Religion and politics in India make for a combustible combination, but a recent article in The Wall Street Journal on Azim Premi entitled Secular Engineer: How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India raises the matter of religion and economic advancement. The article profiles Premji, and gives a brief history of Wipro – transforming it from a seller of vegetable oil to the IT powerhouse of today.
A couple of things about the article rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it was the mention of religion in the title. Does anyone know of the religious background of billionaires from China, Japan, or Western nations? Only recently did I find out the owner of the Marriott hotel chain is a Mormon.
The article repeats one of the standard explanations of why Indian Muslims are under-performing their neighbors – that after partition, the best and brightest Muslims left for Pakistan. If that is the case, then Pakistan should be further along the development path than India, and there should be a number of world-beating Pakistani (or Bangladeshi) companies. Such is not the case – while both nations certainly have wealthy families, they are more likely to have garnered that wealth through methods usually seen in many developing nations – graft, monopolized markets, government favors, feudal relationships, etc.
On the matter of prejudice – while there is prejudice towards Muslims in India, is that the main reason that they have not advanced? After all, there is no Hindu majority holding back Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh, yet these two nations have not produced a Premji or Yusuf Hamied?
Premji’s success is dismissed by Munir Ahmed, an imam who runs a madrassa about 30 minutes from Wipro’s Bangalore offices.
The madrassa’s imam, Munir Ahmed, says that for his students, a future as self-employed shopkeepers or peddlers is preferable to seeking formal work at a large company. “A job is like being a slave,” Mr. Ahmed chuckles, adding that his graduates are in great demand as teachers in other madrassas.
That’s self-serving nonsense – would he be so quick to dismiss Indian Muslims who have succeeded in high profile areas like film and sports? Secondly, plenty of the Indians that go to do back-breaking work in the Persian Gulf are Muslim. Is the imam suggesting that given the choice between being a construction worker in Dubai and answering phone calls in an air-conditioned office in Bangalore, that a Muslim will choose the former?
The article makes a statement that I find a bit hard to believe:
In southern India, where most of the country’s technology industry is based, Hindus speak a number of regional languages and are more likely to study English.
Had he gone to Calcutta, the reporter would have come across plenty of Bengali Muslims who speak English. Even though IT is primarily in the South, it attracts workers from throughout the country. He must not have come across Tamil Muslims or Malayalam-speaking Muslims. And considering that Hindi and Urdu are largely the same spoken language, how would language prevent a Muslim from becoming, say, a receptionist at an IT firm?
The article does end on a hopeful note:
Bangalore’s Al-Ameen college is run by a movement that seeks to modernize the Muslim community. About 360 graduate and undergraduate students, both men and women, are currently studying for computer-science degrees. Most are Muslims, including pious young men with long beards and women with an Islamic hejab that covers their hair, though not their faces. Many graduates have already gotten jobs at companies like Wipro and Infosys, says the college’s principal, Mr. Javeed, and have started to earn salaries well above those offered outside the booming technology industry. “This has brought awareness to the Muslim community about the need to pursue higher education,” he says. “People are beginning to realize that education is power, that education is money, that education is an opportunity.”
Indeed, Premji is a far better role model, for any Indian, than someone who tells you the best you can hope for is what your father did before you, and what his father did before him.
