Muslimophobia in India: Reasons and Remedy (Part Three)

By A. Faizur Rahman

4 June 2023

(With Permission from the author to publish this chapter ‘Muslimophobia in India: Reasons and Remedy’ from the Book 'Politics of Hate -Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia' Edited by Farahnaz Ispahani - Published by HarperCollins Publishers India.)

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Muslim Response

There can be no doubt that the stridency of the accusatory onslaught has rattled the Muslim community to such an extent that it has not been able to mount a concerted intellectual response to overcome the climate of suspicion and distrust that prevails against it. Muslim religious organizations such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) don’t look beyond religion, and therefore, have shown little interest in engaging Hindutva ideologues in a meaningful dialogue. Their public pronouncements have mostly been limited to the Shariah-in-danger kind of theologically emotive issues such as triple Talaq and the law that was enacted in July 2019 to criminalize this practice after the Supreme Court invalidated it in August 2017.

The Muslim intelligentsia, on the other hand, came up with two kinds of responses. One was a dispassionate and balanced countering of the arguments in support of triple talaq and citizenship laws, and a severe condemnation of the physical violence against Muslims. The authors of these responses were Muslim reformers,

legal experts, journalists and independent researchers who wanted to educate Muslims about their constitutional rights and the legal options available to them, while attempting to wean them away from such un-Islamic concepts as extremism, misogyny and religious supremacism.

The second kind of response came mostly from Muslim bureaucrats who tried to lay the blame on the Muslims themselves. Although some of them did grudgingly acknowledge that the community has cause to complain, they also accused ‘ordinary Muslims’ of having adopted an obsessive persecution complex, and derided them for making victimhood their ‘favourite dope’ to get over the melancholic depression caused by the historical disasters they endured.

Such priggish self-flagellation from within the community consisted of ramblings about the huge population of Muslims, their caste system, their aversion to reform, the preponderance of mosques, madrasas and Maulvis in post-Independence India, and the Islamist concepts of Dar-ul-Harb and Dar-ul-Islam. The idea was to somehow establish a nexus between these overdramatized facts and the non- existent ‘victim mentality’ of Muslims.

A disturbing aspect that characterizes some of these sanctimonious commentators is their reticence about the hate crimes perpetrated against the Muslims, which do not find a mention in their one- sided narrative. This cold-hearted silence on Islamophobia raises questions about their intellectual honesty and exposes the artificiality of their bombastic moralizing which, in any case, is of no use to the beleaguered community.

In a way, the arrogant preconceptions of the Muslim religious and bureaucratic elite about Indian Muslims validate Jean-Pierre Faye’s much-criticized horseshoe theory which, in the context of political science, asserts that in certain situations, the far left and the far right

bend like a horseshoe and come within touching distance of each other to present an eerie resemblance. Obviously, the far right and the far left ideologies have little in common, but what Faye meant was that there are times when the combined effect of these schools of extremist thought could have deleterious consequences for the cause they seek to espouse.

In the same way, the negative impact of the combined armchair philosophizing of Muslim religious leaders and bureaucrats, and their failure to provide a way out of the sustained demonization of Muslims, has pushed the community into the arms of Muslim political parties.

The biggest beneficiary of this shift has been Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), which made major gains even outside its home state, Telangana, by winning five important seats in the November 2020 Bihar assembly elections. All seats came from the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region. In the 2015 assembly elections, the party had not won any seats in Bihar.75 Spurred by this transformative success, AIMIM now plans to contest the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal76 and in Tamil Nadu.77 Even provocative televangelist Zakir Naik tried to fish in troubled waters by asking Muslims to form their own political party and migrate to the non-BJP state Kerala to escape persecution.

Researcher Asim Ali of the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research attributes the new Muslim upsurge to their political disempowerment caused by their plummeting representation in the civil services, the police, the army and legislative bodies. For instance, in 1980, Muslim members of Parliament were at 9 per cent. Today, this figure is down to 5 per cent. Even India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has just twenty-five Muslim members in a 404-member legislative assembly, the lowest in twenty-five years.79

However, political pundits have expressed their alarm at the sudden rise of a ‘Muslim party’. Yogendra Yadav, a psephologist- turned-politician, believes that the rise of ‘Muslim exclusive politics’ at the national stage could end up becoming a catalyst for Hindu majoritarian politics as it would further polarize the electorate and hinder efforts to bridge the Hindu–Muslim divide.80 Similar concerns were echoed by social activist Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, who wrote that Owaisi’s rise as a visibly Muslim leader is as much BJP’s need as the AIMIM’s and may lead to national disorientation and gradual disaster.

But Yadav did recognize Muslim perturbations when he empathized with their fear of being reduced to second-class citizens in their own country, with much worse to come. This, he said, is bound to help politicians like Asaduddin Owaisi expand their base. Yadav, for some reason, missed flagging the other two contributing factors discussed above—the inadequacy of Muslim academic response and the balefulness of Muslim bureaucratic slurs.

If the Hindu right’s distrust of Muslims in India is summarized from the foregoing arguments, it can be reduced to two broad, interlinked perceptions: one, the belief that Hindus are the original inhabitants of India and others are outsiders, and two, the worry that Muslims may numerically swamp the ‘original dwellers’ if their population growth is not regulated. A subtle reference to the doctrine of Hindu autochthony and Muslim alikeness can be seen in a recent statement attributed to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, wherein he said that Muslims in India were the happiest people in the world because ‘the Hindus are tolerant and believe in inclusiveness’.

Bhagwat was also quoted as stating, ‘Hindustan was divided at that time so that Muslims could live in Pakistan. According to the situation at that time, Hindus should have had a sway in Bharat,

but our Constitution never said that either you go to Pakistan or you would have to be subservient to Hindus here.’ He went on to claim that India was the only country in the world where a foreign religion that ruled over its people still exists.

The fact is that India was neither ruled by any ‘foreign religion’ nor was it divided to send all Muslims to Pakistan. Besides, one wonders why the happiness of Muslims should be dependent on Hindu tolerance, to say nothing about the fact that in the eighth World Happiness Report of 2020, India is ranked 144 out of 153 countries.

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Other Parts:

Muslimophobia in India: Reasons and Remedy (Part One)

Muslimophobia in India: Reasons and Remedy (Part Two)

 Muslimophobia in India: Reasons and Remedy (Part Three)

 

URL:  https://newageislam.com/books-documents/muslimophobia-india-remedy-part-three/d/129919

 

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