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July/August 1994, Page 44 Public Opinion
Poll Examines Hindu Views of Muslims
By Ella BancroftIn India, where inter-communal violence took an estimated half-million lives when the subcontinent was partitioned between secular but predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947, and which has fought three wars with Pakistan since then, 481 Hindus in the city of Bombay were asked in February 1994 personal interviews by MARG, the country's principal market research and polling company, to comment on their Muslim fellow citizens. In addition to members of many smaller religious communities, there are 740 million Hindus and 110 million Muslims in India, making it the world's second largest Muslim country, after Indonesia, and ahead of both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Presenting the findings in the Washington Post of March 12, correspondent John Ward Anderson compared the status of Muslims in India to that of African Americans in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s. Although they make up 12 percent of India's population, Muslims fill fewer than 4.5 percent of government jobs and have only 4.4 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha, the more powerful house in India's bicameral parliament. Asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements about Muslims, the Hindu respondents produced the results (see end of article). The results are of growing concern to both communities. In a country already straining to support its huge population, there is a widespread perception among Hindus that Muslims are less interested in education, and, as a result, birthrates among them are higher than among Hindus, despite government efforts to encourage family planning among all communities. Muslims counter with charges that discrimination closes many positions in both the public and private sectors to their community, downgrading the accessibility and usefulness of education to India's Muslims. Religious militancy among Hindus led to the destruction of the 16th century Ayodhya mosque by Hindus in December 1992, touching off a wave of communal rioting in which some 1,500 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in Bombay alone.
U.S. Jews Strongly Back Peace NegotiationsDiverse assessments of the Middle East peace negotiations by leaders of national Jewish organizations are not reflected among American Jews as a whole, according to a telephone survey of 500 respondents released in late May by political pollsters Mark Mellman and Stanley Greenberg. The poll was commissioned by the newly created Israel Policy Forum, formed by U.S. Jewish activists to back the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The poll indicated that 88 percent of American Jews support the general concept of the Middle East peace negotiations, and only 5 percent express strong or moderate opposition. The numbers dropped, however, when respondents were asked whether they support the Gaza-Jericho first plan presently being implemented. Some 84 percent of respondents were reported to have expressed "favorable" or "very favorable" opinions of Rabin, with only 37 percent expressing comparable opinions of Likud party leader Benyamin Netanyahu. His favorable rating was not much higher than the 34 percent given PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat by the same Jewish respondents. They gave President Bill Clinton an 84 percent "favorable" or "very favorable" rating, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher a 61 percent rating. Only 14 percent believed that Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad is committed to "real peace," but 65 percent supported Rabin's willingness to trade Golan Heights territory for peace with Syria. "This poll debunks the myth of a rift in the Jewish community," Israel Policy Forum executive director Jonathan Jacoby said. "Despite what some people are saying, an overwhelming majority of American Jews support the peace process and want it to succeed."
Clinton Standing SinksThe 84 percent favorable rating given President Clinton by American Jews in May is in sharp contrast to his standing with the general public, which gave him a 57 percent overall approval rating in Marchand a 51 percent approval rating in mid-May in telephone interviews with 1,523 adults by a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Only 40 percent of respondents during the May 12-15 interviews approved of Clinton's handling of foreign policy, with 53 percent saying they disapproved.
Israelis Pessimistic on Peace Talks and RabinMore Israelis are dissatisfied than satisfied with the way their government is handling the peace process, according to an annual survey on "Israeli Security and the Peace Process" conducted by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. The survey, released in late April, showed 6 percent of respondents saying the Israeli government is doing "a very good job"; 34 percent rating it "good" ; 32 percent saying they were "unhappy" with the government's performance, and 28 percent "very unhappy." Seventy-four percent of the Israeli respondents believe a Palestinian state will be established in the occupied territories, compared to only 37 percent who thought so in 1990. Nevertheless, 60 percent of respondents supported continuing Israeli negotiations with the PLO, although only 35 percent believed the PLO would be able to control terrorism after it takes charge of occupied areas. Similar results were reflected in a poll released on May 5 by the newspaper Yediot Ahronot, in which 62 percent of the Israeli respondents said the prospects for peace in the wake of the Cairo accord were low or nonexistent, and only 35 percent thought they were good or excellent. Ella Bancroft is a free-lance political writer based in Washington, DC SIDEBAR
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