Will Muslims Be Politically Invisibilised? ‘Shikwa-E-Hind’ Explores Their Political Future In India

As the oath taking ceremony of the Loksabha MPs was held amidst much political turmoil - with the Opposition flexing constitution and chanting ‘Jai Sangbidhan’- one major question of democracy remained subdued: the question of minority representation. The 18th Loksabha only has 24 Muslim MPs, merely 4.42 per cent of the total members in a country where the community comprises 14.2 per cent of the population as per 2011 census.

This is, however, not the first time that Muslim presence in the parliament is abysmal. In the last ten years, since Modi took over as the PM, the number of Muslim MPs has been decreasing consistently. In the last Loksabha, there were only 26 MPs in the lower house and none of them could secure a cabinet berth (following the resignation of Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi as the Minister of Minority Affairs).

Against this backdrop, one is tempted to ask - what is the political future of Indian Muslims? Will they be absolutely removed from the power corridors of Lutyens’s? What will be future of ordinary Muslims? Political scientist and scholar of secularism Mujibur Rehman in his latest book ‘Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political future of Indian Muslims’ delves deep into these questions and maps out how gradually the secular fabric of the country has got affected, paving the way for what he calls ‘De-Islamisation’ of India.

In the last decade, though several scholarly books came out identifying this transition - including Christophe Jafferlot’s ‘Muslims in Indian Cities’, Ghazala Jamil’s ‘Accumulation by Segregation’, Maidul Islam’s ‘Indian Muslims after liberalisation’ and recently Tanweer Fazal’s ‘Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India’ - to name a few - there is not any dedicated intervention to unravel the political future of Indian Muslims.

Coming just before the results of the Loksabha elections that seemingly resurrected the dying Opposition, this book rightly captures, besides highlighting the agenda of Hindu right, the complicity and silence of the ‘so-called’ secular parties. Divided in six chapters, Shikwa-e-Hind touches upon all the possible themes that affect the political existence of Muslims in India.

In the first chapter, the author maps out how the political growth of Hindu right has always been connected to its anti-Muslim agenda. It was only in 1989 that the BJP’s seats in Loksabha - on the heels of the Ayodhya movement - jumped from 2 to 85 making it the second largest party in V P Singh’s coalition government. The formation of the first BJP-led NDA government though could be attributed to the intention of the Indian voters to have a stable government after consecutive elections, one cannot rule out the Hindutva factor behind Narendra Modi’s emergence as the central figure of the BJP.

Rehman rightly chalks out how the BJP has taken over the space of anti-Congressism that was created in the wake of emergency and allegations of rampant corruption.

So, the growth of Indian right cannot be read only through the expansion of right-wing forces across the globe. Instead, he says that it grew out of the ideological battle between – Congress’s idea of secularism, Muslim League’s separatism and the Hindu nationalist forces’ imagination of a Hindu Rashtra. As the political domination of the Hindu right grew, the space for Muslims in state assemblies and parliament gradually shrunk. In this backdrop, the author argues, “Indian Muslims would be able to safeguard their other interests, such as economic or cultural or of any other kind, only by becoming the part of political power structure.”

In the next chapter, the author looks into the politics of Muslims in the southern part of the country. In the context of the recent elections where BJP’s vote share has increased in the south and for the first time, the party opened its account in Kerala, this intervention seems to be extremely important. While extrapolating the heterogeneity of Muslims in southern India, he dives deep into the histories of different Muslim communities in this region.

As the impact of partition didn’t affect south much despite Jinnah taking efforts to bring southern Muslims on board - mostly due to the Dravidian movement - how did Hindu right make inroads into states like Karnataka? Rehman gives some interesting explanations. On one hand, he points out how the redistribution of resources among the lower castes actually irked the upper castes and consequently gave a pathway to BJP; on the other, he emphasises how the Hindu right infiltrated schools, colleges, media and local neighbourhoods to create the social ‘other’.

He also brings in the debate over Muslim reservations that has been in discourse since the beginning of the Loksabha campaign. Busting the myths of reservation on the religious ground, he shows that both the reservations for Muslims and their categorisation as ‘backward classes’ predate independence.

Overall, in south, the competition is between politics of inclusion and politics of exclusion, argues Rehman. Notably, a few of his arguments become prophetic when he talks about the future of Hindutva politics in south. His statement that there is a ‘possibility of growing small-scale violence of the kind that is seen widely in the north or the west’ finds resonance in Telangana recently when Muslims were allegedly attacked on the occasion of Eid-ul-Adha.

In the third chapter, while talking about the pervasive violence against Muslims, Rehman enters a different discursive field and argues that the source of violence in Indian society predates colonialism. Debunking the myth that Indian society has been eternally non-violent, he says how Dalits, women, poor have been historically subjected to various forms of oppression throughout the time. Now, Muslims have become the new target.

Digging into the context of Nuh, Muzaffarpur, Delhi and Godhra pogrom, he shows the changing trajectory of the mechanism to deal with the violent outbreaks. Earlier, though it was a common practice to constitute a commission of enquiry to look into the causes and effect of the riots, the latest Delhi riots or Nuh didn’t even invoke the demands of such impartial commission.

Another major change that he notes, lies in the way Hindu right are engaging with riots in the recent times. When Modi faced criticism from across the globe due to Godhra riots, Hindu right understood that it is better to pull up localised issues and provoke small scale commotions that would let the communal cauldron boil. He busts the myth through data that the BJP-ruled states witness less riots as claimed by Modi or Yogi. He also holds the secular parties culpable and recalls how the SP used bulldozer against the relief camps after the Muzaffarnagar riots and contributed to the bulldozer politics.

In the next chapter, Rehman looks into one of the major questions that future of Muslim politics is literally dependent on - the Question of Muslim women. Scholars like Abu Lila Lugodh, Saba Mahmood have shown how the West has been utilising the freedom of Muslim women as a plank to justify their attacks on different Islamic countries since 9/11.

In India, it has, however, taken a different shape through two debates - the proposed UCC and Muslim women’s right to wear hijab. Rehman while tracing the history of both the debates, emphasises two arguments. Firstly, he draws the contour of Islamic feminism and says how the feminist interpretation of the holy text Quran can give different meaning to the practice. And secondly, he shows how the project of UCC, abolition of triple talaq and hijab controversy are products of Islamophobia instead of a true concern for the liberty of women.

To understand this further, one can take the recent case of UCC in Uttarakhand. Though BJP’s projected objective behind implementing UCC has been to give women equal rights, in their draft UCC legislation, BJP-led state government gave exemption to the tribal community.  Interestingly, the denial of property rights to the Adivasi women as per the customary laws have been a major concern among scholars and Adivasi activists for decades. So, is it a question of women’s liberty or just a path opted to further deprive Muslims of their enshrined constitutional rights?

It makes one think through the US black literature of yesteryears when it was observed that black women used to avoid complaining against any domestic atrocities as it might amount to disproportionate attack on the men of the community. Thus, women of the othered community face dual subjugation, one due to her social/religious/political/racial identity, and the other due to patriarchy.

One cannot talk about the political future of Indian Muslims without touching upon the citizenship debate. In the fifth chapter, Rehman looks into the citizenship question in the context of Shaheen Bagh movement. On one hand, he traces the history of Indian citizenship from the constituent assembly debates to the 2019 Loksabha debate before the CAA was passed; on the other, he unravels the complicity of the secular parties in changing the contour of citizenship - from the ‘birth-based’ to ‘descent-based’ claims - through decades.

The book though came out before MHA notified the rules of CAA, rightly presumed that it would be difficult to reorganise a Shaheen Bagh-styled movement in the wake of the CAA implementation. One of the major concerns that the author refers to is of NRC. During the Assam NRC, the de-listed people from Hindu community whereas was assured of citizenship through CAA, the same was denied to Muslims. This is what the author calls ‘Muslims no more’ agenda of the Hindu right.

The nationwide NRC though now is a far-fetched thought given the strong numbers of the opposition in the 18th Loksabha, the marginalisation and othering of Muslims haven’t changed its course. Several reports of lynching and bulldozing of Muslim houses and mosques have come out since the new government has taken the charge.

Covering a vast spectrum from the question of representation to the citizenship rights, Rehman enters the much-debated realm of ‘backwardness’ and through invocation of Gopal Singh Panel report (1983) and Sachar committee report (2006) shows how the conditions of Muslims have almost remained unchanged in decades despite the allegation of Muslim-appeasement.

Interestingly, he asks two relevant questions - firstly, why did Congress government not table the Singh Panel report in parliament? Secondly, why was UPA II government reluctant to implement the recommendations of SCR? The author notes that had the Congress tabled the Singh Panel reports in 1980s, the growing presumptions that the grand old party has been appeasing the minorities since independence would have been debunked.  

While the author extensively deals with significant political vocabularies, one thinks if he could have expanded on his thesis of ‘De-Islamisation’. He might connect the ‘Muslims no more’ argument that he brings in the discussions on NRC to the concept of ‘De-Islamisation’ to shed more light on the overall social and political invisibilisation of Muslims. Rehman’s exhaustive notes and reference, nonetheless, miss Maidul Islam’s work that could have been an interesting engagement given the way Islam explored the question of socio-economic backwardness of Muslims.

However, the book is an important and nuanced intervention into the question of Muslim politics in India. The students and scholars of political science, history and sociology whereas would find it academically interesting, any observer of Indian politics may find out significant inputs to understand the Indian politics better.