The June 25 statement made by the Union Minister for Minorities Affairs Salman Khursheed, calling for critical examination of Sachar Committee report, has evoked wide criticism. Delivering a lecture on ‘Minorities of India: Issues and Challenges,’ at the Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, Chennai, Mr. Khursheed said, “Sachar Committee Report or aspects of Sachar Committee Report need to be critically examined to ensure that it doesn’t lead to ghettoisation.”
He also questioned Sachar Committee Report saying that the report was not the Qur’ān which cannot be questioned. “The recommendations of Sachar Committee Report are not divine like (the) Qur’ān; they can be wrong also and that’s why one must approach them critically,” he reportedly said.
Abusaleh Shariff, economist and Secretary of the Sachar Committee, has reacted strongly to the Minister’s assertion linking Sachar with the ghettoisation of Muslim community and also to Khursheed’s empirical questioning of the report by talking about the possibility of the report being “wrong.”
He writes, “The Minister has a lot to answer as to how will he eliminate large deficit in achievement levels which Muslims have encountered during the last 60 years or so. This has occurred mostly due to discriminatory practices followed by successive governments including the Congress governments both at the Centre and the many states. Sachar recommendations are sensitive to mainstreaming and… points to the areas in which discrimination has occurred and Muslims have suffered.”