ALI SUKHANVER
Who is leading a more miserable life in India; the Dalits or the Muslims? It is a very difficult question to answer because both the minorities are facing the same derogatory and insulting situation in the Indian society. However at some places Dalits seem in a better position and at some places the Muslims seem superior to them but they both are far inferior when compared with the upper-caste Hindus. A few years back India’s much esteemed news paper The Hindu, published a very heart rending investigative report on the poor plight of the Muslims in India. The newspaper sent an investigative team of its reporters to different residential areas of the Capital Delhi and assigned to it the task of finding a flat for a Muslim family. The team went to different property agents but everywhere it got the same response, “The landlords want only Indians, not Muslims.” The reporting team contacted Radha of Gulshan properties in New Friends Colony, New Delhi also. A few days back the Gulshan properties had advertised for a flat to be rented on but the reporting team got the same response there. The agent said, “Another Muslim wanted to take the same flat on rent but he was also refused by the owners though the flat has been vacant for a long time but they will not give it to a Muslim.” The Hindu latter on published the findings of its reporting team with the title, ‘Muslims: The Untouchables of India’. Particularly after the Mumbai Blasts, the situation for the Muslims in India has become more painful. Everywhere they are eyed upon as criminals and terrorists. Even the very popular film stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amir Khan and Sanjay Dutt are also facing the same insulting and degrading treatment only because they belong to the Muslim community. The Muslims in India constitute about 13.4% of the total Indian population but the people belonging to this community are leading a miserable life even worse than the Dalits. The Muslims are the real Untouchables. Moreover it is not only the Muslim community which is facing this ordeal of partiality and discrimination; almost all minorities are being deprived of the basic human rights in India. The Hindu extremists seem unwilling to allow any minority to survive and flourish in the Indian society. The minorities in India are continuously facing targeted killings as well as the denial of justice to them by the Indian state. They are brutally suppressed and crushed by the state authorities for the sin of practicing their faith. Unfortunately such type of exploitation is nothing new; the tale of brutalities against the minorities has been going on for the last many decades. At the beck and call of the Hindu extremists, the fundamentalist Hindu political parties like the BJP seem always eager to make life a hell for the minorities in India. The accounts of arson, murder and crimes against women belonging to the minorities always sound dreadfully familiar but the treatment with the Muslims as well as with the Christians is worst of all. Each detail, each gruesome fact seems taken out of a script enacted before.
This year on July 25th, the CNN published a report on miserable condition of Dalits in India. The report said, “The country’s 2011 census, the latest available, states that just over 16 percent of India’s population are Dalits — making up roughly 200 million people. According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, more than four Dalit women are raped every day in India. The NRCB’s 2014 statistics say crime against Dalits rose 19%. In many of the cases, these crimes are committed by upper caste perpetrators.” In its press release on 6th May, 2016, the Amnesty International included a report on sexual exploitation of Indian Dalit women. The report said, “On the evening of 28th April, a woman, a law student, was found dead in her home by her mother, who works as a daily wage laborer. Media reports state that the autopsy found 38 wounds on the woman’s body and signs of rape, and her intestines had been partially removed. The police subsequently registered a First Information Report (FIR), but have not yet provided a copy of the FIR to the victim’s family, despite being required to do so under Indian law.” Same is the behavior of the Hindu extremists with the Muslims. The name of MP Yogi Adityanath has become a symbol of fear and terror for every Muslim woman in India. This Hindu extremist leader and his men preach the rape of dead Muslim women by pulling them out of their graves. It was the result of his ‘Bashan’ that in October 2015; some Hindu youths dug out the body of a 26-year-old pregnant Muslim woman from her grave raped the corpse. She had died of complications after suffering a miscarriage two days before the incident took place. In short situation is very horrible in India regarding maltreatment with the minorities. But more painful is the thing that in spite of such insulting and agonizing behaviour with Muslims, some of the Muslim countries desire very cordial relations with India.