Reservation for Muslims in jobs and education — feverishly anticipated over the past two years and expected to be announced ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections — might turn out to be a headache the Congress unthinkingly bought itself.
As Muslim groups have been arguing, the route under the United Progressive Alliance government's consideration — a 6 per cent Muslim sub-quota within the 27 per cent OBC quota — would pit the more numerous Hindu OBCs against Muslims, while at the same time alienating powerful Muslim groups demanding an independent 10 per cent central quota for the community.
The Samajwadi Party, which counts Muslims and OBCs among its followers, had expressed itself strongly against the “quota-within-quota” move. Azam Khan, who recently reunited with Mulayam Singh, hit back at the Congress, calling the proposal a “ chunavi rishwat [pre-election bribe].”
General secretary of the Lok Jan Shakti Party Abdul Khaliq told The Hindu: “If this move goes through, there will be clashes in the villages.”
General secretary of the Welfare Party S.Q.R. Ilyas said: “It is not clear to me how reservation is going to be delivered to us. But if the government is indeed proposing this half-measure, then it is a stunt. Let us have separate reservation for Muslims, through a constitutional amendment if necessary.”
The Congress promised reservation for Muslims in its 2009 election manifesto: “The Indian National Congress has pioneered reservation for the minorities in Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in government employment and education on the basis of their social and economic backwardness. We are committed [ourselves] to adopting this policy at the national level,” it said.
Since then, however, the Congress has baulked at going the whole hog on its promise. Party spokespersons and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed would faithfully brandish the manifesto whenever the topic came up, and yet sidle out of committing itself to a time-frame to implement it.
As the debate raged, a leaked version of the report of the government-appointed Ranganath Misra Commission (later tabled in Parliament) found its way to the newspapers. Agitating Muslim groups grabbed the report with both hands, hailing it as “unique and unprecedented,” and insisting that the government immediately implement the commission's recommendation for a separate 10 per cent quota for Muslims outside the 27 per cent OBC quota.
The commission also suggested an escape route in the event of “some insurmountable difficulty in implementing this recommendation.” That was an “8.4 per cent sub-quota” for the minorities within the OBC quota with an “internal break-up of 6 per cent for Muslims.”
Muslim groups naturally saw the 6 per cent compromise — quickly seized by the government — as a cop-out. They instead cited portions of the report, in which the commission made out an elaborate case for treating Muslims, as a whole, as backward.
The “separate quota” demand was voiced by nearly a dozen groups at a large-sized meeting organised in the capital in November 2010. Syed Shahabuddin, who co-ordinated the meeting, declared: “Muslim reservation [10 per cent, as recommended by the Misra Commission] has become the litmus test for secularism.”
The issue was dramatically revived when, at a press conference in Lucknow last month, Mr. Khursheed announced that the quota package was on its way. However, sources in both the Prime Minister's Office and the Minority Affairs Ministry have confirmed to The Hindu that Muslim reservation is far from being a done deal, and the modalities could only be finalised after the legal and political implications are examined.
It is clear that the party and the government are caught in a cleft stick. The Congress, already in dire straits in Uttar Pradesh, cannot afford to ram through a proposal that equally annoys Muslims, for whom it is meant, and the OBC Hindus, whom the party wants to attract to its fold.
Indeed, the party has given ticket to OBC candidates for the 2012 elections precisely to enlarge its vote catchment area. However, to accept the separate quota demand would mean crossing the 50 per cent ceiling which, besides going against the “spirit of affirmative action,” could invite the wrath of the right-wing.
