by Hilal Ahmed
On the basis of this discussion, the Muslim community of India may be divided into three categories:
Poor and lower middle-class Muslims
The emerging Muslim professional elite
Traditional Muslim upper-class elite
This classification, however, requires some refinement. Two important points need to be remembered here.
First, the class status of rich and prosperous Muslims does not always function as a self-governing mechanism that leads them to take up the role of Muslims leaders. There are many rich and economically well-off Muslim individuals who do not show any interest in the social welfare of the Muslim community in general and Muslim politics in particular. Hence, presuming that rich Muslims would eventually operate as a dominant Muslim stakeholder is a highly misleading assumption. Although the economic background of an individual does affect his/her prospects as a member of the community elite, bearing in mind the distinction between those rich and powerful Muslims who prefer to join public life as Muslim figures and those affluent members of the Muslim community who continue to operate in the realms of their professional world is very important.
Muslim public figures—MLA, MPs, the ulema, professionals and even those who participate in prime-time TV shows as Muslim representatives—actually work as ‘organic intellectuals’ in this framework. They offer meanings to frequently used terms related to Muslims, define various expressions of Muslimness and make statements about Muslim views and public opinion. Their own vested interests as a class gets amalgamated and refined in this process and equips them to make broad observations about Muslims or a section of Muslims as a homogeneous class. In my view, this group of Muslims may legitimately be called the ‘Muslim elite’.
Rich and powerful Muslims, who do not make any claim to represent Muslims, also extract a symbolic value. Muslim businessmen, economically powerful farmers and landowners, film stars, civil servants, university teachers and media personalities are often counted as numbers in their respective professions to measure Muslim presence in various institutions. Many a time, this Muslim presence is misleadingly understood as a form of Muslim representation. This confusion between Muslim presence and the claims of Muslim representation produce various kinds of strange public debates.
The controversy around Aamir Khan’s statements, that his wife does not feel secure in present-day India, is a good example. In an interview in November 2015, Khan said:
[Wife] Kiran and I have lived all our lives in India. For the first time, she said, should we move out of India? That’s a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make to me. She fears for her child. She fears about what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers every day. That does indicate that there is a sense of growing disquiet.6
This statement was widely debated. What was remarkable in the debate was Khan’s Muslim identity. A case was registered against him for showing disrespect towards the fundamental duties enlisted in the Indian Constitution.7 Many BJP–Hindutva supporters argued that Aamir Khan must remember that this country (Hindus!) has given him credibility as an actor and, therefore, his statement is ‘anti-national’ in nature. Khan was not invoking his Muslim identity in this case; even his so-called controversial statement is based on an observation by his wife, who is Hindu!
Why is Aamir Khan recognized as a Muslim (and not as an Indian citizen) in this case, despite the fact that he does not claim to represent the Muslims of India?
It is true that Aamir Khan does not represent Muslims; yet, his Muslim name is always reckoned to assess Muslim presence in the Indian film industry. By this logic, Khan, being an affluent person with a Muslim name, cannot be called Muslim elite—partly because of his strident refusal to speak as a Muslim and partly because of his professional identity as an actor and Bollywood celebrity.
The recent tolerance/intolerance controversy also introduces us to the second point about the relationship between one’s economic class and his/her status as a member of the Muslim elite. It is often argued the internal class/caste differentiations among Muslims evaporate at the time of communal violence. Rich as well as poor Muslims are attacked and killed indiscriminately.
There is an element of truth in this argument. The manner in which Ehsan Jafri—a rich and powerful Muslim, an ex-MP from Gujarat and someone who had access to the top political leaders of the country—was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots, shows that class and elite status becomes irrelevant when Muslims are identified only as Muslims.8
The question arises: How is one’s elite position produced and reproduced in such contexts?
It is important to remember that the Muslim elite—rich and powerful Muslims who participate in public discussions and debates as Muslims—have to adjust themselves in the dominant discourse of politics. Their idioms, metaphors and political vocabulary evolve out of the public environment.
For instance, Hindutva is the dominant discourse at the moment, which cannot be ignored by political players. The Muslim elite also respond to it in a number of ways. A section of the elite oppose Hindutva to assert their legitimacy as critical–secular Muslims, while there are Muslims who embrace Hindutva wholeheartedly in the name of protecting the interests of the community. In both cases, Hindutva is reproduced and sustained!
These contextual responses of the Muslim elite, in any case, cannot guarantee that Hindutva’s anti-Muslim rhetoric will not take a violent form, even against those Muslims who are in their good books. In fact, it all depends on political–ideological requirements. If Hindu consolidation is to be achieved through negotiations, Hindutva would prefer a ‘good Muslims versus the bad Muslims’ formula and create a pool of its favourable Muslim leaders. However, if the objective is to create a Hindu impact to demonstrate the anger and assertion of Hindu pride, the ‘Muslim action–Hindu reaction’ theory would be the favoured mode of political action. The demolition of Babri Masjid and the 2002 Gujarat riots are examples of this latter form.
Let us summarize this discussion to propose a workable conceptualization of the Muslim elite.
The Muslim elites are a class of economically rich, religiously dominant, politically influential and culturally powerful Muslims who articulate Muslim views on relevant issues and debates and seek legitimacy as representatives.
‘A class for itself’
For the sake of analysis, I find four interesting characteristics of the contemporary Muslim elite—its self-perception as a class, its imagination of Indian Islam, its caste background and its political openness.
We must note that the Muslim elite is not at all homogeneous. They come from different regions; they are involved in different professions; and the cultural capital they invest in public life is also different in nature.
For instance, the new middle class of Muslim professionals consists of semi-urban and urban-educated Muslim professionals and upwardly mobile, semi-rural elites. Unlike the Muslim elites of the 1960s and 1970s, who came primarily from erstwhile Muslim-dominated urban centres like Hyderabad, Lucknow and Delhi, these new Muslim professionals belong to lower-middle-class Muslim neighbourhoods in metro cities, small towns and kasbas.
Delhi’s Zakir Nagar, Mumbai’s Byculla, Hyderabad’s old city, Kochi, Ranchi and other small towns with Muslim concentrations are the places gradually producing an upwardly mobile set of Muslim individuals.
This regional diversity functions in an interesting way. While these professionals continue to operate in their own specific areas of work, the aspiration to move forward transforms them from a ‘class in itself’ to ‘a class for itself’.
As a class in itself, these Muslims transcend the economic class they once belonged to and place themselves in a relatively higher economic strata. This change of class also brings in a realization that they are the obvious leaders of the poor, marginalized Indian Muslim community. This self-consciousness transforms them into a class for itself—a class which recognizes its location and its interests. Two examples are c
rucial to elaborate this point.
Nagpur-based Indian Muslim Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IMCCI) is a professional body that caters to the needs of Muslim businessmen.9 One of the stated objectives of the IMCCI is to function as a commercial bridge between various businesses both domestically and globally for strengthening the economy through mutually beneficial trade and investment.10 The organization strongly supports foreign direct investment (FDI) in India. Its global vision says:
Diverse types of FDI lead to diverse types of spillovers, skill transfers and physical capital flows. It enhances the chances of developing [an] internationally competitive business environment. It is observed that FDI plays a positive role in enhancing the economic growth of the host and home country as well. Taking all above mention observation [sic] into consideration, we, in IMCCI, very much promote foreign investment into India through us which is beneficial to grow our members’ business as well as to grow the economy of the nation.11
This overwhelming support for liberalization, particularly for FDI in all sectors, simply goes against the views and perceptions of the Muslim lower classes about the impact of globalization, especially with regard to small-scale units. As a professional body which protects the interests of their members, the IMCCI does not show any interest in these kinds of Muslim anxieties.
The Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP), a Mumbai-based organization, however, responds to Muslim marginalization in a different way. The AMP describes itself as a ‘platform for all Muslim professionals [. . .] to share their knowledge, intellect, experience and skills for the overall development of the Muslim Community.’12 This organization is led mainly by Muslim businessmen and white-collar professionals. The AMP has the following stated objectives:
To bring together Muslims from all walks of life to interact and co-operate with an objective to educate, motivate, organize and inspire.
To join hands in order to eradicate evil practices from our society which lead to untold miseries.
To see that the community puts its unspent energy to constructive use.
To instil a feeling of confidence among our younger generation.
To play a leading and active role in the development and transformation of Muslims into a responsible community, consolidating a stronger place for ourselves in Indian society and the global arena at large.13
These objectives adhere to the popular Muslim victimhood story. Although the AMP works on a number of projects, which they describe as ‘Muslim empowerment’, their position on the impact of economic liberalization on Muslims and issues concerning Muslim agricultural labourers are not at all clear. Class disparity among Muslims is completely missing in this imagination of the Muslim community.
The layered management of Islam is the second unique feature of the contemporary Muslim elite. The conventional binary between practising mullah-type Muslims and the self-declared secular/liberal/cultural Muslims has become rather irreverent. Although there are individuals who take extreme essentialist positions either in supporting Islam or in rejecting it completely, the intensity of such provocative debates among the Muslim elite has considerably decreased.
Liberal Muslims who do not practise Islam as a religion and describe themselves as atheists or culturally active Muslims, do not make offensive comments on the practice of religion per se. Likewise, the ulema elite do not overemphasize religion. As a result, an interesting imagination of privatized Islam has evolved over the years. The Muslim elite keep Islam a ‘private affair’ by creating a thin line between public life and religious obligations.
This privatization fits well with the emerging form of Islamic religiosities, which advocates a policy of non-intervention in professional worldly affairs. The Tablighi Jamaat—which has become the dominant form of Sunni Islam in contemporary India—is a good example of this privatization of religion. (We have already discussed the nature of this kind of Islam in detail in the previous chapters.) This is precisely what Zafar Sareshwala, a highly successful Gujarati businessman and staunch supporter of Narendra Modi (until recently!), says:
My physical appearance and ‘image’ is that of a stereotypical Muslim. I have a beard, my wife wears a burkha, we pray five times a day, we’ve done Hajj and we follow every Islamic tradition. But our views are enlightened precisely because we take the teachings of Islam seriously.14
The caste profile of the Muslim elite is the third determining characteristic. We have observed in previous chapters that the caste-based social stratification among Muslims has played an important role in the configuration of economic and political power at various levels. This is also true about the formation of the elite in contemporary India.
We find that upper-caste Ashrafs still constitute the majority of the Muslim elite. Yet, the rise of Muslim middle castes in various regions of the country cannot be underestimated. This phenomenon may reshape the sociological profile of the Muslim elite in the long run.
This is not at all surprising. As per official estimates quoted by the Sachar report, around 40 per cent of Muslims in India belong to the OBC category.15 The upward mobility, educational empowerment and caste-consciousness of these Muslim OBCs—many of whom describe themselves as Pasmandas—is certainly going to affect the circulation of the Muslim elite. In the chapter on Muslim backwardness, we also found that two leading Pasmanda leaders from Bihar—Ejaz Ali and Ali Anwar Ansari—eventually became MPs in the Rajya Sabha. This political recognition as leaders of the Muslim Pasmanda communities has certainly affected the formation of the Muslim elite.
Political openness is the fourth characteristic of the contemporary Muslim elite. It would be completely inappropriate to think that the Muslim elite, despite being a class in itself, adheres to any one political ideology. There are three norms of Muslim politics which they have to follow.
First, they have to explicitly express their adherence to the Indian Constitution. This helps them to articulate their demands in the language of the law. The second norm follows from this legal commitment. They have to situate themselves in the realm of ‘minority rights’, which offers Muslims a legitimate legal identity. We have discussed this aspect in the previous chapter. Finally, they have to invoke ‘Muslim contribution’ and ‘loyalty to nation’ so as to legitimize their status as a stakeholder. We shall discuss these norms in the final chapter of this book. Here, suffice it to say that these unwritten norms actually set the terms of Muslim politics as a discourse.
It is clear that these three norms are open to various interpretations. For example, the legal-constitutionalism and minority rights are interpreted as justifications for the inclusion of Dalit Muslims in the SC list by the Pasmanda elite. But it does not stop the Muslim elite of the BJP to reject this demand, arguing that Muslim reservation goes against the very premise of secularism envisaged by the Constitution itself!
This relative openness offers them an opportunity to make conscious political choices towards identifying appropriate/beneficial locations for them in the overall structure of power.
The politics, in this framework, is envisaged as an instrument to maximize individual as well as collective interest. Syed Zafar Islam’s context-driven decision to join the BJP without asking for a ticket to contest elections, or Zafar Sareshwala’s overwhelming support for Modi without giving up his Islamic identity are some of the revealing examples that demonstrate the political flexibility of the Muslim elite. In such cases, political idioms, such as secular/communal, national/anti-national and Muslim as victim/Muslims as a threat are not taken as the governing principles of politics. Instead, preference is given to practical, context-specific moves.
PART III
THE POLITICS OF SIYASI MUSLIMS
9
The Metaphors of Muslim Politics: Vote Bank, Good Muslims/Bad Muslims and Muslim Appeasement
Addressing a public meeting to mark the birth anniversary of BJS leader Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Modi said:
Our founding fathers have laid down the principles for us t
o follow. It is our duty to bring policies for the development of all the sections of the society [. . .] vote-bank politics is eating away our country like termites. Saving the country from vote-bank politics and its collateral damage is the objective of [the] BJP. Those promoting vote-bank politics did not care about that development.1
This was not the first time when Modi, like other BJP leaders, invoked the term ‘vote bank’ to criticize the policies, programmes and actions of non-BJP political parties. Making this differentiation more accurate and precise, Modi used another term—‘development’, which is introduced as an antithesis to the vote bank. Although the meanings of the terms ‘vote bank’ and/or ‘development’ are not elaborated upon in the speech, Modi was able to make his point. He was certainly referring to the electoral behaviour of Muslims of India, which, in his imagination of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’, had to be condemned in order to achieve progress.
Modi, however, must not be blamed for using ambiguous, vague and unclear expressions to outline the distinctiveness of his party. The idea of the ‘Muslim vote bank’ has never been defined in public discourses! Instead, two very different sets of conflicting arguments are given.
It is claimed that the ‘Muslim vote’ is very decisive in electoral politics because the ‘winnability’ of a candidate at the constituency level and the sustainability of any political coalition at the regional/national level are inextricably associated with Muslim electoral support. The Muslim vote bank, in this framework, refers to the collective political strength of Muslim electorates.
The second argument is negative in nature. It is based on an assertion that Muslims have been used as a political commodity in the market of elections, especially by the secular parties. The BJP is the only political party which does not address Muslims as a vote bank, and that’s the reason why the BJP does not promote tokenism in the name of Muslim appeasement.