Apart from the corporates, the Maoists and the police, Christian and Hindu missionaries have also intervened in many Adivasi areas with schools and hospitals.25 The Christian missionaries have been around since the fourteenth century,26 while the Hindu missionaries have been active for a while as well.27 They have been fairly successful in providing education to the Adivasis as well as in converting some of them to their own respective religious philosophies.
Modernization—just as much as tradition—is welcome only if it results in social progress. In India, however, despite all the modernization interventions, the Adivasis seem to have gained the least and lost the most. Let us compare the progress made by the Adivasis to some of the other backward classes in India. The literacy rate of Adivasis is only 59 per cent,28 even lower than the Dalit literacy rate of 66 per cent.29 Nearly 55 per cent of Adivasi schoolchildren drop out by the time they reach the upper primary level, which is more than the 40.8 per cent among India’s total population. In addition, 70.9 per cent of Adivasi children drop out by the time they reach the secondary level,30 a higher rate than the 56.1 per cent recorded among Scheduled Caste children. According to the World Bank, over 43 per cent of the Adivasi population in 2016 in rural India was poor,31 while this was recorded as 29 per cent in the Scheduled Caste population.
I will point towards an aspect of the desperate state of Adivasis that I consider strikingly crucial for progress—their abject lack of freedom of choice. Hardly any of the interventions—by the government, private companies, Maoist groups or religious missionaries—has been the choice of the Adivasis. In the name of modernization and development, which the Adivasis have rarely asked for, others have often caused mayhem in their once-peaceful habitat. So what progress are we talking about here? There can be no progress without freedom. By imposing our version of modernity on them, we have robbed the Adivasis of even the freedom to chart their own destiny.
Choice can be achieved through various channels of democracy. In this context too, Dalits and lower castes have been more successful than the Adivasis. The former have managed to establish themselves as major interest groups on the national stage, while the Adivasis have not. Dalits and Scheduled Castes are evenly distributed across India and are important vote banks for politicians so as to sway the outcome of state and national elections. Dalits also have successful political parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been in power in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. They have an efficient second rung of activists who know how to build political networks nationwide.
On the other hand, the Adivasis, demographically concentrated in India’s densest forests, do not constitute a vote bank large enough to be considered significant. We have never had an Adivasi Ambedkar, a leader of pan-Indian significance, who could be a role model. In the past five decades, the Adivasis have sometimes expressed their public and collective discontent with the policies and programmes of the state, but their protests—in Bastar in 1966, in Jharkhand in the late 1970s, among others—have been led by traditional Adivasi leaders who were largely irrelevant at the national level. Only in some cases, such as in the Narmada Bachao Andolan, have Adivasis been mobilized by non-Adivasi social activists from an urban background.
About seventy million of these Adivasis live in the heart of India, across the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal.32 However, another 10.2 million or so tribals live in the north-east of India.33 I shall not include these tribes in this particular argument because they differ from their tribal counterparts in the peninsula in terms of socio-economic progress for at least two crucial reasons. One, the chances of their absorption into the Indian (or even global) economy is higher, thanks mostly to their English language skills and higher literacy rate. And so they have gained a large share in the Scheduled Tribes quota in government and civil services jobs, reserved seats in universities, as well as jobs in private companies that need communication skills. Two, they have been largely exempt from the trauma caused by land dispossession because of their location in a corner of the country.
I will now take up the goriest example that relates to another socio-economically disadvantaged group in India.
The partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in August 1947 led to one of the deadliest migrations in human history. In a blatant violation of freedom of choice, Muslims in India were forced to trek to West and East Pakistan (the latter is now known as Bangladesh), and the Hindu inhabitants of those regions were forced to move to India. In the process, more than fifteen million people were uprooted, and between one and two million died.34 Most Muslims who live in India today—making up 14.23 per cent of India’s population35—are those remaining from that great migration to Pakistan. Either out of choice or compulsion, they did not leave. Ever since, they have had to bear the consequences of history.
Hindus can never seem to forget the million-odd Hindus who were killed during Partition, but they do forget that a nearly equal number of Muslims were also killed by Hindus.36 They also hold against Muslims the earlier military invasions and conquests of the Mughals from the north, which took place hundreds of years ago.
Even today, it is only to a certain extent that Indian Muslims have benefited from democracy. For instance, there is not a single state government till date that employs Muslims in proportion to their share in the state’s population. The number of Muslims in government jobs has indeed risen from 5 per cent a decade ago to 8.5 per cent in 2014–15,37 but this is still abysmally below their proportion in India’s population.
There are, however, Muslims who have risen to become prominent political leaders, including Dr Zakir Hussain and Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former Presidents of India. The presence of Muslim leaders in high-level politics dates back to the Indian National Congress. As Guha wrote in his book Democrats and Dissenters: ‘Even before Gandhi assumed its leadership, the Congress had to face the charge that it was essentially an upper-caste Hindu party. To combat this criticism it had to reach out to Muslims and lower castes.’ This practice of presenting a pro-Muslim image and agenda and putting up Muslim political representatives continues in most national and regional political parties. Since Muslims represent a large percentage of the population in India, politicians have indeed needed to be attentive to their votes, but much of that may be mere lip service. In Muslim-dominated parts of Delhi, the local politicians are often Muslims as well, yet the areas they are responsible for often remain underdeveloped. In most other parts of our country too, the economically depressed condition of Indian Muslims is testimony to the fact that democracy has not helped the community much.
The rate of Muslim literacy is far less than that of other sections of society. The current gross enrolment rate of Muslims in higher education is 13.8 per cent, much lower than the pan-Indian figure of 23.6 per cent.38 The literacy rate among Muslim adult males is 81 per cent, compared to 91 per cent among Hindus, 94 per cent among Christians and 84 per cent among Sikhs, according to a report of the National Sample Survey Organization.39 The literacy rate of Muslims has, however, risen from 59.1 per cent in 2001 to 68.5 per cent in 2011, even though the rate of their work participation continues to be the lowest among all minorities.40
Muslims have, at times, even sought low-quality but free education in government schools as well as in religious schools or madrasas. Some of India’s greatest historians and educationists have been Muslims. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of the Aligarh Muslim University, and the historian Irfan Habib are just a few examples. They are not only learned but also resilient, succeeding despite the extraordinary forces pulling them down, and they have helped the members of their community to learn, earn and rise.
I first met Bano and Adnan Farooqui41 in 1998 at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, where Adnan was a professor at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD). Bano and Adnan had been marrie
d thirty years, and they had a daughter and two sons. I first met the family because of the younger son, with whom I would go on to live as a domestic partner across seven countries over a span of eight years—more on that some other time. But this is how I joined him in calling his mother Bano ‘Ammi’ (mother) and father Adnan ‘Abbu’ (father). A large part of my understanding of the Muslim population in India comes from this experience.
Living in India’s capital city, New Delhi, my educated and otherwise rational parents had prohibited me from interacting with the son of the Farooquis. At age nineteen, I was grounded and prohibited from attending university for several days until it was confirmed that I would have nothing more to do with a Muslim boy.
My family’s is a point of view from among the educated lot in India’s capital city. The condition is more sinister in small towns and rural India, where people may be more strongly bound to historical animosity. In cities as well as villages, many cases of murder over religious animosity go unreported.
On the other hand, I remember Ammi as smashing every stereotype. She was a soft-spoken, graceful, traditionally dressed Muslim woman, but more modern in the mind than anyone else I knew. She fiercely supported me all along, recognizing the societal challenges that any educated, independent-minded girl would face. Abbu was more involved in my academic research than my parents, perhaps because he too had struggled for an education.
Abbu hailed from Kanpur in central India, and he was brought up in a low-income Muslim family of seven siblings. Born a few years before India’s independence, he was the only one among the seven to get a basic education. He moved to New Delhi in his early twenties, initially to work as a laboratory assistant for statistics under the guidance of Professor Moonis Raza, the founding chairman of CSRD at JNU. Raza was also Muslim. Alongside his job, under Raza’s mentorship, Abbu went on to pursue a PhD on the statistical methods deployed in geographical studies.
Raza himself was a luminary. During the course of his academic career, he was chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, president and vice chancellor of Delhi University, rector of JNU, and director of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. Abbu often spoke fondly of Raza and the liberal ethos and open-minded culture he had established at JNU.
Abbu kept himself above conflict. It was as if the ugly communal reality outside the gates of the campus where he and his family lived could never touch him. He was a practical and plain-speaking man who would rarely ever display any great emotional crests and troughs. His colleagues and students were equal in his eyes, irrespective of religion.
Even then, upon Abbu’s retirement from the university—which meant he would have to relinquish the elegant campus accommodation—he and Ammi chose, without much deliberation, to move to an area in Delhi that was known to be a Muslim ghetto.
Shaheen Bagh, located in the eastern part of Delhi, has a predominantly Muslim, uneducated populace working in tiny shops along narrow, garbage-strewn roads. The entire area was a winding maze—I do not remember a single time that I had been able to find my way to the new Farooqui home without an SOS phone call to them for help with directions. The local municipality councillor and the member of the Legislative Assembly at that time were both Muslim; yet the development of the area had been grossly neglected. For many years, the only other large construction in the area, besides the Farooqui family’s home, had been the local mosque, while the rest were shops akin to holes in the wall.
The Farooqui family felt that Shaheen Bagh would serve as a safety net for them. Ensconced within the protection of their own community, they would be unharmed if any anti-Muslim riots broke out. They felt safest among other Muslims. Many of Abbu’s Muslim colleagues had also moved there after retirement for the same reason.
The feeling of persecution and the threat of impending poverty are two of the biggest issues weighing on the minds of the deprived sections of society in India. More than the average population, Muslims tend to have jobs in the informal sector, which are usually without a written contract or a regular salary.42 At the time of writing, not even one of India’s top twenty largest businesses has been founded, or is run, by a Muslim. According to the 2011 Census, 24.9 per cent of the 370,000 beggars and homeless people in India are Muslim, which is disproportionately high given that Muslims make up 14.23 per cent of India’s total population. Meanwhile, Hindus make up 79.8 per cent of the population, and have a share of 72.22 per cent (268,000) in the total beggar population. On the other hand, Christians, representing 2.3 per cent of India’s population, make up 0.88 per cent of India’s beggars, and Sikhs, who are 1.72 per cent of India’s population, constitute 0.45 per cent.43
Democracy has, therefore, not served to expand freedom of choice for India’s poor.
By the time I returned to India to take up my role at the Jindal Group, I was no longer in touch with the Farooquis. But I had heard that the family had left their sprawling home in Shaheen Bagh to move to a much smaller apartment in a more culturally diverse colony in west Delhi. Poverty and crime were on the rise in Shaheen Bagh, and some of the roads had gradually become so narrow that even a bicycle could hardly make its way through. For the same reasons, their other Muslim peers from academia had also been forced to make the same move.
The journey of socio-economic progress for various groups in politically free India has been different. Democracy has been a game of snakes and ladders for different sections of Indians to improve their social and economic conditions. In this game, some have gained and some have lost. Then there are those who have found that while caste is not negotiable, economic status is. They have worked hard to change the destiny that they were born with. India is a tough place to live—the opportunities are few, the level playing fields fewer, and many people are seeking the same goal.
One factor in the success stories is the renewed respect for hard work in India. For the first time in our history, the new millionaires are looked up to with pride and reverence, in contrast to an earlier era when the newly rich were objects of scorn and derision. Earlier, the ‘old bourgeoisie’ with inherited wealth and families even remotely connected to royalty would look down upon the toil and enterprise of farmers and labourers. They felt that those who worked hard were ideologically barren, without any social class or manners. However, those with a rags-to-riches story are now considered role models who have proved the success of hard work and merit. We have plenty of success stories such as those of Dhirubhai Ambani, Sunil Mittal and Om Prakash Jindal who hailed from modest backgrounds but built massive business empires. Indians marvel that even though Dhirubhai Ambani’s first trading office was so small that it could not accommodate more than four people, when he died in July 2002, his business empire was worth over $12 billion.
It is the ability to make and implement an informed choice that ultimately plays a vital role in shaping who we want to be and the life we seek. Choice is a rational decision that determines change. But only when a free and informed choice can be made will we be deemed to have made progress. The meaning and path (or the lack of it) of progress (or the lack of it) have been unique and different for each of the backward communities in India. For some, it has meant gaining political power. For others, it has meant improving their financial conditions, while for many others, it has meant just leading a more dignified life. The realization of progress has invariably depended upon the ability of members of a backward community to also implement their choice of how to lead their lives, without the constraints of tradition, the forces of modernization, and the limitation of the surroundings. That choice could be anything—to continue one’s life in the forest or to get a job at a factory; to live in a Muslim neighbourhood or not; whether or not to be bound by community traditions; to get an education or not; to start a business and make it grow.
In India, we do not all have equal freedom of choice. We also have different levels of resources granted to us to implement that choice. A man enjoys a larger set of options f
or earning his living than a young woman, as she is under greater pressure from society to abide by age-old clichés and stereotypes. A wealthy man who openly declares his homosexuality has a greater chance of acceptance than a common man, who might be immediately targeted by the society for being gay. Even though the caste system—of pursuing an occupation according to one’s varna or jati—has been dismantled to a large extent, the ‘caste identity’ persists and influences every sphere of life, be it politics, marriage, or societal relations. A person of a higher caste, say a Brahmin, benefits from having many more choices than a man belonging to the Shudra caste, who might be disadvantaged in job interviews, on social networks and even in romance and love because of his family name, heritage, and upbringing. And so I have often wondered if Swapna could simultaneously ever have the choice in India to be—or not to be—a sexually independent woman and free to get an education anywhere while also being a member of the Devadasi community?
Education offers us a chance to know and understand the choices available to us, but in India, education does not always empower us enough to implement these choices. Progress is made only when an individual can make an informed choice and is able to implement that choice freely. Until our most backward communities are able to do this, we cannot say that India is progressing.
References
Adiga, Aravind. 2008. The White Tiger (Noida: HarperCollins India).
Al Jazeera. 2017. India’s Maoist rebels: An explainer. 26 April.
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