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Wall Street Journal on Premji and Muslim community
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September 11, 2007 14:40 IST
Is Azim Premji, the world's richest Muslim entrepreneur, an inspirational role model or aberrant example for his community?

That is the unstated question, and framing device, The Wall Street Journal uses for its front page profile, in its Tuesday's edition, of the man who parlayed family-run vegetable oil firm Wipro Ltd [Get Quote] into a technology giant that has made its chief the master of a $17 billion fortune.

The piece, authored by Yaroslav Trofimov, quotes Premji as saying that his success shows globalisation is turning into a two-way street that can bring tangible benefits to developing countries.

Is it, however, an inspirational story for India's estimated 150 million Muslims who, the article points out, remain educationally backward, socially marginalised, and mired in crippling poverty?

No, says Trofimov, cutting to a Muslim school half an hour's drive away from Premji's Bangalore mansion, where students memorise the Koran in the original Arabic. The author points out that Premji succeeded by bucking the community trend and has, in doing so, earned the disfavour of Muslim religious heads.

'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,' Trofimov writes. '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.'

'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. Among its 70,000 employees, there's only a sprinkling of Muslims, according to Sudip Banerjee, president of a division that accounts for a third of revenue,' the report notes.

'We've always seen ourselves as Indian. We've never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists,' Premji tells Trofimov in course of the interview that underpins the report.

The success of Wipro, says Trofimov, has no visceral impact on the disadvantaged community of its chief -- for a very good reason. 'As Wipro becomes a global powerhouse, company officials say they seek to hire the best regardless of creed. They say that among the reasons few Indian Muslims meet Wipro's stringent standards is that they often study in Urdu rather than English, and rarely pursue engineering degrees.'

'All our hiring staff are trained to interview in English,' Premji tells The Wall Street Journal . 'They're trained to look for Westernised segments because we deal with global customers.'


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