INVC,,
Delhi,,
The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Indian Muslims are, in more ways than one, sui generic. They are 13.4 percent of India’s population; at the same time, they are the second or third largest Muslim community in our world of nation-states. Addressing after releasing a book entitled “Muslims in Indian Cities” edited by Laurent Gayer and Christoph Jafferlot here today, Shri Ansari has said that Muslims have lived in India’s religiously plural society for over a thousand years, at times as rulers, at others as subjects and now as citizens. They are not homogenous in racial or linguistic terms and bear the impact of local cultural surroundings, in manners and customs, in varying degrees.
He said that the Partition of India in 1947, a result of political calculus, compromises and adjustments of elites but not of population at large, affected adversely the Muslims in India, particularly in the northern and eastern states of the Indian Union. For several decades thereafter the socio-economic impact of that event on the Muslim minority remained largely un-studied or understudied. Ad hoc government initiatives taken occasionally were poorly implemented.
The Vice President opined that the realisation is dawning that as equal partners in a democratic polity governed by the ideals of social, economic and political justice, they can make the weight of numbers felt in political decision-making and seek a fair access to it.
