by Hilal Ahmed
The Muslim assertion against the Modi government is also linked to the evolving environment of hate against all marginalized groups in the country. Table 7 on p. 200 shows that a majority of Indians feel that atrocities committed against the weaker sections of the society are not dealt with adequately by the government. They seem to suggest that the state does not demonstrate a clear attitude against those who create an atmosphere of hate and terror. This is also true about the violence against Muslims. More than half of the respondents asserted that they are not satisfied with the way in which miscreants, such as the gau rakshaks (protectors of cows), are dealt with by the government.
These figures also underline the fact that the Muslims of India do share the national view on a few fundamental issues that India faces as a national community of citizens. At the same time, being the main target of Hindutva politics, Muslims appear to be more concerned and dissatisfied with the present regime. By this logic, the Muslim silence is nothing but a reflection of political indifference, which has emerged as a norm of non-Hindutva politics in the last few years.
Table 5: Does the Modi government deserve a second chance?
Source: MOTN Survey, May 2018; CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Table 6: Are we going in the right direction as a country?
Source: MOTN Survey, May 2018; CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Figures in percentages
Question asked: In general, do you think things in the country are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction?
Table 7: National sentiment and the violence against marginalized groups
Source: MOTN Survey, May 2018; CSDS-Lokniti Data Unit
Note: Fully and somewhat ‘satisfied’ or ‘dissatisfied’ categories have been merged as ‘satisfied’ and ‘dissatisfied’ in this table. Figures in percentages
Question asked: Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the attitude/concern shown by the Modi government towards the following incidents?
The possibilities of any ‘Muslim reaction’ must also be seen in relation to the demographic plurality of Indian Muslims, which we have discussed in previous chapters of the book. As I argue that the Muslim community consists of a number of diversified Islamic communities, which speak different languages, live in different regions of the country, and even follow varied versions of Islam as a religion. In the backdrop of this apparent heterogeneity, the idea of having a defined strategy to counter Hindutva seems unreasonable and vague.
Muslim silence, on the other hand, points towards the intellectual weakness of the political class. Contemporary BJP Hindutva has failed to produce any constructive and positive programme of action for Muslims as a ‘community of communities’. Hindutva survives because of its reactionary position on Islam and Muslims. Non-BJP parties have also failed to articulate any new perspective on Muslims in the absence of old identity-based issues, in which Muslims do not have any interest.
To conclude, I make a futurist observation. The political class must realize that Muslim aspirations cannot be reduced to so-called Muslim issues alone. Muslims, like other socio-religious communities, are more concerned about poverty, employment and education. No doubt, the threat to religious identity affects them psychologically, but the commonly given imaginations of siyasi Muslims do not entirely determine their aspirations as citizens.
Notes
Introduction: Muslims as a Political Question
1. Radhika Ramaseshan, ‘Modi chants purification mantra’, Telegraph, 26 September 2016, https://bit.ly/2WoU0Dy.
2. Varghese K. George and Gargi Parsai, ‘Exclusive interview with Amit Shah’, The Hindu, 2 February 2015, https://bit.ly/2CypsGb.
3. ‘BJP president Amit Shah charged in Muzaffarnagar hate speech case’, Times of India, 10 September 2014, https://bit.ly/2RoAZ0a.
4. Syed Zafar Islam, ‘Why Muslims must give BJP a fair chance’, Indian Express, 4 May 2017, https://bit.ly/2HDr2w8.
5. Ibid.
6. ‘Muslim Man in Hisar Assaulted For Not Saying “Vande Mataram”; One Arrested’, Wire, 13 July 2017, https://bit.ly/2Uom3kB.
PART I: MAKING SENSE OF SIYASI MUSLIMS
Chapter 1: Muslims, We Know as ‘Numbers’!
1. Ramachandra Guha, ‘Liberals, sadly’, Indian Express, 24 March 2018, https://bit.ly/2DDfNzM.
2. Ramachandra Guha, ‘Burdens of the past’, Indian Express, 10 April 2018, https://bit.ly/2CQNLiQ.
3. Ibid.
4. Sagnik Chowdhury, Abantika Ghosh and Ruhi Tewari, ‘Census 2011: Hindus dip to below 80 per cent of population; Muslim share up, slows down’, Indian Express, 27 August 1015, https://bit.ly/2UqGjCf.
5. Gyan Varma, Anuja, Pretika Khanna, ‘Census 2011 shows Islam is the fastest growing religion in India’, LiveMint, 26 August 2015, https://bit.ly/2RRMTF5.
6. Saibal Sen, ‘Bengal beats India in Muslim growth rate’, Times of India, 26 August 2015, https://bit.ly/2Tn7kXa.
7. Mehar Singh Gill, ‘Politics of Population Census Data in India’, Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 3 (20–26 January 2007):
pp. 241–49.
8. Jeffery Roger and Jeffery Patricia, ‘Saffron Demography, Common Wisdom, Aspirations and Uneven Governmentalities’, Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 5 (2005): pp. 447–53.
9. Ashutosh Bhardwaj, ‘Review policy to check Muslim, Christian population: RSS resolution’, Indian Express, 1 November 2015, https://bit.ly/2CSpOaI.
10. Abusaleh Shariff, ‘Myth of Muslim growth’, Indian Express, 2 September 2015, https://bit.ly/2COo4Q0.
11. Jeffery Roger and Jeffery Patricia, ‘Saffron Demography’.
12. John Strachey, India (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd, 1894), pp. 3–5.
13. Ibid., p. 235.
14. Id.
15. Id., p. 240.
16. Id., p. 241.
17. General Report on the Census of India, 1891 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1893), p. 174.
18. Ibid., p. 175.
19. James Mill, The History of British India, vol. 3 (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1826), p. 207.
20. Ibid., p. 430.
21. Id., p. 457.
22. Partha Chatterjee, The Nations and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 19–32.
23. Reginald Coupland, The Indian Problem: Report on the Constitutional Problem in India (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 34–35.
24. Ibid., p. 36.
25. Id.
26. Report of the Indian Franchise Committee, vol. 1. (Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1932), pp. 175–78.
27. A.G. Noorani, ed, The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 63–64.
28. Ibid., p. 57.
29. Maulana Abul Kalam, India Wins Freedom (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1988), pp. 247–48.
30. B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay: Thacker & Co. Ltd, 1943), https://bit.ly/22jzqPO.
31. Ibid.
Chapter 2: Muslims as a Religious Community
1. Jignesh Patel, ‘Truth Behind Boy Tearing India Flag, Saying “Pakka Musalman Hoon”’, Quint, 22 August 2018, https://bit.ly/2DJOPXb.
2. Suresh Chavhanke, Twitter post, 20 August 2018, https://bit.ly/2WsPuUq.
3. Jignesh Patel, ‘Truth Behind Boy Tearing India Flag’.
4. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, ed and trans., Hali’s Musaddas: A Story in Verse of the Ebb and Tide of Islam (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 170–71.
Chapter 3: ‘Islamization’ since Independence!
1. Mohammed A. Kalam, ‘Religious conversions in Tamil Nadu: can these be viewed as protest movements’, Indian Anthropologist 20, no. 1/2 (1990): pp. 39–48.
2. RSS Resolution: ABKM 1981: Meenakshipuram Conversion.
3. Shaikh, Farzana, Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1991), pp. 49–53.
4. Ziya-ul-Hasan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan (Calcutta: Asia Publishing House, 1963), pp. 113–19.
5. 5. Barbara D. Metcalf, Husain Ahmad Madani: The Jihad for Islam and India’s Freedom (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008); and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007).
6. Christian W. Troll, ‘Two Conceptions of Da’wá in India: Jamā’at-i Islāmi and Tablīghī Jamā’at’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 39e Année, No. 87 (1994): pp. 115–33.
7. Abul Ala Maududi, A Historic Address at Madras, trans. Mohammad Siddiqui Naveed (New Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers, 2009), p. 32.
8. Ibid., p. 32.
9. I focus on the works of Maulana Yusuf as he led the Tablighi Jamaat in the crucial years in the post-Partition period, especially in the 1960s, when a new phase of Muslim politics began. See, Hilal Ahmed, Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (London and New Delhi: Routledge, 2014).
10. Mufti Mohammad Roshan Shah Qasmi, Malfoozat wa Iqtebasaat Maulana Mohammad Yusuf Kandhlawi (New Delhi: Rashid Publications, N.D.), p. 19.
11. Ibid., p. 20.
12. Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘Living Hadith in the Tablīghī Jama‘āt’, Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 03 (1993): pp. 603–05.
13. Mufti Mohammad Roshan Shah Qasmi, Malfoozat wa Iqtebasaat Maulana Mohammad Yusuf Kandhlawi, p. 46.
14. For a historical evaluation of these six principles, see Syed Abul Hasan Ali, Life and Mission of Maulana Mohammad Ilyas (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 2012), pp. 40–59.
15. Yoginder Sikand, ‘Arya Shuddhi and Muslim Tabligh: Muslim Reactions to Arya Samaj Proselytization (1923–30), in Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations, Meanings, eds Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 98–117.
16. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); and Jamal Malik, Islam in South Asia: A Short History (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2012), pp. 403–35.
17. Abul Lais Islahi Nadwi, Bharat ka Navnirman Aur Hum (Rebuilding of India and Our Role), trans. Afzal Husaain (New Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers, 2014), pp. 31–32.
18. Abul Ala Maududi, Pavitr Quran (New Delhi: MMI, 1970).
19. Arshad Madani and Muhammad Sulaiman, Quaran Sharif: Anuwad aur Vyakhya (New Delhi: Jamiat Ulama e-Hind, 1992), pp. ii–v.
20. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s emphasis on Hindi should be seen in this political context in which Urdu turns out to be a minority (read Muslim) language. See Paul Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 182–217.
21. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Conversion: An Intellectual Transformation, e-book, https://bit.ly/2SrmflQ.
22. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Three Stages of Da’wah Work, e-book, https://bit.ly/2DGJ5MM.
23. Ibid.
24. Id.
25. For an elaboration of this point, see Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Live to Lead: A Call to Indian Muslims, trans. Shah Ebadur Rahman (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 1980), https://bit.ly/2Ga9qq5.
26. Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Inviting to the Way of Allah (London: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd and UK Islamic Academy, 1992), p. 9, https://bit.ly/2HQNZfA.
27. Ibid., p. 17.
28. Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Appreciation and Interpretation of Religion in the Modern Age, trans. Syed Athar Husain (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 1980), p. 4.
29. Nadwi was one of the founder members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which was established in 1972. This was the first time he was actively participating in an issue which had already taken a clear political shape. However, he emerged as the leading politically inclined religious scholar in the time following the Shah Bano case (1985). For Nadwi’s changing understanding of politics, see Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Karwan-e-Zindagi (Lucknow: Matkaba-e-Islam, 2003).
30. Ibid., pp. 154–62.
31. Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Muslims in India, trans. Mohammad Asif Kidwai (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 1976), p. 3.
32. Ibid., p. 9. See also Jamal Malik, ‘A.H. Ali Nadwi’, in Historical Thinking in South Asia: A Handbook of Sources from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Michael Gottlob (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 242–46.
33. Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Muslims in India, p. 5.
34. This argument is elaborated in two small books penned by Nadwi in the post-1986 period. See Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Hindustani Musalman Ek Drishti Mein (An Overview of Indian Muslims) (New Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers, 2014); and Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Try to Understand the Problems and Sentiments of Indian Muslims: A Prerequisite for Peaceful Co-existence (Lucknow: All India Solidarity Forum, N.D.).
35. Hilal Ahmed, ‘Naik, Zakir’, Oxford Islamic Studies Online https://bit.ly/2I2QMT9.
36. Ibid.
37. Id.
38. Id.
39. Id.
40. Emphasis added; Vidya and Sahil Joshi, ‘Full text of Zakir Naik’s open letter to India: Ban timed with demonetisation to escape resistance’, India Today, 25 November 2016, https://bit.ly/2UFLGO0.
Chapter 4: Why Does Hindutva Need Muslims?
1. ‘Bharat of Future: An RSS Perspective (Day 1)’, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 18 September 2018: ‘हिन्दुत्व उस मूल्य समुच्चय का नाम है । विविधता में एकता, समन्वय, त्याग, संयम, कृतज्ञता । इसका आधार जो सत्य है उसका अन्वें ण हमारे यहां किया गया ।’
2. Ibid.: ‘सभी भारत से निकले सम्ङ्क्तदायों का जो सामूहिक मूल्य बोध है उसका नाम हिन्दुत्व है । - - - इसलिये हम जिसको हिन्दुत्व कहते हैं उस मूल्यबोध, उससे निकली हुई यह संस्कृति, उसके साथ दूसरा घटक है देशभक्ति । वो भारत की पहचान है । भारत इसके लिए है ।#8217;
3. Id.: ‘हमारी चलती आई हुई विचारधारा है उसको दुनिया हिंदुत्व कहती है, इसलिये हम कहते हैं कि हमारा हिन्दू राष्ट्र है ।’
4. Id.: ‘हिन्दुत्व के हम तीन आधार मानते हैं । देशभक्ति, पूर्वज गौरव और संस्कृति ।’
5. ‘Bharat of Future: Lecture Series by Dr Mohan Bhagwat (Day 3)’, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 20 September 2018: ‘इसका मतलब इसमें मुसलमान नहीं चाहिए ऐसा बिल्कुल नहीं होता । जिस दिन ये कहा जाएगा कि हां मुसलमान नहीं चाहिए उस दिन यह हिंदुत्व नहीं रहेगा ।’
6. ‘We do not discriminate people on the bases of sect, community, language, and caste. We simply emphasize on motherland, heritage of our forefathers and the our unique culture. These are the elements of our nationality.’
7. Kanchan Vasdev, ‘Hindutva is being misunderstood, our people responsible: BJP MP Shanta Kumar’, Indian Express, 2 November 2017, https://bit.ly/2Bl2XVp.
8. V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1969), pp. 115–16.
9. M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, https://bit.ly/2Bfhh1C.
10. Rakesh Sinha, ‘Of swayamsev
aks and intellectuals’, Indian Express, 24 March 2017, https://bit.ly/2t43AOw.
11. Bunch of Thoughts, p. 63.
12. ‘Hindu Agenda’, Vishva Hindu Parishad, https://bit.ly/2HRkeuX.
13. ‘Vision and Mission’, Vishva Hindu Parishad, 22 October 2012, https://bit.ly/2BfiBS8.
14. ‘Chapter 2: Our National Identity’, Bharatiya Janata Party, https://bit.ly/2RElUrk.
15. Ibid.
16. Constitution and Rules, Bharatiya Janata Party, September 2012, https://bit.ly/2GauRrj.
17. ‘Philosophy: Integral Humanism’, Bharatiya Janata Party, https://bit.ly/2TweBDV.
18. Ibid.
19. Emphasis added; ‘Philosophy: Integral Humanism’, BJP Gujarat, https://bit.ly/2GnhiDW.
20. Dr Ramesh Prabhoo vs Prabhakar K. Kunte (1996 SCC [1], AIR 1996 1113).
21. ‘Politicians misusing my judgment on Hinduism: Justice Verma’, Rediff.com, 5 February 2003, https://bit.ly/2UFTcs9.
22. Arkamoy Dutta Majumdar, ‘Indian Muslims must realise their forefathers were Hindus: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’, LiveMint, 3 October 2017, https://bit.ly/2S68rh2.
23. V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, pp. 113.
24. Rakesh Sinha, Shri Guruji and Indian Muslims, https://bit.ly/2BjbIPA.
25. Bharatiya Jana Sangh—Party Documents, vol. 1, BJS publication, New Delhi, p. 49.
26. Ibid., p. 104.
PART II: UNPACKING THE SIYASI MUSLIM
Chapter 5: Muslims as a Minority
1. ‘Muslims are not minorities, Parsis are: Najma Heptulla’, Times of India, 28 May 2014, https://bit.ly/2SagklQ.
2. ‘Muslims feeling alienated since Independence, says Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla’, Firstpost, 24 May 2015, https://bit.ly/2D48fVj.
3. Saurabh Gupta, ‘Union Minister Najma Heptulla’s Stand on Muslim Reservation Upsets Minority Community’, NDTV.com, 3 January 2015, https://bit.ly/2WGqaug.