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Access of Muslims and Other Religious Minorities to Rights and Freedoms – Bihar This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Provided they acknowledge the source, users of this content are allowed to remix, tweak, build upon and share for noncommercial purposes under the same original license terms. Some rights reserved Published by: Misaal - Centre for Equity Studies 24, Khazan Singh Building Adhchini, Aurobindo Marg New Delhi - 110 017, India Tel: +91 (0)11-26535961 / 62 Email: [email protected] Web : www.misaal.ngo Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misaalfellowship Credits: This report has been produced with the assistance of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Minority Rights Group International provided technical help. The contents of this report are the sole responsibility of Misaal-CES, and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency or of Minority Rights Group International. December 2016 Access of Muslims and Other Religious Minorities to Rights and Freedoms Bihar December 2016 i Executive Summary 1. This study aims to examine the access of religious minorities in the state of Bihar to minority rights - including to freedom of religion, life and security, and social, economic and cultural rights. The focus of the study is Muslims - by far the largest religious minority in Bihar, and India as a whole. We try to measure access to rights by mapping poor Muslims’ conditions as well as by examining the quality of state provisioning for them. This examination is based on (i) primary data on micro evidence on the condition of poor Muslims, collected from 5 sample sites of Muslim habitations in UP (Patna, Vaishali, Sitamarhi, Darbhanga and Madhubani districts) using household surveys (sample of 100 poor Muslim households at each site) and interviews and focus group discussions, as methods. We also use (ii) secondary data and insights, on both micro evidence of the condition of poor Muslims and working of programmes for them, as well as insights on Muslim outcomes and policy dynamics, sourced from published works, media reports, as well as some RTI questions. 2. Bihar with 17.56 million Muslims (2011 Census) accounts for 10.19 per cent of the country’s Muslim population, the second highest number of Muslims in any state in India. They are a significant percentage of the state’s total population too – at 16.87 per cent. Muslim population is concentrated in northeastern and northern Bihar. Kishanganj, ArariaKatihar and Purnia, all in Northeast have very high concentration of Muslims, as do Darbhanga, Saharsa, West Champaran, and Sitamarhi, all in the north. Majority of Muslims – in the northeast, north as well as in south - live in rural areas. Those in the south eastern and particularly south western districts (Bhagalpur, Monghyr et al) are more urban-based. 63.4 per cent of Muslims in the state were OBCs, rest self-identifying themselves as General. In urban areas alone, this figure is 71 per cent. Currently, there are 9 Muslim groups included in the state BC list and 27 in MBC list. This leaves out many from the lists, including those where the state and central (OBC) lists do not match, thus depriving groups from the benefits that inclusion in BC and MBC lists enable. 3. The findings of our micro studies at the five sites, using sample household surveys, are revealing in how excluded poor Muslims in Bihar are from rights and freedoms: i. majority of respondents worked as manual labourers, mostly in construction but also as farm labour, as porters, rickshaw pullers, and head loaders. Others worked as vegetable and fruit sellers, and pheriwallahs (itinerant cloth sellers), or as motor mechanics and puncture shop owners. Income levels at all five sites was poor, allowing households little savings for basic needs. ii. a very large section of respondents was asset-less, with none or only little land ownership in rural areas, and any comparable assets in urban. Permanent houses, and amenities such as piped water supply, electricity connection and flush toilets at home, too are scare among the cohort, reflecting how poor Muslims struggle with basic services. iii. despite poor incomes and vulnerable livelihoods, only a small section of respondents appeared to be deriving benefits of the many social security programmes for the poor – mostly universal, but some also meant specifically for minorities. These included schemes for employment and livelihoods (NREGS, NRLM), housing (IAY), education and health care (scholarship and RSBY/health insurance), food security (PDS, Antayodaya) and pensions (old age, widow, disability). ii iv. poor access of Muslims to schemes seemed - based on interviews and FGDs with respondents - to be founded on multiple factors: poor awareness among the cohort of the schemes and their rights; poor awareness of the processes for accessing the schemes; poor confidence in themselves to access the benefits, and poor trust in service providers to deliver the benefits. Further explorations reveals that poor awareness and intent is an outcome of the poor participation of Muslims in local institutions – panchayats and ward councils – as well as in civil society, resulting in Muslims largely being disengaged, and unable to influence local level decision making, all of which affects their lives. v. Our profiles of the excluded also tell a story of how, the malaise of communal polarization and violence, spreading all over the country, is beginning to impact the lives of marginalized Muslims in Bihar too. Respondents spoke of attempts by vested interests to foment trouble; the heightened tensions during elections, even the increased activities of SanghParivar affiliated Hindu extremist groups masquerading as religious bodies, resulting in an atmosphere of fear. Yet the refrain from respondents has been that firm and fair handling of situation by state administration meant that citizens are reassured of their life and liberty. 4. Exclusion and Inclusion: Results of our survey, using a very small sample of poorest Muslim minorities, echo the understanding of Muslims exclusion that is available in the wider literature, going to show how persistent exclusions have been over time. These lead us to the following conclusions: i. the socio-economic condition of Muslims in Bihar is poor. Reliance of a majority of Muslims on agricultural and construction labour, at home or as migrants in urban centres, or in petty production – employment, thus wholly in the informal sector, allowing for little security against shocks – ensures poverty is rife. Low asset, and high indebtedness ensures that poverty sustains.Education indicators for Muslims – literacy, enrolment, retention, and drop out, among others – are poor. They get worse especially at higher levels, than the rest of the community. This is another sustainer of the poverty trap of the state’s Muslims. ii. Access to services for Muslims – amenities (water, electricity, roads), education, healthcare, social housing and social security schemes – has been poor historically. This does not seem to have changed much. We did not find evidence too, in our explorations, of much targeted effort by the state government to reach these services to marginalised minorities. iii. Bihar has had its share of violence and attacks against minorities, specifically Muslims. These have resulted in significant loss of life and property, and livelihoods, such as in the Bhagalpur violence (of 1989), where displaced communities are, to this day, seeking to rebuild their lives against great odds. Majoritarian anti-minority mobilisation and hate speech too are realities in the state. But Bihar also demonstrates how strong administrative action, driven by political will to provide security and justice to all, can act to deliver the rule of law, preventing violence, protecting the right to life and protecting religious freedoms. Whilst its neighbour to the west, Uttar Pradesh, has suffered much violence, Bihar has largely remained violence free. This is a definite benefit that the state’s Muslims minorities have enjoyed. Lower violence means society is also less polarized – if not more diverse - all of which works in favour of minorities, enabling a sense of freedom of religion and practice, and an atmosphere that is not fraught with fear. iv. Positive outcomes for Muslims in Bihar, is founded on the nature of politics in the state. Greater state action to uphold the right to life of minorities is a reflection of iii the political ideology that has held forth in the state over the past decades - the alliance of parties speaking for the ‘backward classes’, that has sought, successfully, to nurture a constituency among the Muslims of the state too. This, among other factors, has also delivered other benefits to Muslim minorities in the state, such as recognition of Urdu early on as the second official language, and inclusion of Muslim groups in the MBC category, being principal. v. Yet, despite a supportive political formation in power, Bihar’s Muslims have a long distance to travel to obtain rights as equal citizens. Efforts at improved socio- economic outcomes have been less fruitful, although lower polarization in society, helps limit, to some extent, discrimination against Muslims in provision of services and entitlements. Muslim politics in the state has been reduced to search for security, in place of representation. Bihar’s is a mixed bag then. 5. Recommendations: Policy oriented - ensure groups left out of state BC/MBC and central OBC lists are included in them - explore inclusion of poorest Muslims within SC list. - focus on education, especially at elementary and secondary level, and for girls - integrated programme against child labour in MCD districts – including long- term education support for children and income support for parents. - Special drives on NREGS, NRLM and Kaushal VikasYojana, in MCDs/MCBs/MCTs, including community pilots for livelihoods promotion, to scale up the programmes amongst marginalised Muslims.