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My response to RSS ideologue on the Indian Muslim as a voter

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S Mohammed Irshad
S Mohammed IrshadMar 25, 2017 | 10:12

My response to RSS ideologue on the Indian Muslim as a voter

Prof Rakesh Sinha’s write up on March 8, 2017, in The Indian Express newspaper on the Muslim votebank raises some important concerns which need discussion and debate.

As an RSS ideologue, he is responsible to defend its view of Muslims. He did not deviate from that. The electoral behaviour of Muslims is the focus of the article; basically he denies the rational behaviour of Muslims as a voter.

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He stated that "the magnitude of the public discourse on the question is so powerful that the individual Muslim fails to judge things as an Indian citizen and a voter". This statement reinstates the "anti-Indian Muslim" to the core of the public discourse.

It is the established political position of the RSS and which has been well stated by its leaders again and again. As everybody knows it came from decades ago, which led to the formation of right-wing politics in India.

It is basically building the "other", ie Muslims as the "other" and hence says the inclusion of the community into India’s culture is impossible. Prof Sinha does not directly endorse that argument as BJP leader Dr Subramanian Swamy once demanded disenfranchising those Muslims who do not accept India.

However, Prof Sinha resonates Dr Swamy’s argument in a different context. Dr Swamy’s problem was a Muslim’s presence and Prof Sinha connects it with the failure of the community to recognise their citizenship and voting right.

Prof Sinha connects the crisis of citizenship of Muslims with Partition and the formation of the Muslim League. So the matter is simple, ie according to Prof Sinha the failure to judge citizenship is primarily due to Indian Muslims' consensus for Partition.

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It is a fight between "Akhanda Bharat versus Muslims". This binary is the biggest threat to national integration, and interestingly Prof Sinha himself argues in the article that "there has been ‘research’ which disproves Muslims' en bloc voting". This is a fact, Muslims in India are homogenous in economic backwardness and heterogenous in voting behaviour.

There are reports that in the recent corporation election in Mumbai, Muslims voted for the Shiv Sena. Prof Sinha’s ideology never permits him to look at Muslims' citizenship rights. It is evident in his observation that the Muslim votebank issue appears only during election time.

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It is a fight between "Akhanda Bharat Vs Muslims". This binary is the biggest threat to national integration. Photo: India Today

He categorically ignores the fact that such public discussion benefits the BJP rather than anybody else. However there is a slight difference in approach - unlike other political parties BJP use this binary for strengthening majoritarian politics. It is evident from the Ayodhya movement to the PM's kabaristan statement. 

It is the larger agenda of majoritarian politics to reiterate the religious identity of Muslims in public discourse and completely neglect the civil rights of the community.

I fully agree with Prof Sinha’s observation on less participation of Muslims in political parties other than BJP. It is a fact that Indian Muslims have less representation in Parliament itself.

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Interestingly, Prof Sinha quoted Moin Shakir's paper titled "Religion and Politics: Role of Islam in Modern India" published in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.14, No 7/8 in the year 1979.

He quoted certain observations and conveniently omitted some other observations of Shakir. In academic writing, one has to give proper citation of the paper. However, he conveniently picked up some lines and gave the impression that the paper had been written recently.

For instance, Prof Sinha directly quoted Shakir’s following argument: "Fall back on the romantic view that Islam alone is a perfect religion, while all other religions are imperfect… The political ideology of Muslim organisations is opposed to the ideals of nationalism, secularism, democracy and socialism."

It was selective quoting and the above said part had begun with naming three Muslim movements and not exclusively the Muslim’s political position. Prof Sinha attempted to generalise the entire debate and tried to ascribe it to Muslims in general.

Such generalisation reiterates the Sangh Parivar's established position on Muslims as anti-national. Shakir’s observation on secularism is different from what Prof Sinha read in his paper. Shakir has written that: "In the Swadeshi movement and the Gandhi-dominated Congress, religious sentiments of the people were constantly exploited. Hindu symbols were used to mobilise the people. The Muslim community too adopted a similar strategy of using Islam for political purpose. Secularism is not viewed as separation of religion and politics but as giving 'equal status' to all religions though in practice the new rulers consider Hinduism as the fundamental factor in the field of politics."

There are problems and truth in this statement. Muslims have in fact lost using Islam for political purpose. It is not the failure of the community as well. Islamophobia played a major role in preventing the origin of Muslim political forces and also cooption politics put a lot of faith on the Muslim.

Apart from that, rising right-wing fundamentalism never provided any democratic space for Muslim political forces. The Muslim League is now reduced to a regional party; the MIM is trying to establish base beyond Hyderabad but the recent municipal election in Mumbai gave it a setback.

The All India United Democratic Front led by Mr Badruddin Ajmal in Assam is still considered anti-national because of the presence of Bangladesh-origin Muslims. The UP election results once again proved the absence of Muslim politics.

The Muzaffarnagar riots violence gave a big boost to BJP and forced other political parties to keep away from the constituency. And the victims are left with no option to have even their civil rights protected.

Interestingly, I am still wondering how Prof Sinha would respond to the following statement of Moin Shakir: "It is not Islam but a sense of discrimination which creates a sense of unity. It is the feeling of insecurity which provides the sheet anchor to the notion of solidarity. It is politics not the ideal of Islam or Pan-Islamism which acts as strategies and for maintaining a separate leveller of sectarian differences."

The selective quoting of Shakir missed out some of the core observations on Muslim political mobility and issue of social exclusion. The politics of exclusion really pushes the community out from mainstream discourse and corners them into religious identity.

Such cornering is in fact the reason why Muslims are not get representation in the political movement in a big way, as Moin argued: "The indifference on the part of political parties to mobilising Muslims on secular issues is another obstacles. The political and electoral process encourages particularism and solidarity consciousnesses."

It is true that no political party prefers to mobilise Muslims as general or mainstream community. Lack of such mobility further extends the marginalisation of the community.

Sangh Parivar parties are the major beneficiaries, since the marginality of Muslims evolved as a violent identity and thereby threat to "nation".

Last updated: March 25, 2017 | 10:12
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