In India, the wages of distrust
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A recent media report has pointed out that Muslims have been kept
out of some wings of India's intelligence apparatus. While the thin presence of
Muslims in jobs and education is well known, their exclusion from government
agencies by design is cause for concern. Not only is it a blot on the country's
secular and pluralistic credentials but it has implications for India's
security. It could be detracting from the quality of intelligence the agencies
are gathering.
According to a report in leading newsmagazine Outlook, India's external
intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing,
adheres to an "unwritten code" not to recruit Muslims. Right from its inception
in the late 1960s, RAW, which has a 10,000-strong staff, "has avoided
recruiting any Muslim officer". This is the case, too, with the National
Technical Research Organization, the recently established
technical-intelligence wing of RAW.
The report points out that Muslims and Sikhs are not deployed to protect
India's VIPs, either. The Special Protection Group (SPG) that is in charge of
protecting the prime minister avoids posting Muslims and Sikhs as bodyguards.
The few Muslims and Sikhs who are in the SPG are deployed on administrative
duties. There are no Muslims or Sikhs in the National Security Guard (or Black
Cats), an elite counter-terrorism force that is also responsible for VIP
protection.
While distrust of Muslims is long-standing, suspicion of Sikhs, who constitute
less than 2% of India's population, can be traced back to the eruption of the
Sikh militancy that raged through the 1980s and was aided by sections of the
Sikh diaspora and Pakistan. In October 1984, Indian prime minister Indira
Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh guards, Satwant Singh and Beant
Singh. The Sikh community came under a cloud and Sikhs were thereafter pulled
off the personal security of prime ministers.
Sikh militancy has subsided, but Sikhs continue to be excluded from the
personal security of the prime minister. Incidentally, India's current prime
minister, Manmohan Singh, is himself a Sikh, as is Chief of Army Staff Joginder
Jaswant Singh. Yet people from the Sikh community are not trusted to look after
the prime minister's security.
It was Sikh officers in the police, the intelligence and the armed forces who
ultimately defeated the Sikh militancy. There are lessons in that for India as
it shrinks from recruiting Muslims.
Distrust of Muslims is far deeper and more widespread. They are kept out not
just from bodyguard duties of India's top leaders but much more.
Muslims constitute 13.4% of India's 1.1-billion-strong population, but their
presence in education and employment - both private sector and government - is
nowhere near their population share. "From the administration and the police to
the judiciary and the private sector, the invisible hands of prejudice,
economic and educational inequality seem to have frozen the 'quota' for Muslims
at 3-5%," observes Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu.
"For virtually every socio-economic marker of well-being, the Muslim is well
below the national norm - not to speak of the level commensurate with her or
his share of the national population - and the evidence suggests these
inequalities are not decreasing over time."
The thin presence of Muslims in jobs and employment and their abysmal
socio-economic status have often been blamed on their community's reluctance to
become a part of the Indian mainstream. Muslims don't get jobs because they
don't want to get educated, they don't want to work in government, is an
argument often heard in India. Muslim clerics and politicians are often accused
of keeping the community backward. And there is some truth in this argument.
But there is serious prejudice too against Muslims. And this prejudice is
responsible for the reluctance of Hindus to rent houses to Muslims, to hire
them or to trust them in "sensitive" positions.
In the eyes of many Hindus, no Muslim can ever truly belong to India. Muslims
are seen as "outsiders", descendents of those who invaded India centuries ago.
The partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan out of
Muslim-majority areas has added to hostility against Muslims. Muslims in India
are often regarded as pro-Pakistan and in recent years have been looked upon
with suspicion as possible terrorists.
It is this perception that lies behind the reluctance to recruit Muslims into
the security forces and the intelligence agencies.
It is estimated that the number of Muslims in India's 1.1-million-strong army
is only about 29,000. Since 1947, there have been only three Muslim
lieutenant-generals and only eight major-generals, out of several hundred,
points out Omar Khalidi, author of Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India.
This is the same number as that among Parsis and Jews, who are far smaller
minorities in India.
"The reported exclusion of Muslims from RAW isn't a surprise," said a retired
bureaucrat. "It is an extension of the systematic discrimination that Muslims
in India encounter whether it is in education, jobs or accessing bank credit."
It appears that like RAW, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) - the agency responsible
for domestic intelligence - was once reluctant to recruit Muslims. A change in
its outlook came in the early 1990s when it decided to recruit Muslim officers.
Today, the 12,000-strong IB has what has been termed "a handful" of Muslim
officers.
Will RAW go the IB's way and open its doors to Muslims? Some RAW officials
remain skeptical about the loyalty of Muslims. "How can they be trusted to
represent and protect India's national interests when they are pro-Pakistan or
when their loyalty to the community of Muslims the world over is greater than
that to the country?" one RAW official asked this correspondent.
Other RAW operatives admit that questioning the willingness of Muslims to
represent India's interests is unfair. They recognize that Muslims in the
diplomatic corps have done a great job in representing the country's interests.
They admit too that there are no doubts over the integrity and loyalty of
Muslims in the Indian security forces. And they are willing to admit that
Muslims in the IB played a big role in fighting the militancy in Kashmir.
There is growing awareness within RAW too that it needs Muslim officers not
just because that is politically correct but because Muslims will be able to
fill important gaps in India's world view.
"They might be in a better position to understand the Muslim mind and in
gathering and interpreting intelligence from Muslim countries," said an RAW
officer. With a major part of India's concerns today focused on the Muslim
world, "Muslim officers in RAW would be an asset", he added.
The two obstacles in the way of RAW opening its doors to Muslims are the
absence of clear direction on the matter from the country's political
leadership and the inertia that has gripped the organization, preventing it
from changing its old ways.
It appears that in 2000, when the government was revamping the security setup
after the Kargil conflict, the need for recruiting Muslims came up. According
to Outlook, a senior bureaucrat approached the then national security adviser,
Brajesh Mishra, with the idea of recruiting Muslims into the organizations that
were being set up. Mishra promised to look into it but nothing was done to take
the suggestion forward.
Officials say a policy rethink on the issue of recruiting Muslims into RAW and
deploying them as bodyguards to VIPs is "an enterprise fraught with risk". It
requires someone to stick his neck out and make a bold decision.
"Since there is a possibility that such a decision could go horribly wrong,
nobody wants to take the risk," said a Home Ministry official.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
