RESERVATION: A SUICIDAL APPROACH A Positive Approach Required

Indian Muslims should learn from this. In the last sixty years, on this predominantly Hindu sub-continent, the Indian Muslims, numbering over 175 million, have failed to benefit from being the largest minority group. At the time of partition, they opted to remain in India, but failed to adjust to their new situation. Although they could have become a truly creative minority, they missed the chance to prove their worth. Despite being the largest minority, they have become the most deprived of all the groups across the country. With their creed, tradition, history and numbers, Muslims definitely had the moral stature to make a major contribution to the new India. The saying, 'in giving we receive', could well have been their motto. However, for this, they needed a period of harmony—a possibility only if they had unilaterally withdrawn all their grudges and complaints against the majority and risen above the reactionary psychology of the times. Unfortunately, however, they lacked dynamic and visionary leaders. As a result, Muslims became known as 'takers', rather than 'givers'. AWAITING OPPORTUNITIES Muslims have not yet realized that, from their ‘back seat’ position, they are quite free to exploit their own considerable potential. By putting aside notions of privilege and precedence, they could educate and develop themselves to keep pace with the fast-changing times. It is simply a question of getting their priorities right. Reservation implies achievement without hard work. Promod Batra, noted management author, when asked about the secret of success, said - “Starve the problems, feed the opportunities”. This is sound advice for the Muslims as well. History, after all, abounds in examples of peoples who have successfully risen from the ashes of their dead selves. A case in point is modern Japan. Its denizens thought of themselves as ‘children of the sun’, genuinely superior to all other races and well within their rights in attempting to dominate other nations. Their slogan was ‘East Asia for Japan’. Such thinking was responsible for Japanese aggression from 1937 to 1945, during which period they captured Manila, Singapore and Rangoon. However, they were finally crushed militarily with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by America. On September 2nd 1945, Japan signed a document ratifying America’s