Once the legendary USA President Abraham Lincoln have said; “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people” which seems very alluring whenever we have been taught and told about democracy since our school-days. Even though it seems quite reasonable when we talk about the participation of the so-called masses in the various elections all around the country but could we ever turn a cornered eye towards the stark reality of the current situation. The data presented by a very popular media revealed that almost the total wealth of 3.5 billion people (It is not worth-mentioning that the estimated population of the whole world is around 7 billions.) is less than that of just 62 people. The clear-cut difference between the socio-economic disparity couldn’t be presented in a more transparent way. After witnessing such a rift valley of disparity it seems wondering that the definition of democracy would have been “Democracy is the government of 1% of the people, by the 1% of people, for the 1% of people”.
Where Do Muslims Fit?
Not only of the whole world, even if we talk about our country India, this picture becomes even darker and horrible. According to a socio-economic consensus held in 2011, the maximum of number of rich people in the cities are Jains and villages are the Sikhs. However, the bottom 10% of the poor in both cities and villages are Muslims. A country where the whole democracy is idolised on the sacred secularism can be just assessed from the fact and the biggest plethora of our honourable judicial system is that almost 60% of the prisoners are Muslims, Dalits and Tribals either under trial or the trial haven’t been started yet. More shockingly, 55% undertrials are Muslims.
According to statistics, just 3.24% of the Muslims are in the civil service. Every fourth beggar on the road is Muslim. While Muslims are about 14.2% of Indian population, 25% of the beggars in India are Muslims. Muslims are not able to provide the basic education that India offers. Imagine, in this age of automation when most of the jobs will be done by machines and robots where qualified Indian engineers are afraid of losing jobs, Muslim youth are at the receiving end. Unfortunately, they are completely ignorant of these developments.
These are the dark images of the Muslim society – enough to haunt our conscience. It is necessary to know the plight of women and girls who have been already oppressed. Muslim families send their young kids to sell cheap items on road and little girls to work as maids in the houses of rich. Dharavi is a locality in Mumbai which provides a dark brutal picture of India’s inequality and economic divide. On one side, there are high-rise buildings with swimming pools and on the other side, there is slum where people living like animals. And statistics reveal that 30% of the people living there are Muslims. Dharavi is now a place where women sell their kidneys so that they could fulfil the necessity of their kids. Many of Muslim mothers have adopted a new occupation in the name of surrogacy. How can we define the plight of mothers who are forced to adopt surrogacy. One such mother was quoted by a famous newspaper once when she was asked – why do you want to give birth to a child who is not yours? She replied –
“I give birth to their child so that my own four children can get a meal of two times.”
The time has come in order to take the responsibility by the responsible people in the Muslim community in order to uplift the community inspite of just being a part of useless rallies and debatable dialogues and speeches. Victor Hugo has shown the path in his famous quote “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
(This is an excerpt of a speech by IAS Coach Mr Sameer Siddiqui in New Delhi, India)
