Mahatma Gandhi had said that the quality of a democracy should be judged from the way minorities are treated. Democracies are participative system of governance but numbers assume greater importance in it and when it is multi-religious or a multi-cultural society.

India was multi-religious and multi-cultural from day one in its history. Muslims were an important minority, even a ruling minority for a few centuries but let us remember those who ruled were small minorities within the Muslim minority and had their own interests at heart, never of all Muslims. The overwhelming majority of these Muslims were converts from low caste Hindus, were poor and weak before conversion and remained poor and weak after conversion.

It is this poor and weak Muslim minority, which remained in India after Partition to bear the brunt of not only their poverty and illiteracy but also of the “guilt” of Partition. The majority of  communalists, and strangely even some rationalists, keep blaming them for refusing to reform and become part of the “national mainstream”. This kind of civil society discourse, holds only Muslims responsible for their backwardness and illiteracy.

The textbooks taught in municipal or state schools are examples of our majoritarian ethos. And our media, especially a section of the regional media, plays no less important role in disseminating raw prejudices against Muslims.

Some lower level police officials, particularly the constabulary, are deeply influenced by this section of the media. Even some top police officials have to take orders from their political bosses, who freely use casteism and communalism as powerful instruments to fulfil their political ambitions. This was so obvious in Gujarat 2002.
Added to all this is the fact that our police is largely colonial in ethos. The British had created this police to suppress people, not to help them or to maintain law and order. This continues uninterrupted, further embittered by anti-minorityism.

From the Mumbai blasts in 1992-93 to the two Hyderabad blasts in July and August of 2007 it is a long story of police inflicting torture on Muslim youth, mostly innocent; with no accountability. What is most shocking is that despite all this, the police has not succeeded recently in catching any real culprit. In the Godhra train blasts too, all those arrested are not being tried in the court of law as the police has hardly any concrete evidence against those detained. TADA was a monstrous law, which was opposed by all human rights activists and which was misused to the maximum by all those who rule, including the Congress governments but particularly the BJP rulers against minorities.

Jyoti Punwani, a human rights activist and noted freelance journalist, exposed some of the humiliations inflicted on the innocent by the police after the Mumbai bomb blast. The national media, by and large, ignored these cases. Only the Urdu press focused on them. But the Urdu press is read by Muslims alone. Now the same thing is happening in Hyderabad after the Mecca Masjid and Priyadarshini Park blasts.

A team of investigators constituted by social and human rights activists like Nirmala Gopalakrishnan, K Anuradha and Mohammad Afzal visited detainees in jail and members of their families and prepared a report that makes painful reading.

The report under reference mentions several cases of police arresting people and torturing them even when the suspicion was very slight. They were never produced before court within 24 hours as stipulated by law.

The committee met Hafez Mohammad Bilal Muftahee, age 26, who said that the only reason for his detention (reason given to him by police) was that the police wanted to question him about his association with Rizwan Ghazi. Hafez said that he had taught Rizwan a year ago at the Royal Indian School, where he has been teaching the Quran. He is from West Bengal and has been living in Hyderabad for the past six years.

The police came to his house on September 2 and had Rizwan Ghazi with them. Hafez was not allowed to inform his family. For five days he was interrogated at an unknown location where he was severely beaten, kicked, hit with sticks on the sole of his feet. After five days he was released. He was hospitalised and the records showed that the injuries he had were the result of beatings.

When it comes to Muslims, our police seem to be motivated by their prejudices against Islam. I conduct workshops for the police and experience these prejudices in the form of their questions. But I do not blame them as they are hopelessly ill-informed and the authorities make no attempts to train them in secular values and responsibilities in a multi-religious society. The problem is political and has to be solved with justice and wisdom.