by Hilal Ahmed
The publication of the Sachar report gave a new twist to the idea of Muslim appeasement. As an official document, the report underlines the fact that the Muslims of India are socially, economically and educationally backward and marginalized. Although the report very categorically emphasizes upon the highly diverse and deeply stratified structure of the Muslim community, ‘Muslim victimhood’ as a new template of Indian politics began to take shape. The report was invoked, particularly by non-BJP parties, to demonstrate that Muslim appeasement was a myth created by Hindutva forces and that Muslims must be treated as an excluded community.
Interestingly, Hindutva politics also refashioned itself in the light of this response. It was argued that the Congress did not show any serious interest in the empowerment of Muslims; they were treated as a vote bank, which led to their marginalization and exclusion. The BJP’s firm commitment to equal treatment to all, as the argument goes, helped even Muslims to prosper in the BJP-ruled states. L.K. Advani’s assessment of the Sachar report may be cited here. He said:
Generally speaking, by now, people have widely come to acknowledge that in terms of honest governance and development of Gujarat, Narendra Bhai’s achievements are beyond dispute. What is often questioned is how harmonious are inter-communal relations in the state, and specifically speaking, how happy and contented the Muslims are in the State [. . .] In setting up the Sachar Committee, [the] government had its own objectives. But going through the comparative statistics compiled by the committee, I feel Gujarat should be grateful to Justice Sachar for proving convincingly to the country that under Narendra Bhai Modi’s regime, Muslims are far better off than their compatriots in other states.26
This argument later evolved in party rhetoric—development of all, appeasement of none!
Muslim appeasement has found new political life in post 2014-India. The BJP has successfully established the fact that addressing Muslims as Muslims is an act of appeasement. The impact of this assertion is so powerful that even so-called secular, anti-Hindutva and non-BJP parties have gradually started distancing themselves from Muslims, simply to avoid the tag of Muslim appeasement. This development goes against the narrative of Muslim victimhood, which dominated public discourse in the 2000s.
Let us conclude this discussion by underlining three broad three observations:
Muslim appeasement is not a description of an objective, sociopolitical condition of Muslims. Rather, it is a metaphor of politics, which is used primarily to criticize the policies and politics related to Muslims.
Although Muslim appeasement relies on Muslim homogeneity, an undifferentiated picture of a single Muslim community, recognized ‘good Muslims’ are never treated as beneficiaries of appeasement. In fact, good Muslims of different political parties struggle with each other as organic intellectuals either to refute Muslim appeasement as a myth or to evoke the ‘Development of All, Appeasement of None’ slogan.
The presence of these good Muslims in political parties underlines the fact that Muslim appeasement is an unwritten norm of Indian politics. A section of Muslims is always given priority over others by all political parties in order to promote a socially inclusive image. Muslim elites are given key positions to create political equilibrium. The Modi-led BJP is not an exception in this regard. The Muslim faces of the BJP, such as Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Zafar Islam and Najma Heptulla, are elite Muslims, who are now being appeased in the name of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’!
10
Muslims and the Future of India’s Democracy
Finding Siyasi Muslims: The three main arguments
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 2002:
Wherever Muslims live, they don’t like to live in co-existence with others, they don’t like to mingle with others; and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats. The world has become alert to this danger.1
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 2005:
I take pride in the fact that, although we have 150 million Muslims in our country as citizens, not one has been found to have joined the ranks of Al Qaeda or participated in the activities of the Taliban [. . .] this is because India is a functioning democracy. We are a secular state where all sections of the communities, regardless of religion, caste and creed, they may belong to [. . .] [are part of a] a democracy, being a secular democracy where all religions are free to practise their respective faiths without fear, without favour. I think that’s something which has prevented that sort of eventuality.2
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 2016:
Fifty years ago, Pandit Upadhyaya said, ‘Do not reward/appease (puraskrit) Muslims, do not shun (tiraskrit) them but purify (parishkar) them.’ Do not treat Muslims like vote ki mandi ka maal (vote banks) or ghrina ki vastu (object of hatred). Unhe apna samjho (regard them as your own).3
These three Muslim images—a radical Muslim image of a jihadi community which cannot live with others peacefully, a secular Muslim image of a peace-loving nationalist community which opposes jihadi Islam and an alienated Muslim community, reluctant to take part in the national mainstream—dominate our public discourse in an interesting manner. These conflicting versions of Muslimness are often pitted against each other as conclusive factual statements. Public intellectuals, political observers and commentators, the religious–political elite and even political parties confidently take positions on Muslim issues as if there is no need to know about them. No one bothers to recognize the fact that around 14 per cent of Indians identify themselves as Muslims. Making any decisive statement about such a large number of people, who are inevitably diversified and different from each other in a number of ways, is highly misleading and inappropriate.
This book has made a modest attempt to move away from this dominant mode of thinking about Muslims. Instead of supporting or opposing any given political position on Muslims, I have tried to examine a few sociocultural sources, which produce different imaginations of the Muslim political identity in contemporary India. That is the reason why the term ‘siyasi Muslims’ is invoked.
The book responds to the two basic questions it poses in the Introduction: the sources of Muslim political identity and the possibilities of imagining Muslims as a political community.
The story of the colonial census, which is discussed in the first chapter, tells us that introduction of modern enumeration practices in India—drawing up a head count on the basis of religion—produced the idea of a pan-Islamic Muslim community. The debate on political representation in colonial India sustained this imagination of Muslim homogeneity and, as a result, the concept of Hindus as a permanent majority and Muslims as a permanent minority emerged.
The Indian Constitution remains critical to the idea of a permanent minority. This constitutional mandate led to the realization that there should be a clear distinction between contextually constituted political minorities and the fixed census categories such as Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc. Two constitutional principles—(a) Minorities should always be defined on a contextual basis and (b) The criterion for the identification of a minority should remain open and ever evolving—were set out in this regard.
However, this positive refashioning of constitutional principles found a very different overtone in the realm of competitive electoral politics. Although political parties began addressing the voters as minority and majority, the actual expressions were never delinked from the established colonial idioms of politics: Muslims as minority and Hindus as majority. The evolution of certain institutions, such as the Minorities Commission and the National Commission for Minorities, further contributed to this grand imagination of Muslim political identity. Muslim homogeneity, in fact, received official recognition in 1993, when Muslims were defined as a recognizable ‘national minority’.
This brings us to the first argument of this book.
I argue that characterizing Muslims as a ‘political community’ is a post-1947 political formulation, which revolves around th
ree metaphors of Muslim politics—Muslim vote bank, good Muslims/bad Muslims and Muslim appeasement. These metaphors legitimize and sustain Muslim homogeneity and restrict the possibility of any serious discussion on diversified Muslim political behaviour.
To respond to this oversimplified representation of Muslim identity, the second part of the book examines three crucial sociological dimensions—caste, gender and class. We find that sociological plurality among Muslims determines the nature of internal Muslim debates. For instance, Muslim backwardness is not a settled issue. A section of Muslims argue that all Muslims must be treated as a backward community on the basis of social and educational backwardness. On the other hand, the Pasmanda groups do not subscribe to this position. They want a rational secularization of affirmative action so that Muslim Dalits could be included in the SC category.
Internal debates on the triple talaq issue also reflect this Muslim diversity of opinion. Issues raised by the BMMA and other Muslim women organizations, such as the economic empowerment of women and having an egalitarian and gender-just Islamic family law in India, simply go against the Islamist Muslim men versus radical, anti-Islamic Muslim women binary. Interestingly, however, the government did not pay attention to such distinctive arguments and continued to recognize the ulema class represented by the AIMPLB as its main adversary. The rise of a new Muslim middle class and its progression into the Muslim elite is another powerful example that reflects the socio-economic stratification among Muslims. This class recognizes its vested interest and moves freely in the sphere of politics.
This takes us to our second argument.
Contemporary Islamic religiosities as well as the given narrative of Muslim victimhood are inextricably linked to the internal configuration of power among Muslims in India.
The book has paid close attention to the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Hindutva and its violent manifestations. We find that Muslim homogeneity not only helps Hindutva construct an ideal ‘other’ but also contributes in defining the contours of a particular kind of political imagination of India as a nation. This Muslim otherness is also used by the Muslim elite as well as the so-called secular parties to legitimize their political existence.
The recognition of this mutual dependence is my third argument.
I argue that Hindutva needs Muslims, and precisely for this reason the Muslim elite/non-Hindutva forces also need Hindutva to create and sustain a fear psyche among Muslims.
Will these arguments be useful in making sense of the outcome of the 2019 elections, and will they sustain beyond that? I would like to clarify that the findings of this research are based on a context-driven analysis. Therefore, the purpose of the arguments is to explain the here and now, not to predict what ought to be the future of politics! However, the explanatory capability of a context-based argument may be used to make a few broad observations, especially about Muslim political behaviour. For this purpose, I would like to deal with an important yet unexplained issue: the political silence of Muslims in contemporary India!
Silent yet siyasi Muslims
Why don’t Indian Muslims react to aggressive Hindutva politics? Are they really terrified? Or is there any strategy behind this extraordinary calmness? These questions are not asked directly; yet, they do exist in our public debates as unspoken anxieties. Rejuvenated post-2014 Hindutva politics reworked on its anti-Muslim project and transformed every aspect of the social and cultural life of Muslims in India into an unsolvable contestation.
In the past four years, we have been repeatedly told that Muslims’ eating habits are anti-Hindu/anti-national as they eat beef; that Muslim men don’t love, they do love-jihad with Hindu girls; that Muslim couples deliberately have sex to increase their community’s population so as to outnumber the Hindus; and that they offer namaz on roads to convert public (read Hindu) lands into mosque territory! This propaganda is followed by actual violence against Muslims—lynching, molestation and even rape.
Despite this hostile anti-Muslim attitude, Muslim communities do not get involved in any anti-Hindutva counter mobilization. Muslim religious organizations and pressure groups and even Muslim political leaders (except a few unknown faces who appear on prime-time TV every night!) do not argue for any Muslim mass protest. It is, therefore, possible to infer that Muslims have decided to remain silent to avoid any confrontation with Hindutva and that they would open their card in 2019.
This simple conclusion is problematic. The anxiety called ‘Muslim silence’ must be unravelled for a deeper analysis based on some concrete evidence. Two counter questions may be asked: (a) Has Muslim political attitude changed, especially with regard to identity-related Muslim issues? (b) Do Muslims think differently from other communities in India?
It is worth noting that the BJP has been using Muslim identity as an ‘other’ to cultivate its Hindutva vote bank. Post-2014 BJP politics marks a decisive shift in this regard. Unlike the previous NDA government, the Modi-led BJP decided to deliberately demolish Muslim issues in a more direct fashion. Obviously, any radical Muslim reaction would have given the government an opportunity to promote its political image as a truly nationalist establishment.
However, Muslim reactions were very different. We have seen in Chapter 7 that the triple talaq issue could not create a Shah Bano–type hype, primarily because there was strong social opposition to this practice among Hanafi Muslims, especially in north India. Even the AIMPLB failed to mobilize Muslim public opinion in its favour.
Similarly, the abolition of the Hajj subsidy remained a non-issue, as there has always been a consensus that Hajj travel should be liberalized. Violent cow politics also failed, as eating cow-meat is a highly insignificant matter for Muslim communities in India. That might be the reason why lynching as a preferred mode of violence against individual Muslims has increased in order to keep cow politics alive.
To understand this complex Muslim reaction, we must take the Babri Masjid issue as a relevant example. The CSDS-Lokniti surveys have shown that, over the years, Muslim opinion about the Babri mosque has changed quite considerably. For instance, in 2009, around 80 per cent of Muslims argued that the demolition of the mosque was an unjustified act. This feeling of injustice seems to increase in 2015, when 86 per cent Muslims all over India argued that the demise of the Babri Masjid cannot be justified at all (see Table 1 below).
Table 1: Was the demolition of the Babri Masjid justified?
Source: *NES 2009, CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit; **Religious Attitude Survey 2015, CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Question asked: Some people say that the demolition was justified while others say it was not justified. What would you say—was it justified or not?
It is not that this ‘historic injustice’ could only be rectified by building the Babri Masjid again. In fact, one encounters much diversified Muslim opinion on this question. In 2009, 44 per cent of Muslims claimed that only the mosque should be built on that site, while 25 per cent suggested that a Ram temple along with the Babri Masjid might be constructed side by side to solve this issue. Muslim opinion in favour of ‘mosque with temple’ consolidated in 2015 as the most appropriate solution for the dispute (see Table 2 on the following page).
In fact, this may be the reason why a majority of Muslims feel that the issue must be solved through the court of law, though the possibility of a negotiated settlement outside court is also seen as a strong possibility (see Table 3 on p. 197).
Does it mean that the Babri Masjid still survives as an important Muslim issue? In the 2016 UP Assembly elections, 32 per cent of Muslims argued that the Babri Masjid issue was not important for them, while one-fourth of the respondents decided not to answer this question! (See Table 4 on p. 197.) It simply means that although Muslims feel that the demolition of the mosque was a highly unjust issue, they do not have any serious interest in it. After all, the mosque has long been demolished to create a functional temple in Ayodhya! In other words, the Babri Masjid, like other identi
ty-centric Muslim issues, has lost its capacity to be a cause of provocation for Muslims.
Table 2: What should be the solution for the Babri Masjid–Ram temple dispute?
Source: *NES 2009 CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit;
**Religious Attitude Survey 2015, CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Table 3: How should the mosque–temple issue be solved?
Source: Mood of the Nation Survey 2017, CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Question asked: People have different opinions about how the temple–mosque issue of Ayodhya should be resolved. Some say it should be resolved by the Supreme Court. What’s your opinion?
Table 4: Does the Babri Masjid matter?
Source: UP Assembly Election Survey 2017; CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Question: How important is the Ram Mandir–Babri Masjid issue going to be for you in the forthcoming Assembly elections? Very important, somewhat important, not very important or not at all important?
To understand the visible calmness of Muslims in contemporary India, we must also have a look at Muslim opinion in relation to what is called national sentiment.
The CSDS-Lokniti’s recent Mood of the Nation survey offers us another set of important findings. The survey finds that the popularity of the BJP-led NDA government is declining. Muslim respondents also share this view. They strongly believe that the Modi government should not be given another chance. This Muslim opposition to the present regime, we must note, does not deviate from the national sentiment as a majority of the respondents (47 per cent) argue that the Modi government is not good for the country.
Similarly, the Muslim response to the present state of affairs is not very different from that of other communities. Muslims seem to assert, more stridently, in fact, that India as a country requires a better government that could provide a positive direction to the nation (see Table 6 on the following page).