to eke out a living, including thefts and robberies. Security becomes an obsession for the middle classes, turning their suburbs into fortresses. The slums that grow out of poverty breed diseases and environmental degradation that can scarcely be contained within the confines of the slums. 
• In the modern age poverty poses a major threat to social consensus and political stability. Poverty erodes the moral fibre and the moral cohesion of a society. It destroys the self-confidence of the people caught in the cycle of poverty, and leads to the waste of resources. 
• Ideology is used to justify the limits on the role of the state in providing social welfare. Disparities of opportunities and incomes have increased in recent years. The poor can make themselves heard only by irregular demonstrations, to limited effect. 
• We need fundamental social and economic reforms to ensure all its residents a decent life in dignity which is so eminently within reach, based on its wealth and resources.

Read the source article

Justice and its delivery

Corruption is hampering the delivery of justice globally. People perceive the judiciary as the second most corrupt public service, after the police. We in India, have been living with less than efficient judicial remedy system. Some reasons are restraint of contempt notice threat, corruption prevailing in courts, incompetent level of delivery pattern of our judiciary and lack of awareness even after 70 years of self rule. 

• A transparent and accountable judiciary to deliver justice for all. The integrity, independence, and impartiality of the judiciary are preconditions for fair and effective access to justice and for the protection of human rights. Discrimination and corrupt practices often prevent citizens, especially the poor and marginalized, from equitable opportunities and protection of their rights.
• More than 75% of the Indians have never visited courts while near 100% have visited doctors  and huge majority have visited schools or temples / churches / mosques and little lesser to colleges and employment offices.
• Vast majority have never tested the efficacy of the judicial system. Our judges and judicial officers are crying for help as the work seems piling and becoming unmanageable, what will then be the case if litigation intensity rises?
• The bitter truth is that our courts are court of law and not a court of justice. Some may disagree because it is the law and order that justice is incidental to. If you get proof beyond reasonable doubt, about your innocence, the court shall provide you with justice.
• To achieve justice, to prove the truth, it takes time. The judge doesn’t know what has happened. He or she has to learn, listen to both sides, and with the corroboration of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, make a decision. Extreme justice is often injustice.
• Even though the power is in the hands of the bench, its members cannot unplug the Constitution.
• The truism, justice delayed is justice denied, is easy to cite. But to be in that chair surrounded by thousands of provisions and arguments, and eyes looking for justice, it is not easy to make decisions that are not just in favour of what is right, but also in the interest of the public at large.
• What if, in haste, an innocent person is punished — it would be the most horrendous crime. Instead, let the crime of the guilty go unpunished, than an innocent person being condemned.
• Our judicial system is so opaque and money centered. Even a simple bail and case settlement is often decided and determined based on the person's capacity in financial terms and political poweress.
• It is not a coincidence that all criminal and politically sensitive cases of those in power are always in the back burner and this happen without fail.

Corruption undermines justice in many parts of the world with the poor and vulnerable suffering most. We need justice delivery system that works round-the-year, speedy and free - like public hospitals. To achieve this the judiciary infrastructure must be modernized and upgraded. Judge-to-people ratio should be increased from the present 18 to at least 50 per million people. With the states failing to spend adequately on providing the required infrastructure and adequate number of trained personnel by way of judges and staff, the judiciary can hardly be blamed from the enormous backlog of cases that has been built up to whopping 28 million pending cases. The justice delivery system failure has led to mafia, musclemen, politicians and policemen settling the disputes and collecting hefty amounts from all the aggrieved parties.

Cost of preserving freedom

James Adams, 2nd President of USA

• Freedom is not free. You will pay the price to preserve it.
• John Adams, the second president of USA, he wrote, April 26, 1777: “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
• Theodore Roosevelt wrote in a preface: “No people can be really great unless they possess heroic virtues. America will cease to be a great nation whenever her young men cease to possess energy, daring, and endurance, as well as the wish and the power to fight the nation’s foes. He must also be able and willing to stand up for his own rights and those of his country against all comers resisting either malice domestic or foreign levy.”
• Henry Cabot Lodge warned the U.S. Senate, Aug. 12, 1919: “The United States is the world’s best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, you will endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come strong, generous, and confident. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance; this great land of ordered liberty. For if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.”
• Since 2001, there have been a steady erosion of civil liberties even in countries that regard themselves as liberty's champions. Arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention without trial, suspension of habeas corpus, even torture - who would have thought such things possible? Governments argue that desperate times demand such remedies. They face a murderous new enemy who lurks in the shadows, will stop at nothing and seeks chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This renders the old rules and freedoms out of date. There is always a great force in such arguments. This is how governments through the ages have justified grabbing repressive new powers. 
• During the second world war the democracies spied on their own citizens, imposed censorship and used torture to extract information. America interned its entire Japanese-American population, a decision now seen to have been a cruel mistake.
• The democracies chose by and large not to let it change the sort of societies which was a wise choice not only because of the freedom it bestowed on people in the West during those decades, but also because the West's freedoms became one of the most potent weapons in its struggle against its totalitarian foes.
• War against terrorism is not a war at all. Although a real threat exists, to let security trump liberty in every case would corrode the civilised world's sense of what it is and wants to be.
• Obnoxious measures do not help the fight against terrorism anyway. 
• It is tempting to let secret policemen spy on citizens, detain them without trial and use torture to extract information makes it easier to foil terrorist plots. 
• What you would do with a terrorist who knew the location of a ticking nuclear bomb. Logic says you would torture one man to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and so you would. But this a fictional dilemma. Policemen are seldom sure whether the many suspects they want to torture know of any plot, or how many lives might be at stake. All that is certain is that the logic of the ticking bomb leads down a slippery slope where the state is licensed in the name of the greater good to trample on the hard-won rights of any one and therefore all of its citizens.
• Human rights are part of what it means to be civilised. Locking up suspected terrorists, potential murderers, rapists and pedophiles before they commit crimes would probably make society safer. Dozens of plots may have been foiled and thousands of lives saved as a result of some of the unsavory practices now being employed in the name of fighting terrorism. 
• Dropping such practices in order to preserve freedom may cost many lives. So be it.

Our government in the name of bringing tax evaders to books forcibly linking everybody's accounts and transactions with Aadhaar, without secure network and robust privacy laws, is gross violation of citizens privacy rights, freedom and liberties guaranteed by constitution. To catch a thief undermining citizen's privacy rights is nonsense. This tantamount to peeping into bedrooms of each and every citizen which is an unacceptable nonsense. Preservation of citizen's rights, freedom and liberties takes precedence over all other government's activities. Govt must explore other avenues to go after tax evaders and must stop this nonsensical Aadhaar related violation of privacy rights.

Privacy is a fundamental right - annotations

The Supreme Court’s landmark judgment elevating the right to privacy as a fundamental right is a significant reminder of India’s republican values and their relevance to all classes of people.

• After 70 years of Independence, it would have been highly unpopular for India’s Supreme Court, and any of its judges, to subscribe to a proposition that ran counter to the liberal ethos of the times. 
• Any judge expressing a dissenting view could have run the risk of being seen on the wrong side of history.
• The right to privacy was demanded by only those who had something to hide, said Rakesh Dwivedi, senior counsel for Gujarat. 
• The right to privacy had no relevance for the hungry millions, said the Attorney General, K.K. Venugopal. Privacy was just a facet of liberty, and being amorphous, it could not be elevated to the status of a fundamental right, was the refrain of many respondents before the court.
• Justice Chandrachud - the validity of a law which infringes the fundamental rights has to be tested not with reference to the object of state action, but on the basis of its effect on the guarantees of freedom.
• In a democratic Constitution founded on the rule of law, their rights are as sacred as those conferred on other citizens to protect their freedoms and liberties.
• The invasion of a fundamental right was not rendered tolerable when a few were subjected to hostile treatment.
• The refrain that the poor need no civil and political rights and are concerned only with economic well-being has been utilised through history to wreak the most egregious violations of human rights.
• It is the right to question, the right to scrutinise and the right to dissent which enables an informed citizenry to scrutinise the actions of government.
• The theory that civil and political rights are subservient to socio-economic rights has been urged in the past and has been categorically rejected by this court.
• The right to privacy is too amorphous to be defined in specific terms and that it should be left to evolve from case to case. 
• A restrictive definition of the right to privacy specifying what it included could hamper its growth in the future. 
• The right to privacy was a fundamental right, without specifying its contours, could limit the state’s pursuit of its development agenda.
• Justice Chandrachud, while agreeing that privacy must be left to evolve case to case, laid down three grounds to justify an invasion of privacy. They are existence of a law, a legitimate state aim suffering from no arbitrariness, and proportionality of the means to the object . 
• The sharing of biometric data, which the Aadhaar scheme entails, involves many facets of the right to privacy.

Petitions challenging the Aadhaar Act will now be heard and decided by regular benches of the Supreme Court in the light of the privacy judgment.

It would have been nice if centre had recognised privacy is a fundamental right made laws attenuating Aadhaar and treated citizens with respect. But it is too much to expect such good things from autocratic Modi. Now privacy has become a fundamental right not by virtue of a constitutional provision nor by an act of parliament but by a judgement of a Supreme Court constitutional bench. This is not the best way. And if centre instead of respecting judgement gracefully searches ways and methods to surreptitiously push Aadhaar for citizen's surveillance and undermine citizens rights they would meet waterloo again and again. BJP & NDA and all parties must realize that they are in power for the citizens welfare and not other way round. But Modi & BJP are notorious for not learning lessons but will attempt to bulldoze on people with their stupid thinking.

What army is doing in Kashmir?

Army's role is primarily to secure frontiers from external threats and police to maintain internal law & order.

• Kashmir valley's population is over 9 million of which 96% are Muslims. 60% of the Valley’s population is below the age of 30 with shrinking job avenues. 
• Notwithstanding other achievements of Narendra Modi, Kashmir will be the scene of his biggest failure unless a dramatic breakthrough in the near future. Such a feat will justify J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's belief that only Modi can solve the state's problems.
• The low polling percentage of 7% in last month's Srinagar parliamentary by-poll was a sign of the erosion of popular faith in the electoral process since 2014, when the assembly polls registered 66% voting, a 10% per cent jump from 2008.
• Everyone is feeling choked because the political system has failed to deliver. After PDP tied up with the ultra-nationalist BJP, the space has shrunk even more for the youngsters who have gravitated towards militancy.
• Today, the Army is a part of daily life in Kashmir. New generations of Kashmiris have grown up living next door to military camps while the army too has learnt more about dealing with the Valley. The army lives in the self-belief that it has won the hearts of people in insurgency-hit areas. 
• Kashmir remains the most militarized zone in the world.
• Anywhere between 6.5 lakh to 7.5 lakh [security personnel] are there in Jammu and Kashmir. If you take the Army’s total strength, half of it is there. 
• The ground reality in Kashmir is that in 2013, 31 local youths joined militancy, the number for 2015 (till Sept) jumped to 66, according to police records.
• In Kashmir, security forces are regularly targeted by militants to intimidate people and discourage local youngsters from joining the government forces that have been fighting insurgency that broke out in 1989 and has since killed more than 40,000 people.
• The ratio of police to people is the highest in Kashmir, than any state. 
• It is like a prison-like reality in Kashmir and expect its people to be silent.
• There were only 150 militants in the state last year. Do we need 7 lakh soldiers to fight 150 militants?
• The total number of militants killed in Kashmir since 1990 is 21,000. Of them, only 3,000 were foreign militants.
• If people were told the truth that Kashmiris don’t want to be with India, and the struggle here is sustained by them primarily, and there is very limited external support – the public opinion in India too would change. 
• Not to allow the public opinion to change, campaign about Pakistan-sponsored proxy war are told. Indian electronic media is a part of India’s military strategy in Kashmir.
• The State Human Rights Commission said in an ongoing case that 570 people buried in the three districts in North Kashmir as foreign militants were later identified as local Kashmiris.
• There are at least 8,000 families which claim their members disappeared over the last 25 years. 
• Many Indian soldiers have raped Kashmiris. In the last 25 years, there have been hundreds of women who came forward to file cases of rape. It is very difficult to persuade them to file cases for fear reprisals from the Army. There are also issues of social stigma and non-deliverance of justice. 
• Sexualised and gendered violence cases are about 7,000. This include boys being sodomized, male rapes as well. It would be very difficult to prove a rape. You can hardly call it sex with consent by sex workers, when someone has a gun in his hand and asks a woman to have sex, and she agrees.
• So far there have been no conviction for encounter, rape, custodial killings, disappearances or torture in Kashmir.
• Army using a ‘human shield’ tying a militant in front of Jeep, similar to that of LTTE using children as human shields, and later army justifying and commemorating this action further widens the alienation. This is in gross violation of human rights.
• The utterances of senior BJP leaders are having a direct impact on the ground situation here. Beef was never an issue here and is hardly consumed but after the Haryana CM told Muslims they could live in India provided they stopped eating it, anger is growing and people are fearing the rise of the BJP. Muslims don’t fear death, rather prefer dying with honour rather than living a life of shame under oppression.
• Despite Modi's earlier admonition, the saffron lobby's continuing opposition to inter-faith affairs and the description of Mughal emperors like Babur and Akbar as "invaders", as by UP CM Yogi Adityanath recently recalling the castigation of Muslims as unpatriotic "Babur ki aulad" (children of Babur) during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement further alienates Kashmiris.
• The problem is essentially political. Financial packages announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi are not the balm people need. You cannot throw money at the problem. If you think Modi will come here and announce a package and people will forget, that’s not going to happen.
• The appearance of schoolgirls on the streets to join the teenage boys to throwing stones at the security forces shows that the familial and social norms are breaking down.
• Hemmed in by bunkers, curfews and frequent internet bans, people are searching for dignity and justice. The tragedy is that like in the past over two decades, neither Srinagar nor New Delhi is wising up to the new reality and looking beyond security perspectives.
• The ground beneath Kashmir’s feet is indeed slipping.

My View:
Army can be used to conduct a specific operation in civilian areas similar to that of "Operation Steeplechase" to weed out Naxalites and "Operation Bluestar" to flush out militants from Golden Temple but it is the duty of politicians and police to establish normalcy and maintain law & order. Prolonged presence of Army in large numbers in Kashmir, while weeding out militants inflicts atrocities on civilians, and will only complicate the issue and alienation would be total and irreversible. The only solution is to make Kashmiris feel that they are equal citizens of the nation and engage them politically and economically, otherwise we may very well end up losing Kashmir and for Kashmiris it would be from frying pan to fire. 

Muslims in India are second class citizens

The song 'Sare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Hamara' was an instant hit when Sir Muhammad Iqbal, or Allama Iqbal, wrote it in 1904. Late he became an ardent supporter of a Muslim homeland. Iqbal died in 1938, two years before the Muslim League adopted the resolution for Pakistan in Lahore in 1940, but he was honored as the spiritual founder and national poet of the new nation when it came into being in August 1947.

In early 20th century Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. Muslims faced defeat and humiliation everywhere. Muslims in India have been suffering in many ways. Yet, they are proud Indians and love India as much as any other Indian community. Politics was only one facet of the man. Many Muslims feared that since democracy was about numbers, the Hindu majority would dominate Indian politics, culture and society and Muslims would be slowly marginalized and obliterated from India. If you objectively see the conditions of Muslims in India today, you will feel that is exactly what has happened.

Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world. There were 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010 i.e. 23% of the global population. The world's population is projected to grow 35% in the coming decades, the Muslims are expected to grow by 73% to 2.8 billion in 2050. Majority of the Muslims i.e. 62% live in the Asia-Pacific region i.e. Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey etc. Indonesia is currently the country with the world's largest Muslim population with 203 million (87% of population), but India will have that distinction by the year 2050, with more than 300 million Muslims.

It is illogical & undemocratic to compare societal parameters in proportion to population. Yet the abysmal low shares enjoyed by Muslims in India, in all walks of life, cause heart burns and social unrest in future can't be ruled out. Muslims shares in India:

• Population: 17.22 Crores i.e.14.23%
• Armed forces: 3%
• IAS & IPS: 3.65%
• Bureaucracy 2.5%.
• Central Organisations: 6.24%
• Railways: 5%
• Banking: 3.5%
• Judiciary: 6.26%
• Police Chiefs: 0.1%
• Muslim convicts in jails 15.8% 
• Under-trial Muslims in jails 20.9%
• Per capita daily spend Rs 32.66 (Sikhs Rs 55.30, Hindus Rs 37.50, Christians Rs 51.43)
• Illiteracy: 42.7% ( 36.4% Hindus, 32.5% Sikhs 28.2%, Christians 25.6%)
• Below Poverty Line: 31% (SC/ST 35%, OBC 21%, OBC General 8.7%, Overall 22.7%)
• Fair price shop licences: 6.94%
• Antyodaya Anna Yojana Scheme beneficiaries: 1.9%
• Low income houses allotted: 2.86%
• Working people: 33% (Overall 40%, Sikhs 36%, Buddhists/Dalits 43%, Hindus 41%) 
• Women working: 15% (Sikhs 15%, Jains 12%, Hindus 27%, Christians 31%, Buddhists 33%)
• Rural land holding: 11%
• Women divorced: 23.3% (Hindus 68%)
• Men divorced: 12.7% (Hindus 76%)
• Tractors owned: 2.1%

Marginalization of Muslims in India is a harsh reality. Muslims are poorly represented in public employment, occupying only six per cent of state government jobs, four per cent in the central government, three per cent in the Indian Administrative Services and less than one per cent in senior bureaucratic posts. These empirical surveys and data depict how Muslims as a religious minority have been marginalized in the history of Indian formation. The issues of discrimination, exclusion and marginalization of Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular is complex but a serious matter of concern. But discrimination in every society exists and all people suffer discrimination in some form or other. In the communal–ridden society of India, most of the employers, industrialists and middlemen are Hindus, whereas most Muslims work as employees, workers and artisans. This ominous development has posed a great threat to the Indian Muslims and quest of survival. Muslim women in urban India are much worse off than their rural counterparts, in terms of their overall educational status compared to Hindu or Christian women. Since Muslim Indians share an economic and educational predicament with their vulnerable non-Muslim fellow citizens, therefore, economic and educational welfare are the predominant concerns in the process of democratization of Muslims.

After 9/11, the West unleashed its 'War On Terror.' The victims were mostly Muslims. For over a decade now, there is a general mood of doom and gloom among Muslims. In India too, the rise of right wing Hindu nationalists have made Muslims uncomfortable. Riots, framing innocent Muslims in terror plots, encounter killings, ghettoisation etc, Muslims in India have been suffering in many ways. Yet, they are proud Indians and love India as much as any other Indian community. 

Muslim leaders fought to get equal constitutional rights for Muslims and they failed. The Congress never accepted this idea of separate electorates on the principle that India would be a secular State and Muslims need not worry about it. Nehru's secularism and socialism stands defeated in India. The Congress's secularism turned out to be fake. During partition, the heaviest migration of Muslims that took place were from upper and middle strata of society. If Muslims have been a Congress appeased vote bank since 1947, why are they still backward?

In India, Muslims face communal violence and risk political exclusion because of Hindu majoritarianism, which is gaining ground in the country. While Hindu nationalist groups are waging a concerted campaign against all religious minorities in their efforts to Hinduise India, Islamist forces are doing the same and even worse to religious minorities on this side of the border. After Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, Hindu domination is complete in India. The tokenism of Congress is over. 

The ban on beef trading by Maharashtra government and closing of unauthorized slaughter houses in UP will disproportionately harm poor Muslims working in meat and leather industries. The spatial segregation of Muslims in urban areas makes them more insecure and vulnerable during communal riots. After the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, the state too has contributed to this sense of marginalisation by targeting Muslim men who face human rights abuses during siege and search operations carried out under the pretext of anti-terrorism operations, both within and outside the confines of the law. 

Elite Muslims are comfortable in both countries. Like most poor of the world, it is the poor Muslims in India and Pakistan that face most of the challenges, from education to healthcare to job opportunities. With education & prosperity, all sorts of discrimination will diminish over time. Muslims in India need to work hard to better their lot, and not just blame the government for their pitiable state. Muslims must organize themselves in India and look after their needs, otherwise they will be forced to exist on the margins of society and will be forced to learn to live as second class citizens of the State.

It is safer in India to be a cow than a Muslim ... Shashi Tharoor

My View:
Every person belongs to a minority group, with varying criterion. A Hindu Brahmin belongs to minority of castes. Telugu speaking people are a linguistic minority compared to Hindi speaking people. There are linguistic minorities in every other linguistic state. Since our society is primarily polarized based on religion, religious minorities gains significance especially at the time of elections. In Punjab, Hindus(38%) are minority with Sikhs(58%) are in majority. In India, J&K is the only state with Muslim population being majority at 68% whereas Hindus are 28%. But in Kashmir valley Muslims are over 96%. Minorities exist in all walks of life in all parts of the country. Hence it is the responsibility of the governments to protect minorities and ensure their well being. Social problems are born mostly by poorer classes and to some extent by middle classes where as rich are comfortable everywhere. Thus minority protection is a must as long as poverty & illiteracy are existing. Once poverty & illiteracy are eradicated all protections could be abolished and country can become a 'True Democracy' in letter and spirit with merit as the sole criterion and national achievements would be at its best.

It remains to be seen if India’s democracy can withstand the religious and fascist forces that seem to reign supreme now. The benefits of education, health, employment and enterprise were yet to reach around 100 million Muslims and India as a country cannot grow if Muslims and other marginalised populations are left behind.