By Bilal Gani
Ever since the outbreak of the communal violence in Delhi in February 2020, much has been written on the state of affairs Indian muslims are in. There are vast swathes of articles, write-ups and commentaries on the plight of the muslims
in contemporary India. But there was a deliberate negligence in most of the writings to wrongly interpret violence against muslims as an integrationist project to assimilate muslims into the Idea of India. The popular myth that needs to be busted is that it is muslims who have failed to assimilate themselves into the secular democratic fabric of the Indian state. That muslims in India are not progressive but medieval and backward in their thinking and outlook who didn’t fascinates by the core values of liberty, equality and secularism is rubbish.
In his book, India’s Muslim Spring, author Hasan Suroor described Indian muslims as the most peaceful and progressive muslims in the world. “Today’s muslims are altogether a different species- educated, wiser, less sectarian and more pragmatic”, he elaborated. We need to interrogate why muslims in India are vilified, maimed and persecuted. Why despite their greatest contribution in India’s glorious past are being punished as intruders and repressed on asserting their separate identity away from the majority hindu culture.
In its drive to foster cultural identity of politics BJP saw Indian muslims as a soft constituency. The open declaration of persecution of muslims
by BJP and it’s affiliates is not accidental but a well orchestrated strategy to portray muslim resurgence as a threat to hindu nationalism. In order to give it a legal tone BJP began a political process of dividing Indian electorate on communal lines and a systematic disenfranchising of the muslim community.
Though muslims in India are not well organised and didn’t propagate seperatist nationalism but a vicious campaign is going on to portray muslim resurgence as a challenge to hindu hegemonic order by inciting the constant increase in the muslim population.
The Congress politics of appeasement and the BJP’s politics of hate has left Indian muslims as one of the least represented and the worst persecuted minorities in the world.The change in nomenclature of the muslim places after hindu nationalists and the recent SC judgement in favour of a hindu organisation to construct Ram temple on Babri mosque is a deliberate attempt to demolish symbols of muslim identity and pride.With hindu nationalist party taking centre stage in Indian politics muslims in India are the worst sufferers in political, economic and educational fields. The recent Gallup poll shows that Muslim Indians are more likely than the country’s Hindus and members of all other religions – including those who don’t belong to a religious group – to be “suffering.” One-third (32%) of the country’s Muslims are suffering. Roughly, over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.
In 2017, IndiaSpend reported that 84%of the victims of cow vigilante violence in India from 2010 to 2017 were Muslims, and almost 97% of
these attacks were reported after May 2014.In the past, these attacks were along the lines of sectarian violence and characterised as communal conflict between Hindu and Muslim populations. However, with the rise of Hindu-nationalism post the demolition of Babri Masjid, the attacks have become more systematic taking the shape of state sanctioned pogroms. With CAA, NRC and NPR, persecution of muslims has been institutionalised now. These laws, when implemented properly, will left millions of Indian muslims as stateles like the Rohingya refugees of Myanmar. In Assam alone nearly 2 million muslims names didn’t figure in the state NRC. One can imagine how many more millions will be without citizenship if NRC is implemented throughout the country.The hindu-consolidation is the most successful political project of modern India. From streets to publish spaces hatred and vilification of muslims is a common thing in today’s India. The divide between hindus and muslims is unbridgeable now. CoronaJihad is only the latest manifestation of Islamophobia. Muslims are facing increased discrimination, harassment and attacks after the alleged linking of contraction in virus to Tablighi jamaat event.
The political scenario in today’s India is an overt manifestation of a decades old dream of Hindu-right toestablishreligious supremacy over the political landscape and to instill a fear psychosis among the minorities to submit to this hindu supremacy. CAA, NRC and the removal of special status of Kashmir is an exercise in permanently altering the demographic structure of the Indian society from being diverse to one of a hindu nation.The most important agency, however, in the propagation of the hindutva project is Indian media. Since 2014 Indian mass media has collaborated with the ruling dispensation to propagate what Karl Marx calls ‘ruling ideas’. The media, an institution that is meant to interrogate authority, unabashedly serves it. The recent documentary by Al-Jazeera English shows that Indian media played a significant role in the rise of increasing attacks on muslims. India’s 24×7 electronic media has become a worst culprit in spreading Islamophobia and religious violence in India.
Recently the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has designated India as a country of “Particular Concern”, saying the country was “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations”. Indian muslims are living on the verge of a human catastrophe. Muslims are in danger of an imminent threat of a genocide if nothing is done to stem the rise of irrational nationalism. The violence in Delhi was followed by the mass arrests of muslim students, activists and intellectuals. The recent arrest of a pregnant Jamia Milia Islamia student Safoora Zargar shows how far the ruling dispensation has went to muzzle muslim voices to muscle its might on a minority.
Today Indian democracy is in retreat. India’s pride in being a largest secular democracy with cultural syncretism appears an utopian idea now.
Ambedkar, in his speech in Constituent Assembly, said that Bhakti in poltics is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. Since 2014 religion and politics has been intertwined in India to creat a new breed of bhakts whose allegiance to hindu nationalism provides a smokescreen to further Hindutva agenda. The vicious mix of politics and religion eventually led to an atmosphere of suspicion, hostility and hatred between the majority hindus and an asymmetrically muslim minority. Today Indian democracy is under assault and it seems unlikely that democracy will sustain this assault. Even if it sustains this assault the damage will be beyond repair.
The author is a political commentator and a researcher.
