Marginalization of Indian Muslims

shortly after India We got freedom, we gave ourselves a constitution that guaranteed equal citizenship to all. Yet, 75 years later, there is growing concern among Muslims that their citizenship rights may be at risk. Those concerns were reflected not long ago in the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the biggest nationwide mobilization of Muslims since independence.

Even though the ruling government has put that controversial law on hold, it hasn’t done much to allay the concern. In fact, the anti-CAA protests were followed by riots in the national capital, which was followed by widespread crackdown on Muslim civil society activists. Recently, we have seen the dawn of bulldozer justice. In the three Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, the bulldozer has been employed in Muslim neighborhoods as a barely disguised tool of collective punishment. The judiciary has refused to put a stop to this brazen illegality.

political accommodation

These unfortunate developments remind us of the gap between legal citizenship and real citizenship. In a democracy, that distinction is mediated by the political process, which structures the linkages between citizens and state institutions. Thus, so far as minorities are concerned, their access to the promised package of civil, socio-economic and political rights is governed by the minority’s model of political accommodation.

The Indian experience of politically accommodating Muslims has been an emerging patchwork of different models. In Kerala, Muslims have been part of a broader federalism framework, with a political party (the Indian Union Muslim League) bargaining with the governing coalition on their behalf. In West Bengal, under the long rule of the Left Front, large Muslim farmers were mobilized on class lines through land reforms, and were involved in the political process through local formations. Similarly, Muslims in Tamil Nadu have been accommodated using broad-based policy platforms without emphasizing their religious identity.

In the North Indian model, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Muslims were formed as a homogeneous community, politically motivated by cultural concerns of protecting their distinct identity. This was the dominant paradigm of secular housing not only by the Congress, but also by the socialist and caste-based parties of the region. From the 1960s, a category of ‘Muslim issues’ was established in political discourse – official protection of Urdu, minority status Aligarh Muslim University, Uniform Civil Code, Babri Masjid – and secular parties presented themselves as custodians of these special protections. At the same time, the Muslim religious elite were projected as preferred mediators in the political process, and came to be recognized as representatives of the community.

At some level, this model was pre-determined by the legacy of Partition, which invalidated some of the political demands reminiscent of Muslim League politics. For example, the framers of the Constitution demanded proportional representation in electoral competition, as well as the inclusion of Muslim Dalits (and Christian Dalits) in the constitutional scheme of reservation.

Rather than political or material security, the constitution favored cultural protection to minorities in the form of Article 30. This blueprint for dealing with Muslims primarily through a cultural prism has proved remarkably flexible.

All models of Muslim housing are molded more by the likes of the political elite than by the community pressures below. The Congress could argue that it privileged cultural issues in response to the demands of Muslim pressure groups such as the All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat. Yet, the same pressure groups also raised issues of discrimination in government jobs, unequal access to education and the regular escalation of communal violence. These were not emphasized by the political elite because of the difficult questions of institutional reform and state capacity. On the other hand, symbolic issues have little political value.

This calculation of political costs was dealt a blow by the Shah Bano episode. By bowing to the orthodox Muslim clergy, the Congress not only harmed itself, but also allowed the BJP an explosive device to sabotage its campaign against Muslim appeasement. A survey of the anti-Muslim riots in Congress-ruled UP in the 1980s (the decade of Shah Bano) should be enough to expose the hollowness of this allegation of appeasement. Many of these riots were in fact massacres carried out by the infamous UP Provincial Armed Constabulary such as Moradabad (1980) and Meerut (1987).

In fact, the riots provide a useful lens for measuring the various models of Muslim housing. Political scientist Steve Wilkinson studied more than five decades of Hindu-Muslim riots, and concluded that the prevalence of riots in a state is inversely proportional to the political bargaining power of the Muslim minority. According to Wilkinson, the state’s inaction, which allows for riots, arises not from a lack of state capacity but from a lack of political will. Wilkinson argued that when Muslims are an important part of the governing coalition, the state is more likely to prevent riots. Furthermore, he demonstrated that riots are less frequent in multipolar states, such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar followed by Mandal, because Muslims have a greater political advantage as significant swing voters in such politics.

access to socio-economic goods

However, communal violence is only one parameter on which we can measure the success or failures of different models of Muslim housing. An equally important indicator is the access of Muslims to socio-economic goods. On this front, as the Sachar Committee showed, in most states, Muslims tend to hang around the bottom of the heap. According to Christophe Jaffrelot and Kalaiyarasan A, the proportion of Muslim youth (in 2017-18) who completed graduation was only 14%, the lowest among all social groups. Hindi-belt states such as Haryana (3%), Rajasthan (7%) and Uttar Pradesh (11%) had the lowest educational attainment, while the highest rates were found in Tamil Nadu (36%) and Kerala (28). , Of course, part of this variation can be explained by historical factors such as the generally high state capacity of the southern states and the exodus of Muslim elites from the northern Indian states after the Partition. But it is also partly a result of the failures of models of minority housing that emphasize protection of cultural identity (the Hindi heartland states) rather than those that emphasize access to material goods (Tamil Nadu and Kerala). As Jaffrelot and Kalaiyarasan put it in the note to the southern states: “The achievements of the (Muslim) community must also be seen in the context of the positive discrimination of Muslims in these states – Dalits and OBCs.” [Other Backward Classes] Muslims are given reservation under OBC quota.

We have not yet mentioned the BJP model of Muslim housing, as the party (and the larger Sangh Parivar) opposes this concept. The BJP equates any form of Muslim inclusion with ‘appeasement’, which it considers to be the motor fuel of separatism and communalism. This notion of appeasement is flexible enough to cover even the participation of Muslims in the political process that governs them. Hence, BJP refused to field a single Muslim candidate in 403 constituencies of UP, for the first time in India, no ruling party has any Muslim MLA or MP. As if to underline that denying political representation to Muslims is a matter of principle rather than political constraints, the party has also discontinued the practice of nominating token Muslim candidates to the Rajya Sabha.

As the BJP has become the dominant force in Indian politics, the clock has turned back on the secular politics of Muslim inclusion. In Uttar Pradesh, competitive politics gradually broke away from the model of cultural cohesion, and issues of ‘Muslim empowerment’ began to emerge in the political discourse. In the 2012 UP elections, both the Samajwadi Party and the Congress had promised to create a separate sub-quota for Muslims within the OBC quota. Whatever is in the rear-view mirror now, because the issue of security is at the forefront of the election debate.

Behind the yawning gulf between legal citizenship and the actual citizenship of Indian Muslims is the fault of the political process. The most disturbing aspect is that after 75 years of independence, this gap is increasing.

All models of Muslim housing are molded more by the likes of the political elite than by community pressures below