Breaking the chains of Muslim un-freedom

The late-November release of the Rajinder Sachar Committee report, which found that India's Muslims have been systematically excluded from state institutions (save for the dubious privilege of being imprisoned), resulted in weeks of spirited, countrywide debate. That report has of course confirmed something that everyone already knew; the challenge now is what to do about it. Once the battle lines are drawn, words like appeasement, introspection, reservation, sub-plan allocation and affirmative action fly regularly across the ideological divide. But there should be another way to think about the report's assembled facts and figures. What is most crucial about the report's pages is the kind of politics they will ultimately be able to catalyse.

Being the brainchild of India's economist-prime minister, the thrust of the Sachar report is not so much on the problems of security or identity faced by the Muslim communities of the 13 Indian states with the highest Muslim populations, but rather on the question of economic equity. What the Sachar panel mapped out is what Amartya Sen would call the 'economic un-freedoms' of the Indian Muslims. The real success of the Sachar committee would be if its report became a milestone in the efforts to deliver equity to the Indian Muslim community; if discussion sparked by Mr Sachar were to go beyond newsroom debates, and become part of the popular parlance in ground-level Muslim politics. This would hopefully lead to a situation wherein education and employment become larger 'Muslim issues' than are the Babri Masjid and fatwas in the larger society.

As with all contested terrains in a developing society, the idea of equity brings with it its own politics. For India's Muslims – or, for that matter, any marginal group – equity is among the three major issues that shape the community's political anxieties, the other two being security and identity. While it is impossible to talk of a monolithic Indian-Muslim political agenda, it is still possible to say that the Sachar committee report gives a thrust in one particular direction: towards a politics of equity.

OBC dead-end
Politics for Indian Muslims in the time after Partition revolved around the quest for security. The community's overwhelming support for the Congress party was perhaps due simply to the promise of safety that Jawaharlal Nehru had made them. However, this politics was also rooted in the feudal history of the country. The feudal Muslim elites were comfortable playing the mai-baap (top dog, the provider), while the masses slowly slid into a state of social hopelessness. In the post-Nehru era, the Congress party grew increasingly apathetic towards the demands of the Muslim underclass, and simultaneously began its flirtations with popular sentiments among Muslims that were founded on identity.

The Congress's shift from a politics of security to one of identity, however, was never completed. The reason for this was a crucial shift that occurred after the 1975-78 state of Emergency and following the splitting of the Janata Party – a shift that was most visible in the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where a majority of the country's Muslim population lived. Muslims here felt that they had a better chance if they stuck with the lower-caste movement, together with which they could fight the common oppressor – namely the upper-caste zamindar, who in many cases would also be the Congress representative. The fact that Islam does not allow caste differentiation hardly made a difference.

The Other Backward Class leaders in particular were able to wrest the Muslim electorate away from the Congress counterparts. Over the next two decades, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took over the communalisation that the Congress had started (with, for instance, the Ayodhya issue), Muslims fell for the charming secular symbolism of the OBC movement. In Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav championed the anti-Hindutva cause, while the Samajwadi party chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, earned the sobriquet of Maulana Mulayam.

But there was a crucial disconnect. OBC politics was still inherently one of identity, more about breaking new ground with symbolic assertions of power than a real politics of empowerment or equity. Muslim support was assured because the OBC leaders promised to keep the forces of Hindutva at bay. But with the collapse of the Ram temple movement, this basic premise eventually fell apart. Indeed, the destruction of Babri Masjid catalysed an important trend among the Muslims in India – they decided to take things in their own hands. Strategies such as sticking together (at the cost of ghettoisation) are not merely driven by insecurity, but are also long-term political strategies to consolidate the Muslim vote against the communal parties.

Though it is yet to make itself fully visible, the rift between the Muslim community and the lower-caste Hindu leadership is a growing phenomenon. There are significant indications that, sooner rather than later, Muslims will 'make a break'. Already Lalu's supposed pro-Muslim image has come under fire, and the bravado he showed in arresting L K Advani during his 1990 rally in Ayodhya is a fading memory in the changing political landscape. The results of the recent Bihar elections are telling in the way in which the Pasmanda Muslims went along with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, preferring the Kurmi-heavy Janata Dal (United) to the Yadav-influenced Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). A majority of Muslims in the state belong to the Most Backward Classes, and economically come closer to the Kurmis than the Yadavs. The situation at hand for Mulayam Singh Yadav is even more apparent. Between open dissent by long-time supporters and Muslim leaders such as Kalbe Sadiq floating their own parties, Mulayam's control over the Muslim electorate is clearly facing a breakdown.

Few places to turn
As such, it will be interesting to see which way the Muslim electorate is headed. This writer believes that the shift will be towards a politics of equity, because issues concerning identity often deal in little more than rhetoric, and because the Muslim masses are coming to understand this fact. The Personal Law Board, the fatwas and the burqas might make prominent news headlines, and the media may insist on raking up again and again the discourse on terrorism, but such issues do not really matter for the Indian Muslim masses. While most people have been appalled by the findings of the Sachar report, it should be good news for those who are willing to begin a debate around the serious issues – the ones affecting the Muslims of India, and ones that the masses are now making the core of their own politics.

One has only to look at the recent state elections to see that this is in fact the trend. In Assam, Muslims have formed a new political outfit, the Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF), which succeeded in securing double-digit figures in the state assembly in April. While security issues form the core of political anxieties for the Asamiya Muslims – who are often accused of being illegal immigrants – it may not have been the most important issue in these elections. At face value, it might appear that the AUDF appealed to the Muslim vote bank because it represented Muslim identity and addressed the issue of security better then did the Congress. But if one ignores the 'maulana' image that AUDF supremo Badruddin Ajmal projected to his voters, one still has to contend with the fact that he was a Bombay-based business tycoon who moved around one of Assam's poorest constituencies in a fleet of luxury cars. What Ajmal really did was offer the Muslims of Assam, so far tied to the Congress, a chance to get the best political bargain.

If the Assam case leaves any doubt, at the other end of India was the Kerala state elections, which took place at the same time and clarify matters even better. For a long time now, Muslims in Kerala have voted for either the Indian United Muslim League or the Congress Party; communists had always been considered off-limits. This time around, however, Muslim voters played a major role in routing the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and even the Muslim League itself from the state assembly. What Muslim voters really wanted was someone who could deliver equity – and in this case, they decided on the communists.

But this is only one side of the story. In states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the Muslim electorate still has no choice but to vote for the party that stands against the BJP – and that is the Congress. Post-2002, the Muslim communities in these states remain so gripped with fear over Narendra Modi's Hindutva experiment that they can do nothing but vote to keep the BJP from coming to power. Such a political attitude might last for as long as the fears of Modi remains palpable, and till then the slogans of equity – demands for jobs, education, healthcare – may not be raised at all. And that remains one of the most disheartening failures of the Indian state: that it is unable to provide a community space where talk of equity and development can truly take place.

On the whole, it can be said, Indian Muslims are ready to move on to the politics of equity – perhaps more eagerly than one would expect – and away from the shackles of a politics of security and the stereotypes of identity. The real success of the Sachar committee report will be in its ability to catalyse this movement.