Siyasi Muslims Read online

  The second part of the book unravels the structure of the concept of Siyasi Muslims. The fifth chapter, ‘Muslims as a Minority’, looks at the legal–constitutional technicalities to understand the much talked about status of Muslims as an official minority. It is argued that the minority status of Muslims is not always determined in constitutional terms; instead, it is a product of competitive electoral politics.

  The next three chapters are devoted to the internal power structure of the Muslim community. Chapter 6 takes us to the question of Muslim backwardness, especially with regard to the debate on caste-based reservation. Examining various political positions and arguments, the chapter traces the multilayered nature of the Muslim politics of backwardness.

  The next chapter, ‘The Politics of Triple Talaq’, pays close attention to the triple talaq debate. Instead of suggesting what Muslim men do, the chapter looks at the complex argument made by the Muslim women’s groups. In the next chapter titled ‘The New Muslim Elite’, a serious attempt is made to reveal the class structure among Muslims in India. Using the official data of the Government of India and seminal works on Muslim classes, the chapter offers a contemporary conceptualization of the idea of the Muslim elite.

  The last part of the book recapitulates these discussions and brings us back to more apparent political questions. The chapter titled ‘The Metaphors of Muslim Politics’ examines the postcolonial story of the Muslim vote bank. It argues that metaphors of Muslim politics should not be treated as reasoned statements on the objective conditions of Muslims; rather, they must be seen as weapons of electoral politics. The final chapter offers a set of arguments responding to the possible role of Muslims in shaping the future of India’s democracy.

  A note on sources

  The book relies on five types of research material. Official documents, such as parliamentary debates, census reports and election reports published by the Election Commission of India, are the first kind of sources. These documents are used to extract relevant information/data to offer an informed, evidence-based narrative.

  The research material—pamphlets, short books in various languages and rare photographs—which I have been collecting for over a decade during the course of my fieldwork in different parts of India is the second major source of information. These ethnographic details provide thick background descriptions to situate the main arguments of the study.

  I believe that interviews with religious leaders and Muslim politicians provide relevant first-hand information on critical issues concerning Muslims. Such interviews also introduce us to different perspectives and positions. This is the reason why interviews are considered an important source, especially to make sense of the internal debates among the Muslim elite.

  The fourth kind of sources may be referred to as ‘online’ sources. The websites of leading Muslim religious and political organizations, online newspaper reports and articles are very relevant in understanding public perceptions and debates about contemporary Muslim politics. This is what I have tried to capture in this book.

  The data generated by the CSDS-Lokniti on various aspects of Muslim social and political life in post–1947 India is my fifth major source. I have used the National Election Study (NES) data sets for offering a comparative analysis of Muslim politics. The Religious Attitudes and Behaviours Survey 2015, which was designed primarily to make sense of the contemporary forms of religiosity, is used extensively to produce research-based arguments on Muslim political identity.

  Finally, it is important to make two clarifications here. First, the book does not claim to offer final and conclusive answers to questions posed in the public sphere about Muslims. Rather, it is in an attempt to clarify the nature of public debates and the political reception of such discussions. In this sense, it is a context-driven exploratory exercise. Second, the book is not written to defend the loyalty and nationalism of Muslims in India. As a researcher, I do not claim to represent any Muslim community or group. Nor do I believe in advising the right kind of politics to Muslims. The book is simply an outcome of my engagement with Muslim communities in India as a ‘participant observer’.

  Table 1: Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha, 1952–2014

  Source: The Election Commission of Nepal

  Notes:

  The Muslim members of the Lok Sabha are identified by names. The author has to rely on this method as there is no official source available to get information about the religion espoused by an elected MP.

  *1: Elections were not held in Assam (12) and Meghalaya (1)

  *2: Elections were not held in Assam (14)

  *3: Elections were not held in J&K (6) and countermanded in two seats in Bihar and one in UP

  ** Including Muslims elected in by-elections

  Source: Based on the statistics provided by the Election Commission of India on its official website: https://eci.gov.in/statistical-report/statistical-reports/.

  Table 2: Voting percentage compared religion-wise Religion 2009 2014

  Hindus 58 68

  Muslims 59 59

  Christians 64 69

  Sikhs 66 55

  Other religions 49 60

  TOTAL 58 66

  Source: NES 2009, NES 2014, CSDS-Lokniti

  Figures in percentages

  Table 3: Do Muslims trust public institutions? Social group *General trust in public institutions

  Hindu Upper Caste 64

  OBC 64

  SC 60

  ST 63

  Muslims 63

  Others 61

  Source: CSDS-Lokniti report, Democracy in India: A Citizens Perspective (2015)

  Figures in percentages

  * ‘General trust’ has been calculated by adding the responses to nine trust-based questions, such as trust in national government, provincial government, local government, civil services, police, courts, army, Parliament and political parties.

  Table 4: How do Muslims participate in politics?

  Source: CSDS-Lokniti report, Democracy in India: A Citizens Perspective (2015)

  Figures are in percentages and based on a series of questions

  PART I

  MAKING SENSE OF SIYASI MUSLIMS

  1

  Muslims, We Know as ‘Numbers’!

  Many people . . . object to Hindus flaunting saffron robes and trishuls at rallies. While a burkha may not be a weapon, in a symbolic sense it is akin to a trishul. It represents the most reactionary, antediluvian aspects of the faith. To object to its display in public is a mark not of intolerance.1

  Muslims [. . . ] once ruled over great kingdoms in Iran, Iraq, Andalusia and Turkey, and indeed in India as well. This political overlordship is long gone; yet, in gorgeous buildings and traditions of music and literature, its traces remain. Facing discrimination in the present, many Muslims seek consolation in a return to the past, by thinking, acting and dressing in a form they believe is consistent with the Golden Age their community is said to have once enjoyed.2

  Ramachandra Guha made these comments in his articles responding to a debate on Muslimness in contemporary India. As a public intellectual, Guha’s critique of Hindutva is well known. He has been arguing for the protection of rights of all marginalized sections of Indian society, including Muslims. Hence, it would be absolutely incorrect to brand Guha as an anti-Muslim intellectual.

  These comments, however, are not merely indicative of Guha’s provocative mode of argumentation. No doubt, his intention is to provoke his liberal adversaries to look at Muslims not only as victims but also as a ghettoized, backward-looking socio-religious group. But the manner in which he makes these comments also introduces us to Guha’s reliability on popular perceptions about Muslims. He, too, like others, uses three popular beliefs—Muslims as a single pan-Islamic community, the burkha as an icon of Muslim women’s subjugation and the nostalgia of the royal Islamic past—to underline the internal problems of the Muslims of India.

  Although Guha was severely criticized for his remarks on the burkha a
nd Muslim backwardness by a number of authors and activists, his imagination of Muslims as a homogeneous community was not scrutinized adequately. That was the reason why despite being apologetic for his initial generalizations about the symbols of Muslimness, Guha continues to rely on the assumption that there is only one Indian Muslim society in which the burkha is the only universally acceptable Islamic attire for women. He writes:

  My comparison was ill-chosen, and the chastisement I received for it is merited. I also agree that the headscarf and the skull-cap are akin to the turban and the vibhooti, markers of religious identity that should not offend anyone when displayed in public. That said, I agree entirely with Ambedkar that the burkha is a mark of suppression, of women from men, and also of separation, of Muslims from non-Muslims. If you hide your face from me, how can we be partners in a shared political project? [. . .] There is unquestionably a need for more progressive leadership among Indian Muslims.3

  Guha justifies his position by evoking a text Ambedkar wrote in the 1940s! It simply means that he thinks nothing has changed in the last seventy years in Muslim societies. And it is largely due to this reason, perhaps, that it may be legitimate to suggest that Muslims need progressive leaders to avail of citizenship rights!

  The question therefore is: How to (and how not to) describe the Muslims of India? This is exactly what this chapter tries to do. It problematizes the numerical representation of the Muslim community as a homogeneous entity and traces the story of Muslims as numbers!

  Muslims as numbers: depiction and debates

  Being a census category—a category that is employed to count people on various bases, including religion—Muslims are predominately addressed as ‘numbers’ to describe the demographic configuration of the country. However, unlike other religious communities, Muslims as numbers are always portrayed as an unsolvable national problem. Three different yet connected arguments are often given in this regard.

  First of all, there is a popular development-centric argument. It is suggested that the unrestricted growth of the Muslim population affects the equitable and just distribution of national resources in a developing economy like India. This argument relies heavily on the growth rate of the Muslim population—a statistical tool to measure the comparable increase of population in percentage points. Traces of this explanation could easily be found in newspaper reports and prime-time TV discussions.

  The English newspapers’ headlines of 25 August 2015—the very next day when the government released the latest census statistics on religious communities—is a good example. (See Box 1 on the following page.) It demonstrates how the metaphor of Muslims as numbers is used in public discourse. Being the most accessible form of information about Muslims in India, the population in percentages (Muslims constitute 14.22 per cent of India’s total population, and their growth rate is 24.60 per cent, which is higher than that of Hindus!) actually becomes a powerful symbol of Muslim identity.

  Box 1: English newspapers’ headlines: 25 August 2015

  ‘Census 2011: Hindus dip to below 80 per cent of population; Muslim share up, slows down: The Muslim community has registered a moderate 0.8 per cent growth to touch 17.22 crore in the 10-year period between 2001 and 2011, up from 13.8 crore, while the Hindu population showed a decline by 0.7 per cent at 96.63 crore during the period, the census data said.’4

  ‘Census 2011 shows Islam is the fastest growing religion in India: The proportion of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists shrank, while there was negligible change for Christians and Jains, shows data.’5

  ‘Bengal beats India in Muslim growth rate’6

  Muslims as numbers is also used as an explanatory framework to understand the relationship between Islamic faith and population growth. It is argued that Muslims are more religious than other religious communities. This faith (read blind faith!) in pre-modern Islamic scriptures, such as the Quran and Hadith, does not allow them to accept the challenges of modern life. As a result, the argument goes, an inward-looking Islamic culture evolves, which discourages Muslim men from adopting family planning. To get rid of this old Islamist mindset, Muslims are advised to embrace modern education in the true sense of the term so that they can understand the significance of birth control. This stereotypical conclusion is often rejected by the professional demographers on the basis of factual inaccuracy.7 Yet, the belief that the Islamic doctrine is responsible for the Muslim growth rate seems to dominate public imagination.

  The third argument is purely political. A section of intellectuals and political elite associated with Hindu nationalist politics invokes separatist tendencies inherent in the Islamic doctrine to argue that Muslim population growth is an outcome of a planned strategy, a deep-rooted conspiracy to outnumber Hindus. These scholars are described as ‘saffron demographers’—partly because of their visible anti-Muslim attitude and partly due to their adherence to Hindutva politics.8 The Partition is referred to as a historical metaphor in these explanations to draw a simple conclusion: a stringent law to control Muslim population must be implemented. The resolution passed by the RSS in November 2015 illustrates this more sharply:

  The share of population of religions of Bharatiya origin, which was 88 per cent, has come down to 83.8 per cent, while the Muslim population, which was 9.8 per cent, has increased to 14.23 per cent during the period 1951–2011 [. . .] The rate of growth of Muslim population has been higher than the national average in the border districts of border states like Assam, West Bengal and Bihar, clearly indicating the unabated infiltration from Bangladesh.9

  These arguments, nevertheless, are critically evaluated on the basis of facts and statistics. The growth rate of the Muslim population is compared with other factors such as median age, average fertility and infant mortality rate by professional demographers and sociologists to produce a nuanced and informed counter-reading. Abusaleh Shariff’s thoughtful rejoinder is relevant here. Questioning the ‘ready-to-use political conclusion’, Shariff argues:

  Muslim population has increased from 13.4 per cent of the population to 14.2 per cent, which is 0.8 percentage points higher. But the rate of growth is considerably lower than in previous decades. Muslims are expected to grow faster than Hindus for a couple of more decades because they have the youngest median age and relatively high fertility among the major religious groups in India. In 2010, the median age of Indian Muslims was 22, compared with 26 for Hindus and 28 for Christians. Muslim women bear an average 3.1 children per head, compared with 2.7 for Hindus and 2.3 for Christians.10

  This counter-reading has an intellectual political relevance of its own, especially in the present apparent anti-Muslim context. It offers us intellectually sophisticated arguments to reject the claims of Hindutva-inspired saffron demography—a set of pernicious myths about claimed differences between the Hindu and Muslim population, which has somehow become part of our ‘common wisdom’.11 The hollowness of the popular discourse on Muslim population, which is systematically used by the political class for its own vested interests, is also exposed in these writings.

  However, this informed critique of stereotypical imaginations of the Muslim population survives primarily in academic discussions and seminars. It does not affect the popular belief that ‘the Muslim population is a threat’ to the nation. Even the so-called secular political parties do not show any interest in evolving an alternative political position on Muslims as numbers. The question is—why?

  Let us take an example to elaborate this point. Table 1 on the following page gives us an overview of the Hindu and Muslim populations in India since 1881. The table is based on data collected from different official sources. A very broad overview of the table may suggest that the Muslim population has been constantly increasing since the late nineteenth century and that the decadal growth rate of Muslims is always higher than Hindus. On the basis of this set of information, it is quite possible to look at the following probabilities: Muslims have more wives; they produce more children; the Quran permits them to increase populati
on; and, if this trend continues, Muslims are certainly going to outnumber Hindus!

  The social scientists—professional demographers, sociologists and historians—might not like to look at this table in this way. They could argue that the data presented in the table is not self-explanatory and that one should read these aggregate numbers with other variables (such as region, language, gender and literacy level, etc.) in order to grasp the nuanced demographic picture presented in the table. This expert view, no doubt, encourages us to make a distinction between data and the meanings/interpretations of data. However, these kinds of overtly academic responses do not help us in unpacking the ways in which popular beliefs and stereotypes are justified by using ‘scientific facts’.

  This is precisely the reason why we must focus on the historical making of popular imaginations. In my view, therefore, a genealogy of Muslims as numbers in modern India must be traced.

  Table 1: Population of India, 1881–2011