Photo credit: New Delhi News

The recently held Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind Conference in Ajmer gave a call for Dalit Muslim unity. Laudable in its objectives because of the marginal positions of both these communities, it is but natural that they should come together to fight the perceived oppressions against them from the right wing parties, particularly the BJP which is understood as the party of Brahmanical dominance.

Given the fact that in a few months, there will be elections in Uttar Pradesh where both these sections can play a decisive role, the call assumed greater political significance. After all, Dalits have been out of power in Uttar Pradesh and Muslims have never been so marginal in terms of political representation in Uttar Pradesh.

Moreover, the Samajwadi Party (SP), the ruling party and the party of choice for Muslims ever since it came to power, has failed to protect the life and liberty of Muslims, especially in the last three years. With incidents like Muzzaffarnagar and the rhetoric of Kairana Hindu exodus, it was a natural thing for Muslims to look for a party other than the SP. They perhaps rightly think that it is only the BSP which has the potential to defeat the BJP electorally. 

From the Sachar Committee Report onwards, all analyses of the Muslim situation, particularly in the context of Uttar Pradesh, point towards the convergence of Muslim situation and the Dalit situation. In terms of representation as well as in terms of threat to identity, Muslims and Dalits today seem to be on the same scale of vulnerability. It would not be out of place to suggest that in terms of representation and other social indicators like education, Dalits seem to be catching up and in cases becoming better than the Muslims.

The Muslims, through years of faulty political choices, have lagged behind and are today in a situation where it would not be wrong to group them together with the Dalits. But more importantly, the threat to identity has assumed alarming proportions. Dalits and Muslims have been the victims of targeted attacks on the basis of their identity. While in some cases, it has been an assault from the right wing Hindu forces, in other cases, they have been attacked due to a perceived sense of upward mobility among them which is resented by the dominant middle castes.

It shouldn’t be surprising therefore if both these blocks come together under the umbrella of the BSP. The Jamiat Conference is merely articulating what seems to be the felt need within the Muslim community. The alliance will be formidable but will it also be sustaining and stable?

Historically Muslims have voted with the SP, the ruling party of Uttar Pradesh. In fact when Mayawati was voted out of power, it was the Muslim vote which shifted from the BSP to the SP. How then are we to believe that the alliance will stand the test of times? And what lies behind the ambivalence of the Muslim community to rally behind Mayawati?

Although all indicators suggest that Muslims are at the lowest rung of the ladder in Uttar Pradesh, the perception amongst Muslims continues to be that they are culturally the dominant community in Uttar Pradesh.

The answer perhaps lies in the self-perception of Muslims of Uttar Pradesh. Although all indicators suggest that Muslims are at the lowest rung of the ladder in Uttar Pradesh, the perception amongst Muslims continues to be that they are culturally the dominant community in Uttar Pradesh. There is an abject refusal to come to terms with the present situation and Muslims remain mired in the fantastic past in which they think themselves as large landlords, as the ones who brought civilisation to this part of India.

An average Muslim here is as caste conscious as an average upper caste Hindu. The problem is that even Muslims who belong to lower castes consider themselves to be firmly entrenched with the Ashraf culture of upper caste Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. The lower caste Muslim artisan or businessman who has seen economic upward mobility desires to be accepted within the upper caste Muslim subculture and for that reason denies his lower caste identity.

This denial is very important to understand why any lower caste Muslim mobilisation has not been successful within Uttar Pradesh. Because this denial leads them to consciously abrogate any ties which they have to other lower castes. Islam becomes the lone signifier in such a situation and secular identities like caste and region recede in the background. It is because of this that there is hardly any public proclamation of the acceptance of caste within Uttar Pradesh Muslim politics.

Thus in all probability, this alliance is going to be a political alliance of convenience. It would have been much better if this alliance would also become a social alliance between Dalits and Muslims. But for that to happen, Muslims have to engage with the entrenched caste practices and ideas within their own community. It is all very well to say that Islam does not recognise caste, but anyone who is familiar with Muslim society would say that Muslims are as casteist as the Hindu society.

Only through a thorough interrogation which is internal to the community, can one visualise a true Dalit-Muslim unity. It is heartening to note that the Jamiat has had the voice to articulate such a unity. A good start to show that they are serious about the issue would be to raise the issue of discrimination faced by the Muslim Dalits at the hand of upper caste Muslims.

(Arshad Alam is a NewAgeIslam.com columnist)

(This article was first published on New Age Islam).

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The Dilli–Lahore goodwill  bus had been cruising  along comfortably — in the right direction if not at the desired speed. The reception which the most important passenger on that peace route — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee — received in February during his brief journey across the Wagah, and the response the visiting Pakistani cricket team got from spectators in India a little earlier — both when they won (Chennai) and when they lost (New Delhi) — made it evident that the Jamaat–e–Islami and the Bal Thackerays notwithstanding, amity was the prevailing mood on both sides of the divide. Who then is to be blamed for hijacking the peace process to the chilling Kargil heights?

When investigating a murder case, the first thing any crime investigation agency looks for is motive: Who stands to benefit? An analysis of how things have so quickly, and apparently inexplicably, degenerated from friendship talks to a ‘war–like’ situation can similarly benefit from asking the elementary question: Who benefits from the ominous developments on the border?

From the Indian ‘nationalistic’ perspective, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is the obvious villain of the piece. Why should Sharif invite Vajpayee to Lahore in February and then up the ante in less than 100 days? The explanation is that the Pakistani Prime Minister, embroiled into an increasing number of difficulties on the domestic front, badly needed a scapegoat to divert public attention. 

In early 1997, Nawaz Sharif was returned to power with a massive mandate. Barely two years later, his popularity is on a nosedive. Economically, Pakistan is in a shambles, forex reserves are down to a mere one billion dollars (as against India’s reserves of over 33 billion) and the Karachi Stock Exchange in an acute state of depression. 

Politically, there is increasing talk within the country today of Pakistan being a “failed state”. Sharif’s only response to the deepening crisis has been to damage or dismantle any institution that could act as a forum for the articulation of censure, dissent or mass discontent. The Pakistani Prime Minister has ensured that a person of his choice heads the army, the courts have virtually been turned into “handmaidens to the executive”, the free press is under constant assault, the country’s independent Human Rights Commission has been ordered to cease publishing its newsletter and a witch–hunt is now being conducted against all “anti–state” non–governmental organisations (NGOs). Not surprisingly, the highly influential Economist published from London has recently advised the World Bank not to bail out Pakistan since, with the institutions of democracy being attacked and undermined one after another, there will be little accountability left in Pakistani society.

In the face of mounting problems and criticism, inside Pakistan and globally, one option before the beleaguered Sharif was to do what U.S. President Bill Clinton, the former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and many other international leaders did to lift their sagging political fortune — raise the bogey of the external enemy, rouse nationalist fervour and rally people behind yourself. Fortuitously for Sharif, with only a caretaker government in charge in neighbouring New Delhi and with snow melting in the Himalayas, the political and natural climate was just right to play the Kashmir card.

In short, the easy answer to whodunnit question is, Nawaz Sharif.
But from the Pakistani ‘nationalistic’ perspective, the blame is to be heaped entirely on India’s door. Faced with a fresh challenge from ‘freedom fighters’, the Indian state has chosen to pretend it is dealing with Pakistani army–backed infiltrators. Besides, with elections round the corner, the BJP hopes to reap in extra votes by raising the Pakistan bogey. 

Until a few weeks ago, indications were that the outcome of the polls due in the next few months will not be very different from the results of the last Lok Sabha elections in held in early 1998. The BJP–led alliance was hoping to score over its main political rival, the Congress, by raising a hue and cry over the fact that the latter’s prime ministerial candidate is a foreigner by origin. However, there are two problems with the ‘foreigner card’: firstly, the result of recent opinion polls indicate that the electorate is not particularly perturbed with Sonia’s Italian origin; secondly, with Sharad Pawar having revolted on the same issue and with other potential constituents of the new Third Front in–the–making — Mulayam Singh Yadav (U.P.), Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra), Karnataka’s chief minister, J. H. Patel, segments of the Left Front — also bent on playing the same card, the BJP and its allies are unsure about how much dividend the ‘foreign card’ will yield. 

But an Italian–born Prime Minister at a time when the country faces a grave threat from across the border? Surely, the ‘nation in danger’ and ‘foreigner as PM’ mix makes for a much more potent cocktail?

Thus, theoretically speaking, irrespective of their present posturing, continued tension on the Kargil front suits the political needs of both Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee. Factually speaking, the U.S. and the British response to the Kargil crisis, as also reports in The New York Times and The Independent (London), indicate that they agree with India that Pakistan is the guilty party. Besides, India also claims to have conclusive proof, in the form of dead bodies of Pakistani soldiers, that what it is dealing with in the Himalayan heights is not ‘freedom fighters’ from Kashmir but infiltrators from across the border backed with equipment and personnel of the Pakistani armed forces. But nothing debunks the ‘freedom fighters’ thesis more than the fact that after a gap of nearly 10 years, Kashmir is overflowing with tourists from the rest of India. Surely, it is not guns in the hands of the Indian jawans that are keeping the houseboat owners on the Dal Lake from reaching for the tourists’ throats? 
Even if one assumes this to be the facts of the case, there remains a mystery on the Indian side on what is presently being passed off by different analysts and opposition parties as ‘intelligence failure’, ‘lack of co–ordination between the intelligence and the Indian armed forces’, ‘failure of the defence ministry and the Indian government’ to respond with alacrity to the security threat. Should not a more specific clarification be sought on the timing of the action initiated at Kargil, an action that (coincidentally?) suits the caretaker government facing an election better than resting on the laurels of a newly–initiated peace process? A point being made, in private, by several senior retired army personnel would support this contention: Pakistan’s crossing of the LOC in the Kargil heights is nothing new; what is new is the decision of the caretaker government to challenge the intrusion. 

The question, in other words, is: had the Vajpayee government not fallen in April leading to the imperative of fresh elections, would India and Pakistan still be talking peace, never mind the violations 18,000 feet above sea level?

We reproduce in the following pages an article by a senior journalist from Pakistan (See page 13) who argues that the need for an external enemy — India — is written into the very logic of the direction in which the Pakistani state is moving. On the Indian side, what the caretaker government’s game–plan is for now will become clearer as we get closer to the polls. But beyond the immediate, Teesta Setalvad’s article (see page 16) highlights the fact that in the continuing battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the people of Kashmir barely figure in the discourse on either side.     

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 1999, Year 6  No. 54, Cover Story 1

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