Karnataka: Here's How A Quota Changed Muslim Lives. BJP Now Wants to Scrap It

Reservation helped Shafiullah become a technology lead in an IT company and change the course of not just his but his entire family’s life back in his village. He now makes it a point to give back to the community.

Reservation helped Mohsina secure a corporate job, but it also indirectly opened doors for her to make it to Brazil to play football.

Reservation helped Hafsa gain an MBBS admission and paved the path to achieve her childhood dream of becoming a doctor.

Reservation helped Farheen study software engineering. But she is worried about the future of her brother, an aspiring doctor, since the Karnataka government scrapped the 4 per cent Muslim reservation that helped her make her dreams a reality. Something her brother may not be able to do.

In March this year, just a month before the assembly elections in Karnataka, the state BJP government scrapped the four per cent reservation under the OBC category for Muslims, in what was known as the ‘2b category’. The government distributed the four per cent to increase the reservation for Vokkaligas from 4% to 6%, and for Lingayats from 5% to 7%. The Supreme Court, hearing a batch of petitions against the scrapping of reservations called it a “shaky and flawed” decision, and has stayed it until the next hearing on 9 May.

The Quint spoke to multiple Muslims in Karnataka who, in the course of the last few decades, availed the reservation and had their lives change drastically as a result of it. They now fear about the upcoming generations of the community, and how they would rise up the ladder, without the reservation.

Using Reservation To Give Back To Community

43-year-old Shafiullah was born in Hirur village in Karnataka’s Belgaum district to a poverty-riddled family. Shafiullah’s father was a lorry driver, and he was third of seven children. “I was always academically inclined, but it was very challenging to study in limited financial means,” says Shafiullah.

After managing in local schools, Shafiullah managed to score a decent ranking in the Common Entrance Test (CET) for Engineering, but it was his 2b reservation that helped him get a really good college. “My career got defined by the fact that I was able to graduate from a good engineering college,” he says.

A few years after graduation, Shafiullah scored a job in the IT company, Infosys. He has now completed 15 years in the company.

Shafiullah rose up the ladder in his career, and was able to help his family back home too. “My initial earnings all went in helping my family. Today, all my siblings are well settled in their jobs, one has even moved abroad...So indirectly, my reservation helped my family too,” he says.

But it isn’t just his family, as reservation benefitted Shafiullah, he was able to give back to the community and society as well.

“I started voluneetring with groups that helped provide financial aid to meritorious students

from underprivileged background. I also went back to my village and career counselled young kids,” he says.

From Poverty To Football In Brazil

Reservation in pre-university colleges and degree colleges has helped Muslim students not just academically, but even otherwise.

Mohsina, 26, works in an IT services company in Bengaluru. One of five sisters, Mohsina says she and her siblings are the first women in her entire extended family to just have completed education but also to be working.

When she was in her school, some NGOs working with underprivileged children, trained her and other students in football.

“Then, using 2B I was able to enter a good pre-university (PU) college,” says Mohsina. It was in college that she got selected to go to Brazil for an inter-country football tournament. “It was an out-of-the-world feeling to be able to meet people from all across the world. I am so grateful for that exposure,” she says.

'Reservation For One Helped The Entire Family'

Reservation under 2b category doesn't exist for all Muslims, but only those whose family annual income is less than Rs 8 Lakh. Earlier this was Rs 6 lakh and before that Rs 2 lakh.

Mohsina and her sisters grew up in a house which was “practically just one room” with her parents. Their father worked as an auto driver. Today, the family been able to buy a bigger home with far better amenities.

“Reservation didn’t just help Mohsina, it helped our entire family. Because she studied and did well in her life, our lives got better,” says Zareena Banu, Mohsina’s mother. “There were days when her father’s auto driving earned him just a few hundred bucks, other days when he simply sat at home with no work. But we never gave up on Mohsina’s education because reservation provided some sort of a security—that if we as a family support her, reservation will provide wings to her ambitions,” Banu says.

Quota Removal More Damning For Muslim Girls

Activists have argued that while reservations helped the Muslim community as a whole, its scrapping will have a specially damning impact on Muslim girls.

Hafsa Tasneem, 19, is a first year student of MBBS at a government college in Bangalore.

“It was because of reservation that I got a seat in a college near our home. If it wasn’t for reservation, I probably would have gotten a seat far away, and my family wouldn’t have liked sending me at a distance for college,” says Hafsa.

Her father, Sameer Beg, is an imam at a local mosque in the city. “We didn’t have an academically conducive environment at home, but she still worked hard and was able to make it this far,” he says.

'Future Generation's Dreams At Stake'

Farheen Saba is working as a software engineer at a firm, and had availed the 2b reservation a few years ago.

“People in our society and community don’t prioritise education. For girls, they think better to spend that money in wedding than education and for boys, they prefer investing in starting a business. Now if reservation is also taken away, that will only worsen such mentality,” Farheen says.  

With the scrapping of the reservation for Muslims, Farheen is now worried about her 17 year old brother Abrar, who is presently preparing for the NEET entrance exams. “He has always dreamt of becoming a doctor. His dreams will be shattered if he can’t make it,” she says.

'Not A Religion-Based Quota': Experts Counter BJP

Backward Muslims, who fall under a certain income threshold, have been able to avail reservation since 1994, when the HD Deve Gowda government included Muslims in the OBC category.

This was based on recommendations by a number of commissions which argued that Muslims should be considered a backward class on the basis of their social and educational conditions such as the Miller Commission (1918), Havanur Commission (1975), Venkataswamy Commission (1983), and Chinnappa Reddy Commission (1990).

On the other hand, the Karnataka government hasn’t shown any scientific evidence to back the scrapping of the reservations. Union Home Minister Amit Shah supported the scrapping saying that reservation “solely on the basis of religion” is “unconstitutional”.

The Karnataka government too argued the same in the Supreme court.

“The state government took a conscious decision to not continue with the reservation on the sole basis of religion as the same is unconstitutional and contrary to the mandate of Article 14 to 16 of the Constitution of India…”

-Karnataka Government affidavit

However, experts say this isn’t a religion-based reservation.

“This is a reservation based on the educational and social backwardness of Muslims in Karnataka. This isn’t a religion-based reservation. If so, then Christians and Jains also get reservation in the state, is that not religion-based?” asked Zahid Jahnagir, a professor at Government PU College, Kalaburagi.