One can clearly see that there is quite a discernible pattern in the geography and stridence of majoritarian violence in the wake of Ram Navami processions last week. The provinces (regions) where BJP hasn’t ever been the sole hegemonic governing party, such as West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc., the intensity was more virulent. These provinces of India are yet to offer a complete hegemonic state power to the BJP. In other words, the conquest of Hindutva remains an unfinished business, just yet. The long cherished saffron goal of complete subjugation, marginalization, invisibilization of Muslims remain far from accomplished. Moreover, no other route fetches as much of electoral majoritarian consolidation as the industry of communal hatred and polarisation. This should explain the recent disturbances in the name of Ram Navami. This also explains why Uttar Pradesh has seen relatively lesser instances of such aggressions last week. The insinuation/message was almost clear from the Union Home Minister: Vote for us, else, we will hang you upside down!
In Bihar, certain pockets were targeted rather more intensely. For instance, Nalanda, being the home turf of the incumbent chief minister Nitish Kumar, suffered greater fury; so much so that a very old theological seminary of Muslims, the Madrasa Aziziyah, has been ransacked irredeemably. Its valuable historic library of rare collections has been burnt down to ashes. The politically fragile Nitish Kumar has been making, breaking and re-making alliances with the BJP and its main challenger RJD alternately. Currently, Nitish Kumar is governing in alliance with the RJD. Bihar’s chief secretary is a Muslim, Amir Subhani, who had topped the list of the extremely daunting competitive examination in 1987. His success went on to inspire average lower middle class Muslim students to pursue the career within this elite services. This could have been an added impulse of the majoritarian hate-mongers to ‘show the Muslims their place’.
A note on the history of this residential seminary is, therefore, important. This was founded in 1896 by Bibi Soghra (1815-1908), the widow of Abdul Aziz. The Soghra Waqf Estate is believed to be one of the wealthiest Estates in Bihar. The total property of Soghra Waqf Estate was 28,500 bigha spread in different districts of Bihar like Patna, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, Darbhanga, Nalanda, Nawada, Gaya, Sheikhpura (Barbigha) and Bhagalpur. Besides this seminary, the Soghra Waqf runs institutions of modern education in Biharshrif, such as a high school (founded in 1917), and a college (founded in 1978). Remnants of its heritage houses or monuments still survive in the towns of Muzaffarpur and Biharsharif.
Ironically, the theologian of Pehnasa (Nalanda), Maulana Sajjad (1880-1940) of the Imarat-e-Shariah, Phulwarisharif (Patna), was a fierce critic of Jinnah’s two-nation theory. In his essay in Naqeeb, an Urdu weekly of the Imarat-e-Shariah, dated February 20, 1940, ‘Firqa-waaraana Muaamlaat ka faisla kin Usoolon per hona chahiye? (On what principles should the communal affairs be decided?)’, Maulana Sajjad had written that the leaders of a multi-religious society like India should work out the limits of religious freedom which should be based on the judicious treatment of all sects. He writes that one’s faith should not be demonstrated in a public in a manner which proves hazardous to other faiths — it should not be provocative. He advised that no religious procession of any sect, or community, should be allowed in public spaces. While this may not be appreciated by all, he argues, that this is, nevertheless, desirable and judicious. Moreover, it will do away with frequent communal riots, he said.
Unfortunately, despite the recurrent troubles almost for the last one and a half century, rather than heeding such suggestions to sincerely work out effective resolution, there have been competitive identitarian politics in colonial as well as post-independence eras. Historically, such games have been played from both sides, while state power was in the hands of opportunistically (and therefore, occasionally) communal parties and a partisan administration. In recent years, things have changed drastically. Now, the overtly majoritarian party is not only in state power at the centre and in many provinces (regions/states), but also, its political hegemony in large parts of the country is near absolute. The state apparatuses have got embedded, and even more importantly, fairly huge proportion of the masses have been acutely and dangerously communalised. The criminal justice system especially with regard to communal violence has always been weak, fragile and partisan. In recent years, the large sections of media, particularly the electronic-visual ones, have been contributing rather much menacingly towards actively spreading anti-Muslim hatred.
In this context, one more thing needs to be kept in mind. In recent years, a rapid radicalisation of youth has taken place, across several castes and communities. Informed observers on the ground of Bihar will testify to this. In Bihar, sections of the youth among the Yadavas and the fishermen communities of Mallahs have joined the Bajrang Dal in large numbers. Several of my previous essays have recorded the details of these, particularly the ones I wrote on the Azizpur (Muzaffarpur) violence of January 2015, Lalganj (Vaishali) violence of 2015, as also the Make[y]r (Saran) violence of August 2016.
See Through the Brazen Opportunism of Muslim Elites
Obviously, this “cumulative radicalisation” has not happened suddenly in recent years. It must be repeatedly stated that post-Independence understanding about fighting communalism has been more than a bit flawed. The Nehruvian understanding was that the Muslim communalism was a stronger force in the late colonial era, receiving a fillip from the active prodding from the colonial state. However, after independence, it is the majority communalism which is a bigger danger. In this understanding, at the practical level of fighting it, what was missed was that majority communalism derived much fodder from minority communalism. In other words, notwithstanding the varying implications of the two communalisms, there ought not to have been any letting off on the front of fighting out against the two variants. Most of the ‘secular’ parties, including the Left and the post-Congress regional parties, committed this specific error. Most of the religious and modern educated Muslim leaders have contributed immensely towards stoking majoritarian communalism. There has been a huge deficit on their part in persuading the Muslims to make efforts towards ‘secularising’ their socio-political spaces.
While making this proposition, am not referring only to the crucial issue of reforming Muslim Personal Laws. I have said enough on this specific aspect in my various columns over the past many years: various ‘secular’ regimes have disgustingly appeased the Muslim conservatives and thereby kept eroding their own credibility among the majority community. For the past three decades I have been studying, living and working in a Muslim majority space, which is the Muslim University campus in Aligarh. I have been watching the behaviour, attitude and conduct of the Muslim elite.
Just one instance! The issue of maintenance to the separated and divorced women still remains unresolved. That is decided in accordance with the secular law, Criminal Procedure Code, Section 125. Has the largest residential university of modern education, the AMU, getting Rs 1200 crores from the Consolidated Fund of India, contributed towards resolving such issues? No. What was their role in at the time of the Shah Bano controversy in the mid-late 1980s? Tremendous, as testified by The Telegraph (August 24, 1985). The scholars from the Aligarh Muslim University had joined their ranks with the patriarchic and reactionary forces such as the Muslim Personal Law Board and the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind, as has been demonstrated by Saumya Saxena, in her recent book, Divorce and Democracy.
In response to the Shayera Bano issue (2017), have any significant number of the AMU academics written and spoken against the Muslim Law Board who shamelessly remain intransigent even on the un-Quranic practice of Instant Triple Talaq or divorce (ITT)? No. Insiders do know it pretty well, as to where does the overwhelming majority of AMU fraternity stand on all such issues of reforms!
Now, coming to the more recent issue on the AMU campus! Certain column writers have exposed, which is kind of a big scam. Over the last 103 years, all the Vice Chancellors (VCs) have been the male descendents of the upper caste elites of Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad Nizam bureaucracy. The most progressive among the AMU faculty are not prepared even to acknowledge this mega scam. A retired professor of political Science, reacting against this, went on to write that “some stray dogs are barking”. The faculty is not even prepared to do adopt any corrective measures like for example, through their autonomous Executive Council, a substantial part of which comprises of regional lobbies operative in AMU. At the moment, one fourth (25%) of its members belong to just one district of UP. The academics fiercely denying such a scam have been promoted by a most progressive TV news anchor, not long ago. In short, the state as well as the progressive groups among the sections of civil society, have been extending support, more often, to the regressive among the Muslim elites.
How many of such AMU academics and column-writers have had their past affiliation with the Muslim Right Wing, is hardly a matter of conjecture for informed insiders. Some of them have now suddenly turned to flattering the incumbent saffron regime, quite openly in their columns and videos. Thus, though they gained self-promotion under the ‘secular’ regime despite their proclivities towards or affiliation with the Muslim Right Wing, and now they are all set to gain personal favours from the current saffron regime. This opportunism needs to be exposed more bluntly and candidly. Once such opportunists are exposed and the community is alienated away from them, their worth would come down too low to be co-opted by the regime.
The minoritarians (some of them have grown up as Left student activists in the campuses) as well as sections of the Liberal-Left-progressives have all along been finding limitations and majoritarian biases in the Constitution, just as the Hindu Right has been saying that the Constitution is not Hindu enough. This exercise in corrosion has now reached the extent that even the arguably limited space granted to the minorities in the Constitution is now under severe threat; in fact, that stands substantially eroded, by now.
Hapless Muslims must be rescued not only from the majoritarian forces, they also need to be rescued away from the regressive and opportunist elites from among their own community.
Why am I harking back to such arguments rather more frequently?
This is for two reasons: the immediate one, and the other one has got more to do with what has been happening particularly since the 1980s. The immediate one is again to be seen through what has been happening in the AMU. Seeking favours from the current saffron regime is increasingly becoming a trend and is increasingly getting approval from a section of the Muslim elite. Certain AMU academics have been writing columns to welcome Hindu Rashtra, to drop secularism from the Constitution, etc. Such column-writing academics have been getting felicitations from the AMU alumni groups in India and abroad, particularly the ones in Lucknow, Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, USA, etc. Large number of AMU academics, aspiring to become Vice Chancellors, has been thronging around the RSS offices and functionaries. They have been hosting parties and felicitations to certain pracharaks. These instances seem to suggest that certain self-serving Muslim elites thrive on persecution of Muslim masses.
These persons from among self-serving Muslim elites seem to be sending a loud and clear message to, or mocking at, the Secularists: “Dear liberal-secularists and Leftists, you fight for mere existential survival of the masses of Muslims, while we, the classes of Muslims would do everything to seek some privileged positions from the majoritarian rulers”. After each round of atrocities against Muslims, one or the other elite individual of Muslims get some favour of office or nomination in legislature.
What we have been witnessing in India essentially since 2014, is basically an outcome of the grave errors which were committed by the ‘secular’ politics in the 1980s. This has been amply demonstrated in the two books of 2021, viz., Vinay Sitapati’s, India Before Modi and Christophe Jaffrelot’s Modi’s India. Jaffrelot says that in 2014, India became de facto ethnic democracy, and in 2019, it ushered in the era of competitive authoritarianism. Secularists’ refusal to “secualrise” or progressivise the Muslims has also contributed towards saffronisation of segments of Hindus.
Since the 1980s-1990s, there is one more development that needs comment. Owing to affluence among the subaltern Muslims through West Asian remittance as well as benefit of economic liberalisation accruing to the artisan communities of Muslims have created jealousies, as well as economic conflicts and rivalries among the corresponding castes and classes of Hindus at the grassroots level. Their identitarian assertion via religious processions in certain festivals such as Julus-e-Muhammadi, and rising number of well-built shining mosques with taller aspires and domes have contributed to the jealousies and rivalries. Saffronization of subaltern Hindus has happened also because of this. These neo rich Muslims, particularly in Bihar-UP-West Bengal, have also found much representation in the local bodies.
Also, Hindu elites working as corporate executives in the West Asian countries increasingly feel that the Hindus have now arrived in the 21st century and that the Hindu identity should also find a place of recognition in the world. In this context, as evident from some of the social media narratives, they are now making a narrative that when in 6th -7th centuries or earlier, the Arabs were backward enough to have been grazing camels and goats in deserts, India had kingdoms, empires, art, architecture, literature, governance, etc.
Muslims have theocratic states in those regions. This creates sort of urge among these Hindus to have a Hindu theocratic state in India. In short, India’s Muslims taking pride in the petro-affluence of the Arab countries or taking historical-cultural vicarious pride in “they” having been the rulers of India, further creates certain psychological anxieties among large section of Hindus. Muslims, arguably, not taking as much of pride in India’s pre-medieval or ancient past, is also something which provides some pretext or fodder to the saffron narrative-makers.
The sections of Muslims basking in the reflected glory of the medieval rulers need to dismount the high horse of “having-been-rulers”. Things have changed rather drastically. The sooner they mend their attitudes the better would it be for their pluralist co-existence.
A Small Step towards Finding a Way Out
India’s Muslims and the Liberal-Left need to do much self-introspection and stock-taking. Soft-pedaling with, or, appeasement of, the Muslim regressive forces need to be called out rather more candidly and their opportunist elites need to be exposed. Their crassest opportunism is on full display in their columns and videos. A mere reading of the texts and speeches of Golwalkars and Savarkars by the Liberal-Left (and also by the regressive and progressive Muslims) are not going to help anymore in fighting the Neo Hindutva.
The abovementioned steps however will possibly contribute a bit towards weaning away a section of newly saffronised Hindus to the side of the pluralists, once again. As of now, one can see, the Liberal-Left are staying away from such debates (on democratization of Muslim controlled institutions and also for justice based on gender, caste and region) within the Muslim communities. Without this, a broader and credible front of anti-majoritarian resistance and mobilization may not be possible. Given the pace of the rise of “cumulative radicalisation” in India and beyond, the build-up for anti-majoritarian resistance and solidarity doesn’t have much time to wait further.
The challenge is unusual (and desperate), the solution too has to be less conventional.
Related:
Hindutva mobs in Bihar run amok, cause loss of Rs. 6 crores
Hindutva’s role in riots and official complicity
Ram Navami: West Bengal administration on alert as 2000 celebrations planned
Police to closely monitor Ram Navami processions in Hyderabad and Mumbai