THESE seem like tough times in which to restart a national conversation about the development concerns of poor marginalized Muslims – the mundane, critical materiality of dignified employment, minimum wages, skills for new economy jobs, full stomachs, functioning schools for children, access to higher education, scholarships, safe pucca housing, electrification, sewerage, clean water and clean neighbourhoods, nutrition and good health, and the right to freely dream, demand and aspire to more each day.

It’s a time when a serving Union minister refers to all non-Ram believers (read Muslims) as haramzaade (bastards) in a public speech and the collective might of parliamentary opposition (at the time of writing) wrests nothing more from her than an ‘oops, really sorry’; Sudarshan News gleefully beams undisguised dislike for all things Muslim into our homes via the ubiquitous Tata Sky platform, and only one mainstream columnist sees it as worthy of comment;¹ Yogi Adityanath, a politician charged with communal polarization, is hand-picked by the ruling party to lead the debate on the subject in Lok Sabha; elected Muslim MPs, across party lines, are down to 23; love jihad is everywhere; an unknown man called Dinanath Batra has emerged as an educationist of repute; communal fires dot the country, so far in the North, incinerating hopes of better lives; and we move breathlessly from Muzaffanagar to Moradabad to Meerut to Trilokpuri to Bawana, watching fear spread, see businesses burn down, people dying, losing life’s meagre belongings, fleeing from homes. Yes, tough times to talk minority development.

In the last six months, the minority rights agenda, in the face of an unprecedented communal onslaught, has been reduced to firefighting. What little the Sachar Report of 2006 achieved, these past few months have tried to undo. The Sachar Report’s chief contribution was shifting focus away from all this (above) and changing the framing of the Indian Muslim story. Concern for Muslims has since independence been wedged between two frozen poles – communal violence (victim of external actors) and the personal law debate (victim of internal ‘religious’ actors). After 9/11, the third pole of ‘Muslim-terrorist’ emerged, and for a while this completely dominated the discussion.

And it persists. But somewhere in between all this, the UPA government demonstrated a moment of clarity and governance, set up the Sachar Committee and the development of Muslims emerged as a matter of legitimate national concern. This was the seminal achievement of Sachar. Between 2006 and 2010 academics, activists and journalists kept the Muslim story focused on concerns of development. Muslim children out of school? How many? And why? It was worthy of debate.

 

Now we are back to square one. Muslims are once again reduced to being ‘victims’ of the latest communal assault to hit the headlines; reduced to the miserable street fight of my loudspeaker versus yours; reduced to vigorously condemning the ISIS – an entity most poor Indian Muslims know precious little about; unable to do anything about more substantive citizenship rights slipping away. Among these is the right to equity in development; to participate in the aspirational story that India has been promised.

On 29 September 2014, the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee (Kundu Committee) set up by the previous UPA government, submitted its report to the present Ministry of Minority Affairs. And it needs to catalyze a new moment in our development history. In brief it said – in the eight years since the Sachar Report, a beginning was made, but not enough was done. There is a very long road to walk. And it must be walked with urgency and will. Muslims are still worse off than others in most respects – in poverty, living standards, employment, education, and health.

So, how do we get back on track? In such a vitiated political and public environment, which national interlocutor has the will and wherewithal to push this stalled dialogue towards equal development for all? There is perhaps a role here for India’s vast and organized development NGO sector.

 

In the last decade or so we’ve witnessed a shift in the terrain of Indian public policy. There has been greater presence, power and visibility of civil society actors – NGOs, activists from NGOs, and people’s movements – in shaping policy, both through active participation in formal policy spaces (on consultative bodies in social sector ministries, in Planning Commission working groups and steering committees to formulate five year plans and so on) and by building public pressure. Without rhetoric or polemic, NGOs and activists have played a solid, practical, and democratic role in foregrounding concerns of disadvantaged groups – based on years of grounded work in villages and slums with the people and communities whose rights they have sought to represent.

While NGO/civil society interventions are no substitute for state interventions, NGOs have historically been a crucial bridge between marginal social groups and the state – piloting strategies, doing intensive, closely monitored work in the field, experimenting to come up with new and innovative approaches that respond to ground realities, free from constraints of government systems, and critically, advocating for policy changes with the state, pushing for improved, need based, context specific and ambitious programming to benefit marginal social groups. But even in these spaces, a gap showed up over the last decade. Interlocutors who had experience of working with poor and marginalized Muslim communities, of many castes, occupational groups and scattered across multiple geographies, were few and far between. Or, at least they were not very visible.

Which NGOs work with poor Muslims? What are the kinds of issues they work on, and the approaches they deploy? What works? What doesn’t? Many mainstream NGOs work with women, children, Dalits and tribals, or with landless farmers and unorganized workers, all traditionally identified as ‘deprived or marginalized social/economic groups’. But there appears to be both less work with Muslims and less knowledge in circulation about whatever limited work is being done.²

 

To fill this information gap and push the agenda towards development for all, a group of development experts, policy specialists and researchers conducted an ambitious study between 2011-13.³ For two and half years, trawling through eight states with large Muslim populations, they looked for a credible sample of NGOs that worked with Muslims on development issues – elementary education, higher education, public health, women’s health, livelihoods, SHGs, income generation, rural development, MGNREGA, working with artisans, urban poverty, enhancing democratic participation and seeking state accountability, using RTI, leadership development, women’s rights, child rights, disability rights issues, workers rights and more. Who are these NGOs? Are they mainstream NGOs or ‘community based’ groups? Can they take forward the development road map laid out so clearly by the Sachar and now the Post-Sachar Evaluation Report? Has the idea of ‘minority welfare’ begun to translate itself from policy statements and political grandstanding to a ‘buzz’ on the ground? The study was revealing.

 

Working through key informants and interviewing close to 250 experts, the study came up with a sample of 372 NGOs reflecting some variety in sectors and approaches.⁴ The sample was less than the study had hoped, but perhaps more than some would imagine. What prompted these organizations to start this work, the nature of their leadership (particularly Muslim women’s leadership), the kind of work they were doing (rights-based or welfare), their approach to women’s rights issues, the sources of support they drew on – are issues beyond the scope of this article.⁵ Broadly speaking, the picture that emerged was as diverse as this country itself. NGOs of many different hues and shapes and sizes were working with impoverished Muslims on many fronts, even in creative ways, though not on a very large scale.

 

An ‘objective’ taxonomy of these NGOs was impossible. The self-descriptors used by the NGOs themselves were broadly either as ‘Mainstream NGO’ or ‘Muslim NGO’. When asked what ‘mainstream’ meant, NGOs generally said they had no particular affinity to a socio-religious identity; their focus on Muslims was not exclusive or even primary; they worked with many social groups – Dalits, tribals, women, children, in addition to Muslims. But there were some who called themselves ‘mainstream NGO’ and did work primarily with poor Muslims – including very small NGOs that had emerged from within the Muslim community.

Then there was a crop of NGOs who referred to themselves as ‘Muslim NGOs’, or were part of umbrella groupings and broad coalitions that identified themselves as ‘networks of Muslim NGOs’. Not only was their work primarily with Muslims, but the leadership and staff were predominantly Muslim as well. And the organization articulated an affinity – religious, social, or political – with the Muslim community. These are characteristics similar to organizations that may describe themselves as women’s NGOs or Dalit NGOs – in other words, they are led by women or Dalits and work primarily for the benefit of these groups. (It is important to underscore that NGOs headed by Muslims and doing development work with deprived Muslims were not ‘Muslim NGOs’ merely by virtue of these facts alone – unless that is how they chose to identify themselves).

Some of these were large established organizations promoted through corpuses or donations by prominent philanthropic Muslims, rarely by non-denominational donor agencies. Others were small, local, community based NGOs, who had been in existence for a long time but remained unknown in the larger NGO sector, without large corpuses or networks, simply working with a desire to help their community. They had emerged from within Muslim socio-cultural community spaces and their sources of funding, networks, reach, influence, and impact were all lodged there. Again, few of these organizations got resources from mainstream donor agencies. These small local groups were present in all the states studied, though particularly abundant in Andhra Pradesh.

 

The only reason for dwelling on these terms – ‘Mainstream NGO’ and ‘Muslim NGO’ – is that it indicates not just the location of these groups in terms of funding, networks and social spaces of action, but their desires and fears as well. Those comfortable with being referred to as Muslim NGOs derived much of their sense of self and their strength from within community based networks. Those who wanted to avoid the term ‘Muslim’ and chose ‘mainstream NGO’ as their self-description, aspired to be part of non-community based networks; to access funds from larger non-denominational donor agencies; to be visible in other networks.

There were several NGOs who felt that being identified as ‘Muslim’ was a disadvantage. So, while they largely operated within the universe of the Muslim community, with little access to resources, networks, or technical support from outside this world – they categorically sought to downplay their ‘Muslim’ markers, often choosing innocuous names, even substituting the word ‘Muslim’ for ‘Modern’. So (hypothetically speaking), the ‘Muslim’ Youth Association might after a few years change its name to ‘Modern’ Youth Association. Their choice reflected the fear that a name announcing an exclusive Muslim identity could attract the wrong kind of state scrutiny and impair the organization’s functioning.

 

This fear of being labelled a ‘Muslim NGO’ was most acutely noticeable in the development circuit in West Bengal and Kerala, but was present in varying degrees across all the regions under study. Many organizations in Mewat, for example, said that any NGO involved in the development of the Muslim community that also happened to be headed by a Muslim had to work doubly hard to prevent the ‘Muslim NGO’ tag from sticking. When non-Muslims were the heads of NGOs, even with very similar programmes, they were not burdened by the same pressure. One NGO representative from Mewat said, ‘We are scared of being identified as working with Muslims. It took us two years to get our FCRA. Our work was certainly appreciated, but because of the region where we work [Mewat], they said they needed to investigate us more deeply. Being labelled a "Muslim sanstha (NGO)" is negative for us. We make it a point not to have too many Muslims on a public forum because of the impression it gives. We have worked to ensure that we have a face that is acceptable to all.’

These are not hesitations expressed by Dalit rights groups, tribal rights groups or women’s rights groups – who expressly, pointedly and proudly use the terms ‘Dalit’, ‘tribal’ or ‘women’ in the name of their organization or at least in its subscript. Clearly, articulating a Muslim identity was more fraught and complex than any other in the development world.

Just how fraught the word ‘Muslim’ was in the development sector became clearer as the study unfolded. While a majority of the NGOs welcomed a discussion on the nexus between identity and marginalization, and said it was overdue in the development sector, some prominent NGOs were uncomfortable. A few were so uncomfortable that they denied working with Muslims at all, even though their field work clearly showed otherwise. When asked about this dissonance, they would say simply – ‘we work with all poor people and do not know if they are Muslim or belong to any other community.’ Or – ‘this is a divisive way of looking at marginalization’. Often ‘being secular’ seemed to necessitate a complete flattening of the identity question – or perhaps the flattening was not actually complete. As a marker of socio-economic marginalization, caste was clearly more acceptable than religion, which seemed to be a bad word (specifically ‘Muslim’ even more so). These findings call for some introspection by the NGO sector if is to take the lead in this critical conversation.

 

Politics paints communities in black and white – so Muslims are constructed as a homogenous entity, members of an imagined transnational ummah whose existence magically captures, subsumes and creates the essence of their lives. But NGOs, working in towns, districts, slums, and villages do the obverse, and provide a reality check. For they work embedded in specific local context/s – regional, rural-urban, caste based, social, economic, and occupational.

The NGOs documented by this study were never working with some generalized idea of ‘the Muslim’ but with specific, highly differentiated, hyphenated groups of Muslims each with particular needs, problems, and aspirations – with Siddis, Gawalis, Mappilla Muslims, and Pasmanda Muslims, including both OBC and Dalit Muslims, belonging for example to the Qureshi, Ansari, Nat, Mallah, Musahar, Meo, Julaha, Teli, Jhojha, and Halwai communities. They also worked with women, youth, the differently abled, street children, child labourers, rickshaw pullers, members of the LGBT community, artisans, weavers, beedi workers, rag pickers, sex workers, and hamali workers (headloaders) who were Muslim. This contextual development work does therefore have the ability to provide a necessary counter-discourse to the politics of the day, challenging the singular (largely negative) construction of Muslim, which provides neither real understanding nor basis for planning development interventions.

 

Among the many consequences of working close to the ground is that, almost organically, development work has enabled solidarities to be built among marginalized peoples – born of their common experiences of stigma, discrimination and exclusion. Many NGOs encountered in this study worked with both Dalits and Muslims, and a few did so with Muslims and Adivasis. Many women’s organizations had not only chosen to work by building solidarities between Dalit and Muslim women, but also pointedly insisted only on shared leadership.

The study noted a generational shift in the NGO sector. And found the emergence of a young Muslim leadership, well positioned to take the discussion on identity and cross-community (Dalit-Muslim) solidarities further. Younger people were either taking over NGOs or starting NGOs, and in so doing were using a new idiom, both angry and aspirational. This new leadership was able to speak up, demanding everything that the mainstream had to offer for their community. In so doing, they also ruptured the secular silence on identity, which had apparently muffled an earlier generation of Muslim voices in the NGO space.

This younger leadership evinced clarity on both – the need to engage with the troubled identity question and a strong desire to be part of the mainstream. The sense they communicated was not of breast-beating victimhood but of rights being denied. This was a generation that grew up in a post-Babri Masjid era; some came of age post the Gujarat pogrom, and in their increasingly polarized world it was absurd to ignore the issue of identity or brush it under the ‘unity in diversity’ carpet.

 

Many of these leaders belonged not to elite, urban Muslim families, but to poor or lower middle class homes, from rural, semi-urban, or congested, urban, Muslim dominated areas. As non-Ashrafs (outside the upper echelon among Muslims), these young people had experienced two kinds of alienation: a form of internal ‘othering’, of being looked down upon or patronized by elite Muslims, as well as the external ‘othering’ from sections of the Hindu majority, born out of a communally polarized polity. It will perhaps fall to this young leadership in the future to address an issue largely silenced in development discourse – the issue of caste among Muslims. An earlier generation of political, religious, and community leaders, themselves largely from upper caste groups among Muslims, had been both unable and unwilling to engage with the contributory role that caste has played in creating Muslim backwardness. A new, subaltern Muslim leadership may well be able to move more easily towards forging greater solidarities between Dalits and Muslims.

But it had not been easy for this young leadership to come into its own. Despite hopeful examples from some states, the study also registered an overall note of caution – young people in NGOs working for the development of the community were fearful of being in the public eye. As one academic and activist said, ‘Muslim youth who are willing to work for the community are scared of being noticed in assuming leadership. There is first an urgent need to work with the police on their attitudes towards Muslims.’

 

Confronting the state, waving a ledger of rights, the act comes with risks that many young Muslims were not prepared to take. In addition, many of them – though full of ideas and energy – were struggling with their lack of social capital, manifested as little exposure and an inability to network or get funds. To support these young NGO leaders there is much to be done by the larger, mainstream development sector – providing guidance, incubating, institutional development, leadership development, and networking to promote shared goals.

In summary, the study revealed mixed trends – something to cheer about, but far more to work on. NGOs were working with Muslims, but not enough, not on scale and not always boldly. Advocacy with the state was a weak link in their work – there were few NGOs that had taken up minority development as a focused advocacy agenda. Some mainstream NGOs were hamstrung by their own definitional dilemmas – their version of the disingenuous political slogan of ‘development for all, appeasement to none’; unable to name impoverished Muslims as a socio-religious community deserving of that extra push. Those that were clearer about the nature of this struggle were often ghettoized and unable to come together in strong, credible advocacy platforms to nudge the state.

 

Every government – past and present – speaks of commitment to the welfare of poor Muslims. How has this translated into action in the past few years? After the Sachar Report, it was in the Eleventh Plan period (2007-2012) that we saw the most significant gains. The Eleventh Plan made schematic proposals on education, employment, including access to credit, access to government schemes and programmes, building infrastructure (including through multi-sectoral development programme for minority concentration districts and 338 towns), and creating a national data bank on various aspects of socio-religious communities. This last idea was intended, notably, to ‘understand regional variations in the condition of the minorities from the perspective of plan interventions.’⁶

This was taken much further in the Twelfth Plan document (2012-2017), which categorically recognized the need to respond to context-specific and group-specific concerns within a minority rights framework: ‘While India has experienced accelerated growth and development in recent years, not all religious communities and social groups (henceforth socioreligious communities – SRCs) have shared equally the benefits of the growth process. Among these, the Muslims, the largest minority in the country, are seriously lagging behind on all human development indices. There is also widespread disparity within different SRCs, supporting the view that each SRC is a differentiated category with multiple identities and different socio-political and economic aspirations.’⁷

Now, the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee (Kundu Committee) has made a series of urgent recommendations to the Government of India – including extensive application of a diversity index in resource allocation and implementation of policies and programmes, anti-discrimination legislation, budgetary commitments, correction in programmatic designs, access to employment, health, education, reservation and affirmative action for Dalit Muslims, and above all security from communal violence.

It also, crucially, says, ‘…we must seek to empower the community as a whole through developing trans-formative local leadership. Civil society organizations and NGOs have a critical role to play in strengthening local communities and creating trans-formative leadership. One of the positive impacts of the Sachar Committee was that civil society groups and NGOs were alerted to the need to undertake development work with the Muslim minorities. There is a need to further encourage and incentivize civil society groups to ensure that the promise of development reaches Muslim minorities on the ground.’⁸

This calls first for a response from government, but equally from NGOs, donors, development practitioners, and activists alike – to build on the small beginning that has been made by the development sector; to create cadres of empowered citizens who can push the government, asking for budgetary commitments, and monitoring implementation through social audits; who can reach out and pull development towards them, even from a state reluctant to do its share of the pushing. Why not let actions on the ground lead and craft the difficult consensus, rather than the other way around?

 

Footnotes:

1. Shailaja Bajpai, 20 November 2014 at http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/ columns/hijinks-in-hisar/ downloaded 3 December 2014.

2. In 2011, mainstream NGO networks like the Voluntary Action Network India (VANI) did not record minorities (or, more specifically, Muslims) as a constituency, although VANI did record both ‘Women and Children’s Issues’ and ‘Tribal and Dalit Rights’ in their list of areas of concern and engagement. See, Voluntary Action Network India: Annual Report 2011. VANI, New Delhi, 2011, p. 32.

3. The study, Working With Muslims in India (working title), and an accompanying annotated directory of 372 NGOs, to be published in 2015, is based on a two-and-a-half-year long research in eight states, as well as the region of Mewat, which consists of three blocks in Alwar district (in Rajasthan) and Mewat district (in Haryana). The states included Andhra Pradesh (with a 9.25% Muslim population), Bihar (16.5%), Delhi (11.7%), Karnataka (12.2%), Kerala (24.7%), Maharashtra (10.6%), Uttar Pradesh (18.5%), and West Bengal (25.2%).

4. It was a qualitative study based on a purposive sample and not an NGO census. Selection criteria excluded (most) faith-based organizations as well as minority philanthropies running large service institutions (degree colleges, coaching institutes, management institutes, professional colleges, hospitals) whether on profit or non-profit basis.

5. These issues are discussed in some detail in the study.

6. Planning Commission, GOI, Eleventh Five-Year Plan, 2007-2012 (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008, p. 127. Para 6.155.

7. Planning Commission, GOI, Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 2012-2017 (Vol. 3). Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2013, p. 249.

8. Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee Report. Presented to Ministry of Minority Affairs, GOI, 29 September 2014, p. 179.