Well-known Professor and rights activist, Dr. Ram Puniyani described the general lot of Indian Muslims ‘dismal’ in secular India as the situation of minorities’ rights have worsened over the last three decades. Ghettoised and alienated for long from the mainstream, Indian Muslims were now awakening and realising that the way out for them is acquisition of modern knowledge. Still the dream of equity for Muslims was a far thing and their security had been made precarious by the infiltration of communal elements in the state organs, Dr Puniyani said while speaking at the regional conference on “Rights of Religious Minorities in South Asia: Learning from Mutual Experiences” organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) of Germany in Islamabad. He elaborated that the growth of communalism was not something new as it was the existence of two communal streams of religious nationalism, which had caused the division of British India.
However, India’s secular constitution, which exhorts affirmative action to safeguard the minorities, had all along struggled against the forces of Hindutva led by the RSS. He said the Sangh Parivar builds on Muslims’ typecasting as terrorists and emphasises their otherness to persecute them. The other religious minority that was being oppressed was the Christians who were accused of converting low caste Hindus. He also advocated reservation in jobs for Muslims to bring them up to a threshold of economic and social survival. But it was going to be a long and hard fight.