Frontline: ‘Hindu radicalisation the lethal challenge’

The word radical is ill understood and hugely politicised, especially after the 9/11 [ terror attacks against the US in 2001] when the West tied it to Muslims. The Indian media copied their Western counterparts. In this usage, radicalisation is a word of abuse: a combat concept! It means that as a faith Islam is violent, backward, and hostile to modernity, democracy, etc. However, when [used in the context of] … figures like Gandhi, radical becomes positive. For instance, to author Mira Kamdar, Gandhi is “one of the most radical thinkers… who ever lived”. Radical in this sense is also used for thinkers like Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida, whose books are published by the British publisher Verso in a series named “Radical Thinkers”.

In my first book on the Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami, Princeton University Press, 2009), I argued that “whether or not and how much the movement activists in a given polity will become moderate or militant depends not only on their own desire but equally on the state’s willingness to change as well as the contours of the state’s structure”. Twelve years later, I see no reason to revise my argument. In fact, the lethal challenge India faces is Hindu radicalisation. Is not the open call for genocidal violence against Muslims by Hindu ascetics in a Dharam Sansad in Haridwar (in 2021) a sign of Hindu radicalisation? Hindu radicalisation is a real threat precisely because it has the backing of the state, influential politicians, and even parts of the judiciary.

Certainly, the planned destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 increased insecurity. But this does not mean Muslims were secure before. A series of anti-Muslim pogroms occurred well before 1992: in Moradabad (1980), Nellie (1983), Hashimpura (1987), and Bhagalpur (1989). I am consciously calling them pogroms, not riots. The Bhagalpur pogrom continued for two months. For something to continue for months requires meticulous organisation and, notably, approval from or inaction of the administration.

The insecurity Muslims face today has many aspects: what they can eat; how Muslim women should dress, how they can walk and conduct themselves in public spaces; whether or not Muslims should sport a beard or wear skullcaps. These were also present before 1992, during the so-called secular era of [Jawaharlal] Nehru. Clearly, their scale and ferocity were not what we see today.

To understand everyday insecurity, we must examine state policy and practice. We have many myths about Nehru as a secular, agnostic, rational person radiant with scientific temperament. But Nehru made no attempt to make India constitutionally secular. The word “secular” was inserted into the Constitution long after Nehru’s death. Importantly, if Nehru was secular, why did he take no action against those who, in 1949, illegally installed Hindu idols inside the Babri Masjid? Why, in 1950, did Nehru indirectly support the building of the Somnath temple? Nehru’s Hindu majoritarian impulse was also amply manifest in the 1950 presidential ordinance, which disallowed reservation benefits to Dalits if they embraced Christianity or Islam.

As for the post-1992 insecurity catalysing Islamic extremism, I have already argued that we cannot grasp it without accounting for the fact that the Indian polity in general—not simply this or that party—took a radical Hindu turn and Islamophobia became its axis. This is not to ignore the question of caste, especially the Mandal issue and the rise of V.P. Singh, Lalu Yadav, or Mayawati. Currently, many leaders as well as much of the social base of these very caste groups have differently joined the nationalist Islamophobia.

There is no evidence to suggest that the Jamaat-e-Islami’s interventions are not “really” progressive. We should judge an organisation on the basis of its practices rather than on intention, which some may doubt. The Jamaat and its affiliates in Kerala have stood for many progressive causes and campaigned against Coca-Cola, “development” schemes targeting tribal people, and ecological degradation. The expectation from the Jamaat to be progressive will be moral if there is a simultaneous expectation from the larger political environment, of which the Jamaat is only one constituent, to be also progressive and anti-Islamophobic.

Is it not curious that almost nobody doubts the RSS’ commitment to the tricolour despite the fact that until the [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee era, the RSS never hoisted it, and the outfit instead firmly believes in a parallel bhagva jhanda (saffron flag)?

After Partition, there was no new Muslim party. In fact, a Congress stalwart like Abul Kalam Azad, who had served as Congress president twice, advised, not out of his sovereign will, Muslims to shun politics. In Uttar Pradesh, the first Muslim party appeared only in the late 1960s. Disenchanted with the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal, which refused to take Muslim issues seriously, Jaleel Faridi, a medical doctor, formed the Muslim Majlis. The peak of its success was winning two seats in the [1977 Uttar Pradesh] Assembly election. Of course, the Muslim League existed in Uttar Pradesh, but unlike in Kerala, it barely had an impact. In 2008, Mohamad Ayyub, also a medical doctor, formed the Peace Party of India. In the 2012 Assembly election, it won four seats. In 2017, it won none. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) was historically limited to Hyderabad. Now, it is expanding to Bihar, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. Its electoral impact is severely limited so far. Thus, whatever Muslim parties exist now, they are mostly spectators, not game changers or even game influencers.