More Muslims in Jails: What’s surprising?

Posted on November 5, 2006 by Adnan Alavi

While Muslims constitute nearly 15% of India’s population they are over-represented in prisons where they are often 25-30% or even more.

In 8 states, they comprise 24% of prison population. Of course in Maharashtra the situation is alarming, 10.6% of population but in jails Muslims are over 32%. In Assam, Jharkhand and Karnataka, they are not much over represented. In rest of the states nearly double their percent. So what’s surprising?

Muslims are poor, low on social indicators, denied loans (commissions and reports acknowledge that), benefit less from government schemes and are 1-3% in various categories of government/private sector/public sector jobs– 1/5th to 1/15th of what should be their representation. Mathematically, this inverse ratio is still not reflected their involvement in crime–just 1.5-3 times is the number of Muslim undertrials & convicts compared to their population in these states (it could well have been 5-15 times given their proportion in jobs & lack of opportunities). As far as Maharashtra is concerned, the indiscriminate arrests of Muslims have acquired an altogether new dimension. Muslims are not more criminal (despite disadvantages) than any other social group though they are often portrayed like one.
Adnan

About Adnan Alavi

Adnan has been blogging about Indian Muslims at his blog, Indscribe.
This entry was posted in India, Islam, Politics, Society. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to More Muslims in Jails: What’s surprising?

  1. Pingback: Blogbharti » More Muslims in jails

  2. Nitin says:
    November 7, 2006 at 2:26 am

    Adnan,

    Perhaps you could explain this in a subsequent post:

    ven though an estimated 78,000 women died while giving birth to about 26 million children in India during 2004, statistics show that the maternal mortality had dropped by 24 percent between 1997-98 and 2001-2003.

    Religious indicators show that MMR is estimated highest among women of STs (652) and SCs (584) compared to other Hindu castes. Hindus in general have been found having higher MMR (573) and Muslims just (384).

    Anthropologist PN Mari Bhat said the unusual low MMR among Muslims was puzzling. He, however, believed that it could be because Muslims generally lived in large villages and in urban centres where they had better access to emergency obstetrics care.

    According to an official survey, Muslims also fared better than Hindus in terms of IMR. The IMR for Hindus stood at 77 per thousand, much higher than Muslims (59 per 1,000). Christians have the lowest at 49 per 1,000 [DT]

  3. Sharique says:
    November 10, 2006 at 9:50 pm

    Nitin,
    The answer in contained in the your comment

    Muslims generally lived in large villages and in urban centres where they had better access to emergency obstetrics care.

    And if you are surprised that in spite of this fact why Muslims are backward in education then its a different issue.

  4. Nitin says:
    November 12, 2006 at 11:15 pm

    Sharique,

    Yes. Both public health and education are provided by the state. Why are the data not correlated?

  5. Sharique says:
    November 15, 2006 at 5:01 am

    Nitin,
    When it comes to education muslims are wary but when it comes to health care they are not! I sometimes wonder why a muslim is involved in every social crime, irrespective of quranic teachings but when it comes to education and being open minded, he quotes distorted islamic verses to stay away from them.
    Obviously backwardness of muslims in education cannot be due to discrimination by government…its something innate in every muslim!!

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