The ‘sarkari Musalman’ class trades solely in Muslim backwardness
Chidambaram is not the first modern/secular Indian politician to address Muslims through clerics. It is one of the great tragedies of the secular experiment in India that the clerical class and their institutions are considered representative of one of the largest Muslim populations. In the process, we bestow legitimacy on the most conservative elements and are actually complicit in increasing the clerical grip on the community.
Chidambaram may well be pondering whether his visit was ill-conceived (there had been attempts to persuade Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh to attend). After all, his presence was noted by the media, but the story was overshadowed by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (that controls the largest network of Deoband madrasas) upholding the 2006 fatwa of the seminary opposing the recitation of Vande Mataram.
Deoband is free to oppose anything they want. I consider the head of the Jamiat, Maulana Mahmood Madani, a friend who is always helpful with information and very astute in his political assessments of trends in the Muslim community. But were I ever to live by the fatwas of Deoband, I would be in purdah and spend considerable time negotiating complexities of pure/impure and haraam/halaal. Certainly not a life for a liberal agnostic who loves the old rendition of Vande Mataram by V.D. Paluskar and is quite taken with the A.R. Rahman version too.
The problem is not in Deoband’s religious interpretations and fatwas. The problem lies in the political class upholding it as the symbol of Muslims who must be cultivated, reassured and, indeed, appeased. The Partition of 1947 should have taught us the dangers of making any one individual or group the sole spokesman of Indian Muslims. Deoband always opposed the Partition and the two-nation theory. But in the modern world, the deeply conservative views the seminary propagates also serve to keep followers of their schools and madrasas in a heightened state of religiosity that then separates them even from fellow Muslims.
Pakistan literally translates into Land of the Pure and we have all seen what has happened to the only Muslim nation actually created in the name of religion. But secular India has hardly dealt with the Muslim minority in an enlightened manner. Instead of helping the community integrate and modernise, the political class has made deals with the clerics. Years of reporting on institutions set up for the apparent welfare and protection of the community have convinced me that the nexus between clerics, politicians and wheeler-dealers has created a small class of “sarkari Musalmans” who are now stakeholders in Muslim backwardness.
Consider the state of the most well known institutions associated with the community. First, the Muslim Personal Law Board, made up of a collection of clerics from various schools of Islam (but dominated by Deobandis) who bury their head in the sand and resist any attempt to even rationalise personal law. They have actually served to ensure that in matters of divorce, maintenance and inheritance, the community is governed by laws and traditions that some Arab countries have rejected. Then there are wakf boards in every state that are meant to develop resources for the community but have simply sold off lands for a song and a fat bribe. There are also minority commissions and Haj committees, all manned by the same type of people, some of whom certainly cut underhand deals under the garb of Islam.
No mainstream politician would try to reach out to Hindus by simply making speeches from a religious math or seeking the blessings of saints and godmen (though they may also do that). But it is a combination of ignorance and deep cynicism that is actually behind the legitimacy India’s secular politicians have bestowed on the Muslim clergy. The government itself is now paying the price for this. An attempt to create a central madrasa board was opposed by many Muslim MPs last month. Leading the charge is Maulana Badruddin Ajmal of the AUDF in Assam (also linked to the Deoband school) who has stated clearly that religious madrasas “don’t need any interference in their syllabus or help of the government. The government should focus on madrasas that need their grants.”
Clearly, it’s clerics on top. The politicians, always so nervous about losing Muslim votes, are complicit in this process that only serves to reinforce the stereotype of Muslims as a community of unenlightened mullahs and fanatics.