By comparing burqas to trishuls, Ram Guha has fallen into the trap of model minority thinking
Neither the trishul, which is carried by certain sadhus, nor the Nepali khukuri, nor the Sikh kirpan are weapons of violence, but rather ceremonial appendages. That is, unless they are brought out of the symbolic space they occupy and weaponised by miscreants.
If noted historian and scholar Ramachandra Guha wanted to make a point about the symbolic trappings of orthodoxy, he could have found a counterpart for the burqa in the common ghoonghat that is worn in many traditional Hindu households, often extending to the knee. However, it is interesting to observe that the same people who think of women wearing the burqa as “regressive” have no hesitation in celebrating the fact that our Hindu women ISRO scientists wear traditional saris, bangles, sindoor and bindis to work.
By the fallacy of comparing burqas to trishuls, Guha, a "liberal", has fallen into the trap of "model minority thinking". Model minority thinking is similar to colourblind racism. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociologist, explained that colourblind racism is an ideology in which racial inequality and discrimination are explained in non-racial terms. The most common example of colourblind racism is reflected in the statement, “I don’t see any colour, just people.”
Such a statement assumes that a person’s race or ethnic background does not play a role in their experiences with racism or discrimination. In India that would translate as “I don’t believe in caste/religion” - a disavowal of an uncomfortable reality that only the privileged who do not have to negotiate these barriers can afford to do. Such denials merely perpetuate the status quo of racism and bigotry, while so-called liberals wash their hands of.
For white supremacists in the US, the model behaviour of the Indian-American community rests on refuting their racial identity and presenting themselves primarily through their professional status as doctors or engineers.
The Australian experience that has a deeply racist history shows how this plays out. Although Australia is commonly associated with kangaroos and great beaches, it actually has a deeply racist history. Until 50 years ago, the First Nations people of Australia were not included in the Census so in the eyes of the government, they weren’t counted as people. It took a referendum in 1967 for that to change. Then there were the Stolen Generations where the Australian government systematically removed First Nations children from their parents.
The government was so obsessed with whiteness that up until the 1970s, there was the so-called White Australia Policy, which was a collection of policies banning non-Europeans from migrating to the country. In other words, you had to be white to move to Australia.
History matters, because it informs the attitudes of the present society. As people of colour in first world countries and minorities in India have systematically been treated as second-class citizens, they are considered "conditionally national". The moment they step out of line, the country explodes with outrage.
Right-wing bigots in India tag Muslims through visual symbols, verbal discourse, rumours and myths, terminology and metaphor.
From references to the colour green, the oft-repeated clickbait, “Babur ki Aulad” or frequent references to Aurangzeb, the false flag of "love jihad", the PM’s shamshan ghat/kabaristan analogy to polarise and provoke, to discriminate and to isolate.
A homogenous “Indianness” where religion or caste is not worn upon one’s sleeve, is considered desirable by many cosmopolitan Indians who pride themselves on their liberal ethos. What is the need, they feel, for a person to sport the hennaed beard, the skull cap, the cross on the chain, the burqa, the caste mark on the forehead that to them is a dead ringer and giveaway for backwardness in their respective communities?
Never does it occur to them that a sindoor or a burqa or a ghoonghat with roots in patriarchal domination may also be the result of informed choice on the part of an educated modern woman.
Ordinary cultural signs that are part of everyday life often acquire an extraordinary meaning or significance during situations of conflict.
Since the violence in Gujarat was carried out in the name of religion, several cultural signs that are part of daily life took on an added meaning as markers of religious identity. Further, these signs were those that were seen as expressing differences between the two communities.
Roland Barthes, one of the major theorists of culture of the 20th century, was an anti-essentialist. He was strongly opposed to the view that there is anything contained in a particular signifier which makes it naturally correspond to a particular signified. There’s no essence of particular groups of people (Humanity, Britishness, Indianness) or objects (chairness, appleness) which unifies them into a category or separates them from others.
The following quote sheds light on this: "The features that are taken into account are not the sum of ‘objective’ differences, but only those which the actors themselves regard as significant. The cultural contents of ethnic dichotomies would seem analytically to be of two orders: (i) overt signals or signs - the diacritical features that people look for and exhibit to show identity, often such features as dress, house-form, or general style of life, and (ii) basic value orientation: the standards of morality and excellence by which performance is judged."
To understand the history of such embedded communal stances even from so-called liberal scholars, we have to hark back to colonialism and the political climate it generated. One of the first branches of history writing to highlight the tensions between Hindus and Muslims was British colonial historiography.
The dominant trend in this writing by the end of the 19th century was what sociologist Veena Das calls "the colonial riot narrative", which presented most events, regardless of the issue concerned, as a case of religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Cultural symbols with bulls eyes painted on them to assert confirmation biases are very much a part of this narrative. Since then, the differences between the two communities have been constructed through systematic amnesia and cherry-picked repetition.
Points of difference between the two communities are highlighted repeatedly while the shared bonds of cultural similarity such as language, food habits and everyday interactions are systematically suppressed and silenced.
The characteristics attributed to both communities are so strong that they resemble caricatures much like the Amar Chitra Katha binaries of devas and asuras. These stereotypes are deployed in constructing a linear and one-sided view of history in which the "tolerant, peace-loving vegetarian Hindu" has been historically victimised by the "aggressive beef-eating Muslims".
At the moment of writing this we are witnessing the withdrawal of cases against the perpetrators of the Muzaffarnagar riots.
The Indian state is a signatory to several human rights conventions and treaties. For instance, India ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1979.
The ICCPR guarantees that the right to life of all citizens shall be protected by law. All citizens regardless of what they choose to wear or not wear, eat or not eat, and worship what they will.
Those who want Muslims to outperform their identity aren’t interested in seeing them as equal at all. No one should ever have to be the “model minority” in order to be accepted as equal. Equality should be given, not earned for good behaviour. If “good behaviour” is required, that isn’t really equality.
That diminishes them, their culture, and their agency.