Let me begin this column with the pronunciation of populism in the mother tongue of elections. Since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in the winter of 1992, the ‘othering’ of India has been the liberal war cry. “Hindu khatre mein hai!” is just a copy. The original, perfected by the Congress party and its secular handmaidens in the opposition and media is “Muslim khatre mein hai!”
I hate to tell you this: the Indian Muslim is doing just fine. In the 2011 Census, India’s Muslim population is 172 million. It is the second-largest religious community both in the country and on earth. The success record of this ‘persecuted’ minority is stellar. Philanthropist and founder of Wipro, Azim Premji has donated $21 billion on free education and healthcare. Yusuf Hamied of Cipla gave the world affordable AIDS medication. AR Rahman’s music is played in both temples and night clubs. The list of Muslim Presidents, Chief Justices, cricket captains, film dynasties, and media moguls is long. They are a community with spokespeople, media presence; they have political parties devoted entirely to Muslim concerns. They possess an international solidarity network, and top lawyers to defend constitutional protections. Saudi and Qatari petrodollars fund the building of splendid mosques and run legion of madarasas. Till recently there was even a Haj subsidy. Sure, Muslim representation in Parliament, in state assemblies, in the civil services is proportionally lower than the community’s population. The Muslim male work participation rate is just 536 per thousand population—below Hindu males at 760 and Sikh males at 568. If you add women to the equation, all the numbers fall by 30-40 per cent. These are problems which deserve policy attention, sustained public investment and structural redress. Though the victim trope is part of daily subconscious like a populist tapeworm, the Muslim goes about his business, building empires and businesses and winning elections. This is thus inconvenient to both narratives. But inconvenience is not persecution. And optics is not data.
There is data, hidden in the cortex of national shame that nobody wants to talk about. Here we go. Thirteen Dalits murdered every week; 27 atrocities against Dalits recorded every day; approximately over 50,000 cases of anti-Dalit violence registered each year; 10 Dalit women raped every day. In rural India, Dalit students are neither allowed to sit at the front of classrooms, nor permitted to eat with others. The “two-tumbler system”—separate cups for Dalits in cafes and tea stalls—are prevalent in many parts India. In some churches, Dalit Christians—is there a darker joke in the equalisation of conversion?—have to stand in the back of the pews during sermons. Cases of rape of Scheduled Caste women account for 7.64 per cent of all rape cases reported—2,63,512 cases of atrocities against SCs came up for trial in 2021 alone. The courts are full; hence most perpetrators get off free while the numbers climb. Or are out on bail to terrorise witnesses.
Then there is the vocation that Indian democracy refuses to acknowledge that it exists. In July 2024, Social Justice Minister Ramdas Athawale told Parliament that “no report of the practice of manual scavenging in the country in the last five years has been recorded”: that year 116 manual scavengers drowned. Government data shows 97 per cent of manual scavengers are Dalits. A shocking 80 per cent of male scavengers die before they are 60, descending without safety equipment into sewers that release fatal fumes of hydrogen sulphide and methane; and drown to death, unconscious, in human waste—one every five days. Their caste is their job description and their job description is their death sentence prepared before birth. The Indian postmodern discourse about identity has no language to enunciate this horror.
Opposition leaders stroll through the country, holding up the Constitution and speaking of trees in danger. Ask them the name of the last manual scavenger who died in a sewer in their constituency. Ask them about Mahapadma Nanda—the first great Indian emperor who was a ‘Shudra’. Ask the BJP’s ruling elite why Parliament still has so few representatives from the communities that perform some of the country’s most essential and least acknowledged work? They can’t even phone a friend: their tribe do not know the answer. India’s real democratic crisis is not that the Muslim is persecuted. It is that the Dalit has disappeared, not from the country, but from the Indian conscience. He is present, but ‘unseen’ in every gutter, every dry latrine, every village well that refuses him water, and every classroom where he sits in the back row. He is there in every crime statistic but not read out at prime time. He is the oldest, unhealed wound of this ancient civilisation. Aren’t we too busy performing grief for others to acknowledge the unspeakable tragedy he is?
