I am nervous in speaking before this panel of knowledge elites who are far ahead of me in mediatized performance. In fact, I was hardly needed within this panel, given there is a galaxy of experts present.

These days, communicating within (and among) the like-minded audience is hardly a challenge and it doesn’t serve the desired purpose as much as it should.  The panellists have already spoken a lot on the theme of the symposium. At stake are the words, “evidence”, “proof”, “facts” (subut, sakshya, pramaan). The incumbent regime is doing everything in its power to create a common sense against “evidence” (rationality). Not just in the discipline of history but in every sphere of our daily lives. Not just in India; elsewhere too. Non-state actors, with the backing of state power and wilfully failed criminal-justice system, are deciding what we eat, what not to and what kind of edibles can be stored in our kitchens and refrigerators. These factors impinge on whether we can live or can be killed with impunity.

We are here to reflect upon the National Education Policy 2020. Its basis, as admitted by the Indian government is National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023. The three year of school education during the Grades 6 to 8, according to them are very critical. They do admit that content and pedagogy both are crucial. I looked into the textbooks meant for Grade 6 and for Grade 7. The title is Exploring Society, India and Beyond. The regime claims that these textbooks have an emphasis: minimizing the text by focusing on core concepts. “Focusing on big ideas”, is their emphasis in the “Letter to the Student”, appended at the beginning of the books; and multi-disciplinary approach is an important stated concern. Fundamental Rights and Duties are excerpted from the Constitution, and printed with embellishment. All these are high sounding claims, apparently. But not so, as we get into the details by proceeding further into the book.

A few years ago, we also had “Learning Outcomes based Curriculum Framework (LOCF): BA History Undergraduate Programme, 2021”. In an essay in the journal, Social Scientist, Irfan Habib has written extensively. The prose is endearingly satirical, a trait which the eminent historian employs in his public speaking and less in writing and within the classroom. I would strongly recommend that all of you read the essay. Such a Framework from the regime envisages political encroachment upon the curricula-framing and through this the shrinking autonomy of the universities.

Maulana Azad’s role as education minister (1946-58), along with Nehru and Radhakrishnan, in the autonomy of the UGC was foundational (1953-56). He championed the creation of an independent statutory body to manage and fund higher education, a move that was essential for the institutional autonomy of universities and for the development of a standardized and high-quality higher education system in India. Not only this, Maulana Azad served as the Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), a vital body for advising the central and state governments on educational matters and in framing school curricula. He presided over multiple meetings of the board, including those held in 1948, 1949, and 1950. This position gave him a direct platform to shape and influence educational reforms and policies at a national level.

Maulana Azad was quite conscious of the fact that the Medieval historical past (Muslim rulers) will be weaponized in certain ways by both, Hindu and Muslim communal forces. He therefore instructed (1949) ‘the historians of AMU to conduct research on that period by accessing original sources in Oriental languages.’ While resisting colonialism, his own perception of the Mughal past was distinctive. For instance, he looked upon Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi’s resistance (otherwise quite a conservative figure) against Akbar as an instance of why Muslim subjects too rise in resistance against the British colonial state (See Muzaffar Alam, “Maulana Azad and his memory of the Islamic past: a study of his early writings”, JRAS, Cambridge. 33, 4, 2023, pp 901-916)

For the diminishing autonomy of the universities in recent decades, politics is responsible as also the misuse and abuse of autonomy by the universities and the academia themselves, over a period of time. Recently, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of a prestigious university recently got a show cause notice on the flimsiest of grounds and the notice was not issued by the Visitor. More on that on another occasion!

The specific theme around which we have gathered here is something we are agitated about given that the incumbent regime is selective about facts, besides distorting the facts of history and more than that, which is, not less important, manipulating historical facts in most insidious ways. Manufacturing falsehood, parading these as history, and thereby poisoning the minds of children, of ordinary people in general. That is our concern here. There is a systematic attack on reason. People should not have minds, apply them, should not have or develop any critical faculty. They should not be thinking like citizens with powers of critical thinking, rather, they should function as mere subjects, praja, reáaya, before rulers. This appears to be the dominant political wisdom today.

We also need to keep in mind the fact that the NCERT textbooks are written more for the purpose of teaching material to the teachers. This is the purpose forgotten a long while ago.

Just four days ago, my teacher, Prof Farhat Hasan, along with Prof. Neeladri Bhattacharya, in their interview with Vrinda Gopinath (The Wire.In, July 31, 2025), have articulated all the important concerns pertaining to the issue. Ruchika has been doing it consistently in so many ways with effective communication. I hardly need to repeat these here. I would therefore seek your permission to raise some other issues which may not be getting adequate attention in terms of diagnosing the trouble. Just for the sake of informing the less informed, non-specialist audience here, allow me to do a quick recap, before embarking on the issues I wish to raise here:

In the latest version of NCERT textbooks, we have:

• Demonisation of Mughal rulers including Akbar (a feat achieved by Muslim reactionaries too); and the controversy around Aurangzeb-Shivaji. Through both of these, we can clearly identify the ways in which Hindu and Muslim Right Wing treat history.
• Discussing historical periods and rulers within the binaries of ‘Glorious’ and ‘Dark’ periods and rulers defined as ‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’, in terms of their personal faith. This irrational method overlooks overall state policies and political contexts and values of the era, and thereby creates an atmosphere through which co-religionists of these past rulers are made answerable for certain deeds. Taken to extremes, this can mean ‘punishing them for the previous wrongdoers.’
• The authors/editors of the NCERT textbooks of the 1970s and then again in 2005-06 had reputed professional academic historians this is not the case anymore;
• Earlier, each chronological period had judiciously distributed adequate space, across the evolving grades from VI to XII;
• All regions had spaces in terms of history-making, in the earlier textbooks, yet there were allegations of selective emphasis;
• Gender, Caste, Environment, Technology and Socio-economic changes, Growth of Science in history, sports, literature, sartorial culture, etc., were the issues which remained less addressed; with the evolution of a historical understanding, these issues were attempted in the NCET textbooks of 2005-06. Yet, right wing allegations persisted.
• Allegations of the Right wing were and are (about earlier books), temple ‘destructions’ during the time when Muslim rulers ruled were not emphasized in these texts. Making this argument they pushed for deletion of similar acts by Hindu rulers. Narratives built to create a communally divisive atmosphere. As if today’s ordinary Muslims are answerable for the past conduct of Muslim rulers, and today’s Hindus aren’t answerable for the similar acts of the Hindu rulers in the past.
• Anglo-Maratha Wars are okay to be taught, the Anglo-Mysore wars must to be omitted
• Ironically, while right wing forces might apparently talk of nativism laced with the rhetoric of being anti-West, at the same time their historical narratives derive much from the colonially divisive projects of historical representation;   Dr Ruchika Sharma is doing a lot to speak and write on these.

History has a political goal, has been a tool of ruling class, across the globe. It was so, always. This reminds me of Paul Freire’s 1968 book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He identifies two objectives of pedagogy: a tool for domination, and a tool for liberation. Here there are two models viz., “Banking Model”, in which the students are treated as passive recipients who in turn become unthinking, “submissively obedient” and status-quoist.[1] This de-humanises both the teachers and the students. In this, the oppressed turn into a new batch oppressors. Another model of pedagogy, Friere says, is: “Problem-Posing Model” wherein the teachers and students are co-educators to each other, it is dialogic and interactive.

In this context, one is also reminded of a recent book, Hilary Falb Kalisman, Teachers as State-builders[2]. This book talks of teaching which turns students into a force of resistance, state-subverters, disruptors, challengers to the status quo, and thereby creating thinking citizens who will build stronger society and state, rather than collaborators of the regime.  That is how, Kalisman says, colonial societies emerged to resist the state and attain freedom.

School textbooks are often used to both craft what the nation is or must be and to “teach” future citizens how they are now bound to and by a common historical narrative. Therefore, it is not surprising that India and Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) have put concerted efforts into crafting propaganda-like historical narrations about what their nations stood for.

Such historical narrations ‘droned on, ponderously, sonorously, and repetitively’ in citizenship projects about how the nation came to be formed and what the nation-state did for people’s benefit. Joya Chatterji (in her Shadows at Noon, p. 145) writes: ‘It was not so much that this publicity was executed with brilliance. It was not. It was merely the case that it was repeated ad nauseam, and that everydayness made the message natural’.

Not that history has not been used as a tool in earlier times! But then it was, as it should be, used as a tool of emancipation. Emancipation of the colonised, enslaved people. To inject self-confidence among the rising nation, the nation in making. By the word, nation, I mean people, not merely territory.  Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery and Glimpses were written for those noble purposes. Tara Chand’s books, the books written on the history of 1857 in 1907-09, in 1957, in 2007, etc., by the scholar-activist nationalists were pursuits in those directions. The NCERT textbooks, the books written for popular readings and published by the NBT were all exercises in those noble desirable purposes and directions.

Modern rational, secular democracies need such pursuits immeasurably. Praja ko Nagrik mein badalna hai, that is our biggest challenge today. It is a battle between “communalisation” and “secularization”. Please do note the difference. I am not using the words, “communalism” and “secularism”. I am using its variants, the process, not the mere nouns.

Once we read, Yasmin Khan’s 2011 essay (Modern Asian Studies), “Performing Peace: Gandhi’s Assassination as a Critical Moment in the Consolidation of the Nehruvian State”, we get to know, beyond the stated motive of the author, that the Nehru-led state was making efforts which were, in turn, using it in a certain way; the way for the marginalizing the forces who liquidated Gandhi’s body and life, if not his mind and ideas and ideology and praxis and methodologies.  Nehru strategically managed the public mourning, funeral, and distribution of Gandhi’s ashes to assert state power and legitimise Congress leadership during the turbulent post-Partition period (1947–1950). The state-organised funeral in Delhi, contrasted with widespread, vernacular mourning rituals across India, bridged the gap between the state and the people, reinforcing Nehruvian secularism. Public grief, amplified by events like the Ardh Kumbh Mela, transformed Gandhi into a saintly figure, fostering communal harmony and countering Hindu nationalist sentiments. Yasmin Khan emphasizes that these rituals were not merely ceremonial but politically transformative, solidifying the Congress Party’s role in shaping a unified, secular Indian state.

Nehru was very clear about the problem of communalism. He knew it more clearly than anybody else that in colonial era Muslim communal separatism was stronger because of the colonial state; during 1938-47, competitive communalisms of the two largest religious communities became greater menace because of the colonial state. After 1947, more particularly, after January 30, 1948, Hindu communalism was greater threat. Patel realised it only after January 30, though he didn’t survive for long after that to help Nehru in a larger way. He died in December 1950; not in 1960 (our Home Minister, Mr Shah should allow me to correct him)!

I was referring to the processes of communalisation. These forces remained there, not exactly subterranean, in the early years of independence. The majoritarian forces were apparently and arguably not in a hurry to be state-centric. They were working more on cultural fronts, and in the spheres of education, with the “Catch-them-Young” approach. This focus was there among both Hindu and Muslim communal forces. Both, were waiting for the right moment to capture state power for a full scale implementation of their communalisation programmes. In Pakistan, this project was hardly ever in resistance, as the very basis of the creation of Pakistan was communal. Krishna Kumar and at least in a column, Arvind N Das had written extensively on this. Persons, some previously with the prestigious, St Stephen’s, [I H Qureshi (1903-1981) and also the Gen Zia’s regime] did much to push Pakistan rightward. Ali Usman Qasmi’s (essay in Modern Asian Studies, 2018), “A Master Narrative for the History of Pakistan: Tracing the origins of an ideological agenda”, explains this phenomenon at length.

Gen Zia’s reign (1977-1988), more aptly depicted in Hanif’s novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes[3], coincided with the Saudi-funded project of the Islamisation of Knowledge (IoK) scheme. A range of scholars in different parts of the world started promoting Islamisation of Knowledge (known as ‘IoK’) in the late 1970s. The first World Conference on Education in Makkah (1977) marked a decisive step in the formulation of this project on an international platform. [Among the best-known scholars advocating this notion were Palestinian–American scholar Ismail al-Faruqi and Malaysian philosopher Syed Naqib al-Attas. For radicalization under Gen Zia’s regime, see, Virinder and Waqas Bhatt’s ‘If I Speak, They Will Kill Me, to Remain Silent Is to Die’: Poetry of resistance in General Zia’s Pakistan (1977–88), Modern Asian Studies, 53, 4, 2019. Also see my blog, “Namo’s India a parody of Zia’s oppressive regime in Pakistan?”, SabrangIndia. In, February 17, 2020].

“Sub-continental Majoritarianisms”, to use Papiya Ghosh’s expression, and global politics of the Ummah created a fear among Hindus, especially after the Khilafat mobilisations during the national movement. After Partition too, Hindu Majoritarianism derived fodder from such political pursuits of the Ummah. (Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was against the pan-Islamic, extraterritorial, Ummah; he was for a Qaum confined within national boundary). This phenomenon (Muslim communalism) feeding majority communalism has been afoot since the 1970s and 1980s. This is not a marginal factor. One communalism feeds another, is what Nehru had said, and Bipan Chandra later elaborated upon it.

India and its own Muslim right wing organizations were not averse to or unconnected with the abovementioned schemes promoting the Muslim right wing. Please do have a look into Chapter 6 of Laurence Gautier’s latest book on post-1947 AMU and JMI, Between Nation and Community, Syed Anwar Ali, a Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated teacher in the AMU and his book, Hindustan Mein Islam, and I H Quraishi’s book, The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, 610-1947, which give us a clear idea of Muslim Right Wing in our sub-continent, pre and post-1947.

All right wing forces have globalised networks. Secular resistance too has to ensure globalised networks of solidarity. No study or commentary in isolation will really help us understand the communal forces. (Communalisation of the textbooks is just a part of that politics); and thus, a less informed understanding and flawed or partisan diagnosis will not help us create an effective solidarity. Going soft on the Muslim right wing and hard against the Hindu right wing has proved a counterproductive strategy all these years.

Khoo gar-e- Hamd se thorha sa gila bhi sun le

Barring one or two lesser known pamphlets published by the Indian Left I have hardly come across any comprehensive criticism against the India’s Muslim right wing pursuits in these domains. We do understand that post-1947, the Muslim Right Wing couldn’t be as dangerous as the Hindu Right Wing. It was Nehru’s understanding of communalism and it was his desired magnanimity. That does not, however, really mean that such a lesser danger would not attract attention and will not be resisted. I am not compartmentalising the resistances we ought to offer.

Given the contemporary challenges, I strongly feel that Muslim intellectuals (if they really exist) of India need to speak out more on those aspects. India’s Liberals as also Leftists have reasons to agree with Nehru’s understanding on the colonial and post-Independence communalisms in India (Nehru understood that Muslim communal separatism was more dangerous only till 1947, under the colonial prodding; post-1947 India, Hindu communalism is more dangerous). To this, Late Prof Imtiaz Ahmad had an opinion: this differential understanding doesn’t really mean that while fighting the two communalisms you will discriminate between the two. They have reasons not to speak as much on Muslim right wing. But that cannot be a choice for the Muslim intellectuals. The more they avoid exposing India’s Muslim right wing, the more they provide weapons to the Hindu right and the more they weaken the moral authority of India’s Secularists.

I am only reminding this audience of the fact that minority rights discourses from Muslim leaders have remained weaker during our national movement (the Muslim League shifted this discourse to a direction in which Muslim minority was to be treated to be a nation of ex-rulers), and after Independence too, communal-identitarian concerns were given priority. Rather than strengthening the secularisation processes of India, Muslim intellectuals have remained more active in safeguarding regressive and patriarchal Personal Laws, and less at strengthening the secular forces of India. The religious and “secular” Muslim leadership has remained more identitarian, less secularistic. That has all along done a great disservice to the overall processes of secularisation, only to help majoritarian forces.

Fast forward to 1977 and after: Resurgence of competitive communalisms in the 1980s

Riding on alliance-politics, majoritarian forces in India eventually succeeded, more menacingly with the turn of this century/millennium. They had never really given up. Competitive majoritarianism remained a force to reckon with across the sub-continent. Whenever they formed governments in alliance/coalition in New Delhi, majoritarian parties preferred to the portfolios education, culture, information and broadcasting. Other non-Congress or anti-Congress regional forces hardly pitched for such portfolios.

Unlike majoritarian parties, secular forces, most of who have been state-centric; were dependent upon state resources, subsidy concessions and spaces to run their secularisation projects. Of course, the Left forces existed in industrial trade unions, on the university campuses, students and youth movements, and in the peasant movements, and through certain effected cultural organisations in both theatre, literature and art, too. A changing global economy and the disintegration of the USSR has weakened Left forces in recent decades.

One of the reasons why in recent years more and more Hindus have embraced Neo-Hindutva is the real question to be addressed, here. To my understanding, this question is fundamental because the attack on rationality and ever-increasing receptivity of the falsehood and of the distorted history is linked with this issue. This leads us to another question, how did we deal with the Muslim communalism, in the colonial era as well as in post-independence era?

What proportion of the Muslim literati looked at India’s ancient past with desirable and reasonable pride? Why did Shibli feel more agitated to write in defence of Aurangzeb? Why did he write biographies only of Muslims – non-Indian, Arab-Muslims at that? What proportion of Muslim elites are self-critical? To what extent do they look critically upon the ideas, institutions and history-making individuals of Muslims? What made a section of Muslim elites run a narrative of venerating Aurangzeb as Zinda Pir, and adding the suffix of rahmatullah alaih too?

An honest answer to those questions may help us find one of the missing answers for the first question I raised here as to why more and more Hindus have been embracing majoritarianism in recent decades.

The vilification and/or “villainisation” of Medieval Muslim rulers by Hindu majoritarian and reactionary forces, by stating half-truths, or putting out facts in a distorted manners, is just one problem! What is the obverse side of this problem? Why do a section of Muslims of today feel so very compelled to defend and justify and eulogize only a certain kind of Muslim rulers?  Omission of the story of valiant resistance and confrontation of British colonialism by Tipu Sultan is an obvious problem. The latest NCERT edition has omitted Tipu. A valid resistance to this politics does require that certain facts about Hyder-Tipu rule should not be ignored or omitted by secularists too. The Moplah-Nair “communal” conflict has an agrarian history of land ownership as to whose ownership preceded whose, before and after Hyder-Tipu rule? D N Dhanagre (Past and Present, OUP, vol. 74, 1977) has written about this. Quite a secular historian. Yet, that fact, uncomfortable for Muslims and Liberals and Left, has been obviously overlooked. Ignoring these aspects of history not just makes us intellectually dishonest, it also thereby weakens the legitimacy of our resistance. And that is how we self-restrict building a solidarity for our cause. We have to rethink and introspect.

I recall having read a long interview of Intezar Husain, with Umar Memon (July 1974), published in the early 1970s. (English rendering carried in the Journal of South Asian Literature, 1983). Intezar reminded us Muslims that, in comparison with the Hindus, our attitudes vary. This variation hasn’t been addressed as adequately as required. That has contributed to communalisation and pushing the country rightward.

Our discriminatory and dishonest treatment of both communalisms might be one of the factors why Hindutva has been gaining greater acceptance among growing number of Hindus?

I would therefore seek your permission to make you a bit uncomfortable at least in the last segment of this talk, if not intermittently throughout the talk.

Intezar argued that Shibli Nomani “continually romanticised our history, but there were some other aspects of our history which he didn’t describe at all”. Nirad Chaudhuri’s Continent of Circe, “dealt with the history of India and analysed the Hindu community in an uncompromising and even brutal manner”. “The Muslim community has taken great pride in the fact that the philosophy of history was born among Muslims. But the fact is that these Muslims do not face their history squarely, but merely picked out its good features and then celebrated these as the entire whole of our history. Nirad Chaudhuri’s approach is completely the opposite since he has no wish to “celebrate” the history of the nation of which he is one individual. We see him striving to reach its essence and to present that essence without regard to how his own people would react to it”, argued Intezar Husain.

Now, my question is this: why when such issues were raised in the 1970s, did they remain unaddressed (or inadequately) addressed as before? Addressing these questions may help us understand, at least partly, why more and more Hindus have begun to hate Muslims incrementally.

I have already referred to Syed Anwar Ali’s Urdu book Hindustan Mein Islam. This could be a case study to measure the Muslim right wing’s way of looking at post-Independent Indian History (and their political intent too) Anwar was a faculty at AMU.

As the Hindu right wing has engaged more in vilifying Muslim rulers in general, they appear to be less interested with the Muslim right wing’s knowledge production in India. The day they take this up, things would become even more difficult in terms of building solidarity and resistance against Neo-Hindutva.

Leaving this at that, let us come around the issue of Partition. The subject has been taught through the prism of causes, not on consequences. Why? Because, causation is motivated with the idea of blaming someone and absolving others. In this case, since the League asked for Pakistan and got it, it has to share greater blame. Nonetheless, in such a restricted or selective teaching of the causes behind Partition, Muslims and Muslim League are hardly distinguished from each other, even in among some of liberal circles.

Why is it that stories and narratives of Muslim resistance to Partition remain under-explored, under-prescribed and under-popularised? Why do a good number of educated Muslims of India still rejoice in a historical literature which absolves Jinnah and his League? I leave this question for certain sections of the Muslim educated elite of India: to undertake an honest self-introspection on this count too.

Following two works of Muslim writers are very significant in the genre of anti-League Partition literature.

Syed Tufail Ahmad Manglori’s 1946 book, Musalmanon Ka Raushan Mustaqbil, got translated into English in 1994 only. Similar literature, such as Hifzur Rahman Seohaarvi’s 1945 book, Tehreek-e-Pakistan Par Ek Nazar, remain least known. Does this mean that in academic circles as well as in the popular domain, anti-League Muslims remain lesser known? How many of the Muslim literati really talk about such figures and such writing? I have spent over three decades as student and as teacher in AMU. Few years back, when I was addressing an AMU gathering, on Tufail Manglori (Manglauri), the founder of the City School and shared that he was an ace wicket keeper of the MAO College Cricket team, the information was received by a large audience with surprise. Very few knew about this. A good number of Muslims do remember Seohaarvi as an ex-MP but his anti-League book, Tehreek-e-Pakistan is hardly known even among the literati or the chatterati.

Mushir-ul-Haq (1933-1990) has demonstrated it very well in his 1972 essay, “Secularism? No; Secular State? Well- Yes”. In this essay Haq highlighted a contradiction in the approach of some Muslim leaders. He observed that while they might publicly criticise “secularism” as a concept, they would simultaneously defend the “secular state” and the constitutional protections it afforded them, such as minority rights and the freedom to manage their own religious and educational institutions. He pointed out that this stance could appear to be a form of double standards.

With this, the point I am trying to emphasise here is: in order to strengthen the fight against Neo- Hindutva and in order to strengthen the hands of the likes of Yogendra Yadavas, Apoorvanands, Harsh Manders, Ravish Kumars, Ruchika Sharmas, we ought to resolve that critiquing and exposing the Muslim right wing should not be the business best ignored by thought-leaders, opinion-writers, academics, public intellectuals bearing Muslim names. They must not shy away from this urgent task. They must not keep arguing to the tune that ‘this is not the right time for burdening Muslims of India’ with such a task. For too long we have made such a fallacious and counterproductive argument. This is one of the many factors having contributed to the rise of Neo-Hindutva. The projects of communalising the textbooks, the state and the society have been gaining strength with the way we have been arguing, “this is not the right time to critique, expose and resist the Muslim conservatives and right wing ……’

Do we really even realise the depth of the threat?

I am very sorry to say the answer to this question is not in the affirmative. I am saying this with the unique experience of working with and living on a Muslim majority campus. This is a pessimism coming from me who in his own self-assessment is not someone who gives up on anything easily.

Before I leave, I must clarify what Neo Hindutva is:

The term “Neo-Hindutva” is a relatively recent academic and journalistic concept used to describe the evolution and new expressions of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India, popularised by scholars such as Edward Anderson and Arkotong Longkumer in a 2018 special issue of the journal Contemporary South Asia and an earlier 2015 article, which is, “idiosyncratic expressions of Hindu nationalism which operate outside of the institutional and ideological framework of the Sangh Parivar”, quite distinct from  the modernisation of Hinduism by figures like Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th century.

Neo-Hindutva is defined as a more diffused, mainstreamed, and adaptable version of traditional Hindutva. Unlike the original ideology formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, which was explicitly a political theory of Hindu nationhood, Neo-Hindutva is characterised by its ability to permeate new spaces and take on various forms.

Key characteristics that distinguish Neo-Hindutva from its traditional counterpart include:

• Mainstreaming and Normalisation: It is no longer confined to the institutional and ideological boundaries of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates (the Sangh Parivar). Instead, it has become a normalised, everyday discourse that is seen in popular culture, social media, and even in spaces like yoga and spiritual movements.
• Focus on Development and Neoliberalism: Unlike traditional Hindutva, which was often viewed as separate from economic policy, Neo-Hindutva has been linked to a specific brand of neo-liberalism. It often frames economic progress and material prosperity as a result of and a prerequisite for Hindu assertion. This ties national pride and economic growth together.
• “Hard” vs. “Soft” Expressions: Scholars like Anderson categorize Neo-Hindutva into two types: Hard Neo-Hindutva: This includes groups and movements that are openly connected to Hindu nationalism but operate outside the direct control of the Sangh Parivar, often with a more militant or vigilante approach. Soft Neo-Hindutva: This is a more subtle and concealed form, often avoiding explicit links to majoritarian politics. It operates through think tanks, international organisations, and cultural groups that promote a Hindu identity and narrative under the guise of cultural preservation, charity, or community building.
• Appeal to new constituencies: Neo-Hindutva has expanded its appeal beyond the traditional upper-caste support base by incorporating and co-opting the aspirations of lower-caste groups and Adivasi (tribal) communities, often by offering them a space within a broader, unified Hindu identity.

Thank you for the patience in listening to my discomfiting words!

(The author presented this view on August 4, 2025 at a symposium held at the Constitution Club of India, New Delhi, topic Distortions in the Syllabus of History Books; the presentation sent to us by the author has been suitably edited for publication)

[1] Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire written in Portuguese between 1967 and 1968.

[2] Assistant Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine   in the Program for Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder

[3]  2008 comic novel by the Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif. It is based on the 1988 aircraft crash that killed Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the sixth president of Pakistan.

The post Distortions in the syllabus of history books, an uncomfortable perspective appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Born in Barabanki, and having earned various degrees from, and having served in several American Universities (California, Chicago, Minnesota, etc.), C.M. Naim had a rich academic life.

For decades, I have been reading C M Naim, his essays, books, columns, translations…. And just a few months back (on January 4, 2025, to be precise), he wrote to me, on email, to encourage me to keep writing on Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

His email, verbatim, can be read here:

“Dear Prof. Sajjad,

I’m a retired academic, living now in Chicago.

I have been reading your ‘against the grain’ essays and notes in Urdu and was delighted to read your thoughts on Hameed Dalwai.

Muslim elite of all hues have been suffering this victimhood syndrome. They in fact revel in it. The poor, the helpless, those who had no choice in 1947 and their children and grandchildren have suffered. With no end in sight. While the so-called maulanas have flourished, safe in their sanctuaries. English-speaking Muslim public intellectuals have done the same, secure of acceptance and praise from the liberal non-muslim writers, who do a brave job countering their co-religionists opponents but never challenge Salman Khurshid, Talmiz Ahmad, and so many others who never challenged Nadvis and Tablighis.

Keep up the good work. AMU is a hard place to carry such opinions but someone has to be there to help the young think clearly about their lives in India. Our only bosses/clients in academe are our students. We must be honest with them.

Warm regards,

Naim”

Last year, few of us had thought of suggesting that the AMU requests his consent to accept the AMU-established, Sir Syed Excellence Award. He, however refused, rather bluntly, as he did not have very good memories of AMU! He had quit AMU having taught Linguistics briefly.

My 2014 book on Muzaffarpur begins with a quote from his 1999 book, Ambiguities of Heritage: Fictions and Polemics.

In 2014, there was a controversy around access to the central Library of AMU for the undergraduate girls of the Women’s College. I had written a column, disliked by many, particularly those pretending to be feminists or gender activists. They are those who never speak out against the tormentors of the likes of Shaha Bano (1916-1992) and Shayera Bano.

Naim’s letter to the editor in The Indian Express (13 November 2014) was a source of affirmation for what I had written, concurrently. My Rediff column, “AMU gender row: Reinforcing Muslim stereotypes”, was published (Nov 14, 2014). We were on the same page, on the issue.

Naim wrote:

“I am not an admirer of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) administration and am strongly opposed to having retired non-academic institutions simply on the basis of religion. But The Indian Express report (‘Row in AMU Over No Library Access to women undergrads’, IE, November 12) on the alleged discrimination at AMU was merely shrill and did not mention much that was highly relevant. First, the matter concerns only undergraduate students, not all women students. Second, undergraduate students are not denied use of the main library during daylight hours. Third, undergraduate girls live in the hostels of the Women’s College, a long distance away from the main library. For their safety after dark—a responsibility of AMU and a commitment to their parents- they will have to be bussed both ways. Fourth, the College has its own library and reading rooms. Have they been found to be inadequate for the undergraduate students? If so, what are the inadequacies for the undergraduate students and can they be easily removed? As far as I understand, the college library is sufficient for the needs of undergraduate students and also has the ability to obtain books for them from the main library if needed. Fifth, again, at issue are the needs of undergraduate girls living in hostels, many of whom would be considered, “minors” in other circumstances. Should we not seek the opinion of their parents, who have entrusted their daughters to AMU? The tweets and the report both displayed only politically correct reactions, not careful thought”.

1. M. Naim, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

Soon after, he made an intervention into the EPW (Vol. 50, Issue No. 30, 25 Jul, 2015), through a letter to editor. Caption was “Muslim Communalism”. He wrote:

“While I fully agree with the editorial (“Resisting ‘Sustainable’ Communalism,” EPW, June 27, 2015) and appreciate its urgency and concern, I must point out that there is another similarly corrosive “sustainable” communalism, and that is of a large portion of the Muslim community. It is most obviously expressed in what is easily termed as “sectarian” bias and antagonism. This sectarianism has become more and more blatant in recent years. Then there is also that reflexive communalism that is directed against all Muslims who do not contribute to the sectarianism of these people nor to their exclusivism that is directed against all those Muslims whom they derisively call “secular.” It has been quietly accepted by many liberals in the media. Ordinary Muslim citizens of India need to be protected as much from the communalism of their co-religionists as from what is labelled majoritarian communalism.

C M Naim Chicago”

My friend, Syed Ekram Rizwi had reminded me of his 2010 essay, THE MUSLIM LEAGUE IN BARABANKI: A Suite of Five Sentimental Scenes. This was a wonderful read, full of insights, particularly with regard to the way things unfolded during august 1947 to January 1948 and after.

The same year Naim published a wonderful essay, “Syed Ahmad and His Two Books Called ‘Asar-al-Sanadid’”. This was in the formidable academic journal from the Cambridge University Press, Modern Asian Studies (2011). The chief questions that the paper explored, were, “How do the two books differ from some of the earlier books of relatively similar nature in Persian and Urdu? How radically different are the two books from each other, and why? How and why were they written, and what particular audiences could the author have had in mind in each instance? How were the two books actually received by the public? And, finally, what changes do the two books reflect in the author’s thinking?”

Naim’s EPW (April 27, 2013) essay, “The Maulana Who Loved Krishna”, on F H Hasrat Mohani, was a wonderful read, also carried by the Outlook weekly, in its slightly abridged version. This article reproduces, with English translations, the devotional poems written to the god Krishna by a maulana who was an active participant in the cultural, political and theological life of late colonial north India. Through this, the article gives a glimpse of an Islamicate literary and spiritual world which revelled in syncretism with its surrounding Hindu worlds; and which is under threat of obliteration, even as a memory, in the singular world of globalised Islam of the 21st century.

Another essay by him, “The ‘Shahi Imams’ of India”, Outlook, Nov 27, 2014, offered a historically informed critique of the authority handed over to these anti-historical, superficial characters (clergy), by the unsuspecting, gullible masses of Muslims, not without the support of the state actors of the Indian Republic.

C M Naim’s essays on the portal, New Age Islam, are:

(1) Seminar On Iran Held At Raza Library: Should Such Things Happen At A National Institution In India? (30 June 2012)

(2) “Muslim Press in India and the Bangladesh Crisis” (2 Sept 2013): In this he examined how Muslim public opinion responded to the Bangladesh struggle in 1971, how those responses compare with the reactions in Pakistan, and whether that crisis left any lasting effect on the thinking of Indian Muslims.

Going by what Shyam Benegal (1934-20124) argued in his essay, “Secualrism and Indian Cinema” that the film like “Garm Hawa” could have been made only after the Bangladesh (1971) issue which convinced the hitherto un-convinced Muslims of India that religion could not serve as a binding force of nationalism.

(3) “Another Lesson in History” (19 Sept 2013);

(4) “English/Urdu Bipolarity Syndrome in Pakistan” (19 Dec 2014)

(5) “Listen To Sonu Nigam, Please” (20 April 2017)

His essays are available on his website: https://cmnaim.com/; This includes his essays published in the Annual of Urdu Studies (Wisconsin, USA), which he edited too, and his EPW (June 17, 1995) essay, “Popular Jokes and Political History: The Case of Akbar, Birbal and Mulla Do-Piyaza“.

In 2004, he brought out a collection of his essays, Urdu Texts and Contexts. The book primarily focuses on Urdu poetry, offering fresh perspectives on diverse Urdu texts and their significance in India’s cultural history. It explores literary, social, and performative contexts associated with Urdu in South Asia and beyond, addressing themes such as Urdu poetry (including ghazal and marsiya), the sociology of literature, and the social history of Muslims in North India. The essays cover topics like the works of poets such as Ghalib and Mir Taqi Mir, the musha’irah tradition, and the role of Urdu in education and popular fiction. Naim’s accessible yet scholarly approach makes the book valuable for those interested in Urdu literature and South Asian cultural studies.

Naim’s latest (2023) book, Urdu Crime Fiction, 1890–1950: An Informal History, is a meticulously researched exploration of the origins and evolution of Urdu crime fiction, or jāsūsī adab, during its formative years in colonial India. The genre, initially inspired by 19th-century European and North American crime fiction, was adapted into Urdu through translations, transcreations, and original works. The book highlights key figures like Tirath Ram Ferozepuri (1857-1924), who translated over 114 titles (spanning 60,000 pages), and Zafar Omar, whose 1916 transcreation of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin as Bahram in Nili Chhatri (The Blue Parasol) became a cultural phenomenon. Other notable contributors include Nadeem Sahba’i, known for imaginative Urdu pulp fiction.

Naim details how Urdu thrillers, with evocative titles like Khūnī Chhatrī (The Murderous Umbrella) and Mistrīz af Dihlī (The Mysteries of Delhi), captivated readers with their “wonder-inducing” and “sleep-depriving” narratives, selling thousands of copies.

These works reflected urban India’s modernity, incorporating elements like mannequins, cameras, and truth serums, while depicting secular spaces—railway stations, public parks, and cinemas—where diverse identities mingled. The book also notes the influence of Western authors like G.W.M. Reynolds and the absence of female Urdu crime fiction writers during this period.

Naim’s primary focus is on the genre’s development before 1950, slightly predating Ibn-e-Safi’s most prolific period. Naim acknowledges Ibn-e-Safi (pen name of Asrar Ahmad, 1928–1980) as a transformative figure who elevated Urdu detective fiction to new heights in the post-independence era.

While earlier writers like Tirath Ram Ferozepuri focused on translations or transcreations of Western works, Ibn-e-Safi’s original stories, blending suspense, humour, and social commentary, popularized the genre further, making it a cultural staple in South Asia.

We will miss the “against the grain” essays of C M Naim which were incredibly historically informed.

Rest in Peace Naim sahib!

Related:

One of Urdu’s Greatest Scholars, C.M. Naim, Passes Away

The post Indian Muslims need to be protected as much from the communalism of their co-religionists as majoritarian communalism: In remembrance of CM Naim 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 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.

In the extremely polarised era in the India that we live in, a biography of a contentious person, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) is bound to attract substantial attention. This is not limited to the popular domain of public history but also in the scholarly domain. Historian Janaki Bakhle (Columbia University) has intervened in this sphere, first with two of her long, well-researched essays in 2010. These essays created a temptation among academics and expectations from Bakhle that she brings out a comprehensive biography of Savarkar. The wait took long. Eventually, this large volume has come out. In terms of methodological rigour, the book is indeed an extraordinarily impressive work.

This is perhaps for the first time that Savarkar has been studied not in a hagiographic account but with extraordinary scrutiny of a multitude of sources and evidence: the thick files of police and intelligence reports and a deep engagement with the range of Marathi language sources. This awe-inspiring volume inevitably impresses a discerning student of history with the range of the facets of Savarkar: his anti-colonial revolutionary activities, his anti-Muslim hatred, his radical caste reformism, his Marathi language oeuvres in prose and poetry (creative and rhetorical), the way he looked upon and weaponised history, and the ways he adapted to fashion himself into a legend in his own time through both mythologization and sacralization. In this segment, Janaki Bakhle looks into all hagiographical accounts (around 250 tracts) on and by Savarkar, mostly in the Marathi language. Bakhle says that between 1924 and 1937 Savarkar wrote around 300 essays on various issues, in Marathi, and therefore she makes it clear (p. 423) as to why did she has looked so deeply and closely into Savarkar’s Marathi writings, hitherto untapped by historians:

In this book I have kept in mind Theodor Adorno’s aphorism that one must be steeped in a tradition to hate it properly. By hate, Adorno meant critique, which I take to mean both appreciation and analysis. I have steeped myself in the traditions that surround Savarkar so I could present a new view, scholarly and dispassionate, but also embedded in the traditions and milieu that spawned his life and his legends. I have tried to present Savarkar as a man of intense nationalist passion who was seen as extraordinarily dangerous (hence important and influential) by the colonial authorities, yet who was used (perhaps unwittingly) at the same time by them to further their own agenda.

Janaki Bakhle’s study doesn’t go beyond 1937, even though, while evaluating Savarkar’s “historical” and performable writings, his 1963 account, Six Glorious Epochs has also been subjected to scrutiny and analysis. By terminating the study in 1937, Janaki Bakhle skips the story of Savarkar’s alleged roles in plotting the assassination of Gnadhiji wherein he was acquitted owing to lack of sufficient evidence. The critics of Savarkar may argue that a further trial based on “circumstantial evidence” may have culminated into a different end result This continues to intrigue many as to why neither Nehru, Sardar Patel (who barely spoke against the RSS before January 30, 1948) and Morarji Desai (whose 1974 autobiography hints at something) and other such leaders in power pursued this case further? Was it because such a judicial pursuit may have created administratively unmanageable revulsion from the admirers of Savarkar? Did Savarkar really carry a strong charisma among a section of his fellow castes in parts of his home province?

A close reader of the last three chapters of Bakhle may get some hint/clue about the answers to the last question. In fact, just as a powerful fiction leaves readers thinking for long after having finished reading the story, Bakhle leaves her discerning readers thinking on so many aspects of Savarkar. Bakhle’s relevant chapters clearly suggest that Savarkar, the poet-politician, rhetorical essay-writer, and playwright, the “nation’s bard”, was a sort of cult among a section of the Marathi literary world (for communalisation of this segment of Marathi population, see T C A Raghavan’s 1983 essay). Thus, Savarkar’s pre-Cellular Jail life when he was fiercely anti-colonial revolutionary, and his post-1924 life when he fashioned himself first and foremost as a poet and Marathi litterateur besides a rationalist anti-caste social reformist, helped him become quite a charismatic figure for a section of the Marathi-speaking population. That he “was not sporadically or episodically anti-Muslim; he was deeply and systematically anti-Muslim” (p. 148) could be no less significant factor in his popularity among certain quarters.

The first two chapters rely much upon a critically insightful examination of intelligence reports of the colonial police. The author rightly says that Savarkar spent all his public life under state surveillance (even after independence too). Bakhle is very clear about (a specific contention around Savarkar) that his anti-Muslim hatred always existed and that it had nothing to do with the rumour that he turned anti-Muslim only after he received maltreatment at the hands of a Muslim in the Cellular Jail. However, Savarkar’s anti-Muslim hatred became much more pronounced with the start of the Khilafat Movement, and it served the colonial interest very well. He looked upon Khilafat agitation as an “international conspiracy to steal Hindu sovereignty”.

Bakhle deals with colonial motives in great detail while detailing the Savarkar-Gandhi-Khilafat issue. It provokes scholars of the field to re-look into the hitherto untold impact of the pan-Islamist Khilafat agitation upon a section of Hindus. Apprehensions of Lala Lajpat Rai (Intezar Husain’s 1999 Urdu biography of Hakim Ajmal Khan, Ajmal-e-Azam, records it) were not far different from those of Savarkar on the issue. The colonial power-play of pitting the two religious communities of India against each other is brought out very deeply and comprehensively by Bakhle. Bakhle, quite rightly, makes it a point to mention that many eminent Muslim leaders and scholars were not for the institution of Khilafat, such as, Sir Syed (1817-1898), Ashraf Ali Thanwi (1863-1943), Ahmed Riza Barelvi (1856-1921), Shibli Numani (1857-1914) and Anwar Shah Kashmiri of Deoband. Despite this, by the time the World War-I began, Indian Muslims became so agitated in favour of the Khilafat keeping themselves quite oblivious to the anti-Caliphate upsurge of the Turks at home in Turkey. This aspect needed little more detailed treatment, in order to understand the sentiments of those segments of Hindus who were apprehensive about pan-Islamist “designs” of Indian Muslims. Yet, Gandhiji extended unconditional support to them in the early 1920s.

A further engagement with Azmi Ozcan’s 1997 book, Pan Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877-1924 would have further enriched the book under review. Ozcan makes it clear that Indian Muslims turned sympathetic to the Turkish Caliphate only in the 1870s, when the Ottoman-British relations began to deteriorate. Otherwise, the Ottomans and Mughals were not on good terms. There are indications that the former remained in apprehension that Mughals might snatch away their Caliphate. Mughal princess and writer Gulbadan Begam (1570s; see Rumer Godden’s 1975 biography), Sikandar Begum of Bhopal (1861) and the Tonk State administrator (1871) faced hostilities of the Haj administrators under the Ottoman Caliphate (see Ziauddin Sardar, 2014, Mecca: The Sacred City). Janaki Bakhle however does benefit from Naeem Qureshi (2014) who explains the Ottoman anxiety and insecurity, as they were the first Caliphs to have been non-Arab and non-descendant of the Prophet Mohammad (p. 91).

Bakhle misses to note that, not only Savarkar, long before that, since 1877-1878, Indian Muslim leaders too, were under colonial surveillance for their growing sympathies with the Ottomans. Just two decades back, in 1857, the Mughal state had already been liquidated. It would be pertinent to note that Turkish Cap became a fad in the MAO College of Aligarh (which was founded in 1877). Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hameed II (1876-1909) was reclaiming the Caliphate, calling himself, Imam-ul-Muslimeen, which had receptivity across Asia, Africa, including British India. Soon after Hameed, India’s Pan Islamists would form Anjuman-e-Khuddam-e-Kaba (Society of the Servants of Kaba) in 1912-13.

The colonial intelligence reports about India’s Khilafat leaders and Savarkar’s vitriol against the same carry some degree of resemblance in tone, tenor and vocabulary. She devotes considerable number of pages on the evolution of colonial policing and surveillance, which is quite useful for evidence-based historical research.

Savarkar’s deep antipathy against the Ali Brothers is understandable. While the former looked upon Kemal Ataturk as a secular saviour, the later was agitating passionately about the preservation of Caliphate. Interestingly, Jinnah too displayed a limited, essential resemblance with Savarkar on this specific issue. Also, in the post-Tilak phase of the nationalist mass movement both Savarkar and Jinnah developed an antipathy against Gandhiji. Contrary to assertions from some circles, at least for once, by 1927, we do find Savarkar speaking against Jinnah. In Savarkar’s understanding all Muslim leaders were for enhancing Muslim numbers through conversion, and that they bargained to obtain concessions from Hindus, issuing a threat that “whatever demands Muslims make, all of them have to be immediately granted by Hindus, otherwise with the help of Afghanistan or some other Muslim country we will establish Muslim rule in India” (p. 124).

Subsequently, like Savarkar, Shaukat Ali too (in 1933) would seek clemency from the colonial state to secure his pension to be restored from 1919, rather than from 1933 (something Janaki Bakhle has ommitted). Nonetheless, with meticulous and detailed surveillance reports obtained about Savarkar from the colonial state, helps Bakhle conclude almost irrefutably that the Colonial state always looked upon Savarkar as a tool to be used for creating Hindu-Muslim hostility (p. 423) and made a greater use of him after 1937.

Janaki Bakhle brings out the merits of Savarkar’s caste reformism, something which has remained largely unacknowledged among the non-Marathi readers. She however doesn’t gloss over the limitations of Savarkar’s reformism. “[H]e never developed a critique of caste that acknowledged its deep connections to structures of power, access, and wellbeing” (p. 151). This chapter makes comprehensive engagement with the positions of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Savarkar on the issues of caste and untouchability. Savarkar’s pathologically obsessive pursuit of ethno-nationalism wanted to convert caste (jati) into Hindu ethnicity through an upper-caste Brahminic lens (p. 153). However, on this count, for a more informed critique of Ambedkar and its divergence as well as convergence (in terms of anti-Muslim utterances) with Savarkar, an engagement with Keith Meadowcroft’s works could have proven more useful.

Savarkar’s ethnonationalist project is analysed quite brilliantly in each chapter. He wanted to cure his “nation” of the “narcoleptic sleep disorder”, suggests Bakhle (p. 352). Scrutinizing him as “nationalist historian” she looks into his 1963 text, Six Glorious Epochs as a “defensive tract about the Hindu Mahasabha, which had held itself aloof from Gandhi and the INC-led Quit India Movement [of 1942]”, and where he “appears both angry and tired”.

This is a commendable work not only to know of many lesser known aspects and psyche of her subject (Savarkar) but also to learn much more about the divisive power-play of the British, the crucial decades of the nationalist movement during the 1920s and 1930s, and it unpacks new layers of Hindu anxiety around the Pan-Islamist Muslims of India. Janaki Bakhle’s historiographic rigour, insight (and beautiful prose) uncovers the genesis behind contemporary resurgence of Hindutva. A must read both for the specialists as well as popular reading which settles many contentions of public history on the subject.

Related:

The AMU Teachers’ Association (AMUTA) and Waqf Worries: Ordinary members of the Qaum are caught between a self-serving elite and a majoritarian Regime

Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947

The Waqf Bill 2024: An Open Letter to the Joint Committee of Parliament, the Opposition, and India’s Muslim Communities

The post Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva: Book Review appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Around two months ago the BJP-led government brought a flawed and ill-intended Bill to amend the Waqf Act 1995. It created a furore, and ever since, newspapers, news-portals, Youtube videos have been educating the masses through their “explainers”. Opinion pieces from experts and the theologians too have been published, interjections into the issue with their own position. All this while, the AMUTA, for whatever reasons, has not been able to call a general body meeting or hold discussion sessions. Eventually, on Sunday, September 22, 2024, they called a meeting. Given the general mood on the campus against the Bill, one assumed that there would have been a near consensus on finding ways of working out political tactics and strategies of rejecting and resisting the move. One expected there would be a discussion more on this specific aspect.

That was however not to be. Only two speakers spoke at a “sickening” length as if fellow academics sitting there were school students waiting to be educated, threadbare. This paternalism of these academics against their own colleagues made many among the audience uncomfortable. Speakers’ assumption that others had nothing significant to say, was irksome. The affair degenerated further when two of the longest speaking teachers sought yet another session to again speak on issues they claimed to have omitted to speak on! The presiding authority was generous enough to grant them a second session, again ignoring the fact that others were also competent enough to speak on the issue. These other speakers-in-waiting including this writer (who was the first among the serving AMU faculty to have intervened through his column on the Waqf Bill issue) had a right to speak at greater length: to propose preparing a draft (alternate) bill that could be put in the public domain to mobilise constructive public opinion and also to solicit support of cross-sections of people, including the opposition political parties apart from some of the allies in the ruling coalition. 

Treating the fellow academics as children

In some ways, the two longest speakers were probably right in treating their colleagues as infants or their inferiors. This has to be illustrated by a one instance. This writer used an expression to describe the Executive Council which is massively dominated by a select club of internal teachers. Hence I used the the expression, “Incestuous Club”. This expression was first used by a columnist on March 6, 2023. She then wrote, AMU’s “Executive Council, Academic Council, and the Court are incestuous clubs where everyone is everyone’s someone”.  On March 10, 2023, this piece was rebutted by a professor of law cum vice chancellor of a law university [he eventually made it to the panel for AMU-VC in October-November 2023]. His rebuttal was anything but a precise objection against any sexual connotation of the expression. The EC members aggrieved with my usage of the expression cannot claim to have been ignorant about the columns and rejoinders. The reason being, a long thread of debate on the issue has been carried on The Print.In and on Rediff.Com, besides other portals in 2023. Let it be added that a “synonymous” expression, “blind inbreeding” [in recruitments], was used by the AMU Official Enquiry Committee Report, 1961.

Ever since then (March 6, 2023), dozens of meetings of the AMU Executive Council (EC) have been held thus far. None of these four, or for that matter, other EC members, have raised any objection to the expression. Thus, their silence can be construed as their consent or endorsement of the expression. 

This writer used this expression on a Facebook (Meta) post. They didn’t object to the expression on Facebook or on Whatsapp group of the AMU teachers, called “AMU Faculty 1” where I could have helped them with Dictionary. They, in vengeance and to intimidate me, straight away silently/confidentially, submitted a complaint against this writer, to the Vice Chancellor, possibly to get me penalised or gagged. This is now admitted by at least two (in fact, three) of the four signatories that they have written to the VC to curb my academic freedom. 

The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary clearly provides the meaning of the expression, “incestuous” club, “of a group of people that have close relationships with one another and do not include people outside their group”. The Dictionary, further illustrates it, in order to make it clearer, by using the expression in a sentence: “the incestuous atmosphere of media discourse”. 

We the teachers have elected four teachers to represent us inside the Executive Council, to safeguard our academic freedom, against the Vice Chancellor. Far from doing so, they are, instead, unfortunately, approaching the VC to penalize us and curb our academic freedom.  At least one of them came to me saying, he shouldn’t have signed on such a document. I said to him that of he regrets his act, he should consider withdrawing the complaint. He declined. 

The Vice Chancellor would, one expects, understand the dictionary meaning as well as the extended meaning of the expression in question, and she will treat the reported complaint accordingly.    

The founder admin of the abovementioned WhatsApp Group of the AMU teachers (almost all Muslims) is one of the four elected members of the EC-AMU. For long, a Pakistani member was added to the WhatsApp Group. Once I spotted it and objected strongly to this. His response was, “it happened inadvertently”. My response was, if they have got a habit of submitting complaint to the VC, why shouldn’t I bring it to the notice of the VC, the Government and also to the media? They had no response.  

Further, one of the four elected members to the EC advised me to refrain from consulting dictionaries; that I should concentrate on teaching history [whereas he indulge in campus (politics) through the EC; would carry out his Tablighi Jama’at activities and the Drama Club engagements, besides doing Mathematics!]. He further preached me not to teach/discuss/raise the issues of caste. Asserting his immodesty, he insisted on adding the prefix of “Honourable” for the AMU-EC (and by implication, for its members, including himself), regardless of no such protocol specified by the AMU. 

I look upon this argument with him as one with a person who holds a right wing ideology and is committed to depoliticising the electorate. Outraged, I argued with him referring to Juan Linz’s book (2000), Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, which argues that, authoritarianism relies upon a “mentality” (“way of thinking and feeling more emotional than rational that provide non-codified ways of reacting to different situations”). Thus, by depoliticising common people and by trapping them into irrationalities they facilitate variants of authoritarianism and the personality cult (to which, let me add) of “honourables”.  Such people choose to forget that honour is commanded, not demanded. I wish there was a provision of right to recall such representatives!” He had no response to this on the WhatsApp Group.

Another elected representative, the Joint Secretary of the AMUTA, while inviting the teachers to attend the meeting on the Waqf issue, first circulated an “intimidating” message as to whosoever from among the AMU teachers is referring to the faults (retrogression on caste and gender) of India’s Muslims in the 1970s-1980s and asks the Qaum to self-introspect in order to find out the possible reasons of the rise of Neo Hindutva, according to him, amounts to “blaming the victim” and therefore s/he is a Qaum’s villain; therefore only he can command teachers to attend the meeting.  

In a Muslim majority campus like AMU, any academic with an independent (read “contrarian”) view, is already demonised as Qaum’s traitor, by the elected representative. Given the prevalence of competitive right wing radicalism, such intolerance and provocations might endanger the life of the insider-academics espousing “contrarian” views on such issues.  

Be that as it may, the point I am trying to make here is: (1) Either the two long, self-indulgent speakers on the Waqf issue were absolutely right in treating the fellow academics as school kids with spoon-feeding as pedagogy. Or, (2) The speakers are too self-obsessed and narcissistic to make way for listening to fellow colleagues and more importantly to concentrate more on working out the strategies of resistance. Or, (3) They harboured an intention to consume much of time and thereby not letting this session culminate into working out a strategy to resist in a comprehensive way, by a longer discussion on that specific aspect? (To be fair to them, this is less likely, though).

Anyway, on the intervention of fellow academics in the assembly, focus was brought back to working out a draft bill. This would eventually be endorsed by the academics attending the meeting (There was a thin presence in the meeting).   

Alienation of the Qaum, or disjunction between the Qaum and its self-serving elite    

Most interesting aspect is, these educated elites of the Qaum were then pledging to fight the BJP regime, whereas, the commoners of the Qaum have already been on the streets against the Waqf Bill for the last many weeks. Barring one or two exception, the collective of the AMU teachers seem to have risen to register their protest belatedly. This shows how yawning is the gap between the commoners of the Qaum and its educated, affluent elites!

Even more importantly, while these elites do persuade the commoners of the Qaum to keep waging wars against the ruling dispensation, they themselves behave with cunning opportunism. Consider the empanelment result of the AMU-VC in October-November 2023. Unlike other central universities, AMU empanels its VC through its own EC and Court (both the bodies excessively dominated by internal members), without advertising the position to invite application from across India. This select Club (EC & Court) eventually ended up empanelling all the three from the internal faculty members in November 2023. The predecessor VC too was not only internal faculty but also a resident of the town for the last few generations; he eventually became a legislator belonging to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in UP Council as well as vice president of the ruling party. This unprecedented inbreeding was so brazen that some of the internal teachers seeking to be empanelled as VC have approached the Allahabad High Court to challenge this. 

Insiders in the AMU know too well as to which of these (empanelled) candidates for VC-ship or their alleged patrons have been writing columns in favour of the BJP-RSS in the national English dailies, testifying further to their opportunism. AMU insiders also know it very well as to which of the AMU teachers (aligning with Muslim BJP legislator) canvassed for the BJP candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Videos of such event(s) had circulated among the AMU teachers and on the social media. The AMU insiders also know with considerable clarity as to which of the EC members (from among the AMU teachers and teacher-administrators in the EC), and their clouts, were inclined towards which of these “pro-regime” candidates for VC-ship. 

The short point is: sections of these elite Clubs of AMU have already aligned with the ruling BJP and at the same time the Club has also been instigating the commoners to keep fighting the BJP and facing reprisals from the hate-filled vindictive regime. Understandably, this approach provides such opportunist elites with stronger bargaining power vis a vis the governing party.  

AMU’s Own “Anti-Waqf” (mis) deeds

The AMU itself is alleged to have indulged in erasing the names and identities of the Waaqif (the donor of land estates and assets who institutes/creates the Waqf or charitable endowment). For instance, it has been reliably learnt that the renowned physicist cum the last principal of the MAO College (when it became incorporated into AMU in 1920) and also the founder of the department of Physics in the Lucknow University, Prof. Wali Mohammad (1886-1968) had instituted the Waqf for AMU; one of these is the costly land on which a residential Hall of students is existing. The Hall is named after Nadim Tarin who bore the construction cost of the students’ residential Hall. Sadly, the name of the donor/waaqif of the land stands obliterated. We are told, there could be many such Waqf estates and assets dedicated to AMU, wherein the Waaqifs/donors remain unacknowledged and anonymized.  

In other words, with such state of affairs and the corruption of land-grabbing (by the influential people within the state administration, Waqf Boards and society), ordinary Muslims have become cynical. There is a huge deficit of the people’s connect with the Waqf estates and assets. This would dissuade the common people from adequately agitating and mobilising against the Waqf Bill 2024. This in turn, one apprehends, would fail to mount as much of pressure on the regime, as is required. 

I made similar arguments in my essay as to how and why the current dispensation succeeded in demonising the best of our universities. Questioning the relevance of India’s elite institutions to the social and economic challenges facing Indian societies, I argued that the lack of socially relevant research and teaching has contributed in part to society’s disaffection with “our respectable institutions.”   

The significant disconnect between the educated elites and the common Muslims pose a critical challenge. As highlighted by Omar Khalidi (2010) who records a damning indictment: “[research] publications on Indian Muslims since 1950 to 2010 reveals that the three AMU faculty combined [Political Science, Sociology, Economics] have contributed little to the burgeoning literature on Indian Muslims”. Of course, the Indian state didn’t stop them from carrying out such researches on the India’s Muslim communities.

 Moreover, as Daniele Struppa notes, “A university is a microcosm of our larger society that reflects different beliefs, ideologies, experiences, and backgrounds. While that is exactly what I love about a university community, it also comes with the reality that prejudice lives within our communities as well: we are not immune to the ills of our society”. 

Given this concern, the challenge before the academia in our times is to establish an effective and efficacious connect with the rest of the society, if the current democratic downslide has to be resisted and arrested with forging solidarities. Quite a number of teachers (with clout) in AMU, at the moment, seem to be missing this point, as they are the ones either falling into the trap of becoming practioners of Muslim communalism or aligning opportunistically with the Hindu Right, or both. Patronage-distribution and clientelism is embedded in the governance structures of AMU. So much so that some teachers have shamelessly been continuing in certain administrative offices of the AMU for the last 10 to 12 years, or even more! Some of them holding three administrative positions concurrently, compromising with their teaching; forget about their research. Their clout is so entrenched that successive VCs have failed to replace them with new faces in the University administration. 

Such a pathetic state of affairs needs to be addressed immediately by many reforms including change in composition of the EC, which defiantly adopts any kind of resolution, disregarding financial implications, sense of justice and the government’s or UGC’s inviolable norms. For instance, for recruitments in the AMU schools, they have outrageously reversed the norms of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS, which has got only 30% component on interview and 70% component on written test-for admissions). In contrast, the requirement for AMU schools is reversed,  70% for the interview and only 30% for written test. This is obviously designed to favour their own candidates, already recruited on a temporary basis, in large numbers, over the last many years. Likewise, in certain cases, some influential employees have placed themselves in Old Pension Scheme despite having been recruited on regular basis after 2004 (even advertisement of the post was after 2004 making it even stronger case of New Pension Scheme). The Audit and Account of the government needs thoroughly probe this. The examination system is thoroughly compromised even at the level of question paper-setting and moderation. Yet, the Controller of Examinations has been continuing in his office for very long. The rules state that tenure-statutory administrative positions of the University are required to be advertised and filled every five years. There are many such irregularities, including financial chaos, which need probing by independent government agencies. The assets of such teacher-administrators need to be probed by such agencies too.

The question for the ordinary men and women of the Qaum is: if their educated and affluent elites can’t mount enough pressure upon the AMU-VC to replace these clouts and reshuffle the AMU administration then such a weak-kneed and helpless lot can’t be expected to muster enough strength to press the current dispensation in New Delhi to withdraw the Waqf Bill 2024.  

Most important of all, ordinary Muslims need to be alerted by the conscientious section of people, that a chunk of their educated and affluent elites have switched over to the saffron establishment, leaving them vulnerable, isolated and, above all, helpless to fend for themselves. Felix Pal (2020) has documented a section of western UP Muslim elites opportunistically joining saffron outfits.

The time has come for the AMU [Teachers’ Association] and the communities to rise to the occasion and unite their members. They must actively engage in strategies that not only resist the Waqf Amendment Bill but also address the broader implications of elite’s perfidious detachment from the community. Only by fostering a genuine dialogue and acknowledging the voices of all constituents can we hope to challenge the majoritarian regime effectively. The survival and dignity of the embattled Qaum of Indian Muslims and the country’s organic plurality depend on it. 

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

Related:

The Waqf Bill 2024: An Open Letter to the Joint Committee of Parliament, the Opposition, and India’s Muslim Communities

Three Banes of India’s Muslims: Victimhood Syndrome, Power Theology, Obsession with Identity Politics

No Central Funds, Aligarh Muslim University’s Second Campus in West Bengal Faces Uncertain Future

The post The AMU Teachers’ Association (AMUTA) and Waqf Worries: Ordinary members of the Qaum are caught between a self-serving elite and a majoritarian Regime appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Universities, ‘transmit, interpret and develop the cultural tradition of the society’. They can either ‘continuously reproduce’ these traditions or ‘critically transform’ them, said Habermas. What did the two centrally funded ‘Muslim’ universities in India, viz., the Aligarh Muslim University and its “rebel sister”, the Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, really do?

The Cambridge trained French scholar, Laurence Gautier, has made an immensely successful attempt at working out the abovementioned question by bringing in wide range of empirical details, embarking on a very deep analysis of a wide range of evidence and putting these in larger perspective. She has proceeded to examine as to how did these two denominational universities, and the Muslims associated with these universities, negotiate their place in India, their individual rights as citizens, and their group rights as a religious minority, and/or as descendants of ex-ruling class, one must say. (The work also explores Muslim-ness of Indians and Indian-ness of its Muslim communities).

The Role of AMU & JMI in shaping Muslim identity politics

Whether such negotiations were confined more to the domain of political articulations or whether they produced researches too? Such articulations remain and remained largely tilted towards a particular class within the community of particular region(s). This Urdu speaking Ashraaf elite was called “Kutcherry Milieu” by the best biographer of the MAO College (which became AMU in 1920), David Lelyveld (1978). This is a particularly more relevant question to be raised for the AMU, because, in the colonial period, the All India Mohammedan Educational Conference (AIMEC, founded in 1886) soon became the political organ of the Muslim League rather than keeping the promise of opening up a chain of residential schools/colleges across the subcontinent. Given this legacy,  worldview and outlook, did AMU, post-partition (for pre-partition days, introduction of the book does deal with these questions), ever raise self-introspective question against itself? Did the institution bother to question –in the republican-democratic era –why its enrolments, recruitments and governance-personnel suffer from an elite syndrome: the predominance of a select Club of a particular region-class of the Qaum?

The AMU, in the late 1940s had become epicentre of the Muslim League with the separatists enjoying a stronger presence on the campus. Various circles (not confined to the Hindu Right alone) memorialise AMU as a villain of Partition. The Pakistani intelligentsia also reinforces this idea. On the other hand, Muslims of various persuasions, look upon AMU not only as a platform aimed at their educational uplift but also as a fort safeguarding their identity. In fact, the latter aspect is arguably stronger than the former. This is perhaps congenitally associated with MAO/AMU. Look at Peter Hardy (1972: 103-104)’s assertion, “It is, however, important to recognise the limitations of Aligarh as an educational foundation. At no time did it educate a majority of the Muslim graduates even of the North-Western Provinces [UP]… Success in examinations and individual achievement were at a discount”.

Did the two universities question and address, even in their academic outputs, caste-based hierarchies and exploitation or did they deny or downplay these? Did they, through their research as well as through their political interventions and mobilizations, challenge regressive patriarchy, or, rather did they align with, or capitulate before the orthodoxy? Did they contribute towards secularisation-pluralisation of the state and society in general and the community (Qaum) in particular? Did they democratise the institutions and resources monopolised by the “Kutcherry Milieu”? Or, did they treat Indian Secularism more as a favour to Muslim conservatism and communalism and regressive patriarchy, thereby stoking and bolstering majoritarianism?

A large number of Urdu memoirs of the Aligarh community (faculty, alumni) mostly indulge in self-praise, rather than being critical and self-introspective. [Of significant note in exception are critical essays of Kunwar M Ashraf (1903-1962), in the Aligarh Magazine (Urdu), “Aligarh Ki Siyasi Zindagi” (1953-1955) and “Aligarh aur Siyasiyat-e-Hind” (1960)]. Most of these  reproduce,  disseminate and celebrate a class culture (not the mass culture), often misrepresented as the “Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb”, discounting core academic production for an ameliorative and empowering politics of pluralization and thereby strengthening of Indian democracy. Of course, the two English language memoirs brought out by the AMU-VCs (both were not AMU alumni), viz., Badruddin Tyabji (1907-1995 ) and Nasim Faruqi (d. 12012) in the 1960s and 1990s respectively, have certainly given us critical accounts of some of these aspects.

The two Universities produced two “intertwined yet distinctive political trajectories” (p. 11). By the early 1990s, as the Chapter Six in the book, “Bastions of Islam”, demonstrates, the two campuses were no longer distinctive of each other in terms of shaping and articulating Muslim identity politics. Both campuses had become strong centres of retrogressive forces of north Indian Muslims. According to the author, the JMI became so, more pronouncedly, in the 1990s. This is indeed the boldest and bravest chapter of the book.

Competitive religious radicalism since the 1970s

The AMU was never weak in terms of its right wing Muslim presence and influence, though in the 1970s and 1980s it became even more pronounced along those lines. Both Universities were now becoming even stronger bastions of Islamism and retrogression rather than enhancing the qualitative and quantitative output in terms of academic research and or prioritizing the educational uplift of the Qaum. They were rather more engaged in emotive, identitarian issues. Chapter Six, towards its concluding notes, brilliantly underlines the fact that the more the Qaum turned towards emotive symbolism and identitarianism, the more they (un)wittingly pushed down the agendas of educational and political empowerment of the Muslim communities within. Worse still, the more they stoked majoritarian forces through their own retrogression, the more they made themselves all the more vulnerable, as this partly contributed to pushing India towards Hindu supremacism. Laurence Gautier, in this significant chapter takes into account the sub-continental as well as global phenomenon of the rise of competitive religious radicalism. She has brilliantly benefitted from the essays of Anuj Nadaur (2006), Simon Wolfgang Fuchs (2022), Yoginder Sikand (2003), etc.

Chapter Six of the book under review is a greater eye-opener, particularly for those who are steeped into and subscribe to the victimhood narratives of the Muslim elite and also the Islamic Right Wing. This wonderful chapter also exposes as to how do the hasty, ambitious Muslims bolster their political career through advocating, championing and perpetuating conservatism within the Qaum and pushing them rightward? Very skillfully, they keep the commoners of the Qaum blinded by the fact that such approaches strengthen Hindu majoritarian forces and inflict ever greater vulnerability upon the Qaum. The more both campuses (AMU and JMI) pushed the Qaum towards “Islamisation of Knowledge (IoK) and society” (funded by some of the Islamic countries from the 1970s) the more they ignored the under-representation of India’s Muslims in education, in public employment and in other such sectors such as media and judiciary. The chapter underlines this Rightward shift of the educated segments of the Qaum that was prompted/inspired by and/or coincided with the Maududi’s worldview, the Iranian Revolution (1979), Afghan Jihad, Radicalization of Pakistan under Ziaul Haq, etc.. This is what makes the chapter even more insightful.

Interestingly, during the late 1980s and early 1990s [when the localised dispute of Ayodhya was nationalised through competitive communalism and around the time of the Hindu reaction against the legislative undoing (1986) of the Supreme Court verdict (1985) on Shah Bano and the Ayodhya campaign of the Hindu radicals], the cataloguing of the Muslim underrepresentation was articulated either through the pamphlets of the three major Communist parties, viz., CPI, CPI-M, CPI-ML Liberation, and in certain liberal media outlets such as the Illustrated Weekly of India. Besides, the cataloguing of Muslim under-representation in the Gopal Singh Report (1983). These core issues were being raised to some extent by the state appointed VCs and other functionaries of the two universities but, significantly, not, in any significant measure, by the Islamists on the two campuses. Gautier writes (p. 286), “in the 1980s, university authorities increasingly invoked the need to uplift backward Muslims to frame their actions in a consensual framework.” Though, Gautier has expressed ignorance of benefitting from such pamphlets.

The growing Islamic fundamentalism combined with the boom in Gulf economies added to the anxieties of the sections of Hindu population which feared that the oil money may fund mass conversions to Islam and ‘give to Islamism in India a new glow of self confidence in one sudden sweep’ (pp. 284-285). [A similar apprehension was raised by Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) in the 1920s, after the Pan Islamist Khilafat Movement, best articulated by Intezar Husain, in his Urdu biography (1999), Ajmal-e-Azam]. This is a significant point which needs to be probed further by collecting some data from the ground. As of now, there are very limited explorations about the socio-economic status of the Muslim communities of different regions and sub-regions. Most of the better known University academics, working around such themes of India’s Muslim communities, shy away from collecting such data from the field. Another aspect, missing in this chapter, is to probe this question:  how, while Islamists were active on both campuses, engaged in and “advocating the purifying of Islam, promoting Islamic values and prioritizing the language of religion over the language of minority rights or social welfare”, their own children were –at the same time –pursuing all kinds of empowering education in professional courses as well as in the humanities. Also, how this project of Islamisation was, in itself, shaking overall secularisation and provoking a Hindu majoritarian reaction and thereby aggravating the vulnerability of the Qaum.

Another significant insight coming out of this volume is in the Chapter Four, “Resisting Minority Politics, Holding on to Composite Nationalism: Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) in the post-Nehruvian period”. The author underlines that “JMI’s atmosphere became more orthodox in the 1980s when the ‘influx’ of teachers from AMU increased significantly”, particularly in the Engineering department, and “‘the liberal [ethos of JMI] was slowly isolated’”; and that, “arrival of teachers trained at AMU led to the rise of ‘class consciousness’ on the campus, thereby jeopardising JMI’s vision of a ‘classless society’” (pp. 192-193). The JMI’s Department of Education excelled for as long as the AMU alumni weren’t recruited as JMI’s faculty. This is demonstrated here by the author’s well-tabulated data.

Laurence Gautier, while expounding on the student politics of AMU during 1965-1981, looks upon the minoritarian assertion as politics of pluralising the Indian democracy and that it was also the case with non-Muslim Indians, the Hindu OBCs, who were asserting their rights to a share in the structures and processes of power and were articulating their grievances against “Nehruvian Consensus”. To contain such assertions, Emergency was imposed, after which the Hindu Right gained legitimacy as well as registered rise and expansion, also funded by the Hindu diaspora.

Cunning craft of the Qaum’s elites: nationalizing local issues for self-perpetuation

This raises a question as to why and how the local AMU issue of reservation for “internal” students in AMU enrolments, a discrimination in favour of the privileged, was cunningly made into a larger  problem the Muslim communities across India, in 1965? This cunning craft of the descendants of the “Kutcherry Milieu” needs to be decoded minutely. This particular clique of the Qaum had kind of forced Sir Syed to shun progressive religious reformism as much as also to withdraw the welfaristic (charitable) Waqf Bill (1879). Yet, all such forces succeeded in taking over his College almost completely, soon after his death in 1898. Some of them, without subscribing to his modernist reformism, had opportunistically and tactically aligned with Sir Syed because he had access to the high echelons of the colonial administration up to the Viceroy and his legislative council.

Chapter Two is particularly more nuanced because it makes a very fine distinction between the visions of Nehru (the Prime Minister), Maulana Azad (the Education Minister) and Zakir (the Vice Chancellor) around the question of what kind of role should and would AMU play in the post-Partition period. In a polite and skillfully understated manner (English is anyway said to be a language of the under-statement), Gautier has articulated the tension between the liberal state, Muslim state actors (often derided as the Sarkari Musalman) and the Muslim Right Wing on and off the campus.

Interestingly, while the sarkar (state) and the Sarkari Musalmans attempted at combining the goals of educational uplift of the Muslims as well as helping Muslims acquire liberal-pluralist outlook, the Muslim Right Wing was geared towards preserving and promoting regressivism and emotive priorities than on any educational uplift. That minority regressivism remained a contributory factor towards strengthening Hindu majoritarianism, is still a less addressed aspect in academia and in the popular domain. Not without substance, the Liberal- Left academic and political forces are often charged of going silent or soft on Muslim regressivness.

Socio-political movements and silence on the campus on caste among Muslims

While discussing social justice movements and backward caste assertions, the relevant chapter of this book does not, it appears, adequately engage with the layered dynamics of the JP Movement and Anti-Emergency resistance. As to how much or less AMU and JMI identified with or stayed away from those movements? The student activists turned mainstream politicians of the era have been interviewed by the author. While bringing out polyphonic voices on these campuses on the question of caste, the dominant narratives on the campuses have almost denied existence of such a discriminatory practice. The AMU and JMI were almost equally aloof in 1990 when there were direct clashes across the country among the students on the implementation of the Mandal Commission Recommendations, despite the fact that as many as 82 communities of Muslims were to benefit from the implementation of the Mandal Report, in 1990.

The narratives within Muslim politics generated out of and sustained within AMU, needs further probing. It needs no particular mention that many Muslim leaders emerged on mainstream Indian electoral politics out of these agitations on AMU issues in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the names are: Arif M Khan, Azam Khan, Javed Habib (d. 2012), and of course leaders such as Abdul Jalil Faridi (1913-1974), Ilyas Azmi (1934-2023), and scores of Muslim leaders (including the theologians) across the country. Remember the lines of Lelyveld & Minault (1974) that the AMU was a “profoundly political enterprise”.

Laurence Gautier clearly demonstrates that before the Emergency (i.e., during 1972-1974) and after it (1977-1981), Muslims, around the AMU campus and related issues, emerged as the interlocutor between the Qaum and the Indian State. Soon after that, the Muslim bodies or pressure groups such as the AIMPLB (founded in April 1973), and BMAC/BMCC emerged on the scene. I repeat, the Muslim politics of nationalising the local issues, and secondly, the formation of pressure groups least for educational uplift and empowerment and more for emotive cultural politics, speak tellingly of the priorities of Muslim politics, among north Indian Muslim elites. This also reminds me of an assertion of Theodre P Wright Jr about the Muslim politics in India, raising the question of whether the Muslim minorities can actualise more of their goals through pressure groups rather than through electoral party politics. Paul Brass and Harry Blair, endorsing Wright, are inclined to suggest that the pressure groups yield better results.

Gender Issues: dominance of regressive patriarchy and retrogression

Chapter seven (on gender) is forthright in stating that “In the 1970s, Islamist groups gained increasing influence on campus as they sought to promote adherence to ‘Íslamic values’, including with regard to men-women relations’’ (p. 375) and “At JMI, the SIMI gained popularity among a part of the student body thanks to their firm stance against the state’s interference in Muslim Personal Law” (p. 379). A fairly distinct reactionary patriarchy prevailed on the campus, in which the Islamists having been dominant and hegemonic forces on the both campuses, neither pushed for reforms from within nor did they allow the state to intervene in favour of gender justice. Women, including the various shades of feminists (except among a miniscule sections of the Left) remained ‘guardians of tradition’ rather than ‘actors of change’.

The author candidly states that “The Shah Bano controversy had a deeply divisive impact both at JMI and at AMU” (p. 378). The author however avoids saying that the divisive impact was not confined within the two ‘Muslim’ campuses. Rather the stubbornness of the Muslim conservatives and reactionaries was going to change the whole grammar, syntax and vocabulary of politics across the country in the days to come. This eventually came to be confessed even by Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-1999), one of the prominent villains of the Shah Bano dispute. The narratives of the vulnerability of the Muslims were falsified by their power to arm-twist the regime to legislate against the Supreme Court verdict of April 1985. The two campuses, in effect, stood by or capitulated before such reactionary forces, subsequently contributed, in whatever degree, by pushing India towards the grip of majoritarianism. The narrative-making elite (Kutcherry Milieu) of India’s Muslims is yet to persuade the Qaum to bring in reforms from within or let the state do the needful. Needless to add, many such reforms have already been carried out in most of Islamic countries. Yet, the reactions of the dominant Muslim elite to date, are as outrageous as were in the 1970s and 1980s. Most recently, one could see this in the S[h]ayera Bano Case (2017) as much as in the latest Supreme Court verdict of July 10, 2024. In this specific regard, it is difficult to share the optimism that the author has sanguinely articulated in the last two pages (pp. 388-389) of the chapter of the book.

Chapter seven appears to be implicitly rather kinder to Muslim conservatives in a very limited sense. The author seems to suggest (p. 380) that “the growing militancy of the Hindu right” and the BJP support to UCC, kind of forced some Muslim progressives to promote reform from within. To some extent, fair enough. However, please pay attention to these words of Saumya Saxena (2018, p. 424): “the first battle of Muslim personal law was fought in the 1970s rather than the 1980s”. The AIMPLB came into existence in April 1973. It was outcome of a series of Muslim protests in late 1972 against state interference in reforming the laws regarding adoption of child and maintenance to divorced women. The Muslim Right Wing was in the forefront of such protests and in formation of the AIMPLB. The academics of the Islamic Studies, Theology, Law, Gender Studies, of the two universities haven’t yet explained to the Qaum that Instant Triple Talaq (divorce; ITT) is Un-Quranic, that maintenance is not Un-Islamic, that adoption per se isn’t prohibited in Quran, it only prohibits concealing the biological paternity of the child adopted, that it won’t be anti-Islamic to give equal share to the daughters in inheriting parental assets. These highly paid academics benefitting from funds of the secular state haven’t come out in open against the reactionary theologians exposing them about their stances on these abovementioned issues. Thus, their silence or silent support to the reactionary theologians is undermining the secularization processes, which eventually provides fodder to majoritarianism.

On certain aspects, this book has preferred to spare the two denominational universities, in exposing their flip sides, such as their deficit (self-chosen?) in academic output on the most immediate concerns regarding caste, gender, Minority conservatism, communalism and isolationism-exceptionalism). Do they really deserve this much of empathy?

Muslims in their political articulation talk of their victimisation, and discrimination but in terms of academic output of the AMU, we have rightly been accused by Omar Khalidi that there is “absence of interest in Indian Muslim issues at the three departments”, viz., Economics, Sociology and Political Science.

Political priorities of the AMU-JMI elites have been to generate agitations more intensely about emotive and identitarian issues. Their narrative-making politics has prioritised emotive issues and of lack of criminal justice system in the anti-Muslim communal pogroms, besides underrepresentation in education, public employment, legislative and other institutions. But they have chosen largely not to conduct researches on such issues, in order to make stronger advocacy, as indicted by Omar Khalidi (2010), in his academic audit of the research production of AMU.

How do we explain this (mis)prioritization? Can we not see certain kind of politics played out by the elites of Muslims against its own wider community? This deficit among AMU-JMI elites (the narrative-makers) on those counts is contributing to the skewing of political priorities, fuelling of prejudices, fears and apprehensions. Arguably, our own forthright incompetence and mediocrity, that has harboured a less competitive, more cocooned spaces, in terms of enrolments, recruitments, promotions, etc., within these “Muslim” campuses is a cause?

Anti-democratic governance structure of AMU: An incestuous club

The governance structure within AMU is such that it has been helping it, through dangerous and malicious inbreeding, inside the Executive Council (has got almost 80% of its members from among its own faculty), up to the level of empanelling its VCs (without inviting application from outside through an advertisement), to protect, promote and perpetuate the interests of a small club of Muslim elites (Kutcherry Milieu). The narrative-generating elites of both universities as well as of the theological seminaries of these regions, increasingly confined mostly to western UP and Bhojpuri speaking districts of UP (such as Azamgarh), are also home to some of the noted Islamic seminaries. In contrast, the BHU has got all its EC members nominated by the Union government since the 1950s. AMU is the only University where certain teachers continue in certain administrative offices for far too long — even over a decade –with preposterously poor academic credentials. Successive internal VCs perpetuate and strengthen these cliques and clouts rather than launching a crackdown against these debilitative lobbies.

Record preservation in AMU leaves much to be desired. Had it been preserving the day-to-day resolutions and transactions of the AMU Students’ Union and of the AMU Teachers’ Associations and other such formal and informal pressure groups, lobbies and clouts (including the sub-regional ones) within AMU, the practice would have helped for academic researchers to bring out the layered details of the political-ideological character and Qaum’s misplaced priorities and the huge disjunction of aspirations between the elites and the people of the Qaum.

Taking forward from the insights provided by Laurence Gautier, a sequel volume along these lines on the two campuses, or even taking into account more of the “Muslim” campuses can well be a research project worth taking up. A hint (p. 236, Table 5.1) at tardy, slow, lackadaisical and reluctant efforts of the Muslim elites of western UP in establishing Muslim minority educational campuses and educational trusts, compared to the laudable efforts of their counterparts in southern and western India, is a question of deeper concern that requires consideration.

Sadly, Uttar Pradesh’s Muslim elites compare very unfavourably even with the Bihar Muslim elite which is otherwise identified as poorer and backward. In this specific table of educational initiatives of Muslims, post-partition, Kerala tops it all in terms of establishing total number of Muslim colleges until the early 1980s. Tamil Nadu is far ahead despite having the least percentage of Muslim population. They created quality Muslim educational institutions out of the secular laws of Trusts rather than the self-perpetuating “scam” called Waqf-e-Aulad. Thus, the already short share of the south Indian enrolments in AMU kept falling further.

With such tabulated data of the book under discussion, I propose before the academics, researchers and commentators that a precise gaze on, and scrutiny of, the roles of the Muslim elites of UP, and their dominance/hegemony in the narrative-making power/entitlements of Muslim politics is awaited.

Another significant question to be raised here is: why the newly independent liberal state of India was more favourably inclined towards the ex-Leaguers than towards the consistent Congressite Muslims? Were they greater vote-catchers for the ruling Congress than the consistent Congressites? If so, then what does it tell us about the Muslim politics and its elites? Such a proposition is prima facie provocative but the differential treatments in terms of supplying state fund to the JMI and AMU does testify this proposition. There are many more of such evidence in terms of scores of the overnight turncoats among the UP Muslim leaders, such as Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul (1908-2001), not to say of similar testimony in the Urdu novels of Abdus Samad, Do Gaz Zamin and Khwabon Ka Sawera.

In summing up, this wonderfully well-researched book offers profound and nuanced exploration of the socio-political dynamics of AMU and JMI (north Indian Muslim middle classes and elites) since 1947. It provides valuable insights into the evolving landscapes of the politics of Muslim communities in India. This is indeed an important resource for scholars to elaborate upon many aspects outlined in this book pertaining to the polyphonic voices on almost every important issue which the Muslim communities are grappling with. Thus, this engrossing read offers many promises to open up several unchartered layers of the politics of India’s Muslim communities, waiting to be opened up, with even more courage. The post-independence incarnates of the “Kutcherry Milieu” are waiting to be dissected, x-rayed and held accountable in order to make a new move in a menacingly majoritarian rightward shift of India. The increasingly atrophying Liberal-Left too needs to rethink their hitherto flawed treatment of Muslim regressivism. It is already too late.

[Note: This is an abridged version of the draft presented as a panel discussion on the book, in the India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi, on 28 August 2024].

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

Related:

The Waqf Bill 2024: An Open Letter to the Joint Committee of Parliament, the Opposition, and India’s Muslim Communities

Three Banes of India’s Muslims: Victimhood Syndrome, Power Theology, Obsession with Identity Politics

No Central Funds, Aligarh Muslim University’s Second Campus in West Bengal Faces Uncertain Future

The post Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Rarely do voters believe the promises made in party manifestos, and even more unlikely is it that the detailed promises outlined in the manifesto ensure victory to a party. The absence of a level playing field in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections that the Congress faces should not have –normally –rattled the top brass of the BJP, leading their star campaigner to so sharply comment upon the manifesto of the Congress. Why has the BJP not been able to ignore it? Does the BJP –in any way– fear defeat?

The Congress manifesto is a bold and brave document, except on one count, Personal Laws of the Religious Minorities. The Personal Laws need significant reforms, and in their present un-reformed form militate against gender justice. Especially since majority Muslim countries have in fact implemented significantly some of these reforms (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Arab and African countries). Thus, by not committing to reform in the personal laws, the Congress manifesto 2024 appears to regress, even go back to the 1980s. The Congress must not forget that it was this moment which provided lot of fodder to the resurgence of Hindutva. (The Congress Manifesto does include the following: “The Congress will encourage reform of personal laws. Such reform must be undertaken with the participation and consent of the communities concerned.”-Editors)

It is also common knowledge that the Congress is at its weakest ever especially faced with a weak organization in most parts of the country. It is also extremely resource-starved both in terms of funds and workers. Besides, several promising leaders have deserted the party in recent times.

Given the degree of heightened communal polarisation, particularly in the Hindi belt, and the deep anti-Muslim hatred this polarization has generated, a party reiterating its Pluralist and Secular character and openly challenging the crony capitalism of the dispensation, signals a bold, refreshing stance. The Congress is in fact stoically and courageously assert its core historical ideology. Certain political scientists (Suhas Palshikar being one of these) often say that a political party in deep crisis reverts back to its core ideology to revive itself. May be, the Congress has learnt this lesson and has jettisoned its soft majoritarianism to a significant extent.

The Congress (in its manifesto) has defined its priorities quite clearly. Equity and Social Justice is on the top of its agenda in the manifesto. Youth Unemployment, Distress of Traders caused by the GST, Farmers’ Distress, Ruination of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)with sudden and total Demonetisation, Crimes against Women, Deprivation, Persecutio and Marginalization of the SCs, STs, Minorities, Hijacking of Institutions by the dispensation are some of the highlights emphasised right at the beginning of the manifesto. “Climate of Fear, Intimidation and Hatred” is a concern highlighted without hesitation. Democracy or Authoritarianism, Freedom or Fear, Prosperity for All or Wealth for a Few, Justice or Injustice, are the serious issues flagged before the electorate. [1]

An exclusive segment on the Religious and Linguistic Minorities in the Manifesto reminds us of the “resolution adopted in the 1906 Calcutta Congress that each province organise at its capital a Provincial Congress Committee in such manner as may be determined at a meeting of the Provincial Conference or at a special meeting held for the purpose, of representatives of different districts in the province”. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) is said to have insisted on this aspect. This was further reiterated at the Nagpur session (1920).[2]

The most clear and bold aspect of the manifesto is its’ promise to conduct a nation-wide Socio-Economic and Caste Census to Enumerate the Castes and Sub-Castes and their Socio-Economic conditions. Based on the data, the agenda for affirmative action will be strengthened. Significantly, the Congress has guaranteed that it will pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SC, ST and OBC. The reservation of 10 per cent in jobs and educational institutions for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) will be implemented for all castes and communities without discrimination. Importantly, all the backlog vacancies in posts reserved for SC, ST and OBC within a period of one year. The Congress will abolish the contractualisation of regular jobs in the government and public sector enterprises and ensure regularisation of such appointments.

Promises of legislating the Rohith Vemula Act to protect the SC students (ill enact a law with reference to Article 15(5) of the Constitution to provide for reservation in private educational institutions for SC, ST and OBC), of Establishment of a Diversity Commission to ensure representation of all segments in public spaces and employment, implementing the Renke Commission (The Manmohan Cabinet in its meeting held on 30 January 2014 had approved the establishment of a National Commission for De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes-NCDNT- for a period of three years and framing of an appropriate scheme for grant of Pre and Post matric Scholarships and Construction of Hostels for DNT students), are some of the egalitarian and socialistic measures to empower the oppressed and marginalized segments, which might have seriously rattled the BJP. Theseit has dubbed the pro-poor provisions with Left influence (in the Congress manifesto). The promises of establishing Village Councils and Autonomous District Councils are the steps towards rectifying Regional Imbalance. Senior Citizens, Disabled and LGBTQ communities have got significant space. Right to Health, residential schools at Block/Tehsil levels, are also most appreciable promises.[3]

Removal of Economic Inequalities and Transition to a Socialist form of Society were stated as the two major objectives of Congress since at least 1929.

Defending the Constitution and Reversing the Damage

Two significant points of emphasis are contained in the two sections entitled “Defending the Constitution” and “Reversing the Damage.”

From de-criminalising the offence of defamation, to uphold the people’s right to assemble peacefully and without arms; to review and repeal laws that have affected free press and privacy the manifesto goes further. It assur4es its voters to repeal weaponised and unconstitutional laws. “All laws that interfere with personal freedoms will be repealed.”  The Msnifesto promises to strengthen the Election Commission of India and other statutory bodies and ensure that Parliament is accountable to the people.

But what is it that prompted the Prime Minister to malign this manifesto by likening it with an imprint of Muslim League?

One can only make an intelligent guess. This author is someone who has been teaching postgraduate courses in modern & contemporary Indian history for the last 25 years or so. Modesty apart, I have a keen understanding –more than the non-specialist Indian electorate–of why PM Modi has made this reference to the All India Muslim League (AIML).

The kind of egalitarian pursuit as promised or envisaged in the INC Manifesto 2024, is at complete odds or in opposition to what a reactionary force like the AIML could ever have envisaged. Every student of Indian history and every Indian with a common sense (or understanding) of history knows this well. Since the Congress envisaged its socialist goals from the Karachi Session (1931) onwards, culminating into the Faizpur Agrarian Programme (1936), the Muslim League got seriously alarmed. Having been routed in the 1937 elections, the landlords of the respective religious denominations started running towards the AIML and AIHMS (All India Hindu Maha Sabha). From 1938 onwards, the two organisations grew strong and hysterical. During the Quit India Movement (1942), after the Congress leaders were jailed, both these reactionary organisations had a field day and were shamelessly encouraged by the British colonial state pushing India fast towards Partition. Jinnah and Savarkar gained unprecedented strength. Savarkar was no longer confined to Ratnagiri by the colonial state.

The Interim government of 1946 (formed in September), had its finance minister from the AIML. He was Liaqat Ali Khan (1895-1951), succeeding John Mathai (1886-1959) in November 1946.

Hence, this author finds no such similarity between the All India Muslim League (AIML) of pre-1947 and the Indian National Congress (INC) Manifesto 2024. Moreover, even in the 1940s, it was AIHMS which had formed coalition govt with AIML in Bengal, NWFP, and Sindh.

Raghabendra Chattopadhyay’s essay (1998), (the author is not a huge sympathiser of the Congress, writes:

“The leaders of the Congress now came out in public to denounce the Budget as a ‘clever device’ for discrediting the party by giving a ‘most unpractical turn to both the Congress demands; that is, those for Governmental action against profiteering and tax evasion’. Liaquat’s taxation measures, they argued, ‘would have impoverished all rich men and done permanent damage to Commerce and Industry’. Congress leaders like Patel and Rajagopalachari were violently opposed to the Budget and felt that Liaquat was ‘more concerned to harass industrialists and businessmen than to serve the interests of the country’. They even charged that the Budget was based on communal considerations motivated to harm the members of the business community, the majority of whom were Hindus”.

This quotation makes it amply clear that the Congress was critical of the 1946 Budget of the AIML. Nehru, notwithstanding his socialist convictions, was particularly critical of it in the FICCI meeting that followed soon after.

So why then did the PM Modi liken the Congress manifesto 2024 with the AIML? Liaquat’s new taxes were directed against big business and other excessively wealthy people. “The [1946] Budget [had] really stirred up the entire business community, Indian and British, who were soon up in arms against Liaquat. Stock exchanges in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were indefinitely in protest against the tax proposals. The big houses, and the Press under their control, denounced the Budget ‘murderous one’ intended to destroy the economy by choking business activities in the country”.

Likening the Congress with the AIML is strange because it is the AIHMS had formed coalition governments with the Muslim League in Bengal, NWFP and Sindh in the early 1940s.

Thus, in all probability, PM Modi appears seriously worried of the Congress attack against crony capitalism which has been wreaking havoc against the poor and middle class Indians since 2014. That is only reason, why PM appears so rattled. Why otherwise does the BJP simply not ignore the Congress manifesto, if the BJP is really so very confident of achieving its target of over 400 seats in the Lok Sabha?

Of course, a lot will depend upon how the common electorates would respond to the debate on this particular remark. Afflicted with communal polarisation, particularly the north Indian electorates are less likely to devote a cool-headed look into the Congress manifesto and the PM’s odious comparison of it with the Muslim League. Let’s watch to see if the ordinary voter will have the last laugh or the Adanis and the Ambanis will emerge victorious at the cost of the Indian? The Electoral Bond Scam, or extortion, has already exposed the deep nexus nexus. Will a 400 plus Lok Sabha of BJP ensure India a pluralist democracy? Or, we shall have moved over to the electoral autocracy (Putin’s Russia style, or the Israel model of bi-national state system with graded citizenship)?

Both the voters (electorates) and institutions (Election Commission) are under watch. What do they have in store for the future of India!

[1] From the Manifesto: “Our greatest concern was the prevailing ‘climate of fear, intimidation and hatred’. In the last five years, every section of the people has lived in fear; laws and investigating agencies have been weaponised to intimidate people; and through its words and actions the BJP and its affiliates have spread hatred among people belonging to different religious, language and caste groups.”

[2] On Religious and Linguistic Minorities: “The Party will respect and uphold the fundamental right to practice one’s faith and the rights guaranteed to religious minorities under Articles 15, 16, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution. The Party will also respect and uphold the rights of linguis- tic minorities guaranteed under Articles 15, 16, 29 and 30 of the Constitution. ..”The Party e will encourage and assist students and youth belonging to the minorities to take full advantage of the growing opportunities in education, employment, business, services, sports, arts and other fields. The economic empowerment of minorities is a necessary step for India to realise its full potential. We will ensure that banks will provide institutional credit to minorities without discrimination. The Congress Party will ensure that the minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, public works contracts, skill development, sports and cultural activities without discrimination. Congress will ensure that, like every citizen, minorities have the freedom of choice of dress, food, language and personal laws. The Congress will encourage reform of personal laws. Such reform must be undertaken with the participation and consent of the communities concerned.

[3] Other aspects in the Congress Manifesto released on April “The Congress will include in the curriculum of schools the life and work of social reformers to spread the message of social justice. The Congress will establish Ambedkar Bhavans-cum-Libraries in every district to promote the habit of reading and discussion. The Party will pass a law authorising allocation of resourc- es for the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan and Tribal Sub Plan within the annual budget and monitoring the execution of the plans. 15. Congress will end the evil of manual scavenging. Every manual scavenger will be rehabilitated, re-skilled, provided a job and assured a life of dignity and safety. The Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act, 2013, will be strictly implemented and any person employing anyone for manual scavenging shall be punished. We will provide compensation of 30 lakh to families of sanita- tion workers.”(safai karamcharis) deceased while at work. We will allocate sufficient funds to enable the procurement of machines that will clean sewers and septic tanks, and remove human waste. Free insurance will be provided to all sanitation worker

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The post Why is the BJP calling the Congress Manifesto 2024 to be an “Imprint of the Muslim League”? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I am someone who has been teaching postgraduate courses in post-independence history for decades. My mind goes back to the stirring speech of Feroze Gandhi (1912-1960) in the Lok Sabha on December 16, 1957 [Incidentally, December 16 is also the birthday of my daughter whom we adopted and lost at the hands of a hasty and therefore botched up juridical pronouncement, arguably succumbing to the regressive Muslim Personal Law].

The then Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru was a quintessential democrat, save some debatable blemishes. Feroze was on the treasury benches, acting more ferocious than any qualified opposition leader could have acted. As we look around today, when parts of world are moving rapidly towards electoral autocracy combined with ethnic hatred, we note with great regret that rather than strengthening and deepening our democracy, we have been eroding it significantly.

Feroze Gandhi had (1957) exposed the officials of the State Bank of India (SBI) and of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India involved in (or subjected to) the scam; he was unsparing about the Finance Minister as well. The shady and corrupt transactions of Mr. Mundhra were exposed. Nehru didn’t raise the bogey of the foreign-hand in order to silence Feroze. I therefore strongly recommend — to postgraduate students taking my course—that they read the wonderfully written text of the speech that was delivered with great passion in the Lok Sabha on December 16, 1957. One remembers Feroze today, precisely because of this unwavering speech. Rajni Patel wrote in the Foreword to one famous biography, (Shashi Bhushan, 1977) of Feroze, “At a time we are once again concerned with refashioning our democratic values and revitalizing our public institutions, it is good to recapitulate the work and ideals of a pioneer” that Feroze was.

Had it been today, the Parliamentarian (Feroze Gandhi) could have been chastised as a seditious religious minority out to wreck “Bharat Mata”. Those were the days of a fledgling, proud, strong and emergent democracy; not the sham period we live through today. The then PM was not scared, not insecure and frightened to be losing his office. The regime of that time allowed the debate to take place and it was also widely reported widely in the media. Incidentally, the very same parliamentarian had fought successfully to legislate a law permitting press-coverage of Parliamentary proceedings. Contrast this with the current scenario when our Prime Minister has not had the moral courage to address a single press conference in two terms, that is the last 10 years, and this fact does not appear to disturb the electorate.

Subsequently, in August 1965, there were food riots in India, student upsurges in the Bihar and Hindi belt against corruption, inflation and unemployment. On August 9, 1965, students, employees and the opposition had gheraoed the Bihar Assembly in Patna. They had battled with the police. Herbert Heidenreich (1968), in his research-essay, The Anatomy of a Riot, notes,

“The police resorted to firing in eighteen places throughout the state as railway stations were sacked, government offices and homes of Cabinet members burned, and warehouses looted. Order was finally restored after five days; in many places only when army units were deployed. Journalists and other observers tend to attach adjectives to their descriptions of political violence in India. Thus there are ‘communal’ riots, ‘food’ riots, or ‘language’ riots”

This is how the 1967 elections came to be held against the incumbent regime. We don’t yet witness any such phenomenon in India today after the expose of the Electoral Bond Scam in 2024! Though, we live through, otherwise, an “age of mob fury”, era of lynching, an age of easy provocations and most brutal violence. One reason of course is that we have too many non-state actors, of course, in complicity with the regime, enjoying an impunity from the state, who resort to group violence. Is that why the expose of the biggest scam in the history of independent ever doesn’t provoke the nationalist commitment of the vigilante groups?

Another reason is obvious. “Mainstream newspapers” (Hindi and English and many other regional languages as also the commercial TV news channels) have gone mostly silent. At best, they are reluctantly informing us about these scandals with least possible quantum of information. The best known anchors, shrill when it comes to promoting stigma against vulnerable sections or brazenly promoting one leader and his party, have also been rendered voiceless.

The anti-Emergency campaign and the run up to the 1977 elections are too well known to be re-counted here in detail. Ironically, some of the anti-Emergency crusaders of the 1970s have turned into the practitioners of undeclared Emergency today.

The 1989 elections were held on the back of a campaign against the Bofors Scandal (1987). The then Finance Minister, V P Singh,  resigned from government and led the oppositional coalition to victory and formed a short-lived government, supported by both the left and right. Over decades, VP Singh’s allegations have turned out to be either exaggerated or baseless. There were other mistakes too, that Rajiv Gandhi had committed. He had surrendered “to the forces of prejudice, illiberalism and fundamentalism” in the case of Shahbano Judgment of 23 April 1985, which was upturned through a parliamentary legislation in 1986. This immensely contributed to the rise of majoritarian forces, candidly confessed even by its chief villains, the Muslim clergy, who also nationalized the local dispute of Ayodhya. (See Abulhasan Ali Miyan Nadvi’s Urdu memoir, Karwaan-e-Zindagi. 1988, vol. 3, chapter 4). Rajiv Gandhi, however, had enough grace to have later confessed to the journalist Vir Sanghvi (A Rude Life, 2021) “I was young. I made mistakes”. V P Singh-Arun Nehru combine targeted Rajiv Gandhi like anything. Their partner-in-crime, so to say, was the English daily Indian Express (IE). This is a newspaper, which has today given space to several right wing ideologues and official spokespersons. Ajaz Ashraf writes (Mid Day, April 3, 2023),

“Since May 2014, when the BJP swept into power, its members have altogether written 640 opinion pieces over approximately 3,000 days. This means a piece from the RSS-BJP stable was being published in one of the three newspapers every fifth day. Of the 640 pieces, IE accounted for 337, HT 97 and TOI 206. IE’s figures are high partly because its archive is the best among the three. Its opinion pages are vibrant—proprietors and editors fear a backlash only when they speak out against the government.

I found that 399 of the 640 pieces, or 62.34 per cent, mention Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his government at least once. In one piece, RSS leader Ram Madhav mentions Modi 20 times, in another 18 times. Former President Ram Nath Kovind referred to Modi 22 times in just one piece written, thankfully, after he demitted office. Union Minister Bhupender Yadav did so 21 times in an article. Most BJP spokespersons possess a sycophantic inclination to needlessly repeat Modi’s name in their pieces.

Guess they owe it to Modi for turning them into writers. Since May 2014, Madhav has written 101 pieces for IE, 25 for HT and six for TOI. The IE index of authors shows he began writing only in May 2014. Former Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu has written 68 pieces across the three newspapers, Bhupender Yadav 34, MP Dr Rakesh Sinha 31 for IE, for which former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has penned 22. Spokesperson Anil Baluni has 26 bylines for IE and his colleague Shehzad Poonawalla 20 for TOI.

The 2014 elections were held in the background of the “India Against Corruption” (IAC) campaign of 2011, led by a non-descript “non-ideological” old man Anna Hazare and thereafter, Arvind Kejriwal. Soon, it became pretty clear that majoritarian right wing forces were surreptitiously supporting and sustaining the anti-corruption movement. Very few academics and public intellectuals had the foresight to warn us against such a dangerous anti-ideological movement of the majoritarian forces. By the 2014 elections, India underwent a change almost beyond recognition. What India and the regime stands for today, repudiates almost everything that the freedom movement and the Constitution envisions and commits itself to.

In most of the milestone moments of the electoral history of independent India, the “progressive” forces (Socialists and parts of the Leftists) have aligned with the right wing majoritarian forces. With every of such moment, the majoritarian forces gained greater political strength, social base and institutional penetrations. By now, they have become the hegemons, aided by crony capital and the state institutions at the service of their partisan politics to hound and harass the opposition with. Rahul Gandhi is almost a lone crusader to be going into the masses through his Yatras amidst acute resource-crunch and state-hounding.

As yet there is no biography of Rahul Gandhi. Though, there are not less than two, unflattering, accounts (viz., Sugata Srinivasaraju’s, Strange Burdens and Dayashankar Mishra’s Hindi book) cataloguing the viciously hostile political atmosphere in which he is operating.

Besides the anti-Muslim communal hatred, what else is/are the factor(s) which could possibly explain why we don’t we see a popular outrage on the ground against the Electoral Bond Scam which financially not only cripples but also asphyxiates the opposition to death? This is no longer a concern of a specific oppositional political party alone. It is a question of democracy itself. Why 85% of Indians wish to have autocratic regime?

I am really puzzled about this “indifference” of the people towards the expose of the electoral Bond Scam (corruption). I ask myself, are we no longer thinking humans? Have we, as a nation, become machines controlled by our vicious political leaders? Has the governing party semitized the majority like some religions, where we refuse to evaluate our faith (our politics) with reason? We remain faithful followers of our preferred political party and leader round the clock all the time when, in a vibrant democracy, we are expected to be voters of a specific party only for the polling day, and for the rest, become vigilant and critical citizens. Or, have we, all or most of us, turned into card-holding cadres? We react to the political party we have voted for, in a manner as if we are afraid of committing a heresy against our faith, that is, the wrong acts of the political party of our choice? Why have we become a prisoner, a fanatic supporter of messianic, cult politics, hence a retrogressive, backward looking nation?

After all, way back in November 1937 (The Modern Review, Calcutta), a pseudonym Chanakya, had written against this attitude which “potentially paves the path to Caesarism and dictatorship”. We later got to know that he was none other than Nehru writing against himself. It was his way of training Indians against cult worship. This phenomenon of cult politics was a sad truth for provincial politics in the latter half of the last century, when caste-based, corrupt, nepotist, dynastic parties have had turned into a faith-like creed or sect, in the name of social justice. By the second decade of the current century we magnified this tendency to an alarming level? Why are we in love with electoral autocracy, authoritarianism? Why are we endorsing institutional meltdown? Have we become a psychopathic case? Are we suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome-having fallen in love with our oppressors and tormentors?

The present phenomenon cannot be explained away by just faith-based hatred of one group of citizens against another! True, minority conservatism and communalism has contributed immensely to the strengthening of the majoritarian forces, particularly in the 1980s. True also that the liberal-left forces have often supported (or gone silent on) minority regressivism. This resulted into their gradual but inevitable erosion of the credibility of the liberal-left. So much so that today, increasingly larger number of Muslim narrative-making groups, influencers, columnists and academics are falling into the lap of the dispensation to extract small favours such as vice chancellorship of a few selected “Muslim” institutions. This is amply demonstrated by Felix Pal (2020). Quite a few of these Muslim “notables” do have antecedence of affiliation with the Muslim Right Wing as well as having extracted favour from the ruling Congress (in the pre-NaMo era).

Nonetheless, there is certainly more to the majoritarian resurgence in India (and beyond) in the recent times, in a phase of late-capital crisis and crony capitalism. Identity politics and competitive communalisms constitute only a part of the current crisis in India. Today, in the social media, saffron narratives are most prevalent. Anti-communal narrative- making stuff is less visible than the pro-establishment propaganda. “Neoliberal psychopolitics is a technology of domination that stabilizes and perpetuates the prevailing system by means of psychological programming and steering”, says, Byung-Chul Han, in his 2017 booklet, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. But how to get out of this is not something coming out as lucidly from this philosopher, Han. Have we, as a collective, been turned into “unintelligent”, or “stupid” or “idiot”? We are into the era of mass stupidity? If so, what is the possible answer, being offered by Han? He says,

“The idiot is a modern-day heretic. Etymologically, heresy means ‘choice’. Thus, the heretic is one who commands free choice: the courage to deviate from orthodoxy. As a heretic, the idiot represents a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus. The idiot preserves the magic of the outsider. Today, in light of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness”.

In my very limited understanding, Rahul Gandhi, much maligned as the so called Pappu, and everyone engaged in the epic resistance, can be said to be pursuing the noble act and mission of raising the heretical consciousness of the masses who have sadly been turned into unquestioning faithful (bhakts) of the semitized and oppressive political establishment. May this tribe of “idiots” rise in this era of despondency and desperation! We need larger number of “idiots” to take away the elements of bhakti from us and to shake us to realize how badly we are being looted by a handful of the capitalists. These crony capitalists have snatched away employment from our educated and skilled youth. This band of select two dozen or so capitalists are busy destroying all the wealth of the nation including minerals, water, forests, environment, the very essence of being humans. Has allegience to them overtaken all the state institutions.

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The post Corruption as an issue in Indian Election Campaigns: the 2024 story appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a Muslim exclusive WhatsApp group of my extended family, kinship and village neighbourhood, a young man proposed to boycott the Republic Day 2024. The reason he put forward was, the current dispensation has victimised and marginalised the Muslims in various many ways. The young man proposing this boycott has obtained his diploma from a centrally funded Polytechnic affiliated to the Muslim minority university (Jamia Millia Islami, JMI, New Delhi). The JMI, being a centrally funded public university, offers considerably subsidised and economical fee structure. He also got a job in the union government, soon after he obtained the diploma. Subsequently, he quit this job as he found employment in Saudi Arabia.

His “fantastic proposal” of boycotting 2024 Republic Day celebrations is then confronted with an argument that the core support-base of, and organisations affiliated with the current dispensation, anyway subscribe to a kind of ideology that considers Republican Constitutional values an impediment to actualizing their majoritarian goals. Though, they are in ascendance and the forces resisting them appear to be weaker, are not the southern states still beyond them? Meaning that a majority of Hindus are still against Hindu majoritarianism. True, the share of Muslim communities in the structures and processes of power, in education and trade and employment are pathetically dissatisfactory. This has been the situation for decades however, much before this regime acquired its dominance. This also holds true more for northern India. The difference between north and south is due to a variety of factors, external as well as internal, he is told.

With these arguments, he was further reminded of the social composition of the structures and processes of power in the country he works in. He informed also that in that country where Islam was born, only a specific clan can be the ruler, through inheritance, not through any mechanism of popular will, nor through any form of democracy—consociational[1] or consensus democracy–ensuring maximum participation and representation from across the sects, regions, and ethnicities of the country he works in. He is counselled, a consociational democracy differs from consensus democracy (e.g. in Switzerland), in that consociational democracy represents a consensus of representatives with minority veto, while consensus democracy requires consensus across the electorate.

Thereafter this young man, rather cunningly feigns ignorance about such state of affairs of exclusion, discrimination and disenfranchisement in the Islamic country that he now works in. Also, in terms of his sectarian affiliations, he is supposed to be sympathetic to the Salafi ideology. He raises the issue of the egregious act of the demolition (1992) of Babri Masjid with no punishment meted out to those who have been pronounced criminals by the Supreme Court. Some of these criminals are shamelessly being rewarded with votes and are successful elected representatives.

He is then reminded of an episode of the demolition of a historic mosque in Mecca.

… [in 2005], King Fahd, obsessed with building palaces, could look down on the Kaaba from the bedroom of his new residence in Mecca. The palace was located on the eastern side and overshadowed the whole of the Sacred Mosque… [T]he historic Bilal Mosque, dating back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, adjacent to the palace, was demolished. The development took care to ensure that the king had a full view of the worshippers in the compound of the Haram; hence no minarets were built facing the palace…. [Ziauddin Sardar (2014), Meccah: The Sacred City, p. 338].

This young man was then asked if the ruling aristocracies and civil society (if any exist) of the KSA, UAE and other such countries ever bothered about the kind of discriminations and marginalisation India’s Muslims have been subjected to in India; he was asked if these Arab countries allowed civic protests against Zionist and other persecutions across the globe; did Indian Muslims ever stage a protest demonstration in front of their Embassies in India for their silence on Zionist persecution of Palestinians?

He was also asked to ponder why KSA provides fund only for theological seminaries in India, and not institutes for modern education, whereas under the provisions of the Articles 29, 30 of the Indian Constitution, our Indian state provides fund for our schools and colleges of modern education established and administered by us across the country. These arrangements do feel threatened by the current dispensation but from among the Hindu majority itself, resistance against such threats continue. These forces of resistance need more of solidarity, rather than the opium of alienation and even radicalization of India’s Muslims, from certain “Islamic” countries.

This young man was then reminded that he should be a grateful participant in Indian democracy that grants him and us minority rights; a Constitution and democracy which has equipped him with a diploma to earn his livelihood and to attain socio-economic mobility. He was counselled to work towards strengthening the India’s secular democracy, resisting majoritarianism rather than harbouring only a sense of victimhood above all else. He was also reminded of the fact that in some ways, Muslim conservatism, their own communalism and separatist mind-set, and a disproportionate or exaggerated sense of victimhood are the additional factors contributing to greater ascendance of majoritarianism, particularly since the mid-1980s. He found himself silenced because he was disarmed with this barrage and litany of arguments. In other words, he goes silent not because he is convinced with the counter-arguments. His grudge and reluctance persists. He refuses to be convinced.

One of the greatest failures, and wilful one, has been in letting off the perpetrators and plotters of intermittent communal violence. India’s criminal justice system has been awful on this count. The collective grievance of India’s Muslims has more to do with this aspect than to any other aspect of exclusion, discrimination and victimisation.

There are debates between sections of the liberal-secular population and those who ascribe to majoritarianism. The debate always veers around the agent provocateurs of such communal strife, Who cast the first stone? A concise reply to such a polarised debate is: whosoever may have been the plotters and perpetrators (including the security forces who wilfully fail to prevent and control such violence; often acting as complicit with rioters, and also fail to produce evidence of investigations before the law courts) must be punished. Wilful failure to punish them is explained by only one factor–the majoritarian character of the state, and also of society, which doesn’t have even have post facto remorse for and outrage against such identity-based bloodshed and pogroms.

However, how do most Muslims look at the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 and of Noakhali in subsequent months, carried out under the Muslim League administration led by H S Suhrawardy, and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (1920-1975) was in the forefront?

How do the Muslim elites of the subcontinent look at the politics of the partitions (1947 and 1971)?

Do they look at this aspect of the history and politics of violence?

Do they realize that a large section of the Muslim elites (mostly of western Uttar Pradesh) demanded Partition and they got a separate state of Pakistan, hence, those actors (and subscribers of that ideology) and collaborators of the Raj have to share the greater blame of the violence and brutalities?

This certainly doesn’t mean that one is putting blame on one party and absolving the other. One has invested a lot into reading partition literature, both historical and fictional works. India could have been divided only in the British presence; it was divided because of competitive communalism. This has been a repeated theme in my extensive academic work and writings. Still, certain questions pertaining to a selectivity in the Muslim politics of narrative needs to be raised more urgently than ever before!

Does this Muslim elite realise that the very same ideological forces and classes of Pakistan denied power to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in 1970, despite the mandate?

Do they feel about the kind of brutalities, violence, plunder, etc., they perpetuated in 1971 against their Bengali citizens on the eastern flank of their Islamic Republic of Pakistan? In May 2014, a film, directed by Mrityunjay Devvrat was released, “The Children of War”, also known as “The Bastard Child”, played by Raima Sen, Farooq Shaikh, Rucha Inamdar, among others, depicting the brutalities of 1971?

How many Muslims of the subcontinent really bother to inform themselves about, and remember this movie, in other words, the human brutality against humans, their own co-religionists? Subsequently, on 15 August 1975, even Sheikh Mujibur Rehman with all the members of his family present in his house were done to death.

So far as the erasure and perpetuation of the narratives of histories are concerned, who decides and determines the politics of narrative-making? Has there been an honest and comprehensive introspection about all such issues, besides seeking justice based on caste (Biradri) and gender? Joya Chatterji, in her latest book, Shadows at Noon identifies amnesia and strategic forgetting as “one crucial aspect of nation-building project”. She adds, with each wave of nation-making the fate of internal minorities have become more precarious, across the subcontinent. Despite this, on April 4, 1979 when “judicial” hanging of Zulfiqar Bhutoo happened, his massacre of Bengali Muslims in 1971 was forgotten by sections of India’s Muslims. A popular Bollywood song of the film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978) was parodied with emotions, “O Bhutto re …. Terey bina bhi kya jeena”. That summer, this was hummed by the Muslim boys running around India’s mango orchards, more so when our half yearly exams of the primary schools were over, and we had ample time for leisure. In our homes, among the elders, Bhutto’s misdeeds, in 1970-1971, were chosen to be forgotten. Subsequently, General Ziaul Haq resorted to prodding the Islamic extremists, which would kind of cover up his misdeeds against Bhutto.

That most of us loved Pakistani cricket more than Indian cricket, and we loved the football of the Calcutta’s Mohammedan Sporting Club more than we loved the Mohan Bagan and East Bengal, is yet another open secret. Such “secrets” or narratives within the community do tell something about the community’s socio-political attitudes and worldviews.

Each election, a lot of India’s Muslim youth raise issues of Muslim representation in legislature. Wherever, Muslims have 20% or more share of population they claim it almost as a matter of entitlement that the seat must get Muslim representation. There is nothing wrong with such aspirations. But why do they choose to forget that in an era of more rabid majoritarianism and majoritarian electoral consolidation menacingly aided by capital and media, even a 45% of the demographic share of a religious minority will be insufficient to ensure their victory? Why do they fail to understand that communalism cannot be fought with communalism? And that, if the battle is on communal lines, majority will always be a winner; more so when majoritarianism is a frenzy! This has been put more aptly in a novel, Guerrillas (1975), by V S Naipaul (1932-2018): “When everybody wants to fight there is nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war. Everybody is Guerrillas. …Those who have won will win every war”.

This helplessness of the minorities becomes greater in a first-past-the-post system. A greater section of the Muslim elites, during the popular phase of the national movement, fought more for separate electorates, and less for minority rights in a consociational democracy.  Even during the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD, 1946-1949), this issue was hardly brought about. We need to remind ourselves that during the course of the CAD, the bargaining capacity of the Muslims and Liberal Hindus didn’t remain as strong after July 1947 as it was before that. It got considerably diminished after that, which is yet another major factor why minority rights are on shaky grounds in India (Pratinav Anil’s recent book, Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77, demonstrates this more clearly). One of my insightful mentors reminds me, “If there could be an arrangement where, polling of at least 51% of votes cast (through first or second choice), this would be more conducive to social justice and an attenuation of vote banks. This is something even much admired B. R. Ambedkar lost sight of. He, having secured reserved seats, took the path of least resistance and forgot to put up demands such as this, in the CAD/Constitution”. The Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah Commission (set up in 2000 AD), to review the working of the Constitution, had made the following recommendation:

“The [Review] Commission while recognising the beneficial potential of the system of runoff contest electing the representative winning on the basis of 50% plus one vote polled, as against the first-past-the-post system, for a more representative democracy, recommends that the Government and the Election Commission of India should examine this issue of prescribing a minimum of 50% plus one vote for election in all its aspects … The review commission also said this did not need a major Constitutional amendment but ‘necessary correctives’ could be achieved by ordinary legislation, by modifying existing laws or rules or by executive action”.

After 1986, the Muslim conservatives and bigots made Indian Secularism even more shaky to the extent that this is one of the reasons (major or minor) why we have reached a situation now when, as put by Joya Chatterji’s book, Shadows at Noon (p. 203), “Hindutva’s moral code may not yet have become part of the constitution, but it is a part of India’s everyday life”.

 The moot question still remains un-addressed, as to how have the common Muslims been fed with (or upon) the opium of victimhood? For an answer to this, we need to look into Gopal Krishna’s review (IESHR, Sage, 1973) of Peter Hardy’s two books (1971-1972), The Muslims of British India, and the other booklet, Partners in Freedom and the True Muslims: The Political thought of Some Muslim Scholars in British India 1912-1947). The reviewer, Gopal Krishna, deserves to be quoted at length as he asks us to re-examine and,

“to question and subject to careful investigation several ill-established assertions  of a rather general character originating mostly with the work of  W. W. Hunter [Indian Musalmans, 1871], such as, “Muslims were oppressed by the British after the Mutiny [of 1857]”; “Muslims were educationally comparatively  backward”; “Muslims lost lands to Hindus in Bengal as a result  of British policy”; “Muslims did not get a fair share in the administration”; along with other similar ones, for it is as much on these  as on the notion of the divinely-assigned mission of Muslims in India, and the fear of a threat to Islam from revived Hinduism,  that the separatist movement was nurtured by the Muslim elite. A mythology of relative deprivation and communal excellence provided the foundation of this movement, which by stages came to claim Muslims to be a separate nationality and to demand a homeland for them. In his study, The Muslims of British India, Dr. Hardy has performed an important service by examining the available evidence on several of these propositions. He writes, “For the Muslim elite in northern India, British conquest meant the destruction of a way of life more than the destruction of a livelihood and education” (p. 34). “In judicial employ, except in the highest posts, i.e. judgeships and collectorships, Muslims held their own, in Bengal until the middle of the  nineteenth century, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh for a  generation thereafter” (p. 36). With regard to the effect of the resumption proceedings on Muslims in Bengal, Dr. Hardy writes, “Muslims did suffer, but whether they suffered disproportionately  to Hindus remains a matter of opinion, not knowledge” (p. 40), and he quotes the Education Commission Report of 1882 to say  that ‘the result of even the harshest resumption case, was, not the dispossession of the holder but the assessment of revenue on his  holding, and even that in no case at more than half the prevailing rate’ (p. 41).”.

With these revelations or exposes, we need to ask, who, quite misleadingly, popularised the narratives of Muslim victimhood? And another question one needs to ask is, in post-independence period, has there been any big mass movement of India’s Muslims for education, employment, trading facilities (loans, and other administrative enabling)? The biggest of pan India mass movements of Muslims have been for subjugation of Muslim women by opposing reforms in Muslim Personal Laws, the reforms which Pakistan, Bangladesh and most Arab countries have undertaken much earlier. This was in 1972-1973, and in 1985-1986 (India Today, January 31, 1986). The first wave of Muslim protests resulted into the formation of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) in 1973, even though the amendment in the relevant laws had to do more with the Hindus. The second one resulted into self-confessedly trading off of the Babri Masjid to be given away to the Saffronites, and in its exchange, legislating a law [Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986] against the Supreme Court verdict of April 23, 1985 in favour of Shah Bano (1916-1992). The confession is made in the Urdu memoir (Kaarwaan-e-Zindagi, 1988, vol. 3, chapter 4) of the then chief of AIMPLB, Abul Hasan Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-1999), yet, the confession continues to be ignored. The self-confession doesn’t shock or surprise most of the Muslims of India.

For the sake of clarity, in this context, let a few things be said here:

In the 1980s, the AIMPLB brand of forces among Indian Muslims made their own contribution to, were fodder to in a sense, rising majoritarianism. On January 15, 1986, in a session of the Momin Conference at the Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi announced his intention to amend the law to nullify the Supreme Court’s April 1985 verdict in favour of Shah Bano. A legislative bill was introduced in March and it became the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in May 1986. In January 1986, as said, there were strident Muslim protests against the progressive verdict, which had granted Shah Bano (1916-1992), a Muslim woman, alimony after her divorce. [For the separatist politics of Jinnah in the 1930s, around the theologically non sustainable provisions of the Shariat, and the afterlife of that politics, see these three books: Saumya Saxena, Divorce and Democracy, 2022; Julia Stephens, Governing Islam, 2019; Rina Verma Williams, Postcolonial Politics and Personal Laws, 2006].

The approach of the conservative Muslims became pretty clear from the Urdu memoir, Karwan-e-Zindagi, published in 1988 by Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-1999). In volume 3, chapter 4, page 134, Nadvi clearly narrates that it is he who had persuaded Gandhi not to accept the proposition that many Islamic countries have already reformed their personal laws. Nadvi’s narration is triumphant; he rejoices in the successful accomplishment of his effort to stymie a similar reform in India. He says his persuasion had a particular psychological impact on Rajiv Gandhi and that his “arrow precisely hit the target— woh teer apney nishaaney par baitha”. On page 157 comes Nadvi’s candid “confession”: “Our mobilisation for protecting the Shariat in 1986 resulted into complicating the issue of Babri Masjid and vitiated the atmosphere in a big way— is ne fiza mein ishte’aal wa izteraab paida karney mein bahut bara hissa liya,” he writes.

For further substantiation, one must read Ali Miyan Nadvi’s memoir, Nicholas Nugent’s book, Rajiv Gandhi: Son of a Dynasty (BBC Books, 1990, p.187), reveals:

“…a decision had been taken by the Congress High Command in the early 1986 to ‘play the Hindu card’ in the same way that the Muslim Women’s bill had been an attempt to ‘play the Muslim card’… Ayodhya was supposed to be a package deal… a tit for tat for the Muslim women’s bill… Rajiv played a key role in carrying out the Hindu side of the package deal by such actions as arranging that pictures of Hindus worshipping at the newly unlocked shrine be shown on television.”

The lock (Babri Mosque) was opened within an hour of the judgment being delivered by the district court of Faizabad on February 1, 1986. As said earlier, the deal between the Prime Minister, the Muslim clergy and the Momin Conference’s Ziaur Rahman Ansari (Union Minister of State for Environment in the Rajiv Gandhi led government, who died in 1992) had already been struck in January 1986. There is a reference to this in his biography, Wings of Destiny, 2018, written by his son Fasihur Rahman.

A nagging question yet remains: who wanted to open the locks, and why?  Was it because, in some the bye-elections, the Congress had experienced Muslim opposition? The above revealing accounts of Ali Miyan and Ziaur Rehman Ansari and substantiated by Nicholas Nugent should have created some resentment in a majority of Muslims. They have now. There is, instead, a hypocritical silence, rather than an outrage against the deal struck by the Muslim leaders with the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.  [There is a need to bring out a comprehensive biographical account on the life and times of Shah Bano].

This reveals to us that India’s Muslims didn’t launch any mass movement of minority rights, neither in the colonial period nor after Independence. In the colonial period, in the name of and beginning with securing minority rights, the Muslim League, eventually claimed the Muslims to be nation which eventually required a state too (Jinnah himself didn’t recognise Pakistan’s minorities to be a nation and therefore  they deserving state). Gyan Prakash, the author of Emergency Chronicles, in his interview with Manik Sharma, Firstpost, December 4, 2018), said:

[Muslim] Minorities received equal rights in the Indian Constitution as a result of the nationalist struggle against the British, not due to a specific struggle for minority civil rights. Perhaps only the Dalit movement can claim a history as a civil rights movement. The Muslims never quite developed a civil rights movement, and became torn between the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan and the Congress Party’s nationalist politics. When the BJP seized the mantle of nationalism and gave it a Hindu majoritarian twist, the Muslims were left with no historical struggles and memories of a civil rights movement to summon. Today, unless a movement develops to combine minority rights with a civil rights struggle, the Muslims will remain vulnerable to the swings of electoral politics.

As someone like me who has been teaching postgraduate courses in modern and contemporary Indian history close to the last two and a half decades, it is a matter of deep concern and question, that, my students (majority of them Muslims) do know that the majoritarian forces are appropriating the likes of Sardar Patel (1875-1950). Neither do any of my students know the fact that the anti-Muslim image of Sardar Patel has been rebutted by Rafiq Zakaria (1920-2005) way back in 1996, Sardar Patel and Indian Muslims. This kind of ignorance among the Muslim literati persists despite the fact that its Urdu rendering is also available. Let’s not forget the fact that Zakaria was also someone who has left behind a legacy of a chain of educational institutions. Yet, his academic interventions are so inadequately known to the Muslim literati.

Some of my intellectually accomplished friends in academia are able to find instances of anti-Muslim thoughts and practices even of a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru. Fair enough. But the question is, do they take time out to find instances of Muslim aspirations to establish Islamic State/Hukumat-e-Ilahiya/Nizam-e-Mustafa? Also, the Indian Secularism, as against the western secularism, as well as against the Pakistani experiences, even the Islamist forces such as the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind, have got enough space in India to publish their periodicals, books, to run their madrasas and even their politics. In fact, Muslims speaking against Muslim conservatism and Muslim communalism, are often quite unpopular within their own community.

I am often also intrigued by the Muslim politics of narrative-building, in which victimhood of Muslims is their staple food. It intrigues me, why someone like, Hamid Dalwai (1932-1977), the “Angry Young Secularist” [called so by Dilip Chitre (1938-2009), as well as by, Mehrunnisa (1930-2017), Dalwai’s wife; see Hamid Dalwai, Muslim Politics in India, ed &tr. Dilip Chitre 2023 reprint] an intellectual-activist and novelist must remain much maligned and much derided by most of the Muslims? Compare such instances with those who keep articulating victimhood narratives. Such publicists are so very popular among the Muslims. These state of affairs need to be re-assessed, called into question.

I have followed certain Facebook posts and columns: someone questioning the authenticity of Hadis and doing much radical re-interpretation of certain Quranic verses is not chastised as much as he is condemned if he writes something which exposes Muslim communalism and bigotry and writes more towards de-opiating the Qaum for their obsession with victimhood narratives and questioning their power theology and those who critique their disproportionate obsession with identity politics. They would either deny Muslims being reactionaries, or would argue that minority communalism is of no consequence or if they are eventually persuaded to concede, they would suggest this is not the right time to raise such issues.  Unfortunately many Liberal-Left also endorse such a cunning argument. This s where the Liberal-Left lose their credibility and their fight for secular progressivism becomes weak and the Hindutva forces get fodder to grow. The Hindutva constituency and support-base has been consistently increasing as they say that the India’s Muslim minority are not as weak as they are made out to be by the Liberal-Left. They argue that:

The Muslims rose against the British only after they lost the Mughal power in 1857; most of them joined the national movement in 1920, only to save the institution of Khilafat (Caliphate) in Turkey, through their Pan Islamism; they got Pakistan in 1947; they subverted the Supreme Court and forced the Parliament to legislate against its verdict in 1986. They have got around five dozens of Muslim states and their Pan Islamic solidarity renders India’s Hindus a vulnerable minority, despite being a majority in their own homeland, India, etc. Lala Lajpat Rai had expressed his apprehensions around this with C R Das and Madan Mohan Malaviya (Intezar Husain, Ajmal-e-Azam, 1999). More and more Hindus look upon Indian Secularism as a favour to the Muslims and their regressivism and less as a modernising project of rationalist-progressive foundations of nationalism. This is what Mushirul Haq (1933-1990) said in his essay, “Secularism? No, Secular State? Well-Yes”, included in Haq’s 1972 book, Islam in Secular India. Haq asserted that most Muslims and their Ulema “seem to believe that the state must remain secular but the Muslims must be saved from secularism”.

Haq further argues that the tiny sections among India’s Muslims who have conviction in secularism are referred to by the Muslims with contempt. The book is rendered into Urdu.  I keep adding in this essay about the availability of the Urdu renderings of certain writings. It is to indicate that one must not plead ignorance on the part of the Urdu speaking Muslims as a factor. Rather, one must admit that it is not about ignorance, it is rather about the fact that this is the way narratives of Muslim politics are made and circulated within the community.

Consider another example. Allama Iqbal, the poet, is almost like an “unofficial prophet” for the Muslims of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Iqbal’s views on politics of nationalism are something which makes India’s Muslims’ cohabitation with the fellow Hindu countrymen quite difficult. His debate with Nehru in the 1930s, resulted into expose’ of Iqbal’s “civility-deficit”.

This civility-deficit persisted in Iqbal’s rebuttal against Husain Ahmad Madani’s “Muttahidah Qaumiyat” (1938) as well, when he called Husain Madani to be “mischievous” (and even almost a kafir?). Iqbal wrote [Ehsan, Urdu daily, Lahore, March 9, 1938], “in the mind of Maulana Husain Ahmad and others who think like him, the conception of nationalism in a way has the same place which the rejection of the Finality of the Holy Prophet has in the minds of Qadianis” (Shamloo, ed, 1944, p. 219; rendered into Urdu as well; available on Rekhta. Shamloo, the pseudonym was of Lateef Ahmad Sharvani). This was just weeks before Iqbal passed away [on April 21, 1938]. Iqbal [replying to Nehru’s essay, “Orthodox of all Religions, Unite!” (Modern Review, vol. 58, Issue 5, 1935)] Confessed to his exclusionary-separatist nationalism:

“It becomes a problem for Muslims only in countries where they happen to be in a minority, and nationalism demands their complete self-effacement. In majority countries Islam accommodates nationalism; for their Islam and nationalism are practically identical; in minority countries it is justified in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit”. (Shamloo, ed., Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, 1944, p. 130).

Iqbal even went to the extent of accusing Nehru to having “no acquaintance with Islam or its religious history during the nineteenth century”. Nehru, however, didn’t counter-accuse Iqbal of “no great acquaintance of Hinduism”. Iqbal keeps addressing Nehru as “the Pandit”. I am still looking for Iqbal’s essay (or poetry) in sympathy with the pre-Islamic Spain. No luck, as yet!

While presiding over the Muslim League’s annual session in Allahabad (December 29, 1930), he said, “Ï lead no party. I follow no leader”. In other words while delivering a political address of and for a political party he claimed for himself no to be a politician. And prior to arguing with Nehru (1935), Iqbal had written as many as nine letters to E J Thompson (Oxford University) in 1933-34. These were exchanges on political questions. A comprehensive analysis of Iqbal’s political writings and many self-contradictions therein, reveals him more as a separatist and less as someone who advocated inter-faith cooperation and mutual co-existence in economy, administration and mutual co-existence (S. Hasan Ahmad, The Idea of Pakistan and Iqbal: A Disclaimer. KBL, Patna, 2003/1979).

In other words, Muslim thinkers of the Indian subcontinent have all along been on the path of avoidance, unconcerned with understanding Hindu culture the way they should. The Sangh Parivar in our era has been approaching “power through culture” and the new, educationally and economically “arrived” Hindu articulates majoritarian victimhood accordingly, argues Sugata Srinivasa Raju, in his recent book, Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul Gandhi. Sugata Raju adds, “In India after Gandhi, Nehruvian Secularists appear to have mistaken cultural memory for religious memory” (p. 139). The same can be said about the Muslim thinkers of India. Most of them have failed to make sense of the Hindu culture and therefore they have failed to negotiate with them for more creatively meaningful living in harmony. They have looked upon the Hindu cultures more as victors and rulers and less as someone with a shared heritage and ancestry of the era prior to the Muslim rulers.

Such a corrective (of Muslims reclaiming their past prior to Muslim rulers) has begun to come out only recently, now.

For instance, a young Pakistani historian of the Columbia University, Manan Ahmed Asif, in his book, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India (2020) and in his previous volume, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (2017) has approached the historical past from this perspective. For harmonious and dignified living, such exercises of reclaiming this shared ancestry need to be made into a popular narrative across the subcontinent. India’s Muslims as much as the majoritarian Hindus of India need to be told that it is religious frenzy that has ruined Pakistan. This has been demonstrated in a recent book, Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future by the nuclear Physicist and public intellectual, Pervez Hoodbhoy. This book examines longstanding complex themes and issues – such as religious fundamentalism, identity formation, democracy, and military rule – as well as their impact on the future of the state of Pakistan. We, Indians, need to learn from the self-destructive mistakes of our neighbours and others.

By way of conclusion, what comes out of the foregoing discussion that the India’s Muslims need to take themselves out of the three banes, viz, Victimhood Syndrome, Power Theology, and obsession with Identity Politics?

Conversely put, more and more Muslims have to make their own contribution to invest in secularising India. They must realise –and work to actualize-that communalism is no antidote to communalism, and in competitive communalism, majoritarianism would always be victorious; minority communalism will be an eternal loser.

Are Muslims prepared to realize and introspect about this in order to take up the challenge of the rising majoritarianism?

Are the Liberal-Left forces prepared to tell the Muslims that their conservatism and communalism can no longer be tolerated with silence and by hiding behind an oft-repeated weak argument that “this is not the right time to ask the beleaguered religious minorities to ask for internal reforms”? There has always been less favourable time to ask the minorities for internal reforms and all the time this has consistently been contributing to further strengthening majoritarianism.

India’s Muslims must join the ongoing battles of reclaiming rationality and pluralist co-existence to fight out bigotry and fanaticism.

It is already too late. Yet, it is never too late.

(The author is a professor of History at Aligarh Muslim University)

[1] relating to or denoting a political system formed by the cooperation of different social groups on the basis of shared power, “consociational democracy”

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