What NSA Ajit Doval Told 16 Prominent Indian Muslims

'I cannot imagine that any NSA before Ajit Doval would have given us this kind of time and this kind of engagement. They would have offered slogans, or nothing at all. That, too, tells you something.'

Nearly two decades have passed since Justice Rajinder Sachar's 403-page document that was placed before Parliament in which he described, in cold statistical detail, what many Indian Muslims had long suspected: that the community was being left behind.

The report, submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November 2006, found that Muslims lagged behind Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on several development indicators. Their share in government employment stood at a meagre 4.9 per cent.

Their literacy rate fell below the national average. Dropout rates were high.

Bank credit was scarce -- some institutions had quietly designated Muslim-concentration areas as ‘negative geographical zones.’

In the elite civil services, Muslims made up barely 3.2 per cent. The report had a name for this accumulated disadvantage: a ‘development deficit.’

What followed the Sachar Committee report was, by most accounts, more paperwork. The Ranganath Misra Commission submitted its recommendations in 2007 which was tabled in both houses of Parliament in 2009. The Congress-led UPA government, which had commissioned the inquiry, held power for another seven years. Community leaders who pushed for implementation were given committees. The committees gave reports. The reports gathered dust.

It is against this backdrop that a group of 16 prominent Muslim citizens -- industrialists, doctors, academics, and social activists -- took an unusual step earlier this year.

Rather than issue statements or organise protests, they knocked on the door of the most powerful security official in the country.

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval not only opened it, but gave them two hours at the Seva teerth (earlier known as the Prime Minister's Office) on April 18.

In this interview, Zafar Sareshwala -- Ahmedabad-based entrepreneur, educationist, and one of the 16 -- tells Prasanna Zore/Rediff what was said in that room, what was asked for, and why this group believes the only honest conversation worth having about Muslims in India today is the one that begins not with reservation, but with education and enterprise and equality.

'Honestly, we never expected even to get an invitation'

What was the purpose of the meeting between NSA Ajit Doval and prominent Muslim citizens?

There were 16 of us -- industrialists, businesspeople, educationists, and social activists. Each one of us has been working across the religious divide for years. I, for instance, have been running an initiative called Education to Entrepreneurship for the past 11 years.

We have taken it to 67 cities across the country -- proper workshops where we teach young people basic finance, capital markets, and entrepreneurship, with people from the State Bank, Union Bank, Bank of Baroda, the National Stock Exchange, the Bombay Stock Exchange, and entrepreneurs from TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs.

When we started in Gujarat, under Chief Minister Narendra Modi, it was initially targeted at Muslim youth. We called it the Empowerment and Mainstreaming of Muslims through Education. But around 2017, I realised that underprivileged is not a caste -- it is a class.

A poor Hindu Brahmin is no better off than a poor Muslim. So we opened it up completely.

Today, in a city like Lucknow, roughly 70 per cent of our participants are non-Muslims. It is entirely free -- we provide lunch and transportation as well.

Who were the other people in the group?

Take Dr Faruk Patel of the KP Group. His father was a bus conductor with the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation, who retired in 2004. Today, Faruk Patel's group has three listed companies, generates close to 9 gigawatts of renewable energy -- solar, windmill, green hydrogen -- across more than 11,000 acres in Kutch, with a collective net worth of over three billion dollars. He also runs a school in Surat where over 7,000 students study.

When he took it over, it was worse than a municipal school. Today it is at convent level. This year, 75 students sat for NEET and 25 for JEE -- from that institution. Unimaginable, even five years ago.

Then there is Inamul Iraqi, who runs German Steel -- a business worth about Rs 10,000 crore and employing some 2,500 people, with facilities in Kutch, Ahmedabad, and Maharashtra.

Junaid Sharif's company manufactures walls used in the oil and gas industry, with factories in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Dr Zaheer Qazi is the president of Anjuman Islam, which was established in 1875 and today runs more than 110 institutions in Maharashtra -- from schools and junior colleges to engineering, law, pharmacy, and hospital management colleges -- with over one lakh students, of whom 60 to 70 per cent are non-Muslims.

We also had the vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University.

Five of the 16 were women -- including a former television journalist, Dr Nishat, a gold medallist and professor at AIIMS, and Nusrat Jahan, chairperson of the Delhi Hajj Committee.

Each one of us has large constituencies behind us. The point was to put forward a face of Muslim India that the media never shows -- not the caricature of the bearded man in a skull-cap, but people who are building institutions, creating employment, educating hundreds of thousands of Indians across every caste and community.

Was this meeting called by the NSA, or did your group approach him?

We approached. And honestly, we never even expected to get an invitation. So when the response came back quickly, and warmly, it was genuinely encouraging. We had decided from the start that we would only meet the very topmost people -- the prime minister, the NSA, or whoever they suggested. Not politicians. There is a big difference between a politician and a policymaker. Politicians give you slogans. We were tired of slogans.

'Stop institutional discrimination. Give us equal opportunity. That is all'

What issues did the 16 of you raise, and how did the NSA respond?

We were given almost two hours. Each of us spoke for the first hour and a half, and then Mr Doval spoke for about 35 to 40 minutes. The atmosphere was genuinely cordial. A few of us had booked return flights for early afternoon -- we were expecting perhaps 15 or 20 minutes. We ended up missing our flights.

The first and most important thing we said was: we do not want reservation. Not because we are against it in principle, but because we know it will not happen.

Maharashtra gave Muslims four per cent reservation -- the Supreme Court struck it down. Any government can pass such a law tomorrow, but the Supreme Court will strike it down again because of the 50 per cent ceiling.

The Ranganath Commission, the Sachar Committee -- we have had reports and recommendations since 2007, and the Congress government, which was in power for seven or eight years after that report, did nothing. We have been running behind these slogans for 20 years.

What we asked for instead was positive affirmation -- not unlike what happened in the United States, where there was no formal reservation for Black Americans, but a deliberate effort was made to create an enabling environment. And we said: stop institutional discrimination. Give us equal opportunity. That is all.

What was the NSA Ajit Doval's response?

He was very clear. He said: we are a ship. Either we sink together or we sail together. It is not possible for one community to go forward while another sinks.

He also pointed out that the highest number of Muslims ever recruited into the armed forces has happened in the period since 2012-13 -- and his explanation was simple. They removed the personal interview from the selection process. The officer doing the selection does not know whether the candidate is Mohammad or Anil. It has become faceless, like income tax assessments today, where the officer processing your file may be sitting in Bangalore while you are in Ahmedabad. And ever since that happened, Muslim recruitment went up.

He also spoke about identity -- that each of us carries multiple identities. I am Zafar Sareshwala. I am a Muslim, a businessman, a social activist. Where I may sometimes face a setback, it may well be because of a gap in merit, not because of discrimination. So we also need to look inward.

What concrete plan came out of the meeting?

We decided to form a small committee among the 16 of us to maintain a regular channel of communication with the government -- not just the NSA, but whichever functionaries he suggests. The immediate proposal is to identify locations where we can set up schools and hostels, not exclusively for Muslims, but for underprivileged students across communities, with roughly a 25 to 30 per cent Muslim presence as that reflects local demographics.

Mr Doval said, and I am quoting him directly here: ‘Once you demonstrate that you can build this yourself, I will make sure that 10 or 12 of the country's top industrialists contribute to the corpus.’ So the ask from us first is to put our own skin in the game. Charity begins at home. We are not looking for government handouts.

But this is happening in an environment where terms like 'love jihad' and 'corporate jihad' are being thrown around. How does your initiative fit into that?

We are aware of all of it. But if I start addressing every one of those 10 problems, I will lose sight of the most important one. When the elephant is walking, the dog barks. You keep walking.

My advice to Muslim youth is this: your one small error will be amplified a thousand times. You have to be exceptional beyond doubt.

My father told me the same thing back in the late 1980s, long before the BJP or the RSS had anything like their current influence. He said: ‘You cannot get selected at 100 out of 100. You will need to score 120.’ That was the reality then, and it remains the reality now.

Muslims appearing for UPSC: 'The numbers tell the story'

Does that mean Muslims are not equal citizens?

No. If every Indian looked at every Muslim with suspicion, it would be impossible for someone like Dr Faruk Patel -- who has built a three-billion-dollar business entirely under BJP governments in Gujarat -- to have thrived.

There is a section of society that pushes this agenda (of ‘love jihad’ and ‘corporate jihad’), yes. It is not new. Social media has just made it louder.

You said politicians give slogans. But isn't there an impression among Muslims that the BJP's politics itself is responsible for amplifying anti-Muslim sentiment?

I would say that what you are seeing is amplified social media, not amplified government policy. You see the same kind of thing in the United States and in Europe. As for government, I have to say honestly, we have not faced discrimination. That is why we believe in sitting across the table from people who actually run things -- not from those who tweet about things.

What is the UPSC scenario for Muslims today?

About 10 years ago, we dug into the numbers and found that less than one per cent of Muslims were even appearing for the UPSC examination. So the question of selection did not arise. We quite literally ran a jihad -- and I mean jihad in its true sense, because the word appears 41 times in the Quran and every single time it refers to struggle, to strive for something better. We ran a struggle to get Muslim youth to sit for these exams.

The numbers tell the story. Until 2014-15, roughly 29 or 30 Muslim candidates were selected through UPSC each year. Over the last seven or eight years, that figure has risen to 52, 55, and in one year, 59. Almost doubled.

In the most recent cycle, approximately 53 have been selected -- that is close to five per cent (of all the Muslims who appeared for the UPSC). And this is happening in state public service commissions too, in GPSC (Gujarat Public Service Commission), in clerk and constable examinations -- jobs that Muslims were not even aware they could apply for.

'If Ambedkar had focused only on fighting untouchability, he would have achieved nothing'

You often invoke Babasaheb Ambedkar.

Because Ambedkar understood something fundamental: if he had focused only on fighting untouchability, he would have achieved nothing. He said to Dalits: get yourself educated. Everything else will fall in place.

That is exactly what we are saying. Skill backed by education, with honesty and integrity. Once you have those two things, nobody can ignore you. Not even a dacoit needs a dishonest man working in his house.

Will there be a follow-up meeting? Is a meeting with the prime minister on the cards?

We will continue meeting. We hope to also meet the prime minister and other key functionaries. Mr Doval did not make any specific promise about that, but it is something we intend to work towards.

There is one more thing I want to say. I cannot imagine that any NSA before Ajit Doval would have given us this kind of time and this kind of engagement. They would have offered slogans, or nothing at all. That, too, tells you something.