Since then, a debate has emerged in the public domain. Our self-styled “left liberal” intelligentsia, otherwise loud in denouncing Hindu majoritarianism, suddenly turned mute when confronted with Muslim right-wing pressure. If a program had been canceled under Hindu Right pressure, the outcry would have been deafening. Op-eds, reportage, and fiery essays warning of fascism’s arrival would have saturated every public platform. But when Muslim clerics strong-arm a cultural body into silencing a poet, silence reigns. Many intellectuals believe that calling out Muslim bigotry amounts to Islamophobia and would endanger an already threatened community. This view is simplistic and cowardly. If the true enemy is oppression, it must be opposed wherever it arises, across communities and within them. What the oppressed deserve is critical solidarity, a support that is constructive, accompanied by food for thought.

The Jamiat’s letter to the Academy, dated August 25, begins with praise but quickly hardens. It “forcefully” appeals that Akhtar not be invited, demanding a “man of integrity” take his place, “of any religion, but not a blasphemer of God.” It threatens “democratic means” if ignored, invoking the precedent of Taslima Nasreen who was hounded out of Kolkata. It expresses confidence the Academy will comply, which it did. The letter denounces Akhtar as a “blasphemer,” unfit for a literary stage.

What is striking is not just the intolerance of the demand, but the attempt to normalize religious authority in public life, where writers and poets must either submit to clerical approval or face ostracism. Mufti Shamail Nadvi, a leading voice of the protest, said he was “shocked” Akhtar was invited. But what is shocking about inviting Javed Akhtar to preside over a mushaira? He is first and foremost a poet, heir to four generations of Urdu literary contribution, the author of lyrics that define the golden era of Hindi cinema, and an uncontested literary figure. Nadvi’s “shock” reveals not moral concern but clerical disdain for a man who openly opposes them. Whom did he want instead? Someone with no claim to poetry but unquestioned theological orthodoxy?

Nadvi later claimed he did not demand cancellation, only that “true Muslims” boycott the event. But a boycott called by clerics is never benign. It lays the groundwork for ostracism and, in volatile contexts, mob violence. Imagine if a Hindu leader called for boycotting an event because the guest was Muslim. It would spark outrage. Yet when Muslim clerics do the same, many Muslims and their media representatives applaud it as a victory. This sets a dangerous precedent: must every intellectual first pass a theological litmus test before entering the muslim public sphere( public space where muslims form a sizable chunk ) ?

Nadvi also proposed a debate with Akhtar on the existence of God, accusing him of defaming religion and promoting atheism. But here the clerics stumble on their own contradictions. The Qur’an itself instructs believers not to insult others’ gods precisely because early Muslims did so and provoked offense. Offense is woven into Islam’s very beginnings. Why then is offense suddenly intolerable when directed at Islam? Will Muslims extend the same courtesy of not offending others’ beliefs? Within Islam itself, sects routinely accuse one another of blasphemy. In Pakistan, Nadvi’s counterparts have hurled the same charge at Engineer Mirza, a fellow Muslim preacher. Even Mufti Tariq Masood, from Nadvi’s own sect, has faced accusations of blasphemy. To brand someone a blasphemer is a political weapon, a tool to reclaim fading authority rather than a defense of truth.

If religion trembles before a single poet, then it is the clerics who insult the faith, not Akhtar. Nadvi insists Akhtar is famous for mocking Islam, when in fact his reputation rests on films, lyrics, and poetry. His atheistic remarks, when they appear, are marginal and occasional. Reducing his legacy to blasphemy is either ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation to score points. Worse, Nadvi’s rhetoric paints a target on Akhtar’s back. By invoking the precedent of Taslima Nasreen and repeating that Akhtar’s presence is an insult, he encourages hostility in an environment where blasphemy accusations can easily invite death  . Calling for a “debate” in such circumstances is a provocation for hardliners to do the job.

Akhtar was invited to preside over a mushaira, not to preach atheism. To object to his private unbelief is irrelevant. Does Nadvi mean to say a godless person has nothing valuable to contribute to literature, culture, or cinema? By that logic Muslims should shun modern intellectual life, where atheism and agnosticism are common, and confine themselves to insular ghettos of their own making. Such isolationism is disastrous. It strangles Muslims’ cultural life and reduces them to a community fearful of thought itself.

For so many years, he has attended thousands of mushairas and public programmes and no Muslim was ever offended by his supposed blasphemy. But suddenly when Nadwi comes out and declares that we should be offended and are offended everyone seems to fall in line. This politics of being offended must stop somewhere.

Meanwhile, Nadvi’s own 26-minute press conference did not cite a single Qur’anic verse or Hadith. It was a pure rant, a bid for relevance. His YouTube channel, once stagnant with 26,000 subscribers, surged to 32,000 after this controversy, with his video on Akhtar becoming the most viewed. The episode is less about defending faith and more about clerics chasing attention.

The Prophet of Islam urged believers to “seek knowledge even if it takes you to China,” meaning even from non-believers. Clerics like Nadvi are unable to come out of their archaic mindset of being offended. They demand isolation, echoing the Hindu Right’s charge that Muslims cannot coexist with others.

The cancellation of Javed Akhtar’s invitation may seem small, but it reflects a deeper malaise: the religionization of Muslim identity, where culture, literature, and art must bow to clerical approval. If unchecked, this mindset will strangle public life, silence intellectuals, and confine Muslims to an ever-shrinking ghetto of thought. The tragedy is not Akhtar’s disinvitation but that in 2025, clerics still dictate what ordinary Muslims are allowed to do, and ordinary Muslims can still be mobilized at the clerics’ whim.

(Osama Rawal is a political science graduate from Elphinstone College, Mumbai. He writes on identity, justice, and global affairs. Passionate about reading, travel, and critical thought. He tweets under @OsamaARRawal)

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Talha Mannan (TM), a PhD student in the MANUU (Hyderabad) and the National Secretary of the Students Islamic Organization (SIO, established in 1982; an affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind-JIH, established in 1941 by Abul Ala Maududi) has come out with a critique in his piece published by a “Muslim” portal, maktoobmedia, dated August 26, 2025, “How (not) to talk about Aligarh Muslim University”. This was a week after the “second stage” of the hunger strike protest (hunger strike till death) was finally withdrawn in the pre-dawn moments of August 19, 2025.  The “first” was claimed to have been clinched by some girl students a few days earlier than August 19, 2025. Whereas the “third” stage came to an end with another glass of fruit juice offered by some girls (dukhtaraan-e-millat), subsequent to August 19, 2025.

While expressing his discomfiture with Yanis Iqbal’s and with Bhavuk Sharma’s pieces, (besides some of the write-ups of Prof Mohammad Sajjad), Talha Mannan (TM) has made what is termed as Strawman’s arguments. TM is manufacturing contentions out of nowhere and attributing these to the three authors.

For instance TM seems to suggest that a Leftist slogan, lal salam and laal-laal lehrayega) is equivalent to his Islamist slogan “Islam Ki Dawat”. First of all, no such Leftist slogan was raised in the AMU student protests of August 2025. Thus, he creates an illusion for himself that he has triumphantly refuted the arguments of the authors he purports to rebut. Also, how did he arrive at a conclusion that Bhavuk (and his PhD supervisor) are Marxists/Leftists, is also quite unclear? Of course, Yanis Iqbal does claim to be a Marxist, in his Facebook profile. TM’s motives become evident when he criticises the authors on account of failing to oppose the UP government’s ban on Namaz on roads.

As far as I have been able to follow from their publicly iterated positions, around the August 2025 protests of AMU students, they have raised the issue that JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have not raised — their explicit and candid objection to the UP government’s pre-existing order (March 2025) banning roadside namaz. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have maintained a silence on the said government order and he chose to take on the AMU Proctor who was trying to ensure that the UP government’s specific order doesn’t get violated. Such a shift of the student protest from being against the Proctor to making it against the Yogi government’s police, gave a pretext to the Yogi-led government’s police to launch a crackdown against the students who had already undergone the stun-grenade horror on December 15, 2019. [The immediate prelude of this horror itself awaits an expose]. That is how JSTM itself got the AMU students’ protest menacingly policed. Rather than accepting his own fault he is shifting the blames on the said three authors. This is sheer mischief.

Let it be noted that the AMU students began their protests on or before August 4, 2025, against the procedurally flawed fee-hike. Talha Mannan (TM) jumped into it five days later, on Friday August 8, 2025. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) remained silent on all the days of protests, preceding Friday August 8, 2025. Till August 8, no written statement, press communiqué of the JSTM has been found on the issue of fee-hike. Let it also be noted that in September 2024, the MANUU administration cancelled the students’ union elections scheduled for September 23, 2024. Talha Mannan (TM), contesting the MANUU Students’ Union elections, didn’t intensify his agitation there in Hyderabad, the way he suddenly jumped into the AMU protest on August 8, 2025 to make more vociferous demands for the right to roadside namaz and less for every other issue such as the procedurally flawed fee-hike and demand that elections for the AMU Students’ Union (AMUSU) be held. The JSTM was nowhere to be seen when the AMU girl students were protesting against power-cuts and the agitated girl students were maltreated by Proctorial professors in April 2025

Is it a case then that the JIH rarely exposes the ills within “Muslim managed or Muslim dominated” institutions, unless there is an intra-Muslim, sectarian disputes (for instance, a few months ago, there was a social and Urdu media outrage by JIH against the Darul Uloom, Deoband)? If the answer is in the affirmative, then this pathology that affects Muslim politics needs a deeper scrutiny. AMU has got many systemic flaws, such as a problematic localism, inbreeding (not only in enrolments, recruitments but also in the composition of the Executive Council (EC), in empanelling VCs and in recruiting higher officers and teacher-administrators, highly damaging the quality of academia. The long continuation of a handful of academically laggard teachers within AMU governance (who also extract lots of illegal benefits), and highly disproportionate preponderance of western UP + Azamgarh, financial and other corruption and irregularities, occupation of hostels by non-bonafide ex-students and hoodlums, massive corruption in contracts for supplies and civil constructions, patronage of AMU administration to certain dubious persons doubling as suppliers-contractors, and (also) a massive inflow of AMU teachers into majoritarian saffron outfits to curry favours (such as appointments to VCs!!). Why must posts of ad hoc Controller, ad hoc Finance Officer, ad hoc Registrar, too many Directors & OSDs must continue endlessly? Why must only a particular OSD get driver and security?

These serious, festering issues that plague AMU have, so far not  found any comprehensive expose’ from ‘Muslim bodies’ and their ‘leaderships.’

Besides Talha Mannan (TM)’s duplicity and cunningness, he is also self-contradicting himself and appears confused. At one place he calls Bhavuk’s position (“Why Protests at AMU take a Rightward Shift?”, LinkedIn, August 14, 2025) as being governed by his “Hindu, upper-caste” upbringing, while on the other he speculates Bhavuk’s write-up to be doing with his flawed “Left-Liberal” framework.

Historically speaking, within AMU, students’ protests often acquire a strand of demonizing the Left (the surkha) and then mobilizing [Muslim] students by raising the bogey of “Islam in Danger”..

TM has tried to misrepresent Bhavuk’s position as if he wrote against Namaz per se, which is absolutely false. I haven’t come across any of his writing stating that. The only point, if I haven’t missed something, Bhavuk was trying to make was the refusal to engage with and oppose the UP government’s order (March 2025) banning Namaz by the SIO or the protesters. According to Bhavuk, what Talha instead chose to do was holding the Proctor responsible for not letting Namaz be performed at the protest site as if the Proctor, and not the UP government, that had imposed the ban. [The JSTM seems to be unaware of the fact that the University Road of AMU from the Bab-e Syed to the Centenary Gate isn’t owned by the AMU; it is only used by the AMU; its ownership lies with the Aligarh Nagar Nigam].

What Bahvuk insisted on was that the JSTM has almost side-tracked the central issue of fee-hike which concerns all religious communities and atheists of AMU, and has (TM included) turned it into a Muslim identitarian issue. The AMU alumni too jumped into it only after August 8, insisting to speak only on the namaz issue (an audio conversation between an ex-student leader, Amir Mintoe and the Proctor, Prof. Wasim Ali had been circulated).  Such a twist and turn given by the JSTM weakened overall student solidarity. Also, the battle against the AMU administration was turned into battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Tactically this was a dangerous shift. The student protesters (vulnerable in the face of the BJP’s Neo-Hindutva regime) were made to confront the state and BJP, and less the AMU administration. This was exactly what was needed to weaken student’s mobilization and protest, while strengthening the AMU administration. This was also how and when (August 8, 2025) the JSTM gave a cause to the police to meddle into the affairs of AMU, the protests. Who then is responsible for involving the police in student protests? It is Talha Mannan, the JSTM; not the three writers Talha is trying to shift blame on.

The JSTM collusion with the functionaries of the Muslim managed institutions and JSTM’s prejudices in favour of privileged elite-powerful segments of Muslims (in this case, the AMU administrators) have become sharp and evident during and after the protest of August 2025.

TM does not talk about the timing of the Students’ Union elections previously agreed on in December 2025, after the semester examinations. JSTM has no questions on the refusal of the AMU administration to convene the Students’Union elections in August-September 2025.

It is quite well known that in December 2025, after the end-semester exams, most of the distant provinces’ hostellers leave for their respective homes in Bihar, Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Kashmir. Those left are the ones living closer to Aligarh i.e. the western UP students. Would not this leave the field open for the western UP lobby (aligning with the Azamgarh lobby) to gain control of the Students’ Union? AMU has already been quite infamous for its regionalism and factional politics and this chaotic-chauvinistic power play and such non participative elections will heighten this trend.

Faultline with the JIH’s Worldview 

Why is it that the tone and tenor of the speech by TM makes us believe that Muslim majority campuses are being conceived and portrayed as Muslim exclusive spaces where the Hindu minority is not to be taken along? Constitutionalism’s selective use and the disdainful attitude of the JIH and RSS towards the Constitution is no secret. That the JIH had allied with the saffron forces in 1975 is too well known a fact to be repeated here especially after the publication of Anderson’s and Jaffrelot’s works on the Emergency. Pan-Islamism finds endorsement from TM in the politics of Muslim victimhood where Islamic solidarity is concealed. The Indian saga of the Islamisation of Knowledge (IOK) project is not a problem for the left, liberal or Hindu Right Wing government. Chosen Muslims associated with it do not face problems in any of these regimes in fact all such characters find reward with some position of power. While Saffronisation is critiqued, Islamisation is spared. This double standard is not going to help in the fight against Hindutva. In fact such an attitude has helped in Hindutva attaining power.

Tragically, Muslim reactionary are even today strong enough to send a clear message to the non-Muslim students of AMU that even in today’s era of Hindutva hegemony, writing against the all-powerful Indian Home Minister is easy but a Hindu minority of AMU cannot write against the Muslim Right Wing. All AMU insiders know too well that the JIH wields a significant influence within the structures of AMU. It was these fundamentalist forces which ensured that Prof. Irfan Habib wasput under suspension in 1981. When Abrar Kashif came to a Mushaira in Kennedy auditorium last year (2024), the applause of the students on his “Pan-Islamic” nazm exhorting Mujahids (soldiers) from Afghanistan and Khurasan, had put the University to shame, drawing widespread criticisms on the social-media. Why it is so was easily forgotten that, Pan-Islamism had created a Hindu consolidation post-Khilafat Movement, which eventually became one of the factors in the Partition of India? Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) had worked in collaboration with the Khilafat Movement. But soon after, he realised the dangers of Pan-Islamism and turned into a critic of anyone invoking this phenomenon. Among the Muslim intellectuals, only Intezar Hussain has had the moral courage to admit this in his biography of Hakim Ajmal Khan, Ajmal-e Azam (1999).

The JIH’s stated aim is creation of a theocratic state and for achieving this purpose they need to enhance the numbers of the Muslim population even by conversion (Dawat). JIH’s love for Muslim majoritarianism is no secret. Hence, their slogan, Islam ki Dawat, provides justification for the Hindutva project of Shudhi, Ghar Waapsi. Just see the resemblance between JIH’s Hukumat e Ilahi (Divine Governance) and Non Biological, Parmatma appointed PM!

No wonder then that the saffron outfits insisted for performing “Hanuman Chalisa” inside the AMU campus, a t funded residential university of the Indian state. It was after the call for “Islam ki Dawat” came from JSTM on August 8, 2025, that the call for Hanuman Chalisa inside AMU was echoed by saffron outfits as a “package deal”. The announcement was made by Hindu Raksha Dal’s state convener, Gaurav Sisodia, who was later placed under house arrest in Ghaziabad to prevent him from reaching Aligarh (The New Indian Express)!

This guilt is confessed by the JSTM kind of forces with the fact that the officially uploaded video-clip of TM’s speech (of August 8, 2025 at the Bab-e-Syed of AMU) has edited out the TM’s slogan of “Islam ki Dawat”.

It also needs to be stated that the AMU has a few dozen mosques (pesh-Imams, paryer leaders paid salaries by the University Grants Commission-UGC!), and not a single temple! This, by the way is an issue with Hindus students, even beyond those inclined towards majoritarian Hindutva. This policy is even at variance with the Holy Quran itself since the Quran says La IkraHa Fil Deen meaning there is no compulsion in the matter of religion (it appears in Surah-al Baqrah verse 256 also) and Lakum Deenukum Waliya Deen meaning for you is your religion and for me is mine. JSTM’s Dawat is in sharp contradiction with this verse of Quran. JIH’s Dawat would/should be seen as ominous by Liberal-Left and a tool for the Neo-Hindutva state power to repress the Muslims and reinforcing the stereotype of Muslims as radicalised bigots!

Thus the JSTM in this agitation stands as a culprit of putting India’s Muslims in great danger of repressive Hindutva state.

Sir Syed was against Pan-Islamism and he was a rational interpreter of the Quran. Maududi in his book Tanqeehat, attacks Sir Syed for borrowing “western thought” and inculcating western values into them. It is an irony that the very students benefiting from the fruits of Sir Syed’s enterprise are in solidarity and sometimes even having intimate collusion with such organisations opposed to Sir Syed’s vision. JIH’s duplicitous politics of Muslim majoritarianism in Islamic countries and minoritarianism in India stands thoroughly exposed, by now. Talha cannot play both ways. TM’s play of Victimhood Syndrome, while ground realities of victimisation of disenfranchised and poor Muslims are addressed more by the Liberal-Left. Not so unreasonably, a distinguished Aligarhian, K M Ashraf (1903-1962) clubbed JIH with CIA in his slim book (in Urdu) on Hindustani Muslim Siasat.

These Muslim communal organisations who play the victimhood card, reflect a form of minoritarianism while, on the other hand, rubbishing all secular-democratic forces. They attack Hindu majoritarianism in the rest of India while promoting Muslim majoritarianism within a Muslim majority campus. AMU cannot be expected to exist as a Vatican. Only Liberal-Secular Constitutionalism can guarantee minority rights. Islamist Minority Right Wing (and Pan Islamic politics) can only enable Hindutva.

Muslim reactionary forces such as JSTM must realise that it is not they who provide Rs 1200 crores to a modern university called Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). This fund comes from the Indian state because of its Liberal-Secular Constitution, which JSTM disdains. The bid, even now made, of minority communalists of converting Hindus to Islam in order to establish a Hukumat-e-Ilahiya, is a dangerous game. It needs to be unequivocally shunned. We have seen enough destructions of humans and values by the Salafi regime in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

(The author is a former student who has requested anonymity, he graduated in Sunni Theology from the AMU after studying at the Nadwat-ul-Ulema-Editors)

Related:

The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan

Reluctant Democrats

Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947

The post Is AMU, a Vatican of India’s reactionary Muslim elite? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It has now been more than five years. She has not been convicted of any crime. And yet, her incarceration endures – not as a sentence handed down by a court, but as an unending wait, sustained by a trial that never arrives.

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Gulfisha Fatima has now been imprisoned for over 1,900 days.

This year, on the fifth anniversary of her incarceration, a solidarity week was organised for her. Artists created posters. Writers wrote essays. We shared her story again, in public and private spaces, hoping that her name does not disappear under the weight of silence.

I mailed her a letter with the printed posters created in solidarity with her by a few artists – drawings that said ‘Free Gulfisha’. Not as a campaign or a legal demand, but a gesture of care. The kind of solidarity that says: you are not forgotten, and they haven’t succeeded in making us forget.

But the prison did not deliver the letter. The posters, it seems, were “unacceptable.” Too political, or perhaps too hopeful.

What is the state afraid of? Posters, apparently.

Between censorship and care

This wasn’t the first time something in my letters had been censored. I remember the first one I received from Gul – whole phrases had been erased with a white marker. I couldn’t make sense of what she was trying to say, or who she was referring to. Later, a friend explained that whenever the jail authorities find something objectionable, they simply blot it out with correction fluid.

What were the words being erased with whitener? Underneath those erased spaces were stories from Gul’s PadhoPadhao program – narratives about how, despite describing herself as impatient, she had become the teacher her mother always said she would be. These were letters tracing how incarceration had begun to reshape her: how she was being pushed into roles she had never imagined or wanted for herself – teaching, learning to make jewellery, sitting still for hours, enduring solitary confinement for days on end.

After that, every letter I wrote became an exercise in evading censorship. I tried to fill the pages with stories and sentences that wouldn’t be silenced. I told her about my vegetable patch, my cat, my father and my city. Each letter began to feel like those school assignments: Write a letter to your friend describing your day.

Except here, the state was assigning the prompt.

How do you write about what matters, without inviting erasure?

So I asked her questions instead, like where would you like to go on a holiday once you are out? Have you seen a beach?

She wrote back to say she’d never seen a beach. That she couldn’t imagine what it felt like to think of a ‘vacation’ much less stand at the edge of the sea, feet buried in the sand.

I started searching for photos that might convey the quiet joy of that moment – that stillness, that release. I thought of the beach photos by my friend Varun, a Chennai-based photographer who describes his work as an exploration of spaces – streets, beaches, rooftops etc. His work doesn’t draw attention to itself, and yet it stays with you – the quiet texture of everyday life, without turning people’s lives into a spectacle.

It reminded me of something Annie Ernaux gestures toward in her writing – that the everyday is never neutral (Jacobin, 2022). That to record it is not indulgent, but defiant. A way of refusing the erasure that time, power or distraction so often imposes. To linger on the mundane is also to affirm that it mattered.

And perhaps that’s why I thought of those photographs, of Gul’s life in prison, and of Annie Ernaux – because all three are preoccupied, in their own ways, with the dignity and weight of the ordinary.

I requested a copy of the photos and sent it to her; and they got delivered. After the posters didn’t make it through the jail bars, I was curious (and grateful) how the previous photos had made the cut. I realised that Varun’s photo, in its quiet ordinariness, slipped past the censors likely because it did not look political. The state missed how tenderness, too, can be a radical refusal to forget or abandon. It helped Gul escape from her immediate surroundings for a minute.

She loved the photos and wrote back saying: “I crave normal moments like these. To me, even ‘normal’ now feels like a gift.”

And in the midst of all this, somehow, our friendship grew.

We don’t come from the same city. We weren’t born into the same caste, religion or class. We didn’t go to the same universities or share any obvious markers of a shared world. We are not the same. One of us is in prison. The other is writing this from outside. And yet, in a time when it is often claimed that people from different backgrounds cannot truly understand each other, our friendship has become something rare and deeply cherished.

I remember a time, about a year and a half ago, when I was going through a rough patch. My letters to her grew infrequent, scattered, weighed down by everything I couldn’t bring myself to say. In response, Gul wrote back – gently, with concern. “Are you okay? she asked. It’s unlike you to be so quiet.”

Tucked inside her letter was a small keychain she had bought for me with her prison wages. It was her way of reaching across the bars, of being there for me in the only way she could. That letter marked a quiet turning – an unexpected tenderness. Despite everything she was enduring, it was Gul who took on the larger share of care.

And no matter how many words are blotted out, how many letters are intercepted – this is something the state cannot erase.

Silence as strategy: Censorship and carceral control in India

Writing from prison is never just a personal exercise – it is political. And it is subjected to opaque, unchecked censorship. Prison authorities are granted sweeping discretion over what detainees can send or receive, with little public accountability. While the Prisoners Act of 1894 and the Model Prison Manual of 2016 formally permit letters and reading material, these rights are routinely curtailed by vague provisions allowing officials to withhold anything deemed “objectionable” or “a threat to discipline or security”.

Rule 43.17 empowers superintendents to intercept letters “likely to endanger prison security.” But what qualifies as a threat remains undefined. There is no obligation to document decisions, no route for appeal. Letters disappear. No explanation is given. No one is notified. This is censorship by silence – absence masquerading as order.

For those charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), this regime of erasure becomes more insidious. Since its enactment in 1967 – and especially after amendments in 2008 and 2019 – the law has enabled prolonged detention without trial, often on speculative evidence. The 2019 amendment allows individuals – not just organisations – to be labelled “terrorists,” vastly expanding the scope of pre-emptive criminalisation.

Under Section 43D(5), bail is nearly impossible. Judges must accept prosecution claims at face value, reversing the burden of proof. Accusation becomes punishment. Professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh (2007) calls this a “detention democracy” – where the rule of law coexists with a parallel regime of suspension. Rights exist on paper but remain materially inaccessible.

This is not just the condition of those charged under UAPA – it is the logic of the prison itself. Surveillance, solitary confinement and disrupted communication are not exceptions but embedded features of carceral life. For some, especially political prisoners, these controls may be intensified. But often, the inverse is also true: ordinary undertrials, those without public attention or legal support, may experience even deeper abandonment.

What results is more than legal incarceration – it is an emotional severance. Books may get denied. Clothes for Eid from friends get denied. Letters are redacted or withheld. Care is filtered through bureaucracy.

The prison becomes a space of quiet erasure – where silence is institutionalised, and the threads of memory and connection are gradually worn thin.

What it means to remember

The refusal to deliver the letter with posters was not a surprise. Many of us who write to political prisoners have faced similar outcomes. We write, we send, we wait. Often the message arrives months later. Sometimes never. Sometimes the prisoner is told. Sometimes not. But this refusal still matters. Because it shows how deeply the state fears memory. To make a poster or to write a letter or to read her poems is to assert that solidarity is still possible – despite the fences and the years that pass.

Even when the message doesn’t arrive, it has already done its work.

When we speak of repression, we often speak of grand spectacles – raids, arrests, bans, surveillance. But power also works in small, daily gestures. The unmailed letter. The returned book. The silence from the prison gate. These small gestures are how repression is normalised.

They create a slow withdrawal not just from the prisoner, but from the political itself. Families and friends, unsure of what is safe, stop sending things that can be returned, stop writing certain words or phrases so that the letter does not go undelivered. Artists, afraid of being watched, stop drawing faces.

The prisoner does not just disappear from view – the effort is to gradually erase their side of the narrative in the public’s moral and imaginative landscape. Over time, the very idea of dissent becomes fragile, unspoken. The blank space is no longer just a person. It is a society trained to look away.

​​Perhaps, this is the quiet labour of solidarity: to resist forgetting. To write, to remember, to insist on presence even when presence is policed. Communication is controlled because it keeps the political identity alive.

A woman who writes, who remembers, or who is remembered – becomes dangerous. She unsettles the state’s narrative of isolation. Because the solitary prisoner is a myth; these women resist through community. Their letters become pamphlets. Their poems cross the boundaries of identity and confinement. Their art – sent or received – becomes a slogan, becomes memory. They remain in the movement even behind bars.

It is this continuity – of thought, of political belonging, of being claimed and held by others – that the state truly fears.

Anuradha Banerji is an activist and an independent researcher.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post How Prisons Become Spaces of Quiet Erasure appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It stands in sharp contrast to how India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru intervened to get a scholarship for a young Irfan Habib in spite of the fact that he was member of communist party, faced some penal action from the Aligarh Muslim University for his activities.

The present case of shocking police action against Mahmudabad – putting him behind bars on very grave charges – over his posts needs a close look before putting it in the historical context of how Nehru helped Habib, who would go on to become a famous historian in the future.

Ali Khan Mahmudabad’s Facebook post

Mahmudabad, a young, bright and brilliant academic, was arrested by Haryana police on the grounds that his Facebook post on Operation Sindoor (conducted by Indian Army to deal with the threat of terrorism from Pakistan) among others, incited rebellion and hurt religious feelings.

Mahmudabad remarked in his post that the press briefings on Operation Sindoor conducted by colonel Sofiya Qureshi and wing commander Vyomika Singh were important and constituted good optics. While noting with satisfaction that many right wing commentators applauded colonel Qureshi, he boldly spelt out his concerns that the “optics” could be counted as “hypocrisy” if those commentors, in their role as Indian citizens failed in demanding equally loudly, the protection of “ the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate mongering”.

He also referred to the example of a prominent Muslim politician who said “Pakistan Murdabad” and was trolled by Pakistanis and applauded by Indian right wing commentators hailing him as “our mulla”. “Of course this is funny” remarked Mahmudabad and observed with sadness “but it also points to just how deep communalism has managed to infect the Indian body politic.”

However, he displayed optimism that the press conference addressed by colonel Qureshi and wing commander Singh offered him a fleeting glimpse of, what he said, “to an India that defied the logic on which Pakistan was built”. “As I said,” he said, “the grassroots reality that common Muslims face is different from what the government tried to show but at the same time the press conference shows that an India, united it its diversity, is not completely dead as an idea.”

It is preposterous to think that what he wrote pointed to sedition or attempts to stoke enmity among people professing diverse faiths. The arrest of professor Ali Khan is an example of State action egregiously violating the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression and rule of law.

Nehru on Irfan Habib

It is against this sordid backdrop that we may recall how seventy years back in 1955, Nehru intervened to get a scholarship for Irfan Habib, now a renowned historian. Nehru’s intervention was warranted because the Home Ministry had raised objections owing to the fact that Habib was a member of the Communist Party.

Following Zakir Hussain’s pleadings that Habib should be helped Nehru met him. In the letter to Zakir Hussain, Nehru wrote that Habib was a Member of Communist party and the government scholarship should not be given to someone who might use it to study and later act against the State.

“No State,” Nehru wrote, “ could be expected to go out of its way to give a scholarship to a person on whom it could not rely or who was likely to indulge in activities which were harmful to the State”.

It is instructive that Nehru in that letter described Irfan and his comrades as Jesuits and he wrote that they belonged “… to the strict order and not over-scrupulous in their dealings with others, provided they carry out the dictates of that order to whom they owe their basic loyalty”.

“I see no reason why Government should go out of its way to offer a scholarship to a person who is so tied up with an order of this kind, whether it is the communist party or some other,” Nehru sharply noted.

However, while he did make those remarks, Nehru also showed his statesmanship and wrote, “I recognise, of course, that one must not judge young people too strictly and youthful enthusiasm must not be ignored. Probably, with some greater experience, one grows out of these immature grooves of thought and action”.

In the end, he advised the Ministry of Education to give scholarship to Habib with the remarks that “…. he is a young man of intelligence and, I believe, integrity and both these qualities will no doubt influence his future growth.”

Modi regime criminalising dissent

Seventy years after Nehru displayed his liberality while dealing with a young dissenting academic like Habib and granted him a scholarship, a young professor like Mahmudabad is being put behind bars for his Facebook post which is full of constructive crticisim rooted in idea of India. Eventually Mahmudabad will triumph because in his own words, “India, united in its diversity, is not completely dead as an idea.”

S N Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to former President of India K.R. Narayanan.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post In Contrast: Nehru’s Take on a Young, Dissenting Irfan Habib and the Modi Govt’s Treatment of Mahmudabad appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There exists a deep communication gap even among the non-partisan (voices) on the issue of the Waqf. This needs to be bridged. Every society and religion have provisions and practices, both related to charity and public welfare. In present day India, an era of majoritarian ascendance and minority-bashing, weaponising of this welfarist institutional –even noble– practice is easy. On the other hand, huge Waqf assets and proceeds have been (unfairly) controlled and siphoned off by some among the self-serving religious and secular elites among Muslims in connivance with (sic) the state and state-regulated Waqf Boards, for decades. This duality is a double whammy for the average Muslim citizen, regardless of whether the political dispensation has been overtly anti-Muslim or ostensibly pluralist.

An instance from my ancestral village

In my own native village in rural north Bihar, there are at least three to four graveyards. The largest one is, as per documentation, owned by some families, but used for community burials by all Muslim castes (biradris) and classes of the village. Another one is owned by three specific families. In the three contiguous graveyards, each family buries its own dead in their respective spots. Yet another one, adjacent to it, belongs to the Muslim communities of Mir-Shikars, Rayeens, Mansuris (Pasmanda Muslim communities). The land is said to have been donated by a Bhumihar-Brahman– Hindu upper caste — landlord of the village, the economic status of whose descendants are reported to have dwindled very significantly. What happens then if the (2025 amended provision) of “Waqf by user” is applied to these graveyards in my native village which fall under Waqf properties, without detailed documentation. As per the just legislated law (Waqf Amendment Act 2025), the Hindu inheritors of these lands may claim their ownership (!!) and one can then imagine the socio-political fallout, particularly in an era of “everyday communalism”.

The older mosque of my ancestral village stands on a piece of land which belonged to a widow without any children. The rest of the plot of the land is home to the house of the legal inheritors of the donor, who possess their document of proprietorship. On and off, some other villagers, hostile to, or envious of, the descendant who owns the house (legal inheritor), keep claiming that the rest of the plot of the land (apart from that on which the mosque stands) too belongs to the Waqf (mosque). Thus, a dispute has been kept alive, intra-Muslim. The very same widow-donor is said to have donated another plot of her land and the produce from this other plot of land is s meant for the costs and upkeep (chiraghi, i.e, lighting) of the mosque. This has been all through oral endowments, not documented. If oral practice were not followed, the legal inheritor of the widow-donor could/can always reclaim the land. Recently, certain “pious” people of the village expressed their intent to sell away that part of the land so that a tall, 80-feet tall minar (spire) could be built! Without such an imposing minar, the identity of a newly arrived, affluent (neo-rich) Muslims cannot be displayed, a phenomenon that also creates a sense of awe (and dominance) among both Muslims and Hindus of the locality. This handful of demonstrably “pious” villagers — with pretensions to religious education and knowledge of the Shariah—choose to forget the fact that a Waqf land cannot be put to use for any purpose other than for what has been specified by the donor (Waqif). They also choose to forget the fact that in the face of the non-existence of any written documentation and the lack of registration of such details with the Waqf Board; or non-registration in a court of law to that effect, their step would/could encounter a big obstacle. Who would be the “seller” in the land-registration office? The seller, in such a scenario, has necessarily to be a legal inheritor of the land. That the newly constructed tall minar on the northern wall of the mosque (the metallic road touches the northern wall of the mosque, hence, it involves another question of legality) would (or could) attract the attention of Hindu religious processions and therefore it is (also) potentially explosive– another important issue– that I put aside at the moment. [On more than one occasion, some instances of communal conflict that revolve around the “spot” of religious structures in the past have also brewed on the misplaced priorities of local Muslim communities, who otherwise perennially complain of educational and economic backwardness).

Religiosity of the Waqf

Some academic works, for instance, Khalid Rashid (1978), Gregory Kozlowsky (1985), P. Munawar Husain (2021), etc., on the theme of Waqf, also throw up some important questions:

Is the creation and existence of Waqf strictly as per the Sharia? The Holy Quran makes no mention of awqaf or any institution similar to them. Abu Hanifa (AD 699-767 AD) “disapproved of the institution”?  Collections of the fatawa of religious scholars in India have contained both favourable and un-favourable statements on the institution of Waqf.

Waqf, in actual practice, was not necessarily and strictly either a charitable trust or a foundation of faith. Many of these, such as the Waqf-e-Aulad, were/are selfish practices too, besides of course, also being altruistic. In this specific category (Waqf-e-Aulad), the maximum proceeds of most of awqaf are theoretically and practically earmarked for the members of the family and kinship. Every Waqif (donor) wanted his or her offspring to inherit the fruits of that ingenuity of the [Waqf], to preserve the world of their founders.

The British Indian court’s approach towards following literal Quranic rules of inheritance made Muslim landholders carve out other “legal” ways of preserving the holdings by creating awqaf. Therefore, beginning in 1879, the High Courts of India handed down a series of decisions which overturned any endowment considered to benefit primarily the settler’s own family. The Privy Council in 1894 observed that Muslim endowments must be religious and “charitable”; public, not private. The Courts’ premise was: Muslims ought to follow their own Holy Scripture, Quran, to inherit parental assets.

Who were the mutawallis (managers) of the earliest Awqaf, viz., Khyber, Sawad (Iraq, which was then a part of Iran), and Ramlah in Palestine, founded in 912 AD) Waqf by Faiq, a eunuch, distinguished as having the earliest written record (on a stone tablet)? All of these three earliest awqaf (s) in Islamic history became non-existent due to encroachment by soldiers and other influential elites in the early centuries of Islam. “Military and political leaders gradually appropriated the territory’s income. Such encroachment on endowments was by no means rare. Though awqaf aimed at permanence, few attained it”. The Buwayhids, a family of Iranian, not Arab origin, had a hand in dismembering that [Sawad] endowment.

The creation of Waqf, in most cases — as observed by judges during British colonial rule –had more to do with circumventing the Quranically defined rights of inheritance and division/distribution of the properties (estates) and their proceeds among his/her heirs. Waqf-creation was a way of putting a complete restriction on sale and purchase of the assets/properties by the heirs.  “Waqf is a (unique)/typical phenomenon which partakes the characteristics of endowment, gift and many such sister concepts but, at the same time, stands apart”. “The removal of encroachments upon the Waqf properties is relegated to the executive wing rather than a judicial exercise. The appointment and removal of mutawallis is another complicated issue”.

In the early years of the 19th century, a number of persons from India’s Muslim elite began to convert their property into awqaf. This was a way to protect their family’s fortunes and the social prominence which accompanied it. In both kinds of awqaf, viz., Waqf-e-Aam (exclusively for charitable purposes) and Waqf-e-Aulad, through mutawllis (managers), self-interest could be both preserved and perpetuated.

In 1879, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (when he was in the Viceroy’s legislative council) published an article in his Urdu journal, Tazhib- al-Akhlaq, titled “A plan for saving Muslim Families from destruction and extinction” (“Ek Tadbir: Mussalmanon ke Khandanon ko Tabahi awr Barbadi se Bachaane ki“). In this article, he noted, that a Waqf was “allowed”, or “permitted” (mujaz). Could this mean that while he did not outright disapprove of the practice, he was not a vocal supporter of the institution?

Sir Syed’s four important concerns were: (a) that the property placed in a Waqf be accurately and fully described. (b) his proposal insisted that, once drawn up, a waqfnamah (deed of Waqf) be registered with the district officer or the district collector or magistrate; (c) The shares of the waqf‘s income had to be precisely laid out in the Waqfnamah. (d) Also, the succession to the office of mutawalli had to be clearly established. He wanted the Muslim waqifs to introduce significant content of charity in their waqf so that the European judges may not “mis-read” it as lacking in charity.

Ameer Ali (1849-1928) however disagreed with Sir Syed; Shibli (1857-1914) in his 21-pages long essay on Waqf-e-Aulad (1908) argued that even this form of Waqf is charitable, which endorsed Ameer Ali. Shibli’s theologically premised argument was less convincing as the Waqf-e-Aulad does not promise charity for the ordinary, common Muslim. Eventually, bending under the pressure of the Muslim orthodoxy, Sir Syed was not able to propose the draft-bill in the Imperial Legislative Council.

Interesting facts about some Indian Awqaf: A Muslim woman in Bengal even allowed her deed of Waqf to begin with an invocation to the goddess Durga. In Tamil, a mutawalli preferred to be called Dharmakarta –indigenous usage not Persio-Arabic terminology. Najiban, a tawaif of Bareilly also created a Waqf. It was only when the British Indian State ran interference that the Hoogly College[1] was established out of the Waqf created by Mohd Mohsin. The deed of the Mohd Mohsin Waqf did not have such a provision. Since the period of Caliph Umar’s (the awqaf of Khyber and Sawad), the Awqaf were always under “direct” control of the state.

India’s Waqf estates (Charitable endowments) earmarked for modern education, healthcare and similar welfare activities

Mohammad Mohsin (1732-1812) of Hooghly created a Waqf. It was only with the intervention of the East India Company (colonial) state, that the Waqf established a college in 1836 (Chinsura, West Bengal), now affiliated to the Burdwan University. This College produced alumni such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Muzaffar Ahmed, ABM Habibullah, and many more in various fields, including films and sports. Subsequently, with interventions of the Calcutta reformist, Abdul Latif (d. 1893), scholarships and other stipends for students were also instituted, out of the income from the Mohsin Waqf estate.

In Haryana and Kashmir, some educational institutions are also run by Waqf, though, it is unclear, how much of the running costs are contributed by the financial grants of the Waqf Boards via the provincial government’s ministries of minority affairs. This is something that needs to be brought out more clearly.

There are many Waqfs within the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which provided land and scholarship to students. The noted Physicist Prof Wali Mohammad (1886-1968) is one such person who created Waqf for AMU. A students’ residential Hall (with many hostels) for engineering students, has been constructed on the Waqf land donated by Professor Wali Mohammad, in the 1990s. The Hall, meant for the Engineering students, got named after Nadim Tarin, for the reasons one fails to understand. Thus, the donor (Waqif) of the land, despite being a noted Physicist, has been sadly anonymized, almost completely erased from the history of AMU and its donors. This action was not performed by any anti-Muslim political party. There are many more Waqf lands within AMU which await a transparent acknowledgement and display (of inherited ownership) on the AMU website to ensure comprehensive wider public knowledge and also, accountability. The AMU has also been losing its lands frequently and intermittently, in one or other ways.

“Muslim waqfs and endowments are an old institution but like most other assets, have been generally mismanaged… generations past have been dissatisfied with the way Muslim Waqifs and Mutawallis,… and the governments, have handled waqf properties. Islamic governments have done no better, and in India” too the British imperialist and secular republican governments have fared no better, wrote, the economist and former Vice Chancellor of AMU, A M Khusro, in his Foreword to Khalid Rashid’s book (1978). 

Contentious legislative histories of the Waqf in India

After the failed attempt of Sir Syed in 1879, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, astute politician that he was, jumped into the Waqf fray, ostensibly to protect the interests of the Muslim landed elites who needed the Waqf Validation Act of 1913. This Act, supported by the colonial state, aimed to safeguard the landed assets of these elites, who were seen as potential allies against a growing anti-colonial movement. The Swadeshi Movement, which opposed the religious-communal partition of Bengal, had forced the colonial state to annul the (Bengal) partition in 1911-192, necessitating a political arrangement to secure Muslim support. So much so that, unlike the Sir Syed’s draft (1879), Jinnah (1913) also succeeded in getting a clause added that stated that the registration of a Waqfnamah was not mandatory.

Subsequently, Jinnah enlisted more consolidated support of Muslims through the Shariat Act of 1937 which was based on the Aurangzeb era codification of Shariat, Fatawa-e-Alamgiri of the late 17^th century. Through the Shariat Act 1937-1939, he secured hugely consolidated political support of the separatist Muslim elites and soon after, he succeeded in winning Pakistan for them. Pakistan reformed Muslim Personal Laws in March 1961. Many other Muslim countries have introduced reforms but India’s Muslims continue to resist state interference not only in the issue of the un-Quranic Instant Triple Talaq but also in the AMU’s malignant governance and gross abuse of autonomy[2]

It is also not be out of place to mention here that presently India has 32 Waqf Boards, with only Bihar and UP having separate Waqf Boards for Shias and Sunnis. The Dawoodi Bohra community, historically, has shown a preference for managing their religious properties through trusts rather than under the purview of Waqf Boards. This preference stems from their unique religious governance structure, which centralises authority in the al-Dai-al-Mutlaq.

Moral weakness of building resistance and solidarity

While the “liberal” (or, less illiberal) era of the Indian republic has often been obliging of the Muslim regressive tendencies, the current majoritarian era pursues its own divisive political agenda. For instance, it has criminalised the Instant Triple Talaq (ITT) in 2019 but did not strengthen the provisions of maintenance to the divorced women. Whereas, the Supreme Court’s verdict (in the Danial Latifi case 2001) had already clarified that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 (MWPRD) does provide for maintenance, surely the 2019 Act should have further strengthened the provision? Especially since, maintenance for the divorced women is the most crucial aspect of this issue in the sphere of both equity and rights?

Such has been the political history of India’s Muslims in the 20^th century (colonial and republican eras) and their stubbornness against state intervention to any reform that they have foregone the moral strength needed to resist the Waqf Amendment Act 2025. Worse, this kind and character of Muslim politics, particularly since the 1980s, has been identified by many scholars as a contributing factor to the rise of majoritarianism in India today. Concealing the pathetic aspect of widespread mismanagement of Waqf assets for decades, will now further deplete the moral strength required to build understanding and solidarity required to resist an unwanted law.

Pertinently, the need for a satisfactory political arrangement to safeguard any monopoly on landed assets is equally applicable for Hindu Mahanths and their Mutths. The current dispensation is not concerned about these Hindu institutions which also suffer from similar ills of non-transparent mal-functioning. Unfortunately, it is also true that the institution of Mahanths and Maths remains under-explored academically by historians of Peasant and Agrarian Relations. [Prakash Jha’s film Mrityudand (1997) attempts to depict some of the degenerative aspects of the institution of Mahanth, but this was a melodramatic depiction on celluloid].

The BJP-dominated regime has no intention of introducing a similar law to reform this Hindu institution of Mahanths’ Muths. This is therefore an additional reason why Muslim communities and justice-loving people look upon the Waqf Amendment Act 2025 with alarming concern. The legislative control that it seeks to seize gives a clear impression of targeting only Muslims with this discriminatory treatment.

Specifically, there is a real apprehension that the (amended) Act –presently under challenge—will turn into a tool to harass Muslims by the sinister and wide network of local majoritarian forces and outfits in those smaller villages and mohallas where the written deeds of Waqf and mosques are not available, as is the case with the abovementioned instance from my own ancestral village. Another alarming aspect of the Act is the Places of Worship Act, 1991 falling under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904. According to Kapil Sibal[3] , this specific aspect was also concealed from the Members of Parliament from the Opposition, right until the day it was finally debated in the two Houses of Parliament.

Many scholars also feel that Israel –in West Asia—has also played this politics of usurping available Waqf land and thereby pursuing the politics of dispossessing the Arabs by illegitimate means. Haitam Suleiman and Robert Home in their 2010 essay demonstrate that most Waqf property within Israel has been expropriated by the Israeli state under Absentee Property Laws, a sensitive and complicated issue within the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This instance justifiably alarms India’s Muslims further, about the BJP’s intent.

Briefly, to sum up. India’s Waqf urgently need reforms in terms of actualising the maximum potential of revenue, proceeds, and its use for charitable purposes, that is, towards capacity-building for the weaker sections of the citizenry. Khalid Rashid (1978) estimated that Waqf assets actualise only a mere 3.5% of its actual promise in terms of use for charitable purposes. Waqf land need to be protected from encroachers. Waqf-loot happens with the connivance of both the state and the Muslim elite controlling the Waqf Boards.

The Act legislated in 2025 doesn’t promise any such reformatory intent not does it reflect any sincerity towards breaking this nexus (between the state and the Waqf-looting elites). Protecting the Waqf and realizing its basic objective of charity and welfare remains as elusive as ever. A more thorough and sincere implementation of the Waqf (Amendment) Act 2013 –with some amendments– would have been a more constructive step rather than legislating a new law.

Finally, it must also be notes that a large proportion of Waqf property comprises graveyards (Qabristan) which do not yield any income. A paltry section (mostly orally endowed and unregistered) Waqf assets are owned by village/Mohalla mosques (which are maintained through meagre resources or no income). These “assets” add to the quantum of property of Waqfs, but do not yield returns. This is the point that the Sachar Report (2006), which highlighted the poverty of India’s Muslim minority, failed to note. However, the Sachar Report did reveal that, “There are more than 4.9 lakh registered Wakfs [Waqf estates and assets] spread across the country but the current annual income from these properties is only about Rs.163 crores, which amounts to a meagre rate of return of 2.7 percent…. The current… market value (income to be generated out) of [these] Wakf properties can be put at Rs.1.2 lakh crore.

The present, BJP-dominated NDA-III regime, therefore, should have considered emulating Turkey whose laws of 1868 and 1924 make the Waqf institutions more robust in terms of education, healthcare, municipal and civic amenities and even in disaster relief. Politically, such an emulation may have helped the BJP outsmarting the Opposition, without creating the attendant social friction.

The author is a professor, Modern and Contemporary Indian History, Aligarh Muslim University, and author of Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours.

(This article is an expanded version of Outlook’s May 1, 2025 issue ‘Username Waqf’ where it appeared under the title, ‘A Fractured Timeline’; this is an expanded version being published at the specific request of the author, a regular columnist with Sabrangindia)

[1]  Two decades later than their first venture, the British rulers made another effort to engage Muslims in their pattern of education by taking control of the Imambada Madrasa at Hooghly run under the endowment made by Haji Mohammed Mohsin in 1806. Now it is functioning as the oldest law college in the country, named as Hooghly Mohsin College in 1937.

[2] https://www.academia.edu/127645531/UGC_Draft_Regulations_2025_Question_of_Univ_Autonomy_and_AMUs_Abuse_of_Autonomy).

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYQEyPP-A2M; Kapil Sibal Calls Waqf Bill Unconstitutional, Alleges Political Agenda

The post Amendments to the Waqf Law were needed, but the grab-and-control Waqf Amendment Act, 2025 is not the answer appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The entire political class is silent.

The ruling party has not attempted to hide what easily could be called its genocidal actions in Bastar. Union home minister Amit Shah proclaims it loud and clear. But no opposition leader raises a voice. On the political stage, otherwise, Shah is cornered on a number of things he does. Except this. There is no delegation to meet the President, no hurried press conference, no demand for a white paper, or an investigation. The opposition seems to act as though it has not heard anything, not seen anything, not noticed anything.

Are we seeing the tragic and evil consensus of India’s political class? Are we witness to the outer limits of the democratic idea of India, even in the best version as proposed by the most progressive forces in India’s parliament? Rahul Gandhi, Mahua Mitra, Shashi Tharoor, Asaduddin Owaisi…they have all been silent.

Some of them might be privately attempting to wash their guilt by avidly following the news of the killings, but it is as though they are following a secret medieval covenant not to say anything in public. True to form, the media doles news of the killings as though these are reports of a natural calamity, like death due to lightning or a thunderstorm. What is there to discuss or deliberate? Nothing at all.

Various political parties represent or claim to represent the different social sections, castes, tribes, regions and religious communities that comprise India. Even Adivasi representatives sit in the parliament. They are all silent. In effect, the parliament is sanctioning vigilante action.

What is the covenant which binds them all? What tells them that it is best to quietly focus on other things, and look the other way?

They seem to agree on a so-called structural necessity of the Bastar killings.

Given this scenario, we must step up and act in conscience. We should lobby and sensitise parliament and go on to appeal to the legislators to uphold a moral conscience and intervene to “save democracy”.

But this will only add to the pool of self-righteousness ailing the world. Instead let us recognise how things really stand. Let us read the writing on the wall. Just pause and take note. And learn about the consensus – the silent and rather lethal consensus – which sustains India’s democracy. We must try to learn about the much vaunted “constitutional morality” the republic serves platitudes about – the constitutional morality which the opposition always claims to struggle to save, uphold and defend.

Perhaps the first thing we get to learn is that the political class as a whole has a common enemy. This opposition to that enemy binds all the stakeholders of India’s democracy. They all fear an enemy. And they must unite to kill and finish off that enemy.

Amidst the fractious squabbling between the BJP and the opposition parties, national and regional, it might be difficult to perceive the internal coherence of the Indian political class and the establishment. So consider this: Manmohan Singh might have declared that Maoists are the greatest internal security threat, but it is Amit Shah who acts on it. So does Salwa Judum and Special Police Officers, the others.

This is an issue on which Shah and Chidambaram are on the same page. If there is one thing RSS and the Congress agree on, it would be this. Secularism and communalism appear as one.

The struggle towards the just that morally and politically legitimises the republic loses its efficacy. The moral fibre of the republic is at its weakest here. No wonder then that the Indian parliament recoils from ever having to come face to face with such deep moral blind spots where hypocrisy runs free.

The post Why Indian Democracy Feels No Shame About the Bastar Killings appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Surprisingly, I vividly remember that the story of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Gandhi, was narrated to us by a Brahmin teacher in my village. What struck me even more was the tone of his narration—it seemed to express a subtle sympathy for the killer of Bapu. Yet, that same teacher never took the time to tell us who Babasaheb Ambedkar was.

The entry of Dr. Ambedkar into my life came quite late. I cannot say exactly when I first heard his name, but my real engagement with his work began when I enrolled in a postgraduate programme in Political Science in Delhi.

Traditional Political Science syllabi gave very little space to Ambedkar’s ideas, although they readily imposed the political thoughts of Manu and Kautilya—both of whom were staunch upholders of the caste-based social order—on students. If someone wants to pursue research on Manu, they are free to do so. But I am still unable to understand the rationale behind compelling every student to study Manu at the undergraduate or postgraduate level in a course on Indian political thought.

It may be understandable that M. S. Golwalkar, one of the key ideologues of the Hindutva ideology, praised Manu as “Lord (Bhagwan)” and called him as “the greatest lawgiver of mankind.” However, the disproportionate space assigned to Manu in political science textbooks raises serious questions about the fragility of the secular character of India’s educational system. That Ambedkar—one of the staunchest critics of the caste-based social order and a vocal opponent of “Hindu Raj”—has remained neglected in the mainstream educational system and media should not come as a surprise to many.

My stay at Delhi’s two universities over a span of 11 years—two years at Jamia Millia Islamia and nine years at Jawaharlal Nehru University—brought me significantly closer to the thoughts and legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar. In the classroom, our professors did make references to Ambedkar’s ideas, but I found myself unsatisfied with the way they interpreted and explained his work. I noticed that they had a vested interest in highlighting only certain aspects of Ambedkar while concealing others. The professors soon lost their influence over us when many of us realized that their discussions of Ambedkar inside the classroom and their actions outside were quite disconnected. For them, teaching Ambedkar, writing about him, publishing books, and getting projects in his name seemed more like career-building strategies. For many of us, however, Ambedkar was a ray of light—an inspiration to escape the darkness of an unequal social order. I began to look beyond the classroom and found that engaging with Ambedkarite activist-scholars at the university and those actively involved in Ambedkarite movements was far more fruitful than simply taking notes from careerist professors.

Since Ambedkar wrote in lucid prose, he was not particularly difficult to understand. Unlike many other politicians, he never neglected the importance of scholarship. He read, researched, and wrote until his last breath. The focus of his scholarship was not on fairy tales, nor was he interested in metaphysical or divine questions. As an organic intellectual, he wrote about the problems faced by the most marginalized sections of society—people whom the caste-based system did not even consider human, let alone treat as equals. Ambedkar’s writings, spread across thousands of pages, continue to serve as a torchlight for marginalized communities. Those who uphold the status quo are trying hard to appropriate Ambedkar, but they cannot bury the power and truth of his dozens of volumes of writings.

But unlike armchair scholars confined to the ivory towers of the establishment, Ambedkar believed that the process of thinking is intrinsically linked to action. In contrast to the so-called “objective” scholarship of the mainstream, his writings had a clear purpose and stood firmly with the downtrodden. He recognized that the cloak of “objectivity” and “neutrality” often serves to maintain the status quo and reinforces existing hegemonies. That is why he not only wrote but also acted. He agitated, and he penned. In Ambedkar’s philosophy, the process of thought and action-oriented programmes are inseparable. He was truly a “concerned” scholar and an organic politician.

In my understanding, Ambedkar belongs to the tradition of materialist-rationalist thoughts shaped by Buddhism, Kabir, and Jyotirao Phule. Consequently, he was deeply critical of metaphysical, idealist, Vedantic, and Brahminical frameworks for interpreting the world. Unlike Brahminical thinkers, Ambedkar did not shy away from confronting material reality. Nor did he resort to explaining concrete problems through metaphysical abstractions or the construction of myths. In contrast to the Brahminical scholarly tradition, he categorically rejected the notion of divinity and the role of supernatural beings.

Although he acknowledged the social significance of religion, his conception of it was radically different—his vision of religion excluded the presence of God. For Ambedkar, religion was not about ritual performance or appeasing a higher power; rather, it was a social space where marginalized communities could assert their dignity and forge collective solidarity.

In essence, Ambedkar deconstructed Brahminical myths and laid the groundwork for a new social order rooted in the ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity. Throughout his life, he remained deeply uneasy with the idea of human beings surrendering—whether to divine forces or to fellow humans. For him, both the worship of gods and the veneration of heroic figures were equally unacceptable.

Ambedkar was a staunch advocate of equality in the political, social, and economic domains. Continuing the legacy of Buddha, Kabir, and Phule, he offered a scathing critique of the caste-based social order. As an iconoclast, he denounced the religion into which he was born and criticized the Hindu social order and its religious texts for perpetuating caste-based discrimination.

Since most of us are raised within a Brahminical social milieu, we are trained from childhood to perceive the caste hierarchy as “natural” and the prevailing social system as one that fosters “harmony” and “equilibrium.” From structural-functionalist scholars to most upper-caste leaders and intellectuals, there has long been a tendency to normalize and defend the caste order. However, the emergence of Dr. Ambedkar on the broader political stage began to challenge this entrenched narrative. His powerful call for the annihilation of the caste system resonated with millions who had long been treated as pariahs by the upper castes.

Ambedkar’s enduring contribution lies in his ability, much like a skilled doctor, to diagnose the deep-seated stagnation of Indian society. He prescribed a clear remedy: without the annihilation of caste, the achievement of political, social, and economic equality, and justice for women and minorities, the nation cannot truly progress.

While it is true that the mainstream Indian Left—whose leadership has largely been dominated by Brahmins and other upper castes—ignored Dr. Ambedkar and excluded Dalit leadership until the Ambedkarite movement brought him into public consciousness, this should not be used to validate the Hindutva narrative that portrays Ambedkar as an “enemy” of Marxism or socialism. Marxism and socialism are not monolithic ideologies; they are interpreted and shaped by prevailing parties or dominant leaders, and thus, no single definition is universally accepted. What matters is that Ambedkar engaged with Marxism on his own terms, expressing both agreement and disagreement with its dominant interpretations during his time.

Given that Marxism is a materialist philosophy that advocates for the removal of class-based inequality and the establishment of material equality, Ambedkar’s own work resonates strongly with Marxist principles. His efforts to organize the working class, his emphasis on eradicating economic inequality, and his commitment to a materialist, scientific, and rational worldview align him closely with Marxist ideals and practice.

However, Dr. Ambedkar differed from the dominant Marxist interpretation on the questions of class, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the use of violence. Unlike mainstream Marxist thinkers, Ambedkar’s understanding of class emphasized the social identities of labourers and rejected the notion of the working class as a homogenous entity. His key contribution lay in highlighting the lack of solidarity among workers, despite their shared exploitation.

While Marxists called for unity among labourers, Ambedkar insisted that unity could not be achieved without first addressing the internal divisions created by caste. Upper-caste comrades were often eager to bring about revolution, overlooking the fundamental reality that caste—structured around graded inequality—stood in the way of genuine worker solidarity. Ambedkar argued that caste must first be annihilated to lay the foundation for a truly classless society. This view diverged sharply from that of upper-caste Marxists, who often saw the caste question as a distraction or even a threat to working-class unity. The mainstream Left’s continued failure to enact meaningful social transformation should prompt a serious re-examination of Ambedkar’s nuanced perspective on class and caste.

No doubt Ambedkar was a great scholar, a brilliant lawyer, and an influential Parliamentarian. The construction of his image as a legal scholar holding the Constitution of India has created the impression that Ambedkar only believed in legal and constitutional methods, and therefore, had no ideological connection with Marxists, who are often associated with violent means. To support such a claim, Ambedkar’s famous speech titled “Buddha or Karl Marx” is frequently cited.

It is true that Ambedkar acknowledged that both Buddhism and Marxism opposed private property. However, according to him, Buddhism diverged from Marxism on the question of violence. Ambedkar emphasized that Buddhism, unlike Marxism, rejected violence. That said, his critique of Marxism in this regard must be situated within the historical context of his time. It is a matter of historical record that some communist leaders, backed by the brute force of the state, resorted to violence in their attempt to establish a “class-less” society.

Supporters of such violent methods might argue that radical social change and reordering of class relations cannot be accomplished through purely constitutional and legal means, and that violence by the oppressed is not a violation but an act of liberation. While Ambedkar may have agreed with the goal of achieving a class-less society, he preferred to pursue a different strategy—one that did not involve violence. This belief was deeply held and unwavering, despite criticism from the Left, who at times dismissed Ambedkar as “at best a radical bourgeois leader.”

Ambedkar and his critics held different perspectives on these issues. However, the failures of various communist regimes—though not of Marxism as a philosophy—have led even some of his critics to reconsider his principled critique of violence. Importantly, Ambedkar’s rejection of violence does not imply a lack of belief in peaceful yet radical movements. His famous call to “educate, organise, and agitate” reflects a commitment to constitutional and legal methods, but not a confinement to them.

Consider the historic Mahad Conference of 1927, where Ambedkar led thousands of untouchables to assert their right to access a public tank that had been denied to them by caste-based restrictions. During this agitation, upper-caste aggressors attacked Ambedkar and his followers, yet he stood his ground. His editorials in Bahishkrit Bharat are a testament to his unwavering message urging Dalits not to accept caste discrimination and to rise in rebellion. In one editorial dated May 20, 1927, Ambedkar clearly stated that no one would grant Dalits their rights out of charity—they had to be prepared to fight for them. Is this not strong evidence that Ambedkar was far more than merely a legal scholar? His call to struggle against discrimination and exploitation, and his insistence on securing a life of dignity, align him with mass movements—and place him ideologically close to the Left.

However, one of my biggest attractions to Babasaheb Ambedkar is his theory of minority rights, which is inherently linked to the broader concept of social justice. In light of the rise of right-wing forces in India and elsewhere, Ambedkar’s ideas have become even more relevant today. As previously mentioned, Ambedkar was a staunch opponent of any dictatorial or authoritarian regime. He understood well that the suppression of liberty is often justified in the name of lofty goals, and he consistently cautioned marginalized communities not to fall prey to such narratives.

With the advent of democracy and the introduction of universal suffrage, Ambedkar recognized the transformative potential of the right to vote for bringing about social change. However, he did not believe that formal political equality alone was sufficient to ensure justice and equality in society. He argued that social reform, economic equality, and robust safeguards for minority rights were essential complements to political democracy. In other words, while equal voting rights represent a significant achievement, they are only truly effective when accompanied by social and economic justice, along with institutional protections for minorities.

Ambedkar frequently cautioned that democracy as an institution can only survive when social and economic equality is achieved. While he did not believe in using violent methods to bring about radical change, he also disagreed with liberals who believed that formal equality and a market-driven economic order would eventually lead to a just society. In various writings and speeches, Ambedkar highlighted the threat that class-based inequality poses to the sustainability of democracy.

Today, economic inequality in India has increased significantly compared to Ambedkar’s time. The ongoing crisis of Indian democracy and rising societal instability can largely be attributed to this widening economic gap. If Ambedkar were alive today, his foremost agenda would likely include launching mass movements for full employment, equitable access to quality public education, and comprehensive healthcare for all. He would also have been at the forefront of resisting reactionary and conservative forces that disguise themselves as nationalist. He would have strongly opposed the conflation of religion and politics, and any attempts to align the Indian state with the majority religion. No one denounced Hindu nationalism as forcefully as Ambedkar, who called it “the greatest calamity for this country.” Undoubtedly, he would have aligned himself with the Left.

Ambedkar’s democratic theory and his idea of social justice are closely linked with his concept of minority rights. He opposed authoritarianism and dictatorial regimes because he believed that one person, one party, one caste group, or one class cannot be entrusted with safeguarding the interests of all. He was acutely aware of the fact that ruling castes often attempt to serve their own interests under the guise of “nationalism,” dismissing the legitimate concerns of marginalised communities as “communalism.”

Perhaps he was among the first to expose the trope of nationalism versus communalism as a tool to silence the voices of the oppressed. His critique of nationalism does not imply support for communal politics. Rather, Ambedkar demonstrated how the category of nationalism has been co-opted by sections of the upper castes to present their own interests as “national interests”, while branding those who question this dominance as “communal.”

Ambedkar has also been unfairly accused of being a supporter of British imperialism. However, the historical reality is that he was not against India’s freedom. While the upper castes considered the mere transfer of power from British rulers to Indian elites as the attainment of Swaraj, Ambedkar pressed nationalist leaders to explicitly define the rights and safeguards that minorities would receive in post-Independence India. These upper-caste leaders often appeared “radical” in their political critique of British rule but remained deeply conservative and status quoist when issues concerning Dalits, Adivasis, lower castes, and religious minorities were raised.

Ambedkar’s critique of Indian nationalism stemmed from a commitment to social justice. Throughout the freedom struggle, he consistently raised the issue of caste-based inequality and worked to amplify the voices of the marginalised. He firmly believed that caste-based social order was a significant obstacle to fostering fraternity among Indians. Without addressing the caste question, he argued, the process of nation-building could not be complete.

In contrast, upper-caste leaders and their allies in the Hindutva camp often promoted an ascriptive theory of nationalism, asserting that the idea of the Indian nation has existed for thousands of years. In tracing the nation back to ancient times, Hindu right-wing ideologues positioned the Hindu community as the authentic nation and cast minorities and non-Hindus as outsiders. Since the minorities were not considered fully part of the Hindu nation, their patriotism was constantly questioned. As a display of loyalty, the Hindu right demanded that minorities abandon their distinct identities and assimilate into the dominant culture in order to receive validation as true patriots. Ambedkar was acutely aware of the dangers posed by religious and communal interpretations of nationalism and citizenship. That is why, he opposed strongly communal majority. That is why he strongly opposed attempts by upper-caste Hindus to forge a communal majority.

For Ambedkar, the antidote to the politics of communal majoritarianism—which posed a serious threat during his time and continues to endanger India’s social fabric—was the establishment of mechanisms to check authoritarian tendencies and institutionalize safeguards for minorities. One of the greatest threats to democracy, in his view, was the concentration of power. In other words, Ambedkar was a strong opponent of absolute power and an ardent advocate of power-sharing among communities.

As a true democrat, Ambedkar was disheartened by the suppression of opposition voices during Nehru’s regime. While numerous books celebrate Nehru’s democratic credentials and openness to dissent, little attention is paid to the fact that he dismissed the first democratically elected communist government in Kerala, played a key role in the centralization of power, and presided over a Parliament that lacked an official Leader of the Opposition until 1967—during the peak of the Congress system. Ambedkar himself noted that he was not granted his ministry of choice in Nehru’s cabinet, even as some ministers were assigned multiple portfolios. Today, under BJP rule, the marginalization of opposition voices and the stifling of dissent has intensified manifold. That is why Ambedkar’s unwavering commitment to defending dissent and opposition remains profoundly relevant in today’s political climate. Ambedkar’s critique of hero-worship also offers a powerful lens through which to understand the rise of populist right-wing leaders. We still await a critical analysis of Narendra Modi’s rise through the lens of Ambedkar’s political thought.

Ambedkar was deeply pained to witness the Congress Party using its own Dalit leaders to silence him whenever he raised his voice. Today, the BJP has perfected the art of delegitimizing authentic Dalit leadership by grooming its own representatives through the ideological apparatus of the Hindutva laboratory. Consequently, while Dalits are now nearly proportionally represented in legislative bodies, most of these leaders—elected through joint electorates and reliant on their party’s backing—tend to remain silent or toe the party line on critical issues affecting their communities.

It is important to remember that Ambedkar strongly demanded a separate electorate for the Depressed Classes during the Round Table Conference, a demand that the British Government ultimately granted. However, he was compelled to give it up following Gandhi’s fast. He observed that authentic Dalit voices often struggle to garner support from both mainstream political parties and caste Hindu voters, resulting in their continued marginalization.

It is unfortunate that most mainstream scholars of India’s electoral system rarely acknowledge the structural inequality inherent in the first-past-the-post system. There is little advocacy for proportionate and effective minority representation, a demand that Dr. Ambedkar passionately championed. While many European countries have embraced proportional representation for minorities, Indian intellectuals often take pride in pointing out the shortcomings of other nations rather than engaging in introspection and learning from successful democratic models to advocate for reform at home.

While Ambedkar contributed significantly to the shaping of democracy, the safeguards for the interests and rights of minorities were especially close to his heart. It is important to note that the term minority, for Ambedkar, was not confined to religious minorities alone. He defined minorities broadly to include socially discriminated groups. According to Ambedkar, the category of minority applies not only to religious communities such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis, but also to Dalits and Adivasis.

Several political scientists have later classified minorities into types such as religious, linguistic, caste-based, and tribal (Adivasi) minorities. Ambedkar believed that the true measure of a successful democracy lies in how well it protects the interests and rights of its minorities. He was acutely aware that, in a democratic polity, governments are formed based on majority support—meaning that minorities are often excluded from power. To address this structural inequality, Ambedkar warned against the creation of a communal majority.

Today, the danger Babasaheb foresaw has become increasingly apparent. The deliberate strategy of stoking communal tensions and demonizing the Muslim minority as the “other” in Indian society is designed to unite the majority community through a shared religious identity and thereby forge a communal majority. From Ambedkar’s perspective, the formation of a communal majority is anathema to democracy, as it inevitably leads to the suppression of minority rights.

Keeping in view these dangers, Ambedkar clearly stated that a government formed through majority rule should not be regarded as holy or sacrosanct. Speaking at the Annual Session of the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation held in Bombay on May 6, 1945, Ambedkar said, “Majority Rule is untenable in theory and unjustifiable in practice. A majority community may be conceded a relative majority of representation but it can never claim an absolute majority.”

In simple terms, Ambedkar argued that while the formation of a government may occur through majority support, it must never overlook the necessity of respecting the consent of the minority. For this reason, Ambedkar opposed the enactment of any law that lacked the approval of minority communities, warning that such disregard could provoke rebellion. Law after law directly affecting minorities—especially the Muslim minority—is being enacted by the Modi-led BJP Government without seeking their consent. In fact, the recent enactment of the Waqf Amendment Bill (2025) is widely seen as a majoritarian assault on minority rights.

On multiple occasions, Ambedkar demanded both proportionate and effective representation for minorities. It is important to note that while proportionate representation is necessary, it is not sufficient. The term effective is crucial in Ambedkar’s framework for safeguarding minority rights. Once the principle of effective representation is acknowledged, it essentially grants the minority a form of veto power. This veto power serves as an assurance that minorities need not fear majority rule, as no law would be passed and no policy formulated without their equal participation and consent.

In other words, the success of democracy lies in ensuring that minorities feel confident, secure, and prosperous. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, sought to give the country a strong and just constitution, and he did his utmost to safeguard the interests of weaker sections within it. However, Ambedkar was also aware that, without the active participation of minorities and other marginalized groups in policymaking, even a good law would not ensure justice. To emphasize his point, Ambedkar argued that if marginalized communities are included in decision-making processes, they can interpret even a bad law to deliver justice. But if they are excluded from executing policies, even the best of laws will fail to serve their interests.

One of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s greatest achievements was securing constitutional, institutional, and legal protection for the policy of social justice and reservations—thus removing it from the whims of any individual, whether in the executive or the judiciary. Ambedkar understood that justice could not be achieved without addressing gender inequality and legally granting Hindu women equal rights. This is why he pushed hard for the passage of the Hindu Code Bill in its undiluted form.

No one understood better than Ambedkar the suffering of Hindu women during the post-Buddhist era, particularly under the social codes of Manu, which stripped them of their rights and severely restricted their mobility. As a feminist, Ambedkar recognized that the caste system was perpetuated by controlling the sexuality of Hindu women and prohibiting inter-caste marriages. He aimed to eliminate these social evils and liberate women through the Hindu Code Bill. Unfortunately, the Hindu Right—both within the Congress party and outside it—conspired against him. When he found himself isolated, Ambedkar was forced to resign. To this day, Ambedkar’s mission to liberate Hindu women remains unfulfilled.

As is evident today, the philosophy and goals of Dr. Ambedkar are more relevant than ever before. However, the struggle for emancipation from the caste-based social order can only succeed if broader solidarity is forged. I find that Ambedkar’s thoughts and programs align more closely with Leftist agendas. When I use the term “Left,” I refer to the broader Marxist and socialist philosophy. While I acknowledge that Ambedkar did not agree with every aspect of mainstream Marxist and socialist interpretations, that does not mean Ambedkar—and by extension, Ambedkarites—are not natural allies of the Left. Here, the term “Left” does not refer to any specific political party. Nor am I ignoring the reality that leadership within mainstream Left parties in India has historically been dominated by upper castes, who often neglected caste issues and hesitated to elevate Dalit leaders to top positions. Nevertheless, the historical failures of certain Left organizations should not become a permanent obstacle to an alliance between Ambedkarite and Leftist forces.

That is why, for me, my Ambedkar is a Leftist Ambedkar.

Dr. Abhay Kumar holds a PhD in Modern History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His forthcoming book explores Muslim Personal Law. Email: debatingissues@gmail.com

The post My Ambedkar is a leftist Ambedkar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The United Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development (UMEED) Bill 2024, introduced by the ruling BJP-led Union government, has now been referred to the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) for further examination. Upon reviewing the draft Bill and observing reactions from the Opposition, media, and academics, it becomes evident that a crucial aspect is missing from the discourse. The responses from Muslim organisations follow a familiar pattern: an outright rejection of reforms deemed as religious matters, coupled with a resistance to any state intervention aimed at reforming these areas. This has been the typical stance on issues like Muslim Personal Law, Muslim University governance, and Waqf administration.

This reaction necessitates an intervention to bring forth a broader perspective.

The scope of the flawed bill

The proposed Bill ostensibly addresses the management and mismanagement of Waqf properties, rather than delving into the theological or historical legitimacy of Waqf as an institution. It seeks to address concerns about the assets held under Waqf, the proceeds they generate, and the persistent corruption within the Waqf administration. However, some Opposition leaders seem to be treating the Waqf Bill in the same way as they have treated other religious matters, such as the Shariat Act of 1937 and the governance of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

It is important to clarify that, regardless of the Supreme Court’s upcoming verdict on AMU’s minority status, structural reforms in the governance of AMU will remain unresolved. For instance, the AMU will still have a preponderance (over 80%) of membership of the internal teachers in the Executive Council. In all these cases, there exists a widely held belief within all Muslim communities that the state should not interfere, that no reforms should emerge from within the community, and that these matters are divinely ordained and therefore immutable. This belief perpetuates a sense of Muslim exceptionalism, exclusivity, and isolation from the state.

Both the government and the Opposition appear to be engaging in the usual “vote-bank politics”, addressing their respective constituencies based on identity. This approach has already caused significant harm to India’s Muslim communities, due to the bizarre stance of their own self-serving elites as well as the ruling and intellectual elites of the country. It is crucial for ordinary Muslims to be informed by their theological and secular institutions (such as Deoband, Nadwah, Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and MANU Hyderabad) that Waqf, arguably, does not have explicit Quranic or Shariah mandates. Imam Abu Hanifa (699-767) also didn’t approve of it as an institution indisputably and explicitly sanctioned by Sharia. Waqf-e-Aam and Waqf-e-Aulad (types of Waqf) are often more about circumventing Quranic inheritance rules and preventing division among heirs than about altruism and charity and public welfare. They are not divinely ordained.

The historical context of Waqf

In the latter half of the 19th century, Waqf in India became a means to fund identity politics and secure representation in colonial governance institutions. Gregory Kozlowski’s 1985 book, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India, highlights that most Waqfs in India emerged during this period when the colonial state turned land into a commodity. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), a visionary pragmatist, was aware of both the British Indian judges’ concerns about Waqf-e-Aulad (Waqf for descendants) and the self-interests of the Muslim landed aristocracy. British judges rightly saw Waqf-e-Aulad as circumvention of Quranic inheritance laws and in their judgments invalidated many of these Waqfs, as they lacked charitable elements. This is why they kept invalidating such Awqaf, annoying the Muslim landed elites turning into Waqifs.

Sir Syed therefore, proposed a middle path. In 1879 –as member of the Viceroy’s Legislative council– he introduced a draft bill advocating that Waqf properties be used also for more meaningful and tangible charitable purposes such as education, healthcare, and social welfare, not just for mosques and madrasas. He argued that if managed properly, Waqf could be a powerful tool for social change and community development, brings out Prof. Shafey Kidwai’s column (India Today, August 13, 2024). Sir Syed’s proposal was also published in 1877 in his periodical Tehzibul Akhlaq, with the title, ‘A Proposal for Salvaging Muslim Families from Extinction and Destruction’. This was vehemently opposed by orthodox Muslims who saw the insistence on charity and public welfare as an innovation (bidat). As a result, Sir Syed succumbing to the conservatives and orthodoxy withdrew the bill.

In contrast, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the cunning politician, by the second decade of the 19th century, jumped in to protect the interests of the Muslim landed elites who needed the Waqf Validation Act of 1913. This act, supported by the colonial state, aimed to safeguard the landed assets of these elites, who were seen as potential allies against the growing anti-colonial movement. The Swadeshi Movement, which opposed the religious-communal partition of Bengal, had forced the colonial state to annul the (Bengal) partition in 1911-192, necessitating a political arrangement to secure Muslim support.

Such a political arrangement to safeguard the monopoly on landed assets is equally true for the Mahanths and their Mutths .Unfortunately this institution of Mahanths and Maths remains under-explored by the historians of peasant and agrarian relations. Prakash Jha’s film Mrityudand (1997) attempts to depict some of the degenerative aspects of the institution of Mahanth, but it eventually turned more into a melodramatic movie.

The BJP has got no intent of introducing a similar Bill to reform this Hindu institution of Mahanths’ Muths? This is therefore an additional reason why Muslim communities look upon the proposed Bill with alarming concern, as it creates an impression of targeting only Muslims with discriminatory treatment. One more apprehension is, turning the Bill into a tool to harass Muslims by local majoritarian forces and outfits in those smaller villages and mohallas where written deeds of a Waqf and mosques aren’t available.

The nature of Waqf: Neither divine nor immutable

Waqf is not the exact equivalent of charitable endowments in the “Christian” West. In many cases, as said earlier, it is a means of circumventing Quranic inheritance regulations. Just as the community’s elites have misled others into believing that Shariat is divinely ordained, Waqf has also been portrayed as an immutable, divinely sanctioned institution. This deception needs to be exposed for the greater common good.

Moreover, the looting and encroachment of Waqf assets have been a recurring issue across the Islamic world since the 7th century AD. This mismanagement occurred with the earliest prominent Waqfs, such as Khyber and Sawad (Iraq) during Caliph Umar’s time, and the Rumlah (Palestine) Waqf established in 912 AD by a person named Faíq (which has earliest surviving written record-stone inscription). All three “earliest” Waqf estates have since become non-existent, as their assets were looted by military and other elites!

Waqf mismanagement and loot

The looting of Waqf assets is almost as old as the institution itself. In India, there is a consensus that Waqf properties suffer from gross mismanagement and looting. Despite numerous legislations, the loot continues unabated. The existing laws, therefore, require a thorough re-examination. Unfortunately, neither the ruling party nor the Opposition has highlighted this consensus in the Lok Sabha, in media, or in academic debates. The near silence of academics from institutions like AMU and JMI on this matter is particularly notable.

The “Muslim-friendly” “secular” Opposition refrains from addressing Waqf loot because doing so would justify the need for the Bill. This also explains why their interventions in the Lok Sabha are superficial and merely rhetorical. The Opposition cannot afford to state frankly that Waqf is not divine and requires human intervention for reform in order to prevent its loot and redirect it for the welfare and empowerment of the Muslim communities.

Academics, theologians and other knowledge elites have been shallow in their interventions. They have not voiced the concerns and apprehensions they discuss privately about the implications of the proposed Bill. The Muslim community needs to see through this politics, not only of the politicians but also of their own knowledge elites. Why aren’t these academics helping legislators and the community understand the issue in a holistic manner?

The real threat posed by the Bill is to the elites within the Muslim community. The proposed Bill challenges the exclusive Muslim representation in Waqf Boards as mandated by Section/clause 14 of the Waqf Act of 1995. This section, which deals with the social composition of Board Executives, is being questioned in the new Bill. The provision for Muslim-exclusive privileges in Waqf representation is being removed, which is a significant point of concern, alarm and contention. Another alarming concern is the proposal to do away with the enabling provisions enshrined in section 40 of the Waqf Act, 1995. It gives powers to the Board to acquire, issue notices or hold an enquiry into the ownership of the property that it has reasons to believe belongs to the Waqf.

Proposed reforms

While the proposed Bill has its deep flaws, the lack of detailed articulation by its opponents hinders constructive debate. Historically, state intervention has sometimes yielded positive results, as seen in the Mohsin Waqf of Hooghly, where the British colonial state established the Mohsin Hooghly College in 1836, going beyond the original terms of the original Waqf. The Waqf Bill of 2024 should explicitly incorporate such progressive steps. Parliament should legislate to ensure Waqf Boards take similar rewarding actions.

Muslim communities must abandon their collective hypocrisy. For instance, the practices, such as Instant Triple Talaq (ITT), are un-Quranic yet they stubbornly refuse to reform themselves as much as they resist the state intervention. Despite, Ali Miyan Nadvi’s assurance to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the AIMPLB refuses to provide for maintenance to divorced Muslim women. They keep opposing the Supreme Court verdicts in this regard.  Likewise, adoption of a child is not prohibited by Quran (it only prohibits concealing the biological paternity of the child adopted) and custody is absolutely valid as was the case with Zayd the adopted son of the Prophet Muhammad, yet, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) refuses to reform it. Their stubbornness is immensely supported by most of the academics of the modern institutions such as the AMU and JMI. Political leaders like Akhilesh Yadav, Asaduddin Owaisi, and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) must take a clear stand on this issue.

Some Tentative Recommendations for the Waqf Bill 2024

1. Creation of a Waqf Tribunal: Establish a tribunal consisting of judges of the rank of High Court judges as the exclusive body for resolving Waqf cases, with the Supreme Court as the appellate authority.
2. Enhanced Land Survey: A Land Survey Commissioner should be comprised of at least three officers in each Board.
3. Mandatory Gender and Caste Representation: The Waqf Board’s composition should be diversified and this should be made mandatory (with Muslims of all castes and women as members).
4. Digital Transparency: Waqf assets, deeds, and real estate records should be digitized and made publicly accessible online for transparency and vigilance.
5. Promotion of Charitable Activities: The Bill should mandate that Waqf properties be used aggressively for establishing modern educational and research institutions, especially quality residential schools under Article 30 of the Constitution.
6. Strict Penalties for Mismanagement: Penalties for those who grab, usurp or mismanage Waqf properties should not be diluted. Rigorous imprisonment should be enforced.
7. Memorialization of Waqf Creators: Waqf creators (Waqif) should be remembered in a befitting manner, be honored, and their deeds digitized and made publicly available.
8. Defined Roles for Mutawallis: The roles of Mutawallis (Waqf administrators) should be clearly defined, with fixed tenures of 3-5 years. Eligibility criteria should be established for their appointment.
9. Accountability Mechanisms: A robust check and balance mechanism should be implemented for both Mutawallis and Waqf Boards.
10. Mandatory annual auditing, and the income of the Waqf Boards should be made available for public vigilance.

Hope, the stakeholders would listen to the above words!

(The author is a Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University)

The post The Waqf Bill 2024: An Open Letter to the Joint Committee of Parliament, the Opposition, and India’s Muslim Communities appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Enforcement Directorate and other agencies arbitrarily target those who are perceived as dissidents or political opponents in violation of the rule of law.

The not–so–silent aim is to convert India’s diversity into a pro- Hindu state. This affects our democracy, secularism, federalism and civil liberties.

I cannot speak with any authority of the ‘deep’ state which our distinguished chairman for this meeting, Mr [N.N.] Vohra knows about but may not disclose. It exists under the cloud of secrecy and confronts, even eliminates many in the name of national security. The deep state covers many deals, conspiracies and atrocities hidden from public exposure.

I was asked to celebrate the achievements of India’s constitution from 1950 over 75 years. Much can be written and said about this journey and many experiences can be drawn from it.

Nehru is much criticised these days, but his tenure should be remembered. He interacted with other non-Congress politicians, hostile journalists and those who opposed him.

When he spoke of the Seventh Fleet in a public statement, he was threatened with a privilege motion in parliament because in those days, all major matters had to be first placed on the floor of the house.

He confronted this with an apology. He faced a contempt motion in the Madras high court
with humility, was represented and won his case.

The infamous President’s Rule imposed in Kerala in 1959 during his tenure was at the instance of Indira Gandhi, then president of the Congress, and home minister Govind Ballabh Pant.

I saw a picture in Justice Krishna Iyer’s house where Krishna Iyer, then a minister in the ill–fated government, was presenting a memorandum to a passive, even sad, Nehru. I asked Krishna Iyer to explain this photograph to me. The judge told me that he had informed Nehru that the Left coalition which had come to power and was threatened by President’s Rule was prepared to accept all of the Union’s demands. Nehru then told Krishna Iyer to speak to Indira.

Be that as if, may Nehru cannot escape responsibility for destroying the first elected communist government in the world. But to his credit, unlike now, he allowed a strong debate in parliament which took the government apart even if the Congress majority in parliament sustained the imposition of President’s Rule.

This episode also reflects on the need to separate political governance from constitutional decision– making. I will dwell no more on this. Those interested in my views on Nehru can read my long introduction to a book called Nehru and the Constitution (1992) where I invoke Milan Kundera’s evocative statement: “Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor could lead to love.”

Nehru’s was a metaphor in India’s formative years and remains so and to be admired. He cracked down on powerful corrupt ministers and gave his all to democratic governance. Mistakes? Of course there were. Who doesn’t make them? Our present controversies about Nehru are political because the BJP and the Sangh parivar feel that by denigrating Nehru, Modi’s status will be enhanced.

There is academic controversy as well on Nehru’s economic policy, as seen in Arvind Panagariya’s The Nehru Development Model –  History and its Lasting Impact (2024); and more generally by Tylor C. Sherman’s Nehru’s India – A History in Seven Myths (2022) and others. His photographs are being removed and replaced by Savarkar’s. But Aditya Mukherjee’s Nehru’s India – Past, Present & Future (2024) stands out at a time when history is being corrupted.

Mrs Gandhi did subvert the constitution in the sixties with uncalled President’s Rule against opposition– ruled states which came into power electorally after 1967. There was the dreaded Emergency (1975-77). But she was humbled by Indian democracy, the greatest gift by India’s constitution to her people.

Today we celebrate Modi, whose contribution to India’s democracy is winning elections through fundamentalism supported by crony capitalism, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Sangh parivar with ‘gifts’ to the poor –  all in the name of growth and economic progress.

But I do not want to indulge in ungainly political dialogue or compare Modi’s rise to Hitler who also chose the path to power through democratic elections to the Reichstag to become chancellor. Nor am I interested in analysing his foreign policy as that of a flying salesman not just for India but himself.

Amidst speeches and oratory he has little time for governance; and has collapsed the distinction between governance and a constitutionally established state. My concern is less on the constitution’s journey over the past 75 years and more on the contemporary challenge to constitutionalism,  whose basis is being challenged from within. The past informs the present which, in turn, informs the future.

II. Checks and balances

The challenges of our present discontents are characterised by the collapse of the system of checks and balances to discipline constitutional power. I believe that the principles of checks and balances are a visible and invisible basis for a successful democratic, secular and federal constitutionalism. Without this the constitution would sink into the abyss and give rise to promote an elected dictatorship established from within the constitutional framework.

I am not really concerned with the elected dictatorship in America, Turkey and other parts of the world, which are countries that have their own grievances, their own challenges and their own impossibilities. Trump raises important questions on India’s foreign policy and the global economy where India, for all Modi’s travels, is at sea. Trump summons. Modi responds. Weapons deals are made to bolster America’s military industry and war machine.

Let us see how this system of checks and balances works. The powerful executive is responsible to parliament. The judiciary is empowered to challenge any high– handedness by the executive or any authority of governance including parliament, to protect the liberties of the people, prevent religion from entering electoral politics and to defend a balanced federalism. It has overseen the conduct of the civil services and resolved their disputes and has taken on authoritarianism at different times, succumbing during the Emergency (1975-77).

Part of the checks and balances of the constitution protects the states in the hope that there will be cooperative federalism with equities. Unfortunately, we now have a coercive federalism which divides people, favouring these governments which side with Modi’s political
centre.

The Modi government supported by the RSS and other elements of the Sangh parivar has, in many ways, promoted a Hindu state. There is a 501– page report of Sanghi intellectuals to replace the present constitution with a Hindu constitution.

Is this really possible in India, which is the greatest experiment of governance over the most diverse multicultural, multi–linguistic and multi–religious nation– state, housing several civilisations?

India with its around 200 million Muslims, is demographically second to Indonesia along with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It dwarfs all Islamic countries of the Middle East. Its Christian population is greater than many states in the world. It houses Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and many sects. People should realise that Hinduism is not a monolithic religion, but contains not only sects but religions within it. This is lost sight of by militant Hinduism and even the courts on which I am writing essays collected and titled  Conquest by Law:
Essays on Colonising Hindu Religious Endowments and Religious Freedom in India.

What is also disturbing is the aggressive linguistic dominance of Hindi. India has many officially recognised languages. Hindi is the official language, English is to be used for the ‘official purposes’ but surely is now an Indian language. Hindi is to be progressively used officially and developed. (Articles 343- 351). But few lay people can comprehend Hindi’s propagation in its neologised Sanskrit form, especially in government notifications, which is alien.

But there lies the rub. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution officially recognises 22 languages to include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri. Of these languages, 14 were initially included in the original constitution. The Sindhi language was added in 1967. Three more languages, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, were included in 1992. Subsequently Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali were added in 2004.

These are the tip of the iceberg. The bewildering variety of Indian languages and their dialects can only amaze and define India’s diversity and linguistic federalism.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has been at the forefront to protect Tamil. The assertions of BJP leaders including Modi will not absolve the party and its cohorts for promoting Hindi nationalism even in symbolic titles of legislations, the text of which is otherwise in English. On my impromptu test with lay Hindi–speaking, relatively poor people, they do not understand the ‘Hindi’ words for programmes and legislation promoted for acceptance. Linguistic federalism has become an important issue. DMK leader M.K. Stalin has led the charge against imposing Hindi nationalism.

We need to go back to controversies in the constituent assembly where K.M. Munshi and N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar agreed to Hindi being an ‘official language’, and Article 351 gives the duty to the Union to promote the spread of Hindi. But, as H.M. Seervai and others pointed out, given the diversity of languages in India, Hindi cannot be the “national language”.

I argued the case of Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan v. State of U.P., (2014) 9 SCC 716, where the issue was whether the state of Uttar Pradesh could make ‘Urdu’ a second official language. I was in favour of Urdu being added as an official language.

A constitution bench led by Chief Justice R.M. Lodha found this decision of the state to be valid and said that the “constitution does not foreclose the state legislature’s option to adopt any other language in use as official language”. It noted that many states have followed such an approach including Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi, which also recognises Hindi, English, Punjabi and Urdu.

The test is that the first or second language should be ‘used’ in that state. Tamil is used in Tamil Nadu and other languages in their respective states. The court said: “It is said that law and languages are both organic in their mode of development. In India, these are evolving through the process of accepting legitimate aspirations of the speakers of different languages. Indian language laws are not rigid but accommodative – the object being to secure linguistic secularism.”

The Union should back off from its archaic three–language formula and allow Tamil Nadu and other states to develop their own languages as official languages to be taught in schools. At present, we do not have a ‘national’ language – nor can the Hindi states impose one. The link language that has been effective is English and Hindi if they are agreed by the states mutually.

This is where an undeserving linguistic dictatorship can wreak havoc. Hindi is supported by demography in the North; the rest of the country speaks through different cultures and articulates in different tongues. Linguistic dictatorship will destroy the federation. Healthy checks and balances are needed so that all Indian cultures are articulated, expressed and nurtured in their own tongues. It is not for the Centre to impose a linguistic federalism on those who view themselves differently but are passionately Indian.

I will not dwell on the present government rewriting history officially and unofficially ignoring checks and balances; and secularism which is a part of the basic structure of the constitution to protect India’s unparalleled diversity.

III. The underlying texts of the constitution

At first sight, it is difficult to fathom India’s sprawling constitution. It has 395 Articles, many Sub-articles, 12 elaborate Schedules –each the size of many constitutions in the world. It has been formally amended 106 times, and through various legislations, under different allied Acts of parliament and under other provisions of the constitution, 46 times without reference to the complex process of amendment in the constitution.

Some people say we should redraft our constitution, which was a creative compromise with many elements of democratic surrender by her people to constitutional authorities. I have described this in a book titled he Constitution of India: Miracle, Surrender, Hope” (2017). I dedicated that book to Fali Nariman, my distinguished friend, who used to say that we will never be able to draft a new constitution now if we want, because people will fight over everything and come to a conclusion only through unwelcome crude political majorities.

But, in his last book, he advised, “you must know your constitution”, and showed how to maneuver its complexities –a notable and commendable effort. His latest, beyond the Courtroom: Reflections on Law, Constitution and Nationhood reminds us of India’s democratic gift to itself.

I need to explain that all constitutions invoke a surrender of rights, liberties, hopes and expectations during constitution–making and after. It is left to those who work out the constitution to ensure that this, or any other surrender, is not inimical to the people the constitution serves. It is in civil society that we will find hope for the future.

To understand the underlying thread of the constitution, I identify the following texts:

1. The Democratic and Political texts
2. The Justice texts
3. The Federal texts
4. The Civil Service texts
5. The Military texts

Each of them are fundamental in their own right, but interact with each other under a system of checks and balances.

The democratic and political texts are huge and contain many provisions to include a common electoral roll without discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex (Article 325), and elections to the parliament’s lower house and state assemblies on the basis of adult suffrage, which now means a right to vote if above 18 years of age (Article 326).

There are no special seats on the basis of religion, the kind demanded by Muslims and others which led to Pakistan. I sometimes feel that in those heady pre-Independence days, we could have conceded special or general electorates for Muslims to preserve an undivided continent to keep it together and save us from the horrors of Partition. I read the accounts from July 1946 with anger and dismay; though it may well have been that by that time the die was cast.

I canvass better relations with our neighbours, especially Pakistan, which I visited. Our fundamentalist friends cannot understand the importance of this.

The Election Commission is an independent constitutional body to ensure free and fair elections. There is some contemporary concern about appointments to the membership of the commission, which has ousted the chief justices in the selection process and admitted it to political domination. This is a blow to electoral constitutionalism and the system of checks and balances which accords independence and autonomy to the constitutional body. We need a wide-bodied committee to suggest names which are confirmed by parliament to save the neutrality of this important commission.

A Delimitation Commission organises the constituencies; and the judiciary determines electoral disputes. The South, with more birth control and lesser populations, fears delimitation will diminish their strength in the elected legislature. All this will affect the checks and balances of the constitution in these texts. The South should not get lesser seats due to the demography of the North.

But there is cause for worry. Justice Madan Lokur has rightly pointed out that executive responsibility to parliament is decreasing. Richard Crossman elaborated that with the rise of prime ministerial power, there are strong presidential elements in the parliamentary system. One can see this in his posthumously published Crossman Diaries and a lecture in Harvard.

But though insightful, we still have a president who has to act on the aid and advice of the cabinet, with some independent powers. Another check and balance. But Crossman was concerned with the prime minister ascending power over his own cabinet and the latter’s discourse. To do so is a failure of checks and balances enshrined in India’s constitutional texts (Article 78, especially Articles 75(3), 78, 163, 164(2) and 167).

In India, the rise of a powerful Prime Minister’s Office centralises power in a disturbing way. Modi has appropriated considerable power to himself. This should serve as a warning.

There is also concern about the Delimitation Commission re-organising constituencies in a politically biased way and the danger of the Election Commission losing its autonomy due to political pressure. In a significant decision called Abhiram Singh (2017), Justice Lokur led a thin 4:3 majority to hold that appeals to religion in election were not permissible. This trumped the minority view of the then–Justice Chandrachud, Justice Lalit and Justice Goel – all of whom had some saffron connections or tendencies.

I leave this discussion on the political and democratic texts with apprehension because of the danger they portend. The apprehension deepens because debates in parliament are lessening. I demonstrate this in my book Reserved! How Parliament Debated Reservation 1995-2007 (2008) and other essays on other legislations.

Excessive control of parliament discussion weakens faith in this prime body. Quite apart from the paucity of debates on legislations and on President’s Rule proclamations, governments’ majorities dominate committees as we can see on the Waqf Bill.

Discussion on issues is stage–managed by speakers and the dreaded Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar (a veritable hit man for Modi’s government who does not understand the importance of the neutrality of his role). The result is that when the opposition disrupts proceedings to demand discussion, they are blamed for subversion, overlooking the genuine demand for discussion and debate.

The justice texts: The justice texts are crucial for democracy, federalism and civil liberties. But two clarifications are necessary.

The justice texts are not just addressed to the judiciary but to all organs of government including the executive, parliament, civil services, the federal structure and the military.

There are special texts in the constitution to monitor and give justice to the untouchables (chedule Castes (SCs)) and Schedule Tribes (STs), who also have presence in the legislatures, and at a lower level in local government to SCs, STs along with the other backward classes (OBCs) and women.

Many years ago, I printed a long article arguing for one-third women’s representation in legislatures. That is now law waiting to be implemented.

There are several constitutionally appointed commissions to work towards the upliftment of the marginalised (Articles 338-342A). But there is concern that there is an over–concentration on ‘reservation’ by way of quotas in services and access to education. In many cases I have supported reservations but for principled limits on the inclusion and exclusion of claimants. I also feel that not enough is done regarding direct affirmative action programmes.

But the core of the Justice texts lies in the fundamental rights chapter (Articles 12-36). Here are provisions of equality, liberty, freedom, protection of religions, their faiths, beliefs and practice, enhancing cultural rights and, most important, reposing in the judiciary with the right to move to the high court and directly the Supreme Court when these guaranteed rights are in threat.

Crucial to the independence of the judiciary are appointments to the higher judiciary. In Nehru’s time, the executive consulted the judiciary and this worked reasonably satisfactorily even if Nehru bitterly complained that lawyers (surely including judges) had, in his phrase, “purloined the constitution”. The record of this cooperation is recorded in the second collegium case.

But although his parliament reversed some important judicial decisions, checks and balances were in play over judicial appointments. It was Mrs Gandhi who saw threatening clouds to her power that she wanted a “committed” judiciary. Committed to what? Her regime or the constitution? Principled constitutional governance? She fiddled with these appointments when she lost important judicial decisions, more so after her election to parliament was declared invalid by an Allahabad high court judge.

This led to the Emergency, where otherwise brilliant judges in the Supreme Court gave her unbridled powers over political and other preventive administrative detentions against the decisions of nine high courts.

The judiciary came out of the Emergency badly wounded. The judges responsible for the disaster apologised in different measures –some were defiant. I do not believe that the judiciary would have survived this debacle but for Justice Krishna Iyer inspiring Justices P.N. Bhagwati, Y.V. Chandrachud (those two being party to the Emergency decision), Chinnappa Reddy, D.A. Desai and others to rely on a new approach and jurisprudence.

But as far as judicial appointments were concerned, the end result was that the Supreme Court in three important decisions of 1982, 1993 and 1998 struck back to eventually give itself dominant control over appointment through high court Collegiums and finally, as the decider in the Supreme Court collegium.

But this dominant power has been thwarted by covert and overt government interference. In 2014 the constitution was amended to create an independent National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC). This was struck down by the Supreme Court as politically dominated in the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Assn. case (2016).

Although I participated in the case that led to the NJAC’s downfall, I am not sure if I was right. Maybe the NJAC would have been more transparent, as my personal faith in the collegiums has declined. But I remain unsure. What we need is a wide–based commission whose decisions are ratified by parliament.

I also believe that in Modi’s time, the judiciary has sought to be saffronised with independent judges like S. Muralidhar taken out and regime judges like Victoria Gowri and Shekhar Yadav brought in. How much saffronisation? I cannot say, as this requires more research.

The entire controversy over Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s tenure was really over his failure to protect the checks and balances of the constitution, in his decisions as master of the roster to allocate cases, in judicial appointments with perceived religious biases, and his almost psychotic love for publicity.

So how have the justice texts fared? In response, the Supreme Court has spread itself into too many areas. The judiciary is overburdened. But the courts, especially the Supreme Court, still have the respect of the people. If the courts act independently and remain independent, there is more than hope for the future. However, we must remind ourselves again that the justice texts are not just to the judiciary but also to the other organs of government; and, of course, all of us.

The federal texts reflect India’s diversity. India now has 28 full fledged states and nine Union territories administered by the Union with some democratic governance in Delhi and Puducherry. After the dismemberment of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), there is one less state and two more Union territories, J&K and Ladakh.

These constitutional divisions are based on linguistic and cultural differences and strengthen diversity, secularism, democracy and governance itself. However, the working of Indian federalism has led to critical attention through public discourse, the Governors’ Report (1971), the Tamil Nadu Report (1969), the Sarkaria Commission Report (1988), the Constitution Commission Report (2002) and the Punchi Commission Report (2010). Of all these, the Sarkaria Report is the deepest.

One cannot ignore the vast research done by academics, of which my friend Balveer Arora who is on the stage, and Zoya Hasan are examples, amidst so many others including state governments and a vigilant media.

India has been called a quasi-federal state. The term has gathered currency because of the dominance of the Union and its huge powers. This argument of central domination is partly unsatisfactory, because all large federations are centralised in their power distribution but should be more sensitive in their working. Elsewhere I have argued in 1966 that India is quasi–federal because territorial integrity is denied to the states.

Gautam Bhatia, a distinguished jurist, in his latest book Constitution of India (2025) shows that the Supreme Court has contributed to this centralisation. This is only partly true, but the court has also tried to arrest the abuse of political federalism and has recently given greater mining rights to the states and chastised the outrageous behaviour of governors appointed by the BJP to behave responsibly in the discharge of their constitutional functions.

Governors have become political ‘hitmen’ for the government in power at the Centre. More recently, their conduct has become embarrassingly perverse.

The federal texts demand “cooperative” federalism. We can see this in Canada and perhaps Australia, but less so in America after the election of President Trump. Cooperative federalism is partly through institutions like the Inter-State Council (Article 263) or where there is meaningful exchange at formal and informal levels in respect of the distribution of power, the allocation of finances, interaction and mutual respect for each other’s governance. But this requires political will, often lacking in Indian federalism.

The Inter-State Council, which was resurrected after four decades, has fallen into disuse. Political interference is manifest in many ways. It began aggressively during the first reign of Mrs Gandhi when she used the President’s Rule provisions in Article 356 to oust and demolish opposition parties that had succeeded at the polls to establish their governments in many states.

Other political parties have also used these provisions mercilessly. The Janata government dismissed nine opposition governments in 1977 claiming a massive electoral mandate and the Congress returned to do the same in 1980.

These travesties continue. President’s Rule has been imposed 134 times, including 11 during the BJP’s tenure since 2014.

I believe that Article 356, which houses the power to impose President’s Rule, should be abolished, because as a result of these impositions, democratically elected governments simply disappear and consequently the state is run by parliament and the executive at the Centre.

External threats and public order problems can be dealt with by cooperative means. The general Emergency provisions (Article 352) or financial emergency provisions (Article 360) can be invoked with caution, because under this use of Emergency powers, democratically elected state governments survive as they should. This is also a part of the sustained duty of the Union under Article 355, which states that “it shall be the duty of the Union to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution”.

Although this has been emphasised because of the need to deal with war and revolts and also justify the imposition of President’s Rule in erring states, it gives the Union ample power to protect the nation; and properly interpreted, imposes a duty not to take over the democratic governance of the state but enhance it without imposing President’s Rule and abolishing legislative democracy in the states.

At the core of the abuse of political federalism are the governors appointed by the Union government. I believe that earlier some governors acted with constitutional honesty even though it was often with disastrous results. When I interviewed governor Dharma Vira for a book, he told me that he may not have been wholly correct in not giving the Mukherjee ministry the 18 extra days it wanted to face the assembly. I also believe that my father, governor Shanti Swaroop Dhavan, should have allowed Jyoti Basu to have formed a minority government in West Bengal.

Some but not all governors acted with honesty. But the BJP’s governors like Jagdeep Dhankhar (West Bengal), R. N. Ravi (Tamil Nadu) and Arif Mohammad Khan (Kerala) are a disgrace to the office. Dhankhar as vice president continues to espouse the BJP’s politics, refusing to maintain the neutrality of his office.

I believe governor selection needs approval by an evenly politically distributed parliamentary committee after extended consultation with the state in question to result in the appointment of non-partisan governors who should not be transferred until they complete their five–year term unless impeached earlier. After their term, they should be ineligible for further gubernatorial office more than twice after going through impartial selection again for a possible second term.

Who should form a ministry after election or otherwise cannot be decided in Raj Bhawans. Even a minority ministry of the largest party or coalition should not be enjoined to face a ‘confidence’ motion. Once sworn in, they should only be toppled by a ‘non-confidence’ motion. This should be true of parliament and state assemblies. An instrument of instructions needs to be devised.

Abuse of political federalism was addressed by the Supreme Court in the Bommai case (1992) and the Rameshwar case (2005) to provide for judicial review of the decisions to impose President’s Rule. When the Uttarakhand President’s Rule was struck down by the high court, the BJP government was indignant and discriminated against the judge’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

We should remember that judicial review is a backstop. It would be better for the Presidents Rule provisions to be abolished.

A distinguishable feature of Indian federalism is its asymmetry. Not all states are alike and cannot be treated as such. This asymmetry is manifest in special provisions in the constitution for the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Sikkim, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka.

For Nagaland and Mizoram, even the parliament cannot interfere with cultural religious practices (Article 371 and 371 A to J). Areas of states with tribal populations are protected (Fifth Schedule) even if Supreme Court decisions in the Andhra and Chhattisgarh cases have been conservative in not providing for a protective shield in this Schedule.

Significantly for Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, there are constitutions within the constitution in these states (Sixth Schedule), with other significant autonomies (Article 244A).

Given this, it should not surprise us that the state of J&K was governed by two interacting constitutions at the Union and state levels. The provisions for these two constitutions was called ‘temporary’ because the J&K state constitution was yet to be finalised not as the Supreme Court used this term to destroy the J&K state constitution through executive decisions and legislation passed hurriedly through parliamentary majorities.

Succumbing to the government, the Supreme Court upheld these decisions of a BJP majority parliament with no discussion. This merits an explanation.

In 1957, parliament enacted the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, whereby two provisions (Articles 152 and 308) ordained that parts of the Indian constitution relating to the constitutional governance of state governments (some 100 Articles) and administrative services (some 50 Articles) would not apply to J&K because they were covered by the J&K constitution. These important provisions could only be changed by the rigorous procedure of constitutional amendment (Article 368).

But, subverting this, the Supreme Court decided that they could be changed by executive order without confronting this argument at the bar.

The J&K imbroglio rested on provisions in the constitution to alter state boundaries or change their status (Articles 3-4). These are draconian provisions which could be used to deny the territorial integrity or constitutional status of a state. These provisions may have been necessary because many aspects of the Indian federation were incomplete when the constitution was inaugurated in 1950. These provisions provide for consultation of the state legislature which, the Supreme Court in Babu Ram’s case (1960) diluted.

In the case of J&K, since there was President’s Rule in the state, parliament was unable to consult the state legislature and de-facto consulted itself as a substitute. Those provisions should be reconsidered and amended for more and better consultation.

It is time that India realised that except for large States like Uttar Pradesh or the singular case of Vidarbha, the territorial process that forms the basis of Indian federalism is now complete. When the J&K case reached the Supreme Court, the judges colluded to reduce a mighty and respected state with Muslim dominance but cultural diversity into two Union territories with a vague promise that statehood would be restored in some uncertain future. This was not the Supreme Court’s finest hour.

All governments need adequate finances. Much can and has been written about India’s financial federation, which provides for fiscal levies by the Union and states with greater powers of taxation in the Union and their distribution and grants by the Union government. Reports of the Finance Commissions have been pivotal.

The Planning Commission was a supra-constitutional body now replaced by the truncated NITI Aayog. The 15th Finance Commission, which came into play in November 2017 in the aftermath of the then–recently introduced GST, was reposed with a continuing function to examine grants and review tax devolution to honour the conditions under which it was created and with a caveat on performance–based incentives which may eclipse endemic need–based requirements. This commission favoured the Union government.

GST poses a problem as the GST Council has recommendatory problems and an essential dispute–settlement machinery has not been set up.

A distorted political federalism has joined hands with economic federalism. There is rank favouritism towards those political parties in power that have joined or allied with the BJP–dominated National Democratic Alliance in power in the Union government. The other opposition states are under–resourced. In federal matters, existing checks and balances are being undermined and old statutory mechanisms are being dismantled. New mechanisms undermine a healthy financial federalism.

The civil service texts are important for the selection of the civil services. These are the backbone of Indian governance. To obviate political interferences, the selection of civil servants was entrusted to Public Service Commissions for the Union and states to ensure the independent selection of civil servants, including the police (Part XIV, Articles 308-323).

To ensure that civil servants act independently, there are provisions to ensure that they are not dismissed, removed or reduced in rank without due process (Articles 311-312). The idea was that they should be able to stand up to the political executive without fear or favour.

Unfortunately, successive political executives have violated these provisions, with the result that there is mighty litigation by civil servants in tribunals, high courts and up to the Supreme Court. What a colossal mess. The very size of this litigation shows that members of the civil services are disgruntled by constantly arbitrary and discriminatory treatment by executive governments. This does not augur well for the performance and independence of civil servants.

Remedial litigation also shows how civil servants are transferred if not liked by the political party in power – an issue where the courts have protected the powers of the executive.

Now, the Union government seeks to make outside special appointments in a relatively arbitrary and unregulated way. Checks and balances have gone and need to be restored and innovated.

I now turn to the military texts. Army recruitment is by the Union government, which has generally respected the autonomy of the army, which unlike Pakistan has not converted India’s democratic polity to hand over total powers to the military. But there are provisions in the constitution to modify the fundamental rights chapter in relation to the armed forces and when martial law is in force (Articles 33-34).

Why is this important? The army has a huge presence in the seven northeast states and J&K. They have enormous powers. We challenged the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 with shoot-to–kill powers in the Supreme Court which demurred, refusing to interfere or even lay down guidelines.

At one stage, Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, when chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, called a meeting of all the concerned top generals to meet with activists. This afforded a frank exchange, but the army did not yield to greater accountability even in respect of allowing independent observers in court martials.

Military operations also precipitate a ‘deep’ state where people are killed or illegally detained or imprisoned. This is hidden from view but surfaces. We need to know more about this deep state and have more accountability from the army and military without interfering in operations.

Since the topic for the day is federal democracy, I have addressed the issue more elaborately and mirrored my concern about checks and balances in the working of the constitution. The inauguration of more direct democracy at the village and city level is discussed in the next part although germane to India’s three–tier federalism.

IV. Separation of government from state

The state is created by the constitution which is permanent. Governments formed under te constitution come and go. The latter may make policies but must operate within the framework of constitutional limitations.

I was reminded of this by Balveer Arora’s recent and much publicised television speech. Today’s government and state are being unified as if the constitutionally created state is a play thing. I think Rahul Gandhi was prompted by his advisers to declared that the Congress will take its fight to the state itself. This was an ill-advised comment, which received much flak and reflects ignorance.

Our object is to save the state which is being taken over by the government to rewrite India’s history, diminish diverse cultures and claim absolute powers so that attention is diverted from the constitutional framework and its imperatives to the ambitions of the government in power and the iconisation of leaders to dwarf anything that stands in their way being undermined.

India is not Indira nor is Indira is India. Nor Modi is India and India is Modi.

V. Constitutional morality

When Ambedkar reviewed the constitution making of the Constituent Assembly, he expressed two caveats of considerable significance.

The first was that this ‘magnificent’ constitution would fail if good men failed to implement it.

The second connected concern was expressed by referring to George Grote’s view of constitutional morality in ancient Greece. This was generally ignored because the members of that august body believed that there were enough men and women of character amongst them and their successors who would take over constitutional governance even though they were wary that many constitutional provisions had flaws and could be politically subverted.

Even so, they believed that in the constitution’s processes and institutions with its checks and balances would work even after partition and Gandhi’s demise.

It is said that in one memoir written by someone other than Gandhi, it was projected that the latter believed in direct democracy at village levels which though inserted in the unenforceable Directive Principles emphasised the importance of panchayats at the grassroots level.

Perhaps this dream was fulfilled in part by the panchayats amendments in rural area and urban settings (Part IX – Article 243(H) to 243(T)). Added to this dream was the Panchayat Extension to Schedule Areas Act, 1996, which gives a dominant role to gram sabhas consisting of the entire village population to control predatory mining entrepreneurs and others.

My dear friend B.D. Sharma, in his weekly meetings with me, felt that the Act has lost its efficiency because the decisions of the direct democracy sabhas were not mandatory.

What our constitution needs are structural changes to promote democracy at all levels and also address the issue of an ‘operational’ morality to address not just the silences of the constitution but its operation across the board. This does not require a new constitution, but a partial re-examination based on consensus.

A new breakthrough came when the Fundamental Rights case (1973) decided that the basic structure of the constitution could not be altered by constitutional amendments. This could have been a doctrine of limited significance if it applied only to arrest constitutional amendments. But Bommai (1992) also used this doctrine to examine the executive action of imposing President’s Rule on various states and declaring that ‘secularism’ was part of the basic structure which was violated by these impositions.

Needless to say, democracy, judicial review and the independence of the judiciary are also part of the basic structure as well as aspects of fundamental rights as explained by Chief Justice Chandrachud (senior) in the Minerva Mills case (1978), which linked the equality, freedom and liberty provisions as part of a celebrated ‘golden triangle’.

It was not entirely clear whether the basic structure provisions could invalidate statutes and were only a means of interpretation. The better view is that it has more general application.

Perhaps born out of the basic structure doctrine, but standing tall as a self standing imperative for constitutional understanding and interpretation, it has bred more radical versions, described and articulated as ‘transformational’ morality on ‘constitutional novelty’. These are innovative doctrines not just, as Madan Lokur pointed out, to deal with the silences of the constitution, but of greater significance. It grew from Supreme Court decisions of Justices Dipak Misra and Chandrachud with some support from others.

My basic concern about constitutional morality is its relativism. Whose constitutional morality? The court’s? Or some judges’? Do Modi and the Sangh parivar have a different “Hindu” view of constitutional morality to rewrite history or legislate for change or even press for a new Hindu constitution which is being explored? Was a Uniform Civil code an issue of constitutional morality?

Judges have differed on its content and application. In the Sabarimala case (2019), Justice Chandrachud emphasised the egalitarian and libertarian provisions of the constitutional text as constitutional morality. Justice Indu Malhotra emphasised plural secularism. Both views led to different results.

At the end of my now dated book on President’s Rule in the States (1979), I talked all too briefly of institutional morality. By this I meant that every institutional authority, every constitutional or statutory functionary and every process of governance has a best practice.

Without elaborating, I wanted all those in power to yearn towards the best practice constituting institutional morality; and to advance the dharma of constitutional governance. Subjectively, this draws sustenance from the Mahabharata to ask each one to find their dharma and move towards its fulfillment of best practice. Many fall short of this requirement – as they do in our time. But I believe institutional morality to be a more workable solution.

VI. Conclusion

I will not attempt a summary of what I have said on elected dictatorship, the checks and balances of the constitution, its manifestation in the five texts of the constitution (the political or democratic texts, the justice texts, the federal texts, the civil service text and the military texts), the need to separate government from the state and exploring the morality of the constitution.

My concern reflects on our challenges in 2025 as they have now emerged after 75 years of governance with all their ups and downs. These challenges have to be addressed by civil and political society and all of us whose future destinies are invested in this great nation for now and generations to come.

To borrow from an American poet: India is large and contains multitudes.

This article is based on the author’s lecture delivered at the India International Centre on January 25, 2025.

Rajeev Dhavan is a senior advocate.

Courtesy: The Wire

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To traverse that road map, the RSS and its founders adopted a twin strategy from the beginning. The Hindu Mahasabha was dedicated to develop its footprints and the RSS to penetrate different sections of society by building a cadre based organisation. This twin strategy continued from the days of Hindu Mahasabha through Jana Sangh and consolidated in the BJP era.

There is something to be learnt by all those who wanted to transform India built on a constitutional secular democratic republic to a people’s democracy (Marxists). To first and foremost is, to preserve constitutional democracy. This requires setting out goals with clarity, identifying ‘enemies’, chalking out a strategy to weed out those that harm society, and lay the foundation of achieving respective goals.

On all these fronts the RSS has travelled a long way and its implications and consequences are before us to see. I am not going to recount all those here except emphasising only one aspect. A political tactical line is not the patented right of the Left or Communist Parties. Any party that aspires to rule any country will ultimately will evolve its own tactics which includes accepting a united front as a tactic whenever such a force is weak.

The RSS has fought hard to come out of the woods and stay relevant within an Indian political context at a time when free India was being built on the basis of the universal values inscribed in Preamble of the Constitution.

The historiography of the RSS will be enriched if one critically looks into the role that this exclusivist organization played during Partition, more particularly in western and eastern parts of India, the two regions affected tragically by a sudden change in demography.

In the immediate aftermath of Independence and Gandhi’s assassination by one of its followers (January 30, 1948), the RSS went into political oblivion. Since then, it has worked patiently among the masses defusing its ideology in the name of being a ‘cultural and charitable organisation’ and at the same time, resorted to united front tactics with the then Congress and constituent partners of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal.

Despite such occasional encounters with positions of power, the RSS felt that mass politics required far more pragmatic approach and transformed its political arm Jan Sangh into the re-incarnated, BJP. Even then, instead of coming up with its own original ideological road map as prescribed by Golwalkar, the RSS guided the BJP to traverse the path of Gandhian socialism and what not. Despite this, it could not achieve effective pace in political growth and relevance. It therefore came out open in the public, again, with a twin strategy.

The first strategy was focused on framing a debate on the lines of pseudo secularism primarily aimed at undermining one of the key pillars of the basic structure of the Constitution. Coupled with this, the second strategy was to publicly own up to the RSS’ core agenda of militarising Hindus and Hinduising society, and, in fact, building a new kind of civil society around this twin strategy. Demonising constitutionalists and free thinkers and transforming ‘Maryada Purushottam Ram into warrior on alien or alienated sections of society’ both were pivotal in the RSS spectacular rise to power.

The RSS, therefore, never faltered in identifying its enemies, nor resorted to a nuanced approach while dealing with them. In this journey, the RSS clearly held Communists in India to be among its prime enemies.

This was academically acknowledged by the Left in general and the CPI (M) in particular, decades ago. In a document released within in the lead up to the 2019 general elections, titled, In Defense of constitution and democracy, the party stated, “It is for this reason, and also for an alternate policies in the economic sphere promoted and practiced by CPI (M) led state governments, that the BJP Modi led Hindutva platform has openly declared the left and the CPI (M) in particular as its main ideological foe.”

Based on the road chalked out in In Defense of constitution and democracy, the CPI (M) in its Central Committee meeting held in December 2018 concluded, “The Political Resolution has pointed out that our line is not of equidistance between the BJP and the Congress. Hence in states where the main contest will be between the BJP and the Congress, such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and others) we should fight just one or two seats and campaign generally for the defeat of the BJP.” The resolution also called on the cadre to “contribute towards maximizing the pooling of anti-BJP votes based on our political line”.

Subsequently, while analysing the 2019 general election results, the Central Committee was not hesitant in cautioning the Congress party when it said, “The Congress party failed to put in place, on the ground, the unity of opposition secular parties when it was campaigning for in the run-up to the elections. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress contested independently.”

The review further observed in “Overarching Hindutva Identity that “The BJP-RSS orchestrated an overarching Hindu identity during the campaign which cut across, to some extent, the social and ethnic divides amongst the people.  This was accompanied by micro-level social engineering to successfully combat the dominant caste based social alliances which were forged in some states. The BJP identified the non-dominant castes and individual tribal communities for targeted messaging and propaganda. This was accompanied by physically contacting voters by the RSS and its network, consolidating the BJP’s outreach.” This was observed in documents from the 2019 October Central Committee meeting.

Further the CPI (M) also observed that “The BJP is aggressively working to establish a unitary State structure in India. This is required for them to advance the RSS’s fascist agenda of converting the secular democratic Republic into its ideological political project of `Hindu Rashtra’ (This should appropriately be read as “Hindutva Rashtra”)”.

The document identified four key challenges,

“a) The BJP has won this decisive victory on the basis of unprecedented money power and full support of the international and domestic corporates.  The trajectory of anti-people economic reforms favouring the big business and the rich are bound to intensify by imposing greater miseries on the vast majority of the people.  The Party will take the lead in rallying the maximum sections of the people in struggles against such economic assaults.

“b) The consolidation of the Hindutva communal polarisation will lead to greater attacks on the rights of the religious and linguistic minorities, worsening their security concerns and livelihood.  The safeguarding and strengthening of secularism, as enshrined in our Constitution, will be taken up by the Party drawing in the broadest sections in these struggles.

“c) The penetration of the RSS in all Constitutional authorities that happened during the last five years is bound to further intensify.  This will lead to undermining such Constitutional authorities in order to facilitate the transformation of the Constitutional Republic into the ideological project of the RSS, “Hindutva Rashtra”.  The defence and strengthening of all Constitutional authorities will be championed by the CPI (M) along with all other forces willing to join these struggles. 

“d) The focus of the BJP’s victory was based on the need to establish a `security’ state in India, the infringement upon the rights of individuals specifically the right to dissent will sharpen.  Already ominous indications are evident. The assaults by private armies under one pretext or the other against Dalits and religious minorities will intensify. The rights of working people and religious, linguistic minorities will come under attack leading up to witch-hunting.  The CPI (M) will take the lead in mobilizing the broadest segment of our people who cherish democratic rights and civil liberties to meet these challenges squarely.”

Further, the party also discussed at its Central Committee meeting in January 2020, the intensified challenges from the RSS and stated that,

“The situation in Kashmir continues to remain far from normal even after five months. Apart from the merciless denial of elementary human and democratic rights of the people, the situation has devastated the J&K economy, imposing further misery on the people. All these measures are clearly aimed at consolidating Hindutva communal polarisation and seeking to replace the secular democratic Indian Constitution with the RSS fascist agenda of “Hindu Rashtra”.

It is on this understanding that the CPI (M) adopted its Tasks on Cultural Front document in August 2020 wherein it identified the twin dangers being faced by the country.

The Tasks on Cultural Front clearly stated, “Both neo-liberalism and communalism, domestically, thus seek the homogenisation of public tastes.   The former is to strengthen its cultural hegemony and to reap super profits. The latter, in addition to this, is to pave the way for the establishment of a rabidly intolerant fascist State – the RSS vision of `Hindu Rashtra’.

The RSS’ slogan of “one country, one people, one culture” can acquire a real status and meaning only through such homogenisation, negating the very fundamental foundations of India’s rich cultural diversity.  Further, both neo-liberalism and communalism seek to divert the attention of the people away from day-to-day problems and importantly weaken their struggle against the existing exploitative order.”

The Party also warned secular and democratic forces that the BJP, utilised the period of the pandemic and the consequent disruption of normal life and activities due to lockdown restrictions etc. to advance the core RSS agenda of converting India into their conception of a rabidly intolerant fascist `Hindutva Rashtra’.

The CPI (M) acknowledged that the establishment of such a `New India’ is not a product of this Modi government alone. It has a history of nearly a century – from the founding of the RSS in 1925, Savarkar’s theses on Hindutva and its ideological construct and the RSS’ organisational structure –all with the goal of a fascist `Hindu Rashtra’ by Golwalkar in 1939.

Armed with this understanding, the Party went in to preparations for its 23^rd Congress at Kannur, at which the Political Resolution in the opening chapter itself assessed that, “The period since the 22nd Congress has seen the further consolidation of the BJP, which being in government is aggressively pursuing the Hindutva communal agenda of the fascist RSS. It has mounted a multi-pronged attack through the pursuit of rabid neo-liberal reforms strengthening the communal-corporate nexus, looting of national assets, promoting crony capitalism, legalising political corruption and imposing full-fledged authoritarianism.”

While observing the qualitative change in the political landscape off the country, the Political Resolution also stated, “Para 2.2: Since then, there has been the intensification of the above right wing offensive. However, with the return of the Modi government with a larger number of seats and vote share began the aggressive furthering of the Hindutva communal agenda of the fascist RSS. What is unfolding, particularly, in the post 2019 period, is on the lines laid down in the CPI-M Party Programme:

“The Bharatiya Janata Party is a reactionary party with a divisive and communal platform, the reactionary content of which is based on hatred against other religions, intolerance and ultra-nationalist chauvinism. The BJP is no ordinary bourgeois party as the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh guides and dominates it. When the BJP is in power, the RSS gets access to the instruments of State power and the State machinery. The Hindutva ideology promotes revivalism and rejects the composite culture of India with the objective of establishing a Hindu Rashtra.” (Para 7.14)

“The threat to the secular foundations has become menacing with the rise of the communal and fascist RSS-led combine and its assuming power at the Centre. Systematic efforts are on to communalise the institutions of the State, the administration, the educational system and the media. The growth of majority communalism will strengthen the forces of minority communalism and endanger national unity. The support of sections of the big bourgeoisie for the BJP and its communal platform is fraught with serious consequences for democracy and secularism in the country.” (Para: 5.7)

“Party should fight against all forms of intrusion of religion in the economic, political and administrative life of the nation and uphold secular and democratic values in culture, education and society. The danger of fascist trends gaining ground, based on religious communalism must be firmly fought at all levels.” (Para: 5.8)

Political Resolution of CPI(M)’s Kannur (23rd) Congress also identified the emerging class contradictions in India in the aftermath of the farmers united struggle that forced a retreat by BJP government as follows: “Para 2.123: Class Implications- New class conflicts have emerged during the course of this struggle, between the big bourgeoisie in collaboration with international finance capital and the entire peasantry, including sections of the rich peasants.

“Para 2.124: Secondly, conflicts amongst the ruling class partners are also emerging between the big bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the non-big bourgeoisie, particularly those belonging to the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, on the other.

“Para 2.125: Thirdly, BJP’s drive to establish its complete political hegemony in the country by destroying the federal structure of our Constitution and, in its place, erect a unitary State structure is creating conflicts between the Central government and elected state governments. Some regional parties, who head state governments, who were supporters of the BJP in Parliament and those who vacillated and remained largely neutral in their support to the BJP in Parliament, are being forced by this hegemonic drive of the BJP to come out in opposition, particularly during this kisan struggle.

“Para 2.126: The emergence of such conflicts amongst the ruling class partners creates possibilities that must be utilised by the exploited classes, particularly the working class, poor peasantry and agricultural labour, to intensify the class battles against the bourgeois-landlord order.”

“Para 2.127: Such possibilities for advancing the class struggle have emerged with the growing coordination between the working class trade union movement, the peasantry and the agricultural labour. Such developments began much earlier and since 2018 made significant advances through joint movements of these sections. This growing unity in struggles must be strengthened further in the coming period.”

It is in this backdrop, coupled with a solid ideological footing and absorbing the international experiences in fighting fascism, that it was decided to implement the Party’s 23^rd Congress directions and the CPI-M worked towards formation of INDIA block which played a crucial role in halting the roller coaster ride of the BJP to Parliament.

The CPI (M) has a programmatic understanding which clearly states that the BJP is ideologically guided by the RSS which has fascist characteristics.

In Telugu there is a saying. You can’t sow rice and reap wheat. Thus the ideological mentoring of RSS which sows fascist tendencies cannot result in any other outcome except that of transforming the country into a fascist Hindu Rashtra, armed with a militant Hindutva ideology.

This is what the understanding with which former General Secretary, CPI (M), Sitaram Yechury led the Party and this is the background in which the present Polit Bureau coordinator, Prakash Karat, acknowledged and hailed the contribution of Sitaram Yechury in expanding the Party’s understanding of the RSS and its fascist efforts to transform our constitutional secular democratic republic into fascist Hindu Rashtra. Whether in strength or in weakness, the RSS has never wavered in naming its enemies with determination.

Today, at this crucial hour, the question before the Party which is organizing its 24^th Congress at Madurai is whether it will further strengthen the ideological contribution of Sitaram Yechury or whether it steps back and wavers in naming the principle class enemy, which is the BJP guided by the fascist RSS.

Will the CPI-M lose ground, step back and retreat into its self-created binary confusion? The formulation on whether to give primacy to struggles against globalisation or to struggle or to strive and struggle to protect the constitutional secular democratic republic (and thereafter) to transform it into people’s democratic republic?

That is the crucial poser that presses for an answer.

(The author, Y Venugopal Reddy, is cultural critic and practicing as advocate at Hyderabad and had contributed a series of articles in the run up to 22^nd Congress of CPI (M) at Hyderabad)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Part 1, 2 and 3 can be read here

Evolution of CPI(M)’s approach towards Hindutva Politics: A Reading of its own documents – Part 1

Evolution of CPI(M)’s approach towards Hindutva Politics: A Reading of its own documents – Part 2

Evolution of the Left [CPI (M)] approach towards Hindutva politics: A Reading of its own documents – Part 3

Related:

Subjective thinking Hazardous for the CPI(M), India

CPI(M) must read the writing on the wall, realign to defeat fascist forces

Steer Clear from Jargon, Look at the Ground Reality: CPI(M) Today

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