TheDaak review

Siyasi Muslims A Story of Political Islams in India, Hilal Ahmed, Penguin Books, 2019, pp-222, ISBN-978-0-670-09140-9, Rs 496

By Durdanah Masoodi

The book Siyasi Muslims is a thorough read on the emerging discourses about Muslims in India, the identity of whom continues to fuel a lively ongoing debate. The book has been named Siyasi because, as per the author, it connotes two meanings. One is that it assumes Muslims are a deeply political community. The other deems them as a community that is ‘informed, conscious, yet disloyal’. The subtitle of the book ‘a story of political Islams’’ is used by the author to differentiate between ‘Muslim politics’ and ‘political Islam’ where the former is an attempt to listen to dynamic muslim issues, and the latter is a plural usage to understand reshaped Islamic principles in postcolonial processes. 

The first part of the book helps readers to understand the colonial evolution of Muslim politics and its trajectories after partition. Ranging from issues of creation of a Muslim Monolith, to the question raised on the same, and impact of Islamic dawat by certain Sunni figures/movements to the ultimate trajectory of Hindutva animosity for Muslims. It can be argued that the political engagements of Indian parties driven by the impulse for power and the goal of winning have benefited from the ‘religious-based homogenous identity’ of Muslims. Calling it a religious-based homogenous identity is broadly due to the subscription of Muslims (Indian or worldwide) to some common beliefs as per the tenets of Islam, which are, Faith, Prayer, Alms, Fasting and Pilgrimage. Although the author has talked about various ways through which Islam is being practiced by Muslims in India, the argument holds substance only in the art and action part of such practices. In essence, it is the aforementioned homogeneity of Muslims that is targeted during electoral or nationalistic motives to spark the “other” side’s countermobilization. This familiarizes us with Wilkinson’s argument about how certain events are designed in a way to provoke a minority, which will force them to react and hence, lead to ethnic violence between the two groups (Wilkinson, 2004). However, while unpacking Siyasi Muslims, the author argues that Muslims should not be seen as a homogenous community, because of varying tastes in politics depending on their caste, class, and other factors. The interesting part is that these differences are advanced by parties to serve their purpose of showing themselves as accommodative about the “minority” which otherwise is thought of as “homogenous and threatening”.

However, as the author argues, even the concept of Muslim minority has two dominant narratives in India- that of accommodation and appeasement/separatism. The Constituent Assembly of India, as the author argues, formulated a fluid concept of the minority, thereby, not dealing well with Muslims as a minority in constitutional terms, rather reducing them to electoral competition. This viewpoint remained stronger because the assembly was dominated by lawyers, and the use of legal language led to a lot of unsolved puzzles. The author contributes here the argument that Muslims as a religious community and constitutional minority are different, as being a minority cannot be a permanent tag. This leaves readers with the question- does becoming populous without sovereignty (because unlike autonomy which covers partial independence, sovereignty caters to wider control of political power) and agency determine any strength?

Furthermore, the author speaks about Muslims as minorities in contemporary India who are searching for survival strategies, especially under the current order. But if Muslims only search for strategies to survive what the author calls the “Modi phenomenon”, those are then of no use because, as pointed out by Mamdani, as long as the source of the issue is not addressed, the problem will keep on lingering (Mamdani, 2020).  Despite contestations about whether this division is a pre-or post-colonial phenomenon, the author points to how colonial power through strategies of “categorization” and “fixation” added a “new language of politics” in India. This connotes that the colonial state normalized creation of such identities, and when the State institutionalized identities, as argued by Lieberman and Singh, it is seen as more of a natural phenomenon than something that is created (Lieberman & Singh, 2017).

The book further elaborates on the question ‘Why does Hindutva need Muslims?’  An interesting conclusion is drawn by the author in this analysis, which is that “the struggle to define Hindutva always revolves around Muslims” (p. 94). This is reinforced by Appadurai’s argument that not only does the majority need a minority for its existence, but the former also considers the latter as a threat to its idea of being a total ‘whole’ (Appadurai, 2020).  Hence, when Bhagwat argues that “Hindutva without Muslims is meaningless,” he puts forward rhetoric to connote that the “existence of the idea of Hindutva needs Muslims for its survival” (p. 88). Further, the author points out the idea of Indianizing Muslims is so deep that even if Muslims of India try to Indianize themselves in one field like politics, they will always be questioned about not doing so in other fields like dressing, eating, and so on. Essentially, the author argues that there is an inherent contradiction between Indian Muslims and various conceptions of Hindutva. This is just one profile of a case where Muslims are collectively taken as a threat since they are seen as foreigners. Hence, the concept of Muslim homogeneity as a threat could be assessed in this case. Restating Kymlika’s term “minoritized majority”, people who subscribe to the majority tend to act as a victimized minority living in fear of existential survival (Kymlika, 2007: 26).  In this case, subscribers to Hindutva and their associates. But while we turn the pages of the case, we see structural differences among Muslims that determine their politics, as put forward by the author.

The presence of differences based on caste, region, and class has created divisions among Muslims themselves. On this note, we find politics being played differently. The economically better-off section, termed Ashrafis, and the ones who are not, called Arzals, have their reasons for assessing the Muslim backwardness in India. The author takes the arguments of the Late Syed Shahabuddin and Iqbal Ansari under the “Muslim unity perspective” (p. 122) and those of Ali Anwar and Eijaz Ali under the “Muslim Pasmanda perspective” (p. 134). The former perspective views the under-representation of Muslims as the core problem and wants reservations for all Muslim communities. The latter considers caste as the main barrier and hence, vouches for the reservation of certain sections within the Muslims. This distinction between groups on various bases led to the emergence of an elite class. The author remarkably argues that “Muslim elites are not just a class of economically rich, but religiously dominant, politically influential, and culturally powerful” (p. 159). Such elites in their respective fields claim to represent the community in general. However, there is a profound difference between what the vast Muslim masses think and how they are claimed to be presented by elites, who, as argued by the author, mold themselves as per the context. By presenting for example, the issue of Triple talaq, Babri Masjid, and Hajj subsidy, the author presents the claim that the vast Muslim population thinks beyond these “Muslim issues” and do care about rest socio-economic affairs.

In the last portion of the book, the author discusses the politics that surrounded the Siyasi Muslims in three major domains. The first is the issue of the reduction of the Muslim community by the parties to the Muslim vote banks. However, if patterns of Muslim voting are analyzed, religious issues are not the only ones that bother them, but electoral gains have reduced their identity to religious issues. The second issue is that of the ‘Good Muslims vs. Bad Muslims’ division, done for electoral gains. Generally, the perception of a good Muslim in India is one who says yes to everything by compromising anything, while the bad ones would refuse to do so. Because here it is the broader or major identity that was used to determine the good and bad ones. The last issue deals with that of Muslim appeasement. As per the author, it speaks either of biased institutional practices or unfair political practices towards Muslims. The present regime usually speaks of it as against constitutional norms of religious equality. The Congress argues that the opposition is trying to shadow this community and exclude them as per their agenda. Surprisingly, the presence of few Muslim figures in these parties, as the author argues, is a symbolic presentation of the usage of the policy of appeasement. Quoting examples of educational institutions such as JMI and AMU, the author puts forward that how so-called ‘appeasement’ done on their bases has further complicated the definition of minority, and the idea of backwardness.

To conclude, it can be argued that the attempt made by the book to understand the ongoing debate about the Muslim community beyond what they have been restricted to deserves appreciation. However, that should not lead one to think of the unspoken issues as obsolete. The book majorly explores how Muslims have responded to contemporary issues surrounding them, but remains silent on their mobilization by parties such as AIMIM, and movements. This limits its exploration and analysis specific to legal matters and does not go beyond that. Yet, the book is vital in terms of understanding the internal dynamics of politics, constitutional explanation of their identity, and concepts of homogeneity and minority, speaking of segregation and accommodative tendencies respectively. 

References

Appadurai, A. (2020). Fear of small numbers: An essay on the geography of anger (D. P. Gaonkar, J. Kramer, B. Lee, & M. Warner, Eds.). Duke University Press. 

Kymlicka, W. (2007). The internationalization of minority rights. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 6(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mom032 

Lieberman, E. S., & Singh, P. (2017). Census enumeration and group conflict: A global analysis of the consequences of counting. World Politics, 69(1), 1–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0043887116000198 

Mamdani, M. (2020). Neither settler nor native: The making and unmaking of permanent minorities. Belknap Press. 

Wilkinson, S. I. (2004). The electoral incentives for ethnic violence. In Votes and Violence (pp. 1–18). Cambridge University Press.