Category — Culture

While it is convenient to say that Muslims are not doing enough to promote religious reforms within Islam, it’s impossible to turn a blind eye to the archaic customs and practices prevalent among Hinduism.

It is shameful to note that even in this day and age, people are not allowed to run for elections just because they are ‘Dalits’. And the irony is that the post for which they were de-barred from running is reserved exclusively for the scheduled castes!

The analysis of the 2001 Indian census is throwing up interesting tidbits of data (one of which was the subject of my last post). The latest piece of information is the distribution of population, based on religion, engaged in economic activities.

On an average, 39% of all Indians are engaged in some economic activity or the other. In case of Hindus 40% of whom are economically active, the percentage is above the national average. But in comparison, only 31% of Indian muslims are actually workers… which is well below the national level.

This statistic, combined with the fact that the population growth of Muslims has been increasing all the time, does not make for very optimistic reading. This should be a cause for concern… not because it implies that unemployment is high among the Muslims, but because it implies that given the low levels of literacy among Muslims, there is a higher chance of them turning to crime for earning a few quick bucks.

This also is a nudge to the Muslim leaders and clerics, to get their acts together and expedite the reforms to aim for a progressive Muslim community.

Last but not the least, I hope the idiot, reservation-happy and vote-banking politicians do not see this statistic as another opportunity to carry out their minority appeasement agendas.

While Murli Manohar Joshi may have used his term to tinge the history textbooks with the ideologies of his political masters, Arjun Singh seems to be going overboard in his overzealous drive to reverse Joshi’s excesses. Arjun Singh is attempting to fire shots at the Sangh parivaar by placing his gun on the shoulders of school-children.

Instead of learning history, all that children seem to hear, these days, are words like ‘Saffronisation’, ‘Detoxification’, ‘Northernization’, etc. Everybody seems to be out to implement their own agenda. But then, what are the options?

• Create a joint parliamentary committee to analyse ways in which neither party sees red while coming up with multi-coloured history text books. (well, with all those various colours, at least no one will be able to claim that history books are boring!)
• Let the government of the day decide on what really happened in history and who did it! (Heroes and villains in our history would switch places every five years!)
• Let the government withdraw from this history text books business once and for all, leaving it to ‘eminent historians’. (Well, the eminence of these historians is usually decided by the government of the day!)
• Let the corporate sector do it! (History will go to the highest bidder!)
• Last but not the least (my suggestion!), stop teaching history in schools. Categorize all history text books under ‘fiction’ and arrange for more library periods during school hours. ;-)

These education ministers have created a big mess for themselves to contend with! One can only hope for a solution fairly quickly. Though I wonder why the Prime Minister, a techocrat himself, hasn’t stepped in to intervene. Perhaps, he’s emulating what Atal Bihari Vajpayee did during his tenure!

What do you think?