What Makes Premji a ‘Muslim tycoon’? Can we see his philanthropy without religious blinkers?

Right said, Premji? Pic: The Telegraph

Azim Premji is the right type of man. India deserves every bit of him and his contribution, both as entreprenueur and philanthropist.

Therefore, when he announced recently to give more, it sounded just right:

“I strongly believe that those of us who are privileged to have wealth should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.”

No one can have a problem with this. However, it raises two issues.

• Did he have to sign up with the ‘Giving Pledge’ group, co-founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? I have discussed my reservations about this sort of philanthropy earlier. It is his money, his country, his concerns. Globalising it obscures intent, if not action. He is right that education is the way forward. Unfortunately, there appears to be an increasing move for ‘quality’ education, ignoring the massive illiterate ‘market’.   

• Is it necessary to make him into a showpiece of a community? There is a difference between keeping a low profile and not being proactive. It is indeed commendable that he does not flash his faith (a luxury he has, incidentally, because money has no religion), but what about the desperation by others to thrust it on him, and for him to do the proper secular thing?

I will have to reproduce in entirety the piece I wrote in 2007 in Counterpunch as a response to the execrable interview in Wall Street Journal. Azim Premji may be “The Bill Gates of India” (which tells us more about our foreign obsession than globalisation), but even the international media will sell his story tagged with religion:

Is Azim Premji really the world’s richest Muslim entrepreneur? Is there a list which mentions the richest Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Christian, Scientologist, atheist, Rastafarian?

Unlikely. At least nothing that would make the Wall Street Journal want to give it front page legitimacy. Talking of legitimacy, surely we are talking about legitimate enterprise, for the underworld and the mafia, Muslim or otherwise, are flush with money. In all likelihood, they are investors in the big companies.

Mr. Premji heads Wipro, India's third-largest IT exporter. Its fortune rests at $17 billion. I like rich people. But this gentleman is not just rich; he has been saddled with baggage. And the newspaper goes out of its way to prise it open by saying that he defies all conventional wisdom about Islamic tycoons - he does not hail from the Persian Gulf and does not wear his faith on his sleeve.

Where did the term ‘Islamic tycoon’ come from? What is unconventional about not wearing your faith on your sleeve? Is it even important to discuss?

Of course, it is. Imagine the world we are living in. Azim Premji has to be displayed as the nice guy – no beard, well-fitted suit, an amiable demeanor, likeable. He might have been a crass bore with filthy lucre, the Tom Cruise type who had to jump on an Oprah Winfrey sofa to declare his love for a Kate to become interesting. Mr. Premji has been given a moment quite unlike that cheesy one. He has been profiled (and do pardon the pun) in an article titled, “How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India”.

I am an Indian and have always lived in the country of my birth. It is not a Hindu nation. It may have a majority of Hindus, but then it has a majority of illiterates. Why wasn’t the report called, “How a literate billionaire thrives in illiterate India”? There are many such potential headlines I may offer, but I should hope the point has been made.

This ‘Muslim billionaire’ has thrived because he had a family business to start with. He had money to get a decent education and he had the spirit of enterprise. Hindu India did not contribute to these, neither did Muslims. It is an individual achievement.

It is unfortunate that Muslims are being made accountable for aspects of life that would under normal circumstances not identity them with religion.

Yaroslav Trofimov, the writer of the article, says, “Yet, to many in India's Muslim community, Mr. Premji's enormous wealth, far from being inspiring, shows that success comes at a price the truly faithful cannot accept. They resent that Mr. Premji plays down his religious roots and declines to embrace Muslim causes – in a nation where people are pegged by their religion and where Hindus freely flaunt theirs.”

What price has Mr. Premji had to pay? He has quietly gone and made a success of his business. There is no resentment against his hesitation to talk about his Muslim identity, and no Muslim social organisations are dependent on his largesse.

What is resented is the fact that in a country where most of the 150 million people of the community are ghettoized, the likes of Premji are touted as examples of Hindu tolerance. This just does not wash. It is most patronizing, and a huge insult to those who do make a decent living but are tagged in ways that are negative simply because they lack the visibility of a high-profile profession. On any given day there will be a handful of Muslims taken out of the celebrity closet to reveal the mothballed magnanimity of the majority community.

No one wants Premji to stand up and be counted. But there is no reason for him to play along with this secular sham, and he has been doing so for a while. He said in an interview to the paper, “We have always seen ourselves as Indian. We've never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists.”

The report further states, “Mr. Premji has mentioned his Muslim background so rarely in public that many Indian Muslims don't even know he shares their heritage. None of Wipro's senior managers aside from Mr. Premji himself are Muslims. The company maintains normal working hours on Islamic high holidays.”

This does not sound like a report in a respected newspaper but something straight out of a pamphlet. What heritage are we talking about? Is there one Muslim heritage? His last name could well be Hindu as his roots are in Gujarat. What is so heart-warming and significant about not working on Islamic holidays? Does it become news when many Hindu-owned companies celebrate religious festivals with a puja (prayer) and in fact during Diwali (that is an unabashed ode to the goddess of wealth) people even offer prayers to account books? Is it news that this includes Muslim entrepreneurs? What is the purpose behind such a statement? And why is it surprising considering that most of the 70,000 employees of Premji’s company are non-Muslim?

These are devious little tricks. No one mentions good old Adnan Khashoggi and his cruise liners in which the international high and mighty had fun vacations.

Isn’t there a mean between riding the Islamophobia and secular waves? The latter is as ridiculous as Mohamed al Fayed screaming about being discriminated against by British society because of his religion.

Azim Premji is a thriving businessman in the globalized world he keeps talking about. A globalized world that is unwilling to dignify him as just another wealthy guy and has to mention his religion not just in passing but as the very crux of his defiance – a defiance that is as imaginary as other stereotypes.

He says with what appears to be an element of arrogance, “All our hiring staff are trained to interview in English. They're trained to look for Westernized segments because we deal with global customers.”

Indeed. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians are doing rather well for themselves, and they don’t go around kowtowing to some colonial mentality that talks about English in such a fashion. He mentions that most Muslims are educated in Urdu. Perhaps he might like to check the statistics that say Urdu is a dying language. Perhaps he might like to sponsor some schools for Muslim children; he can do so incognito so that his secular credentials are safe. Perhaps he might like to know that even madrassas these days use his computers, so it is entirely possible they are cracking codes on them. Perhaps he might like to not even entertain questions about his Muslim identity. He is rich enough to afford to say, “No comments”. That is true liberation.

However, being called a Muslim tycoon is like being addressed as a hot Eskimo. And who doesn’t like a touch of oxymoron?

Are we grown up enough to accept him without strings attached and our baggage of expectations and stereotypes? Why does he or anyone need to do something specifically, and self-consciously, secular to prove their nationalistic stripes?

---
Update Query: Wonder why I forgot to add here that among all the industrialists who sang paeans and promised and were promised a rose garden during Narendra Modi's 'Vibrant Gujarat Summit', Azim Premji was not around. He is or Gujarati origin and interested in development. What made him stay away? A point that needs to be noted. 

Premji and Aiyer can go take a walk…

…or a sprint

It is becoming increasingly clear that while the Commonwealth Games are rife with corruption, I am not quite certain what the ‘concerned' people are barfing about. Some of it I discussed in Play it again, scam.

Today, Azim Premji was interviewed on the subject. Why Premji, chairman of Wipro, the computer etc manufacturers? As a citizen, he has every right to question the nasty deals. But he has not done that. He is complaining about money spent on infrastructure for the CWG, yet he forgets the same is done when some middling leader from the West arrives here. Besides, why this balancing act of ifs and buts?

Here:

“The Commonwealth Games, like the Olympics, are a celebration of the human spirit of excellence. Therefore, in itself, the Games are a worthy endeavour.

However, given the thousands of crores being spent on the Delhi Commonwealth Games, we need to ask if this is money spent wisely. As a country, we are constantly forced to compromise on funds. For instance, India needs more schools, and the existing schools need better infrastructure and more teachers….

How can we forget that for Rs 28,000 crore we could have established primary schools and health centres in tens of thousands of villages? Can we ignore this splurge the next time a malnourished child looks at us in the eye?”

How many malnourished children look us in the eye? If the Games are a worthy endeavour, then why is he diverting the issue to other aspects? Does he ask the same eye-popping questions when five-star hotels are built, new industries come up, and villages are wiped out to make way for factories? These are private enterprises – does that make them immune to accountability? And, they do need to get governmental approval. Ever heard Premji come down on these and discuss schools and healthcare?

“The capital already boasts of some of India’s best infrastructure. Instead of spending crores to widen Delhi’s roads, should we not prioritize building roads and schools in Bihar where none exist in the first place?”

I think Bihar’s CM Nitish Kumar will want to do a double-take on this. The places Azim Premji has visited in Delhi may have the best infrastructure, but has he been to Yamuna ke uss paar…the other side? Instead of rubbishing Bihar, he might like to check out the level of poverty in Delhi. Only because it is the capital does not mean the ordinary citizen gets the benefits.

“At times like these, it will serve our leaders well to recall Gandhiji’s talisman: ‘Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?’”

I assume Mr. Azim Premji’s computers will wipe out illiteracy and give the poor control over their lives.

As a related aside, has he asked our prime minister* how the nuclear deal will not help the poor?

- - -

This brings us to Mani Shankar Aiyer who is on a roll, thanks to the CWG. This is from a report where he:

…questioned the rationale of Delhi hosting the event and said it would have been a “very good answer” to insurgents if it would have been held in Manipur.

This is not even smart; it is idiotic. It is the people of Manipur who have to be given an answer by his government, a political answer. Where was he when the National Highway was closed and provisions could not reach the people? This sort of muscle-flexing does not make sense if you know that the insurgents are fighting several elements within and outside.

He wants to play games with them, then he can go there and have a chat and a friendly match of some kind. Why is he giving a lecture to Delhi University students about it? Talk to the Manipuris, ask them if they would have liked a little infrastructure, some beautified roads. whitewashed buildings, new stadia, potted plants, lots of toilet paper. And, yes, he can revert to his bosses in New Delhi, who still keep him in business, and check whether they can provide the requisite security to the players, the visitors and sports enthusiasts.

Aiyer wondered why such mega events come back to Delhi again and again. Even if it is organised here, he asked, why localities on the outskirts like Bawana are ignored.

Where is Bawana? Does Azim Premji know about it? And why is Aiyer so attached to it all of a sudden? Does Bawana have the space? Would it provide for the needs of such competitive sports? Why has his government not done anything for Bawana?

To show just how he means business, he poses a challenge:

“There are 37 days to go in which the government has to fill the gaps to ensure a spectacular Games which it has promised us. I am content to wait. The Games will last for 15 days. I will come back. Neither are you going away nor I am going away.”

He had promised to “get the hell out of” the city. I hope he goes to a place where he has a huge TV screen and can watch the games. If we know a little about him and about our media, then be sure there will be a satellite link conveniently connected to him for his sound bites. He will be on call 24/7 just to tell the world that it has been a useless exercise.

I hope that before leaving he ensures that the residents of Bawana have dish TV so that they can welcome him when he decides to move residence there to show his allegiance to lesser souls. We aren’t going anywhere, Mr. Aiyer, but we assume you will not let us down. Go, Bawana, go!


End note:

Did TOI have to mention in the headline: ‘I am not a US stooge, says PM’? Did he use those words? Manmohan Singh used the passive voice for the important part.

*“To say that this has been brought to promote American interests, to promote American corporations, I think, this is far from the truth. I beg of this House to pass this bill with unanimity.”

Having said this, it is truly unfortunate that he has to stoop in Parliament before colleagues, that too for a bad deal.

Taking it on the chin

There are some articles that get people to respond either very sharply or emotionally, as the case may be. There are far too many and I had said I would put them up but realised most of those people may not be genuine even about the abuses!

It is a set pattern if the issue is Indo-Pak. In one pithy sentence: Pakistani saying, "Why write on Pakistan?"; Indian saying, "Why write on Pakistan?"; I thinking...at least they are reading. I get good idea from all this.

I have merely emphasised some points in the excerpts below that made me smile or laugh aloud or well...

Do not forget to scroll down for the finale…the only one I replied to from this lot because the person is a known number.

Views from Pakistan

Farzana, don’t comment basing on your fantasies. There is more filth in your country try to clean that first. I know this is no argument but what you see in Pakistan is mostly projected and propagation. You ask me any thing and I can reply that regarding society here. Now edit and read yourself whatever I could write. There are mistakes but I have to do other jobs as well.

Out side America the UE is not satisfied even. You have watched the flogging and not the way they humiliate women in their society. They don't spare sick idea to materialize practically.`
I know Britni and Miley and Jolie very well but would not like our society to go after there foot print as we would need a good stock of morning afters!.

- - -
Why don't you give Pakistanis the real face of India and write about that in the news papers?

Killing of Muslims everyday, Muslims are not allowed to go to mosques, poverty, farmer suicides, filthy cites, army raping Kashmiri girls and mothers and castrating Kashmiri men? You could write about it and break up India into small pieces which we will then conquer by jihad.


View from India

Missus,
I am thinking that your articles is too much pessimistic. Elections are the good things that we are having and the rest are not having. You are telling the communal forces are not destroyed that is for you sad. But that is the true it will never be. You are the expecting that every one problem must be solved otherwise it is not good, and you must to thinking that one by one all the problem it will be solved. I am to much happy that the winning is Congress because the future will be good. I am thinking that to many our people they are not understan the english and they cannot getting job or business.
I am liking your writing also that kagazkalam is to much clever. Are you having the children?
- - -
Hi Farzana,

I read your article on Manmohan singh and all that he could 'not do' and how he showed it as achievement, for things that were not really achievement.

However, why do you feel that PM has to be some one who has won an election.

Mother teresa was not married to father of children she adopted, and she is still a mother.

With due respect for your expereince of journalism, I would have appreicated if you could have taken more holistic view. At the end of day you create perceptions in the minds of reader, but then there are some like me hard to convince.

But some where you are also fighting with the perception of elegibility for a person to be PM, rather than what he should do.

He is lot better than many, isnt he?
IF he listens to all, doesnt it means he is all encompassing. If he listen to sonia doesnt that he mean, he knows his limitations.

Farzana its dynamic democracy, where 2+2 = 4 will not be case always.

Regards,

- - -

The final one here in response to Imagining the Taliban:

Hi Farzana,

Having read your article three times over, I STILL have absolutely no idea what you're trying to get at - tum kehna kya chahti ho? It seems to me you're a muslim who can't reconcile to being an Indian (or vice versa) - either way, you seem to carrry HUGE chips on your shoulders, which make you attack the Bollywood Khans, Azim Premji and even the venerable Dr Abdul Kalam for no particular reason, and with no particular logic. Your statement that the Bombayites were not angry, but only `mildly irritated' at the 26/11 carnage was pure poppycock, to say the least.

Anyway, this is not about your identity crisis, but your other references...

As a muslim, if you feel the Taliban doesn't need to be stopped, then we are on different pages altogether, and there's no point in having this exchange at all..

As an `incidental' Hindu, I am terribly proud of the pluralism of India (I prefer the word to secularism), and take great comfort in the fact that the saffron brigade is peripheral to the concept of INDIA - fringe elements that pose no threat to this great nation and what it stands for..

Regards,
X

My reply:

Assalamalaikum:

I should hope this form of greeting fits in with a certain stereotype you seem to harbour, never mind the fact that I am an “accidental Muslim”, as opposed to your “incidental Hindu”.

It is rare for anyone to read my article these many times, though I do wonder why you, or anyone for that matter, respond to something so obtuse. Thank you for dignifying my “not particular reason”, “no particular logic”. You are very kind.

You ask, “tum kehna kya chahti ho?” Jo aap theek samje, kyonki aap samajh hi nahin rahe hain.

You bring in the old thing about Muslim vs. Indian and the Premji brigade. My “poppycock” has turned out to be almost like a prophecy. I hope you do not blame this on my ashubh (inauspicious) Muslim blood.

And why should I respond to the Taliban only as a Muslim? Then, may I ask if you are responding as a Hindu?

Regarding the pluralism of India, that cannot go away as long as some of us live it, rather than live with it. I do not wish to flaunt anything, but my upbringing and my family are examples of it. To reiterate it everytime I write anything that goes against the tide would be to reduce myself. I refuse to do so even after the continual questioning of my nationality (forget nationalism).

However, it is interesting that you see the saffron brigade that has caused havoc several times in our own country as “fringe elements” but the Taliban as a threat. What more can I say?

I do hope the light tone has not offended you. I did not want this to be one more exercise where you waste your time trying to figure out what I am saying. Thanks for writing in, anyway.

Khuda Hafiz before I run out of Muslim phrases…

Regards,
F

The world's richest Muslim tycoon

What Makes Premji a ‘Muslim tycoon’?
By Farzana Versey
September 14, 2007, Counterpunch

Is Azim Premji really the world’s richest Muslim entrepreneur? Is there a list which mentions the richest Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Christian, Scientologist, atheist, Rastafarian?

Unlikely. At least nothing that would make the Wall Street Journal want to give it front page legitimacy. Talking of legitimacy, surely we are talking about legitimate enterprise, for the underworld and the mafia, Muslim or otherwise, are flush with money. In all likelihood, they are investors in the big companies.

Mr. Premji heads Wipro, India's third-largest IT exporter. Its fortune rests at $17 billion. I like rich people. But this gentleman is not just rich; he has been saddled with baggage. And the newspaper goes out of its way to prise it open by saying that he defies all conventional wisdom about Islamic tycoons - he does not hail from the Persian Gulf and does not wear his faith on his sleeve.

Where did the term ‘Islamic tycoon’ come from? What is unconventional about not wearing your faith on your sleeve? Is it even important to discuss?

Of course, it is. Imagine the world we are living in. Azim Premji has to be displayed as the nice guy – no beard, well-fitted suit, an amiable demeanor, likeable. He might have been a crass bore with filthy lucre, the Tom Cruise type who had to jump on an Oprah Winfrey sofa to declare his love for a Kate to become interesting. Mr. Premji has been given a moment quite unlike that cheesy one. He has been profiled (and do pardon the pun) in an article titled, “How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India”.

I am an Indian and have always lived in the country of my birth. It is not a Hindu nation. It may have a majority of Hindus, but then it has a majority of illiterates. Why wasn’t the report called, “How a literate billionaire thrives in illiterate India”? There are many such potential headlines I may offer, but I should hope the point has been made.

This ‘Muslim billionaire’ has thrived because he had a family business to start with. He had money to get a decent education and he had the spirit of enterprise. Hindu India did not contribute to these, neither did Muslims. It is an individual achievement.

It is unfortunate that Muslims are being made accountable for aspects of life that would under normal circumstances not identity them with religion.

Yaroslav Trofimov, the writer of the article, says, “Yet, to many in India's Muslim community, Mr. Premji's enormous wealth, far from being inspiring, shows that success comes at a price the truly faithful cannot accept. They resent that Mr. Premji plays down his religious roots and declines to embrace Muslim causes – in a nation where people are pegged by their religion and where Hindus freely flaunt theirs.”

What price has Mr. Premji had to pay? He has quietly gone and made a success of his business. There is no resentment against his hesitation to talk about his Muslim identity, and no Muslim social organisations are dependent on his largesse.

What is resented is the fact that in a country where most of the 150 million people of the community are ghettoized, the likes of Premji are touted as examples of Hindu tolerance. This just does not wash. It is most patronizing, and a huge insult to those who do make a decent living but are tagged in ways that are negative simply because they lack the visibility of a high-profile profession. On any given day there will be a handful of Muslims taken out of the celebrity closet to reveal the mothballed magnanimity of the majority community.

No one wants Premji to stand up and be counted. But there is no reason for him to play along with this secular sham, and he has been doing so for a while. He said in an interview to the paper, “We have always seen ourselves as Indian. We've never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists.”

The report further states, “Mr. Premji has mentioned his Muslim background so rarely in public that many Indian Muslims don't even know he shares their heritage. None of Wipro's senior managers aside from Mr. Premji himself are Muslims. The company maintains normal working hours on Islamic high holidays.”

This does not sound like a report in a respected newspaper but something straight out of a pamphlet. What heritage are we talking about? Is there one Muslim heritage? His last name could well be Hindu as his roots are in Gujarat. What is so heart-warming and significant about not working on Islamic holidays? Does it become news when many Hindu-owned companies celebrate religious festivals with a puja (prayer) and in fact during Diwali (that is an unabashed ode to the goddess of wealth) people even offer prayers to account books? Is it news that this includes Muslim entrepreneurs? What is the purpose behind such a statement? And why is it surprising considering that most of the 70,000 employees of Premji’s company are non-Muslim?

These are devious little tricks. No one mentions good old Adnan Khashoggi and his cruise liners in which the international high and mighty had fun vacations.

Isn’t there a mean between riding the Islamophobia and secular waves? The latter is as ridiculous as Mohamed al Fayed screaming about being discriminated against by British society because of his religion.

Azim Premji is a thriving businessman in the globalized world he keeps talking about. A globalized world that is unwilling to dignify him as just another wealthy guy and has to mention his religion not just in passing but as the very crux of his defiance – a defiance that is as imaginary as other stereotypes.

He says with what appears to be an element of arrogance, “All our hiring staff are trained to interview in English. They're trained to look for Westernized segments because we deal with global customers.”

Indeed. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians are doing rather well for themselves, and they don’t go around kowtowing to some colonial mentality that talks about English in such a fashion. He mentions that most Muslims are educated in Urdu. Perhaps he might like to check the statistics that say Urdu is a dying language. Perhaps he might like to sponsor some schools for Muslim children; he can do so incognito so that his secular credentials are safe. Perhaps he might like to know that even madrassas these days use his computers, so it is entirely possible they are cracking codes on them. Perhaps he might like to not even entertain questions about his Muslim identity. He is rich enough to afford to say, “No comments”. That is true liberation.

However, being called a Muslim tycoon is like being addressed as a hot Eskimo. And who doesn’t like a touch of oxymoron?