Siyasi Muslims Page 2

  1967: The Congress lost the elections in nine states.

  1968: The Enemy Property Act, 1968, was passed by the Parliament. The act empowered the government to regulate the appropriation of property in India owned by those who have taken up Pakistani nationality.

  1968: A political party named Muslim Majlis was formed.

  1971: War with Pakistan began, followed by a second partition of South Asia, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh

  1971: The Congress under Indira Gandhi won the Lok Sabha elections.

  1972: The AIMPLB was formed in Mumbai, especially to respond to the debate on the adoption bill.

  1974: The imam of Jama Masjid, Abdullah Bukhari, was approached by the Congress. He issued a statement in favour of the government’s family planning programme. It was circulated as a fatwa.

  1974: Imam Bukhari began to oppose Indira Gandhi. He was arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971, but later released. He was approached by the Opposition parties.

  1975: Emergency was declared.

  1976: A Muslim locality was forcibly demolished at Turkman Gate, Delhi. Nineteen people died.

  1977: The Janata Party (JP) was formed; Imam Bukhari issued an election fatwa in favour of the JP.

  1978: The Minorities Commission was formed by the JP government. The Congress opposed it.

  1978: The Second Backward Classes Commission, known as the Mandal Commission, was set up. It proposed a formula to include non-Hindu communities in the OBC category.

  1979: Indira Gandhi wrote an open letter to Imam Bukhari requesting him to support the Congress. Bukhari agreed and campaigned for the Congress in the elections.

  1980: Indira Gandhi won the Lok Sabha elections.

  1980: The Gopal Singh Panel for minorities was constituted.

  1983: The Gopal Singh Panel submitted its report. It was never discussed publicly.

  1984: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad began its first yatra for the Ram temple. The Congress supported it. The local Muslims of Faizabad formed the Babri Masjid Action Committee, Faizabad. No national Muslim leader showed any interest in this issue.

  1984: Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Imam Bukhari supported Rajiv Gandhi in the 1984 elections.

  1985: The Supreme Court’s verdict was pronounced in the Shah Bano case, favouring maintenance given to an aggrieved divorced Muslim woman.

  1985: The AIMPLB launched a nationwide movement against the Supreme Court verdict.

  1985: The Rajiv Gandhi government accepted the demands of the conservative ulema led by Ali Mian Nadwi of the Nadwa. It paved the way for the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, that nullified the Supreme Court judgement.

  1986: Babri Masjid, which was occupied by a local mob in 1949, was opened to Hindu worshippers.

  1986: The all-India level Babri Masjid Conference was held in Delhi.

  1987: The first-ever Muslim political coalition on Babri Masjid, the Babri Masjid Movement Coordination Committee (BMMCC) was formed under the leadership of Syed Shahabuddin.

  1988: The Babri Masjid coalition disintegrated into two fractions: the BMMCC led by Shahabuddin and the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee (ABMAC) led by Abdullah Bukhari.

  1989: Both fractions supported the Janata Dal (JD) in elections. V.P. Singh formed a non-Congress government with the help of the BJP and the communist parties.

  1990: The BJP withdrew their support to the government after the arrest of Advani during his Rath Yatra to Ayodhya.

  1990: Chandra Shekhar formed a new government with the help of the Congress. The Shahabuddin group supported the government.

  1990: Negotiations between Muslim groups and the VHP began.

  1991: The Congress won the elections in the name of secularism and P.V. Narasimha Rao became the prime minister.

  1992: Babri Masjid was demolished by kar sevaks.

  1992: The first Muslim convention on reservations was held in Delhi.

  1993: A series of bomb blasts occurred in Bombay (now Mumbai).

  1993: The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) as a statutory body was established. Muslims were declared a national religious minority. The BJP opposed the NCM.

  1993: The All India United Muslim Morcha was formed by Dr Ejaz Ali to demand the inclusion of Muslim Dalits in the Scheduled Caste (SC) list.

  1998: The NDA, led by the BJP, was formed and won the elections. The BJP gave up its core Hindutva issues to sustain the coalition.

  1998: The All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz was formed by Ali Anwar. He demanded that the reservation system be secularized and Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians be given SC status.

  1999: The NDA formed the government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

  2000: The BJP-led government reconstituted the National Commission for Minorities.

  2002: Riots occurred in Gujarat in which around 1000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed.

  2004: The imam of the Jama Masjid supported the BJP in the elections and asked Muslims to vote for the party. The UPA came to power.

  2005: The prime minister’s 15 Point Programme was launched.

  2006: The Sachar Committee was set up to evaluate Muslim backwardness.

  2007: The Sachar Committee submitted its report. The cabinet accepted all the recommendations. The BJP opposed it.

  2008: The Ranganath Misra Commission submitted its report. It recommended reservations for Muslims.

  2009: The UPA, led by the Congress, won the national elections again.

  2013: Riots took place in Muzaffarnagar, western UP.

  2014: The BJP-led NDA won the elections. Narendra Modi formed the government.

  2015: The first mob-lynching case was reported. It was followed by similar incidents in north India. An aggressive cow-protection movement was launched by pro-BJP groups.

  2016: The ‘ghar wapsi’ agitation was launched to reconvert Muslims.

  2019: The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Ordinance was passed.

  Introduction: Muslims as a Political Question

  Do Muslims need purification in 2019?

  In a speech dedicated to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, argued:

  Pandit Upadhyaya used to say no ‘ang’ (part) of society is untouchable for us. But many people misunderstand the BJP and project us wrongfully. The definition of secularism in currency is distorted. It runs down the ‘desh bhakts’ (patriots) . . . 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).1

  Perhaps this was the only occasion when Modi addressed Muslims as a recognizable social group after becoming the prime minister in 2014. Interestingly, however, he did not deviate from fairly popular perceptions about Muslims in India and their role in national politics. Modi raised three rather clichéd metaphors—Muslim appeasement, the Muslim vote bank and, the most predictable, the Indianization of Muslims—to make them textbook patriots.

  These metaphors, no doubt, have acquired a place in our public discussions. Yet, the manner in which the political behaviour of Muslims as a category of analysis has been relegated to the margins in the last four years is rather unprecedented. This book is a modest attempt to unpack the symbols, metaphors and stereotypes associated with Muslims in India and their political inclinations.

  There is a strong argument that the rise of the BJP and its Hindutva politics is going to dominate the political discourse in 2019; thus, the conventional ‘Muslim politics’ of bargain and appeasement is no longer relevant. The political class, the argument goes, is not interested in debating inclusiveness and diversity, primarily because these issues do not work in hardcore interest-based, competitive electoral politics. The increasing social base of the BJP, especially among Dalits and Adivasis, is presented as ‘evidence
’ to show that the ‘grand Hindutva unity’, which the BJP has always been dreaming of, has finally been achieved.

  This argument is presented in two different ways. It is claimed that the ‘Modi wave’ has destroyed the old caste-based, religion-based vote-bank politics. Therefore, there is no need to address the specific interests of any particular community of voters in elections. In this framework, electoral promises made for any religious/linguistic minority are treated as a deviation from the nationalistic slogan: ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’.

  On the contrary, however, this ultra-developmentalism is also used to underline Hindu subjugation and victimhood. The aggressive campaigns for ‘ghar wapsi’ and ‘love jihad’ and the lynching of Muslims in the name of cow worship were seen as ‘natural reactions of subjugated Hindus’. In an interview, BJP president, Amit Shah, said:

  Development agenda and ghar wapsi have nothing to do with one another. The way of thinking should be changed. Conversion is a problem [. . .] Not a single so-called secular party has come forward on this. Should forcible conversion be stopped or not? I believe they should be. So those who want to stop forcible conversion should come with us.2

  This intentional overlapping between development and Hindu victimhood actually began in 2014. The BJP’s national slogan ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’, which was presented as a mantra to achieve equality-based citizenship, found a completely different political overtone at local levels.

  For example, in UP’s Muzaffarnagar district (where a series of communal riots took place in September 2013), the BJP relied heavily on communal polarization. Making an obvious reference to these riots in an election speech, Amit Shah asserted that ‘the 2014 Lok Sabha polls were an opportunity to seek revenge for the insult inflicted during the riots in Muzaffarnagar.’3 Although an FIR was filed against him for using the word ‘revenge’, the BJP continued to highlight the Muzaffarnagar riots as Hindu subjugation.

  Muslim politics, interestingly, is also redefined through the prism of this new configuration of Hindutva politics, that is, ‘Development’ + ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ + ‘Hindu victimhood’. It is claimed that Muslims are in search of workable survival strategies, which might help them get adjusted to the Modi phenomena. Muslim leaders of the BJP often claim that Muslims must embrace the BJP to create a space for themselves in such a Modi-centric political environment. In a recent article, BJP leader Zafar Islam argues:

  The real and pertinent question is: Who is keeping the Muslims out of power? It’s the Muslim community which is responsible for making its votes valueless and redundant by becoming a captive vote bank for the Congress and a few other parties, but completely ignoring the BJP which is a ruling party and works in a non-partisan manner.4

  How to (not) understand Muslim politics?

  In my view, this imagination of Muslim politics seems problematic for three reasons. First, the Hindu–Muslim religious–political divide is not the main determining aspect of diversity and pluralism in India. There are a number of different communities which recognize themselves as Hindu or Muslim in a variety of ways. Therefore, translating population data into an electoral majority–minority at the national level is a highly misleading exercise. Muslim communities, like any other social group, participate in electoral politics at the constituency level, responding to a number of regional and local considerations, which do not necessarily relate to the national picture.

  Secondly, the distinction between Muslim participation and Muslim representation is very important. The debate on Muslim political representation is all about the decreasing number of Muslim MLAs and MPs. It is assumed that Muslim voters would eventually vote for a Muslim candidate, and that the region, caste, class, gender and party affiliation would not affect their electoral choices. This imaginary correlation between Muslim voters and the elected MLAs and MPs is entirely incorrect. The shrinking presence of Muslim legislators in the assemblies and Parliament does not reflect the nature of Muslim political participation. For instance, there are only twenty-three Muslim MPs in the Lok Sabha at present, which is the lowest Muslim representation in the lower house since 1952 (see Table 1 on p. xliii). However, if we look at the voting percentage of Muslims in the 2014 elections, we might come across a very different picture (see Table 2 on p. xliv). Muslims participated in the electoral process with great eagerness and that has been the reason why the Muslim voting percentage at the national level is remarkably impressive. To understand Muslim politics, therefore, is not merely to analyse the question of Muslim representation—the declining number of MPs and MLAs. The political enthusiasm among the Muslims of India for democracy, their faith in public institutions and their active participation in all forms of politics must also be recognized (see Table 3 and Table 4 on pp. xliv and xlv, respectively).

  Finally, there is a difference between so-called media-driven ‘Muslim issues’ and the everyday anxieties of Muslim communities. For instance, triple talaq is portrayed as the ultimate issue that plagues Muslim women. It is claimed, quite stridently, in fact, that talaq is the most important reason behind the marginalization and under-representation of Muslim women in public life. As expected, a binary between mullahs and progressives has been created and we are left with only two options—yes or no to triple talaq! No one bothered to look at the religious diversity among Muslims, the changing educational and occupational profile of Muslim women at different levels and the nature of contemporary Muslim patriarchy. No rational mind can support triple talaq; but presenting marriage and divorce as decisive political concerns for Muslim communities in general and Muslim women in particular is a highly superficial, distorted and absurd explanation.

  What is ‘siyasi’ about Muslims?

  Muslim politics has always been understood in a negative sense. Political descriptions such as ‘Muslim communalism’, ‘Muslim separatism’ and, very recently, ‘Muslim/Islamic terrorism’ are used interchangeably to describe Muslim politics. Although the debates of the early 2000s on social exclusion and inclusion offered official acceptability to the multilayered Muslim under-representation and backwardness in various spheres, Muslim politics continues to be defined in a rather elitist way.

  Muslim politics, in this sense, is not about the arguments, statements and claims made by Muslim leaders and religious elites. These Muslim political stakeholders, no doubt, do have an intrinsic relationship with Muslim communities. But the political vocabulary they use to argue on behalf of Muslim communities always comes from competitive electoral politics. For instance, when a Muslim leader of the BJP says: ‘Muslims have a message for their counterparts . . . BJP is not communal but painted so systematically . . . Give them a fair chance. . . .’5 he actually implies that Muslims are not going to vote for Modi and the only solution is that they must vote

  for him!

  The challenge, therefore, is not merely to analyse the question of Muslim representation—the declining number of MPs, MLAs—but to go beyond this neat and clear portrayal of Muslim politics. That is what this book explores. Instead of offering a grand narrative of political Islam/Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, it identifies two broad questions:

  What are the sociocultural sources which contribute to the Muslim political identity in contemporary India?

  Do the Muslims of India constitute a political community?

  This book does not aim at defining Muslim politics in India. Instead, it looks at the ways in which Muslim politics as a template is used to describe statements, actions and processes. In other words, the book studies Muslim politics as a political discourse—an intellectual mode through which certain specific notions of Muslim identity in contemporary India are produced and sustained.

  The term ‘siyasi’—an Urdu/Persian word that generally means ‘political’—is employed here intentionally to describe the diverse forms of Muslim identity. Two specific justifications might be given in this regard.

  First, Muslims are often described as a politically conscious community. The discussion
on Muslim vote bank and Muslim appeasement relies on the assumption that Muslims are fully aware of the complexities of the electoral system and therefore always act accordingly. This popular portrayal envisages Muslims as a deeply political community. There is a need to unpack these popular perceptions and, for that reason, Siyasi Muslims is conceptually very useful and instructive.

  Secondly, there is another meaning to the term ‘siyasi’. It is used to denote those individuals and groups who are not trustworthy, who work only to further their own vested interests and never join in with mainstream national interests. The Muslims of India are often defined in these terms. It is alleged that they are obsessed with Islam, which does not allow them to embrace any other identity wholeheartedly. This is the reason we are often told, rightly or wrongly, that they do not sing ‘Vande Mataram’, that they eat cow meat and support Pakistan. In other words, they are siyasi!6

  These two meanings of the term ‘siyasi Muslims’ contribute to a very popular yet stereotyped perception of Muslims of India—as an informed and conscious group of people who are untrustworthy and disloyal to the nation!

  The book is divided into three parts: (i) Making Sense of Siyasi Muslims, (ii) Unpacking Siyasi Muslims and, finally, (iii) The Politics of Siyasi Muslims.

  The first part of the book has four chapters. The first chapter titled ‘Muslims, We Know as Numbers’ traces the story of the census that transformed Muslims into a numerical entity. It also identifies the paradoxes of modern Indian Muslim identity and tries to answer a very basic question—how to address the highly diversified Indian Muslim community in intellectual terms?

  This is followed by a chapter on contemporary Islamic religiosity, ‘Muslims as a Religious Community’. Investigating the assumption that Muslims are more religious than other communities, this chapter demonstrates Muslim views on religion and religiosity. These themes are further unpacked in the third chapter, ‘“Islamization” since Independence’, which traces the story of postcolonial Islam as a diversified phenomenon. Discussing the notion of ‘Dawat-e-Islam’—inviting Muslims as well as non-Muslims to embrace Islam—the chapter argues that the story of postcolonial Indian Islam cannot be understood without making sense of the debate on Indian secularism. The next chapter, ‘Why Does Hindutva Need Muslims’, makes an attempt to understand the historically constituted anti-Muslim rhetoric of different forms of Hindutva. It also underlines the genealogy of a few questions that are asked to evaluate the loyalty and patriotism of Muslims.