Is asking Muslims to introspect too much?

Ibn Khaldun Bharati in The Print

The Modi Raj has been an undisguised blessing for Indian Muslims. They never experienced the kind of peace and prosperity that they have been enjoying for the past 10 years. Never in the history of independent India a decade has been so free from long, protracted bouts of Hindu-Muslim riots as the one from 2014-24; and never since the 1990s have Muslims remained so untouched by the shadow of suspicion on account of frequent bomb blasts and terrorist attacks. More importantly, never have Muslims evinced such little sign of unrest over non-issues as in these 10 years.

There has been a positive behavioural change in the community. Their focus has shifted from emotional agitation to constructive pursuits, which has begun to reflect in the unprecedented success of their youth in competitive examinations. A sign of their all-round progress is this year’s Civil Services Examination results, which have as many as 51 Muslims in the list of successful candidates. Such a number was unheard of during the Secular Raj.

Though Modi Raj has inspired a behavioural change in the Muslim community, for it to become permanent, it has to be accompanied by a sincere ideological transformation.

Narendra Modi, who always spoke of Muslims as inseparable from the 140 crore Indians, recently, in an interview with Times Now, spoke especially to them, and urged them to do something which no one wants them to — introspect!

He urged them to look into the sense of deprivation that they have been nurturing. The day such introspection is undertaken, the ground will slip from under the feet of the liberal politics of appeasement and the Muslim politics of victimhood.

Aversion to introspection

Introspection is a word that infuriates Muslim ideologues and makes Left-liberals no less indignant. In their opinion, Muslims, as self-proclaimed victims, can only have a litany of grievances against the Hindu community and the Indian state and make the claim — the First Claim — on its resources as compensation. Introspection is another name for self-investigation. A guilty conscience can’t face it. Not surprising why it makes the Muslim opinion makers so uneasy. The entitlements internalised over centuries of Muslim rule have made the Muslim elite incapable of self-enquiry. They are a people of rights, not duties. Therefore, they want the Hindu community and the Indian state to introspect why the Muslims are not happy with them.

One may ask why the idea of introspection so unsettles Muslim ideologues — the ulema, politicians, academics, columnists, journalists and social media influencers. Is it because the inconvenient questions may lay much of blame at their own doorstep? For example, how Islam came to India and what the nature of the Muslim rule was may be an academic question, but to ask whether medieval supremacism has been renounced or continues to flow in the contemporary Islamic discourse is a politically pertinent question. Do they have the character to answer it honestly? The inability to satisfactorily answer it forces them to allege “victim-blaming” — they being the universal victims. There is a deeper reason too. Muslim politics is so intricately imbricated into Islam that questioning it may implicate the religion and bring discredit whose consequences may unravel their worldview. It’s an existential question.

Enemy’s enemy is a friend

Muslims’ aversion to introspection has been as much their fault as of the post-Independence ‘secular’ politics. Independence came with Partition — the triumph of Muslim communalism over secular nationalism. Even as secularism lay defeated, Jawaharlal Nehru sensed a threat to his rule from the large Hindu nationalist faction of the Congress, and the forces represented by Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He needed allies to fight them, and who could be a better ally against Hindu nationalism than the people of the Muslim League, who, having carved out a separate country for themselves, decided to stay back in India as they saw their interests better served here? Nehru needed them and pleaded with them to not leave. They were inducted into the Congress and made legislators and ministers without any re-education into the secular ethos on which he professed to base the new state. What an irony that they were taken into Congress not for their new-found secularism but for their old commitment to Muslim communalism. The perverse import that the Nehruvian template — the communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than the communalism of the minority — imparted to the secular praxis, has been so enduring that 77 years hence, no secular party wants Muslims to secularise. Indian secularism has thrived on Muslim communalism.

If the Muslim society is haunted by dejection for not having the standing that is its due, it’s the responsibility of their thought-leaders to diagnose the malaise and prescribe the recovery. Though the public intellectuals of any society come from its elite section, they inevitably end up critiquing the privileges of their own class, which hinders the progress of the masses. This small band of conscientious individuals keeps the moral compass of the society headed true north.

The Hindu society has been brought back to life by the people whose critique abolished their own privileges. In the social reform movements of the 19th century, it were the ‘upper’ caste men who first agitated against caste and gender discrimination. Later, the Constitution was enacted by the members of the Constituent Assembly, who had come from privileged backgrounds and were elected by a very limited electorate of the elite. However, by enshrining the promise of equality and instituting adult suffrage, they effectively abolished their own class. And, in the aftermath of independence, it were largely the legislators from the landed gentry who passed the zamindari abolition and land ceiling laws. The regeneration of Hindu society owes a lot to the self-annihilation of its elite. The ideal of tyag (sacrifice) had some reflection in collective renunciation too.

Character of Muslim elite

The Indian Muslim elite, aka the Ashraaf, remained tenaciously wedded to their tribal interests, and with animalistic instinct of self-preservation, tried to defend their privileges. They couldn’t reconcile to the loss of centuries-old political power, and as the Hindu society developed and raced past them in education, culture and politics, they formulated the ideology of victimhood. The promise of equal citizenship appeared to them as a diminution of their historical stature, and therefore, ‘weightage’ and ‘special treatment’ became the stock phrases in their political lexicon. They wanted an equivalent of Article 370, or special provision, in every sphere.

And, because they controlled the religious discourse and the political narrative, their sense of loss became universalised as the deprivation of the Muslim masses. In reality, however, the Muslim masses had been steadily prospering alongside other Indians, as the economy grew and democracy deepened. The Muslim melancholia is a poetic trope and narrative tool. It is a false consciousness.

Playing kingmaker

The arrogance of “satta pe hum bithayenge, hum utarenge (We decide who shall rule and who shall not)” is another delusion that Modi has appealed to Muslims to disabuse themselves of. The Hindu society has been in continuous churn for the last 200 years. India’s growth is a direct outcome of the progress toward social justice achieved through caste and gender reforms. Muslim ideologues mistook this churning as implosion, and the reform as derangement. They not only looked with glee at what they misperceived as the disintegration of the Hindu society, but actively interfered with the process by siding with one caste group against another. The only thing worse than divide-and-rule is divide-but-not-rule. While the Muslims strutted around as kingmakers, they were just wageless mercenaries. Being viewed as the ones who, after dividing the country, were now dividing the Hindu society, the Muslims invited the wrath that they could have done without.

And what did they receive from their favoured parties in return for the en bloc voting? Little besides a license to indulge in socially aggressive behaviour that would give them an illusion of political domination. Very often, there would be an open display of brazenly communal, anti-social and even anti-national activities. Riots were the inevitable consequence of this kind of politics. The irony is that when a riot erupted, the vote-bank parties left Muslims to their fate. During the Secular Raj, Hindu-Muslim riots were as regular as seasonal crops.

Not against Muslims

Though he need not, but Modi specified that he is not anti-Muslim or anti-Islam. He is just pro-India, which, besides being 80 per cent Hindu, is 14 per cent Muslim too. If Muslim ideologues see him as anti-Muslim, they would better introspect about the inherent conflict between their idea of the Muslim identity and India. Have they ever wondered why there isn’t a complete overlap between Muslim and Indian as there is between Hindu and Indian? Why the phrase ‘Indian Muslim’ doesn’t sound as ludicrous as Indian Hindu? Why do they have to resort to arcane theories of multiple identities and avoid answering their own question about the hierarchy of identities, whether one is first an Indian or a Muslim? They have to resolve the self-created dichotomy of belief and belonging. The Modi era is the best time for this, for he is not into a transactional relationship with them. He serves them equally irrespective of whether they vote for him or not.

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Pasmanda - Muslims that 'minority politics' left behind

KHALID ANIS ANSARI

   

 

The pasmanda’s quest for empowerment will help democratise Indian Islam and deepen democracy in the country

‘Pasmanda’, a Persian term meaning “those who have fallen behind,” refers to Muslims belonging to the shudra (backward) and ati-shudra (Dalit) castes. It was adopted as an oppositional identity to that of the dominant ashraf Muslims (forward castes) in 1998 by the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a group which mainly worked in Bihar. Since then, however, the pasmanda discourse has found resonance elsewhere too.

The dominant perception is that Islam is an egalitarian religion and that Indian Muslims on the whole, especially in the post-Sachar scenario, are a marginalised community. The pasmanda counter-discourse takes issue with both these formulations. In terms of religious interpretation, Masood Falahi’s work Hindustan mein Zaat Paat aur Musalman (2006) has convincingly demonstrated how the notion of kufu (rules about possible marriage relations between groups) was read through the lens of caste by the ‘manuwadi’ ulema and how a parallel system of “graded inequality” was put into place in Indian Islam.

Caste-based disenfranchisement

As far as the social sphere is concerned, Ali Anwar’s Masawat ki Jung(2000) has documented caste-based disenfranchisement of Dalit and backward caste Muslims at the hands of self-styled ashraf leaders in community organisations like madrasas and personal law boards, representative institutions (Parliament and State Assemblies) and departments, ministries and institutions that claim to work for Muslims (minority affairs, Waqf boards, Urdu academies, AMU, Jamia Millia Islamia, etc). The book also underlines stories of humiliation, disrespect and violence on caste grounds that various pasmanda communities have to undergo on a daily basis, at least in northern parts of India.

Thus, pasmanda commentators contest the two key elements of mainstream ‘Muslim’ or ‘minority’ discourse —Islam as an egalitarian religion and Indian Muslims on the whole as an oppressed community. Islam may be normatively egalitarian but actual-existing Islam in Indian conditions is deeply hierarchical. Similarly, all Muslims are not oppressed, or not to the same degree, at any rate: Muslims are a differentiated community in terms of power, with dominant (ashraf) and subordinated (pasmanda) sections. Consequently, the so-called ‘minority politics’, which has been quite content in raising symbolic and emotional issues so far, is really the politics of dominant caste Muslims that secures their interests at the expense of pasmanda Muslims. Not surprisingly, a recurrent theme in pasmanda narratives is that minority politics has singularly failed to address the bread-and-butter concerns of the pasmanda Muslims, who constitute about 85 per cent of the Indian Muslim population and come primarily from occupational and service biradaris.

The notion of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ communities in India — read primarily in terms of religious identity — is of modern origin and linked with the emergence and consolidation of a hegemonic secular nation-state project. In this sense, while ‘secular’ nationalism becomes the locus of legitimate power and violence, Hindu and Islamic nationalisms become the sites of illegitimate power. The seemingly epic battles that are constantly fought within this conceptual framework — around communal riots or ‘Hindu’/‘Islamic’ terror more recently in the post-9/11 world — have been instrumental in denying a voice to subordinated caste communities across religions and in securing the interests of ‘secular,’ Hindu or Muslim elites respectively. In this sense, the pasmanda articulation has highlighted the symbiotic nature of majoritarian and minoritarian fundamentalism and has sought to contest the latter from within in order to wage a decisive battle against the former. As Waqar Hawari, a pasmanda activist, says: “While Muslim politicians like Imam Bukhari and Syed Shahabuddin add thejodan [starter yoghurt], it is left to the Hindu fundamentalists to prepare the yoghurt of communalism. Both of them are responsible. We oppose the politics of both Hindu and Muslim fanaticism.”

Faith and ethnicity

The structures of social solidarity that pasmanda activists work with are deeply influenced by the entangled relation between faith and ethnicity. The domains of Hinduism and Islam are quite complex, with multiple resources and potentialities possible: in various ways they exceed the ‘Brahminism’ and ‘Ashrafism’ that have come to over-determine them over time. On the one hand, the pasmanda Muslims share a widespread feeling of ‘Muslimness’ with the upper-caste Muslims, a solidarity which is often parochialised by internal caste and maslak-based (sectarian) contradictions. On the other hand, pasmanda Muslims share an experience of caste-based humiliation and disrespect with subordinated caste Hindus, a solidarity which is equally interrupted by the discourse around religious difference incessantly reproduced by upper caste institutions. Since the express object of the pasmanda movement has been to raise the issue of caste-based exclusion of subordinate caste Muslims, it has stressed on caste-based solidarity across religions. As Ali Anwar, the founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, says: “There is a bond of pain between pasmanda Muslims and the pasmanda sections of other religions. This bond of pain is the supreme bond … That is why we have to shake hands with the pasmanda sections of other religions.”

This counter-hegemonic solidarity on caste lines is effectively encapsulated in the pasmanda slogan ‘Dalit-Pichda ek saman, Hindu ho ya Musalman’ (All Dalit-backward castes are alike, whether they be Hindu or Muslim). At the same time, birth-based caste distinctions are sought to be transcended from the vantage point of an egalitarian faith: “We are not setting the Dalit/Backward Caste Muslims against the so-called ashraf Muslims. Our movement is not directed against them. Rather, we seek to strengthen and empower our own people, to enable them to speak for themselves and to secure their rights and justice … We welcome well-meaning people of the so-called ashraf background … who are concerned about the plight of our people to join us in our struggle.” It is in the midst of such complex negotiations, the punctuated nature of faith and caste-based solidarities, that the pasmanda emerges as a political factor.

Overall, pasmanda politics has relied on transformative constitutionalism and democratic symbolism to attain its social justice goals — the deepening of existing affirmative action policies, adequate representation of pasmanda Muslims in political parties, state support for cottage and small-scale industries, democratisation of religious institutions and interpretative traditions, etc. Obviously, it confronts all the challenges that any counter-hegemonic identity movement faces in its formative phases: lack of resources and appropriate institutions, cooption of its leaders by state and other dominant ideological apparatuses, lack of relevant movement literature, internal power conflicts, and so on. Also, as Rammanohar Lohia said: “The policy of uplift of downgraded castes and groups is capable of yielding much poison. A first poison may come out of its immediate effects on men’s minds; it may speedily antagonise the Dvija without as speedily influencing the Sudras. With his undoubted alertness to developments and his capacity to mislead, the Dvija may succeed in heaping direct and indirect discredit on the practitioners of this policy long before the Sudra wakes up to it.” These are the challenges that the pasmanda activists face while confronting the ashrafiya-dominated minority politics. However, their struggle for a post-minority politics is on and one hopes it will democratise Indian Islam in the long run by triggering a process of internal reform. The pasmanda critique of the majority-minority or the secular-communal dyad will also contribute to a democratic deepening that will benefit all of India’s subaltern communities in the long run.

Muslims that 'minority politics' left behind

KHALID ANIS ANSARI

  

 

The pasmanda’s quest for empowerment will help democratise Indian Islam and deepen democracy in the country

‘Pasmanda’, a Persian term meaning “those who have fallen behind,” refers to Muslims belonging to the shudra (backward) and ati-shudra (Dalit) castes. It was adopted as an oppositional identity to that of the dominant ashraf Muslims (forward castes) in 1998 by the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a group which mainly worked in Bihar. Since then, however, the pasmanda discourse has found resonance elsewhere too.

The dominant perception is that Islam is an egalitarian religion and that Indian Muslims on the whole, especially in the post-Sachar scenario, are a marginalised community. The pasmanda counter-discourse takes issue with both these formulations. In terms of religious interpretation, Masood Falahi’s work Hindustan mein Zaat Paat aur Musalman (2006) has convincingly demonstrated how the notion of kufu (rules about possible marriage relations between groups) was read through the lens of caste by the ‘manuwadi’ ulema and how a parallel system of “graded inequality” was put into place in Indian Islam.

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Caste-based disenfranchisement

As far as the social sphere is concerned, Ali Anwar’s Masawat ki Jung (2000) has documented caste-based disenfranchisement of Dalit and backward caste Muslims at the hands of self-styled ashraf leaders in community organisations like madrasas and personal law boards, representative institutions (Parliament and State Assemblies) and departments, ministries and institutions that claim to work for Muslims (minority affairs, Waqf boards, Urdu academies, AMU, Jamia Millia Islamia, etc). The book also underlines stories of humiliation, disrespect and violence on caste grounds that various pasmanda communities have to undergo on a daily basis, at least in northern parts of India.

Thus, pasmanda commentators contest the two key elements of mainstream ‘Muslim’ or ‘minority’ discourse —Islam as an egalitarian religion and Indian Muslims on the whole as an oppressed community. Islam may be normatively egalitarian but actual-existing Islam in Indian conditions is deeply hierarchical. Similarly, all Muslims are not oppressed, or not to the same degree, at any rate: Muslims are a differentiated community in terms of power, with dominant (ashraf) and subordinated (pasmanda) sections. Consequently, the so-called ‘minority politics’, which has been quite content in raising symbolic and emotional issues so far, is really the politics of dominant caste Muslims that secures their interests at the expense of pasmanda Muslims. Not surprisingly, a recurrent theme in pasmanda narratives is that minority politics has singularly failed to address the bread-and-butter concerns of the pasmanda Muslims, who constitute about 85 per cent of the Indian Muslim population and come primarily from occupational and service biradaris.

The notion of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ communities in India — read primarily in terms of religious identity — is of modern origin and linked with the emergence and consolidation of a hegemonic secular nation-state project. In this sense, while ‘secular’ nationalism becomes the locus of legitimate power and violence, Hindu and Islamic nationalisms become the sites of illegitimate power. The seemingly epic battles that are constantly fought within this conceptual framework — around communal riots or ‘Hindu’/‘Islamic’ terror more recently in the post-9/11 world — have been instrumental in denying a voice to subordinated caste communities across religions and in securing the interests of ‘secular,’ Hindu or Muslim elites respectively. In this sense, the pasmanda articulation has highlighted the symbiotic nature of majoritarian and minoritarian fundamentalism and has sought to contest the latter from within in order to wage a decisive battle against the former. As Waqar Hawari, a pasmanda activist, says: “While Muslim politicians like Imam Bukhari and Syed Shahabuddin add the jodan [starter yoghurt], it is left to the Hindu fundamentalists to prepare the yoghurt of communalism. Both of them are responsible. We oppose the politics of both Hindu and Muslim fanaticism.”

Faith and ethnicity

The structures of social solidarity that pasmanda activists work with are deeply influenced by the entangled relation between faith and ethnicity. The domains of Hinduism and Islam are quite complex, with multiple resources and potentialities possible: in various ways they exceed the ‘Brahminism’ and ‘Ashrafism’ that have come to over-determine them over time. On the one hand, the pasmanda Muslims share a widespread feeling of ‘Muslimness’ with the upper-caste Muslims, a solidarity which is often parochialised by internal caste and maslak-based (sectarian) contradictions. On the other hand, pasmanda Muslims share an experience of caste-based humiliation and disrespect with subordinated caste Hindus, a solidarity which is equally interrupted by the discourse around religious difference incessantly reproduced by upper caste institutions. Since the express object of the pasmanda movement has been to raise the issue of caste-based exclusion of subordinate caste Muslims, it has stressed on caste-based solidarity across religions. As Ali Anwar, the founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, says: “There is a bond of pain between pasmanda Muslims and the pasmanda sections of other religions. This bond of pain is the supreme bond … That is why we have to shake hands with the pasmanda sections of other religions.”

This counter-hegemonic solidarity on caste lines is effectively encapsulated in the pasmanda slogan ‘Dalit-Pichda ek saman, Hindu ho ya Musalman’ (All Dalit-backward castes are alike, whether they be Hindu or Muslim). At the same time, birth-based caste distinctions are sought to be transcended from the vantage point of an egalitarian faith: “We are not setting the Dalit/Backward Caste Muslims against the so-called ashraf Muslims. Our movement is not directed against them. Rather, we seek to strengthen and empower our own people, to enable them to speak for themselves and to secure their rights and justice … We welcome well-meaning people of the so-called ashraf background … who are concerned about the plight of our people to join us in our struggle.” It is in the midst of such complex negotiations, the punctuated nature of faith and caste-based solidarities, that the pasmanda emerges as a political factor.

Overall, pasmanda politics has relied on transformative constitutionalism and democratic symbolism to attain its social justice goals — the deepening of existing affirmative action policies, adequate representation of pasmanda Muslims in political parties, state support for cottage and small-scale industries, democratisation of religious institutions and interpretative traditions, etc. Obviously, it confronts all the challenges that any counter-hegemonic identity movement faces in its formative phases: lack of resources and appropriate institutions, cooption of its leaders by state and other dominant ideological apparatuses, lack of relevant movement literature, internal power conflicts, and so on. Also, as Rammanohar Lohia said: “The policy of uplift of downgraded castes and groups is capable of yielding much poison. A first poison may come out of its immediate effects on men’s minds; it may speedily antagonise the Dvija without as speedily influencing the Sudras. With his undoubted alertness to developments and his capacity to mislead, the Dvija may succeed in heaping direct and indirect discredit on the practitioners of this policy long before the Sudra wakes up to it.” These are the challenges that the pasmanda activists face while confronting the ashrafiya-dominated minority politics. However, their struggle for a post-minority politics is on and one hopes it will democratise Indian Islam in the long run by triggering a process of internal reform. The pasmanda critique of the majority-minority or the secular-communal dyad will also contribute to a democratic deepening that will benefit all of India’s subaltern communities in the long run.

(Khalid Anis Ansari is a PhD candidate at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands. He also works with The Patna Collective, New Delhi, and engages with the pasmanda movement as an interlocutor and knowledge-activist. Email: khalidanisansari@gmail.com)