Muslims in India : their educational, demographic and socio-economic status with cooperative indicators for Hindus, Sikhs Christians....1990-93

Vol. - I : Bihar

For centuries Muslims have been living in the midst of
Hindus and other communities and over time bave,
become an inseparable part of the Indian sociei;
However, the Muslim community of India has become an
object of curiosity and "expert" comments are very often
made on the state of Muslim society on the basis of
impressions which have no scientific validity whatsoever.
Evaluations, in all honesty, should be rooted in the
authenticity of data on the ground realities which should
be empirically verifiable.
The idea behind the work, is to furnish solid and
incontrovertible statistics on a number of indicators critical
to an understanding of the social, economic, demographic,
occupational and educational status of Muslims in India in
comparision to the Hindu and other communities. It needs
to be emphasized that the study absolutely rejects the idea
of treating Muslims as a social isolate.
The work has been so designed that the statistics, based
and compiled from field survey, provide information on
a whole gamut of problems, such as, social structure,
household size, mother-tongue, general and age-specific
sex ratio, age structure, marital status, fertility rates, work
articipation rates and the industrial classification of the
wik force, occupational structure, literary and
educational levels, drop-outs and the quality of education.
The underlying assumption behind this study is that for
evolving any corrective mechanism and for ensuring
healthy, equitous and balanced development of all
sections of Indian society, it is most necessary to have
all data-base cross-classified by communities on
indicators of development. The study, by and large,
synchronizing with the operations of the 1991 Census of
India, improves upon the Census report, in the sense that
it is possible, with its assistance, to generate
cross-classified data- at the household and community
levels in a given area. It can thus be justly claimed that
the present work, in ways more than one, makes a major
headway on the Census of India, 1991 data.
This study is based on the household level data collected
from Kishanganj, a class II town and headquarters of the
district of the same name in Bihar, which lies in that
triangle where India, Bangladesh, and Nepal meet.
Territorially, it has been an area of ethnic inter-mixing
and cross-cultural interaction has been the highlight of its
social history. While it cannot be claimed that the sample
of Kishanganj is representative of the Muslim population
of Bihar, it is also true that it is not very far from it. The
data were collected through a schedule which was
canvassed in the town in early 1991 by local volunteers
conversant with the local languages/dialects such as
Maithili, Saryupari, Bengali, Santhali etc. Thus a very true
and genuine picture emerges.