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Three Banes of India’s Muslims
Victimhood Syndrome, Power Theology, Obsession with Identity Politics

MOHAMMAD SAJJAD
Professor, Dept of History
AMU, Aligarh (India)
March 8, 2024

Browsing through the social media, if one wishes to fathom the minds of educated Muslim youth in
India, what does one come across? This is a question crossing the mind of someone like me who teaches and
lives in a Muslim majority campus. One therefore has an everyday interaction with India’s educated Muslims; fair
quantum of sample to analyze a Muslim mind living in this era of majoritarian hegemony.

In a Muslim exclusive WhatsApp group of my extended family, kinship and village neighbourhood, a
young man proposed to boycott the Republic Day 2024. The reason he put forward was, the current
dispensation has victimized and marginalized the Muslims in various many ways. The young man proposing this
boycott has obtained his diploma from a centrally funded Polytechnic affiliated to the Muslim minority university
(Jamia Millia Islami, JMI, New Delhi). The JMI, being a centrally funded public university, offers considerably
subsidized and economical fee structure. He also got a job in the central government, soon after he obtained the
diploma. Subsequently, he quit this job as he found employment in Saudi Arabia. His “fantastic proposal” of
boycotting the Republic Day celebrations is confronted with an argument that the core support-base of, and
organizations affiliated with the dispensation, anyway subscribe to a kind of ideology wherein the Republican
Constitutional values are rather an impediment in the ways of actualizing their majoritarian goals. Though, they
are in ascendance and the forces resisting them appear to have become much weaker than ever before, many of
the southern provinces are still beyond them. Means, majority of Hindus are still against Hindu majoritarianism.
True, the share of Muslim communities in the structures and processes of power, in education and trade and
employment are much dissatisfactory, since long, since much before this regime acquired its dominance, more in
northern parts. This is owing to various reasons, external as well as internal, he is told.

With these arguments, he was further reminded of the social composition of the structures and processes
of power in the country he works in. He is told that in that country of the birth of Islam, only a specific clan can
be the ruler, through inheritance, not through any mechanism of popular will, nor through any form of
democracy—consociational or consensus democracy--ensuring maximum participation and representation from
across the sects, regions, and ethnicities of the country he works in. He is counseled, a consociational democracy
differs from consensus democracy (e.g. in Switzerland), in that consociational democracy represents a consensus
of representatives with minority veto, while consensus democracy requires consensus across the electorate.

He cunningly feigns ignorance about such state of affairs of exclusion, discrimination and
disenfranchisement in the Islamic country he works. Also, in terms of his sectarian affiliations, he is supposed to
be sympathetic to the Salafi ideology. He raises the issue of the egregious act of the demolition (1992) of Babri
Masjid and no punishment to those who have been pronounced criminals by the Supreme Court. Some of these
criminals are shamelessly being rewarded with votes to be elevated to become legislators. He is then reminded of
an episode of demolition of a historic mosque in Meccah.

... [in 2005], King Fahd, obsessed with building palaces, could look down on the Kaaba
from the bedroom of his new residence in Mecca. The palace was located on the eastern
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 side and overshadowed the whole of the Sacred Mosque… [T]he historic Bilal Mosque,
dating back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, adjacent to the palace, was demolished.
The development took care to ensure that the king had a full view of the worshippers in
the compound of the Haram; hence no minarets were built facing the palace...1

He was asked if the ruling aristocracies and civil society (if any) of the KSA, UAE and other such
countries ever bothered about the kind of discriminations and marginalization India’s Muslims have been
subjected to in India; he was asked if these Arab countries allowed civic protests against Zionist and other
persecutions across the globe; did Indian Muslims ever stage a protest demonstration before their Embassies in
India for their silence on Zionist persecution of Palestinians. He was asked to ponder why KSA provides fund
only for theological seminaries in India, and not for modern education, whereas under the provisions of the
Articles 29, 30 of the Indian Constitution, our Indian state provides fund for our schools and colleges of modern
education established and administered by us across the country. These arrangements do feel threatened by the
current dispensation but from among the Hindu majority itself, resistance against such threats continue. These
forces of resistance need more of solidarity, rather than opium of alienation and even radicalization of India’s
Muslims, from certain “Islamic” countries.

He was reminded that he should be grateful to the Indian democracy and its minority rights which
equipped him with a diploma to earn his livelihood and to attain socio-economic mobility. He was counseled to
work towards strengthening the India’s secular democracy, resisting majoritarianism rather than harbouring only
victimhood and nothing else. He was also reminded of the fact that in some ways, Muslim conservatism, their
own communalism and separatist mindset, and a disproportionate or exaggerated sense of victimhood are the
additional factors contributing to greater ascendance of majoritarianism, particularly since the mid 1980s. He
found himself silenced because he was disarmed in this battle of arguments. In other words, he goes silent not
because he is convinced with the counter-arguments. His grudge and reluctance persists. He refuses to be
convinced.

One of the greatest failures, and willful one, has been in letting off the perpetrators and plotters
of intermittent communal violence. India’s criminal justice system has been awful on this count. The
collective grievance of India’s Muslims has more to do with this aspect than to any other aspect of exclusion,
discrimination and victimization. There are debates between the liberal-secular and the majoritarians as to if all
the time there has been a case that the agent provocateurs of the strife have always been from the other side, and
never from the side of the one playing victimhood. A concise reply to such polarized debate is: whosoever have
been the plotters and perpetrators (including the security forces who willfully fail to prevent and control such
violence; at times act themselves as the rioters, and also fail to produce evidence of investigations before the law
courts) must be punished. Wilful failure to punish them is explained by only one factor--the mjoritarian
character of the state, and also of society, which doesn’t have even a post facto remorse for and outrage against
such identity-based bloodshed and pogroms.

But, essentially speaking, how do most Muslims look at the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 and
of Noakhali in subsequent months, carried out under the Muslim League administration led by H S Suhrawardy,
and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (1920-1975) was in the forefront? How do the Muslim elites of the subcontinent
look at the politics of the partitions (1947 and 1971)? Do they look at this aspect of the history and politics of
violence? Do they realize that a big section of the Muslim elites (mostly of western Uttar Pradesh) demanded
Partition and they got a separate state of Pakistan, hence, those actors (and subscribers of that ideology) and
collaborators of the Raj have to share the greater blame of the violence and brutalities? This certainly doesn’t

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mean that one is putting blame on one party and absolving the other. One has invested a lot into reading
partition literature, both historical and fictional works. India could have been divided only in the British
presence; it was divided because of competitive communalism. One has demonstrated it in one’s books as well
as English and Urdu language columns. Still, certain questions pertaining to the Muslim politics of narrative
making need to be raised more urgently than ever before!

Do they realize that the very same ideological forces and classes of Pakistan denied power to Sheikh
Mujibur Rehman in 1970, despite the mandate? Do they feel about the kind of brutalities, violence, plunder, etc.,
they perpetuated in 1971 against their Bengali citizens on the eastern flank of their Islamic Republic of Pakistan?
In May 2014, a film, directed by Mrityunjay Devvrat was released, “The Children of War”, also known as “The
Bastard Child”, played by Raima Sen, Farooq Shaikh, Rucha Inamdar, among others, depicting the brutalities of
1971. How many Muslims of the subcontinent really bother to know about, and remember this movie, in other
words, the human brutality against humans, their own co-religionists? Subsequently, on 15 August 1975, even
Sheikh Mujibur Rehman with all the members of his family present in his house were done to death.

So far as the erasure and perpetuation of the narratives of histories are concerned, who decides and
determines the politics of narrative-making? Has there been an honest and comprehensive introspection about
all such issues, besides seeking justice based on caste (Biradri) and gender? Joya Chatterji, in her latest book,
Shadows at Noon identifies amnesia and strategic forgetting as “one crucial aspect of nation-building project”.
She adds, with each wave of nation-making the fate of internal minorities have become more precarious, across
the subcontinent. Despite this, on 4 April 1979 when “judicial” hanging of Zulfiqar Bhutoo happened, his
massacre of Bengali Muslims in 1971 was forgotten by sections of India’s Muslims. A popular Bollywood song
of the film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978) was parodied with emotions, “O Bhutto re …. Terey bina bhi kya jeena”.
That summer, this was hummed by the Muslim boys running around the mango orchards, more so when our
half yearly exams of the primary schools were over, and we had ample leisure times. In our homes, among the
elders, Bhutto’s misdeeds, in 1970-1971, were chosen to be forgotten. Subsequently, General Ziaul Haq resorted
to prodding the Islamic extremists, which would kind of cover up his misdeeds against Bhutto.

That most of us loved Pakistani cricket more than Indian cricket, and we loved the football of the
Calcutta’s Mohammedan Sporting Club more than we loved the Mohan Bagan and East Bengal, is yet another
open secret. Such “secrets” or narratives within the community do tell something about the community’s socio-
political attitudes and worldviews.

Each election, a lot of India’s Muslim youth raise issues of Muslim representation in legislature.
Wherever, Muslims have 20% or more share of population they claim it almost as a matter of entitlement that
the seat must get Muslim representation. There is nothing wrong in such aspiration. But why do they choose to
forget that in an era of more rabid majoritarianism and majoritarian electoral consolidation menacingly aided by
capital and media, even a 45% of the demographic share of a religious minority will be insufficient to ensure
their victory? Why do they fail to understand that communalism cannot be fought with communalism? And that,
if the battle is on communal lines, majority will always be a winner; more so when majoritarianism is a frenzy!
This has been put more aptly in a novel, Guerilla (1975), by V S Naipaul (1932-2018): “When everybody wants to
fight there is nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war. Everybody is guerilla. ...Those
who have won will win every war”.

This helplessness of the minorities becomes greater in a first-past-the-post system. A greater section of
the Muslim elites, during the popular phase of the national movement, fought more for separate electorates, and
less for minority rights in a consociational democracy. Even in the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD, 1946-
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1949), this issue was hardly brought about. We need to remind ourselves that during the course of the CAD, the
bargaining capacity of the Muslims and Liberal Hindus didn’t remain as strong after July 1947 as it was before
that. It got considerably diminished after that, which is yet another major factor why minority rights are on shaky
grounds in India (Pratinav Anil’s recent book, Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority,
1947–77, demonstrates it more clearly). One of my insightful mentors reminds me, “If there could be an
arrangement where, polling of at least 51% of votes cast (through first or second choice), this would be more
conducive to social justice and an attenuation of vote banks. This is something even much admired B. R.
Ambedkar lost sight of. He, having secured reserved seats, took the path of least resistance and forgot to put up
demands such as this, in the CAD/Constitution”. The Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah Commission (set up in 2000
AD), to review the working of the Constitution, had made the following recommendation:

“The [Review] Commission while recognizing the beneficial potential of the system of
runoff contest electing the representative winning on the basis of 50% plus one vote
polled, as against the first-past-the-post system, for a more representative democracy,
recommends that the Government and the Election Commission of India should examine
this issue of prescribing a minimum of 50% plus one vote for election in all its aspects ...
The review commission also said this did not need a major Constitutional amendment but
‘necessary correctives’ could be achieved by ordinary legislation, by modifying existing laws
or rules or by executive action”.

After 1986, the Muslim conservatives and bigots made Indian Secularism even shakier to the extent that
this is one of the reasons (major or minor) why we have reached a situation now 2. Joya Chatterji’s book, Shadows
at Noon (p. 203) puts it more aptly, “Hindutva’s moral code may not yet have become part of the constitution,
but it is a part of India’s everyday life”.

The moot question still remains un-addressed, as to how have the common Muslims been fed with (or
upon) the opium of victimhood? For an answer to this, we need to look into Gopal Krishna’s review (IESHR,
Sage, 1973) of Peter Hardy’s two books (1971-1972), The Muslims of British India, and the other booklet, Partners in
Freedom and the True Muslims: The Political thought of Some Muslim Scholars in British India 1912-1947). The reviewer,
Gopal Krishna, deserves to be quoted at length as he asks us to re-examine and,

“to question and subject to careful investigation several ill-established assertions of a

rather general character originating mostly with the work of W. W. Hunter [Indian
Musalmans, 1871], such as, “Muslims were oppressed by the British after the Mutiny [of
1857]”; “Muslims were educationally comparatively backward”; “Muslims lost lands to
Hindus in Bengal as a result of British policy”; “Muslims did not get a fair share in the
administration”; along with other similar ones, for it is as much on these as on the notion
of the divinely-assigned mission of Muslims in India, and the fear of a threat to Islam from
revived Hinduism, that the separatist movement was nurtured by the Muslim elite. A
mythology of relative deprivation and communal excellence provided the foundation of
this movement, which by stages came to claim Muslims to be a separate nationality and to
demand a homeland for them. In his study, The Muslims of British India, Dr. Hardy has
performed an important service by examining the available evidence on several of these
propositions. He writes, “For the Muslim elite in northern India, British conquest meant
the destruction of a way of life more than the destruction of a livelihood & education” (p.
34). “In judicial employ, except in the highest posts, i.e. judgeships and collectorships,

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 Muslims held their own, in Bengal until the middle of the nineteenth century, in the region
of modern Uttar Pradesh for a generation thereafter” (p. 36). With regard to the effect of
the resumption proceedings on Muslims in Bengal, Dr. Hardy writes, “Muslims did suffer,
but whether they suffered disproportionately to Hindus remains a matter of opinion, not
knowledge” (p. 40), and he quotes the Education Commission Report of 1882 to say that
‘the result of even the harshest resumption case, was, not the dispossession of the holder
but the assessment of revenue on his holding, and even that in no case at more than half
the prevailing rate’ (p. 41).”.

Has there ever been Any Mass Movement for Minority Rights?

With above revelations or expose, we need to ask, who, quite misleadingly, popularized the
narratives of Muslim victimhood? And another question one needs to ask is, in post-independence
period, has there been any big mass movement of India’s Muslims for education, employment, trading
facilities (loans, and other administrative enabling)? The biggest of pan India mass movements of Muslims
have been for subjugation of Muslim women by opposing reforms in Muslim Personal Laws, the reforms which
Pakistan (in 1962), Bangladesh and most Arab countries have undertaken much earlier. This was first in 1972-
1973, and then in 1985-1986 (India Today, January 31, 1986)3. The first wave of Muslim protests culminating into
their convention in Bombay on December 27, 1972. This Muslim Convention decided to form a body to protect
the Muslim Personal Law, or to protect the Shariat Act of 1937 and 1939, codified mainly by Jinnah, for a
political consolidation of the Muslims to actualize the goal of Pakistan 4. This Muslim Convention resulted into
the formation of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) in April 1973 (Hyderabad), even though the
amendment in the relevant laws (Cr. P. C 1898; to help deserted women & abandoned old parents, with
maintenance, and for adoption of child) had to do more with the Hindus. The second one resulted into self-
confessedly trading off of the Babri Masjid to be given away to the Hindu Extremists, and in its exchange,
legislating a law [Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986] against the Supreme Court
verdict of April 23, 1985 in favour of Shah Bano (1916-1992). The confession is made in the Urdu memoir
(Kaarwaan-e-Zindagi, 1988, vol. 3, chapter 4) of the then chief of AIMPLB, Abul Hasan Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-
1999), yet, the confession continues to be ignored. The self-confession doesn’t shock or surprise most of the
Muslims of India.

For the sake of clarity, in this context, let a few things be said here:

In the 1980s, the AIMPLB brand of forces among the Muslims made their own contributions of fodder
to rising majoritarianism. On 15 January 1986, in a session of the Momin Conference at the Siri Fort Auditorium
in Delhi, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi announced his intention to amend the law to nullify the Supreme
Court’s April 1985 verdict in favour of Shah Bano. A legislative bill was introduced in March and it became the
Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in May 1986. In January 1986, as said, there were strident
Muslim protests against the progressive verdict, which had granted Shah Bano (1916-1992), a Muslim woman,
alimony after her divorce5. The approach of the conservative Muslims became pretty clear from the Urdu
memoir, Karwan-e-Zindagi, published in 1988 by Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Miyan Nadvi (1914-1999). In volume 3,
chapter 4, pages 133-134, Nadvi clearly narrates that it is he who had persuaded Rajiv Gandhi not to accept the
proposition that many Islamic countries have already reformed their personal laws. Nadvi’s narration is
triumphalist; he rejoices in the successful accomplishment of his effort to stymie a similar reform in India. He
says his persuasion had a particular psychological impact on Rajiv Gandhi and that his “arrow precisely hit the
target— woh teer apney nishaaney par baitha”. On page 157 comes Nadvi’s candid “confession”: “Our mobilization

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for protecting the Shariat in 1986 resulted into complicating the issue of Babri Masjid and vitiated the
atmosphere in a big way— is ne fiza mein ishte’aal wa izteraab paida karney mein bahut bara hissa liya,” he writes.

For further substantiation, one must read Ali Miyan Nadvi’s memoir, with Nicholas Nugent’s book, Rajiv
Gandhi: Son of a Dynasty (BBC Books, 1990, p.187), reveals:

“...a decision had been taken by the Congress High Command in the early 1986 to ‘play the
Hindu card’ in the same way that the Muslim Women’s bill had been an attempt to ‘play
the Muslim card’... Ayodhya was supposed to be a package deal... a tit for tat for the
Muslim women’s bill... Rajiv played a key role in carrying out the Hindu side of the package
deal by such actions as arranging that pictures of Hindus worshipping at the newly
unlocked shrine be shown on television.”

The lock (Babri Mosque) was opened (at 5.19 pm) within less than an hour of the judgment being
delivered (at 4.40 pm) by the district court of Faizabad on 1 February 1986. As said earlier, the deal between the
Prime Minister, the Muslim clergy and the Momin Conference’s Ziaur Rahman Ansari (Union Minister of State
for Environment in the Rajiv Gandhi led govt; who died in 1992) had already been struck in January 1986. There
is a reference to this in his biography, Wings of Destiny, 2018, written by his son Fasihur Rahman. Yet, a nagging
question remains: who wanted to open the locks, and why? Was it because, in some of the bye-elections, the
Congress had experienced Muslim opposition? The above revealing accounts of Ali Miyan Nadvi and Ziaur
Rehman Ansari and substantiated by Nicholas Nugent should have created some resentment in a majority of
Muslims. It hasn’t. There is a hypocritical silence, rather than an outrage against the deal struck by the Muslim
leaders with the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. This is also to be noted that India reformed Hindu Personal Law
in the 1950s6. Pakistan reformed parts of Muslim laws in 1961, putting restrictions on polygamy and talaq-e-
biddat, or instant triple talaq, was outlawed. [From the very beginning (1930s), separatist politics and gender
injustices are intertwined in the politics of the Shariat Act. In the united British Punjab, a Muslim lady of the
powerful Tiwana family was not given any share in the ancestral property as per the local custom 7. She claimed
her rights under Sharia which sanctioned women a share. To circumvent it, a bill was passed by the Punjab
Legislative Assembly in 1931 that sanctioned the custom of primogeniture (giving succession to the first-born
male child), which deprived women of any share in inheritance. Local custom of denying inheritance rights to
daughters prevail; the centrally legislated Shariat Act is not applicable in the state subject of land and agricultural
affairs]8. Here, it needs to be made some clarifications about codification of Muslim laws in British India.

“In 1866, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the highest court of appeal in the British Empire,
placed the Shariat above local customary law – though it allowed the latter to be used provided “proof of special
usage” could be presented. However, in the following years, the High Courts of Calcutta (1882) and Allahabad
(1900) disallowed the use of customary law for Muslims. But in another see-saw move in 1913, the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council decided that customary law played a major part in Muslim life and allowed its
use in the courts of the Raj…

In the 1930s, the Muslim League took up the case of codifying the Shariat as part of the law of British
India. It sought to end the confusion in courts over which law would apply to India’s Muslims. Since the League
would benefit politically from the emergence of a pan-Indian Muslim identity, it required the Muslim-ness of a
person to be his primary identity. Here, identification with the Shariat – over and above customs of caste and
region – was important. In the end, this politics would go on to produce the Shariat Act, which forms the basis
for Muslim personal law in India today…

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 Yet, customary law still had force. In the Punjab, Muslim landholders were alarmed by a, then radical,
provision in the Shariat that gave women inheritance rights. Under customary law, Punjabi women – Hindu,
Muslim or Sikh – had no rights over their father’s property.

While Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah desired a Shariat Act that would help him create a
pan-Indian Muslim identity, he also wanted the party to do well in the Punjab – a province where large
zamindars held sway. In the end, a compromise was struck and “agricultural land” was excluded from the
purview of the Shariat Act. The Central Legislative Assembly, the parliament of British India, passed the Shariat
Act in 1937 – a move that was seen as a significant victory for the Muslim League at the time”. [It is therefore
necessary to bring out a comprehensive biographical account on the life and times of Shah Bano].

The above narration clearly reveals to us that India’s Muslims didn’t launch any mass movement of
minority rights, neither in the colonial period nor after Independence. In the colonial period, in the name of and
beginning with securing minority rights, the Muslim League, eventually claimed the Muslims to be nation which
eventually required a state too (Jinnah himself didn’t recognize Pakistan’s minorities to be a nation and therefore
they deserving state). Gyan Prakash, the author of Emergency Chronicles, in his interview with Manik Sharma,
Firstpost, December 4, 2018), said:

[Muslim] Minorities received equal rights in the Indian Constitution as a result of the
nationalist struggle against the British, not due to a specific struggle for minority civil
rights. Perhaps only the Dalit movement can claim a history as a civil rights movement.
The Muslims never quite developed a civil rights movement, and became torn between the
Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan and the Congress Party’s nationalist politics. When
the BJP seized the mantle of nationalism and gave it a Hindu majoritarian twist, the
Muslims were left with no historical struggles and memories of a civil rights movement to
summon. Today, unless a movement develops to combine minority rights with a civil rights
struggle, the Muslims will remain vulnerable to the swings of electoral politics.

In the Prologue of his book, Gyan Prakash further clarifies it:

“There is nothing in India like the organic resistance in the United States to Trump’s racist
agenda. The reasons are not far to seek. No history of civil rights battles stands behind the
granting of equal rights to minorities in postcolonial India. Instead, it was the nationalist
struggle against the British rule that produced a secular and democratic constitution. But
with nationalism now hijacked by Hindu majoritarianism, the defence of minority rights
can summon no history of popular struggle on its behalf. The law and institutions have also
failed to push back. In the United States, on the other hand, ground-level resistance is
robust.”9

Puzzling Muslim Politics of Narrative Making

As someone like me who has been teaching postgraduate courses in modern and contemporary Indian
history almost for the last two and a half decades, it grossly intrigues me that my students (majority of them
Muslims) do know that the majoritarian forces are appropriating the likes of Sardar Patel (1875-1950). At the
same time, none of my students know the fact that the anti-Muslim image of Sardar Patel has been rebutted by
Rafiq Zakaria (1920-2005) way back in 1996, Sardar Patel and Indian Muslims. This kind of ignorance among the
Muslim literati persists despite the fact that its Urdu rendering is also available (on Rekhta e-book as well). Let’s

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not forget the fact that Zakaria was someone who has left behind a legacy of a chain of educational institutions.
Yet, his academic interventions are so inadequately known to the Muslim literati.

Some of my intellectually accomplished friends in academia are able to find instances of anti-Muslim
thoughts and practices even of a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru. Fair enough. But the question is, do they take time
out to find instances of Muslim aspirations to establish Islamic State/Hukumat-e-Ilahiya/Nizam-e-Mustafa?
Also, the Indian Secularism, as against the western secularism, as well as against the Pakistani experiences, even
the Islamist forces such as the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind, have got enough space in India to publish their periodicals,
books, to run their madrasas and even their politics. In fact, Muslims speaking against Muslim conservatism and
Muslim communalism, are often quite unpopular within their own community.

I am often intrigued by the Muslim politics of narrative-making, where victimhood of Muslims is their
staple food. It intrigues me, why someone like, Hamid Dalwai (1932-1977), the “Angry Young Secularist” [called
so by Dilip Chitre (1938-2009), as well as by, Mehrunnisa (1930-2017), Dalwai’s wife; see Hamid Dalwai, Muslim
Politics in India, ed. & tr. Dilip Chitre 2023 reprint] an intellectual-activist and novelist must remain much
maligned and much derided by most of the Muslims? 10 Compare such instances with those who keep articulating
victimhood narratives. Such publicists are so very popular among the Muslims. These state of affairs need to be
re-assessed, called into question.

I have followed certain Facebook posts and columns: someone questioning the authenticity of Hadis and
doing much radical re-interpretation of certain Quranic verses is not chastised as much as he is condemned if he
writes something which exposes Muslim communalism and bigotry and writes more towards de-opiating the
Qaum for their obsession with victimhood narratives and questioning their power theology and those who
critique their disproportionate obsession with identity politics. They would either deny Muslims being
reactionaries, or would argue that minority communalism is of no consequence or if they are eventually
persuaded to concede, they would suggest this is not the right time to raise such issues.

Credibility Loss of Liberal-Left and Resurgence of Hindutva

Unfortunately many Liberal-Left also endorse such a cunning argument. This s where the Liberal-Left
lose their credibility and their fight for secular progressivism becomes weak and the Hindutva forces get fodder
to grow. The Hindutva constituency and support-base has been consistently increasing and expanding as they
say that the India’s Muslim minority are not as weak as they are made out to be by the Liberal-Left. They argue
that:

The Muslims rose against the British only after they lost the Mughal power in 1857; most of them joined
the national movement in 1920, only to save the institution of Khilafat (Caliphate) in Turkey, through their Pan
Islamism; they got Pakistan in 1947; they subverted the Supreme Court and forced the Parliament to legislate
against its verdict in 1986. They have got around five dozens of Muslim states and their Pan Islamic solidarity
renders India’s Hindus a vulnerable minority, despite being a majority in their own homeland, India, etc. Lala
Lajpat Rai had expressed his apprehensions around this with C R Das and Madan Mohan Malaviya (Intezar
Husain, Ajmal-e-Azam, 1999). More and more Hindus look upon Indian Secularism more as a favour to the
Muslims and their regressivism and less as a modernizing project of rationalist-progressive foundations of
nationalism. This is what Mushirul Haq (1933-1990) said in his essay, “Secularism? No, Secular State? Well-Yes”,
included in Haq’s 1972 book, Islam in Secular India. Haq asserted that most Muslims and their Ulema “seem to
believe that the state must remain secular but the Muslims must be saved from secularism”. Haq further argues
that the tiny sections among India’s Muslims who have conviction in secularism are referred to by the Muslims
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with contempt. The book is rendered into Urdu, available on Rekhta E-book. I keep adding in this essay about
the availability of the Urdu renderings of certain writings. It is to indicate that one must not plead ignorance on
the part of the Urdu speaking Muslims as a factor. Rather, one must admit that it is not about ignorance, it is
rather about the fact that this is the way narratives of Muslim politics are made and circulated within the
community.

Consider another example. Allama Iqbal, the poet, is almost like an “unofficial prophet” for the Muslims
of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Iqbal’s views on politics of nationalism are something which makes India’s
Muslims’ cohabitation with the fellow Hindu countrymen quite difficult. His debate with Nehru in the 1930s,
resulted into expose’ of Iqbal’s “civility-deficit”.

This civility-deficit persisted in Iqbal’s rebuttal against Husain Ahmad Madani’s “Muttahidah Qaumiyat”
(1938) as well, when he called Husain Madani to be “mischievous” (and even almost a kafir?). Iqbal wrote
[Ehsan, Urdu daily, Lahore, March 9, 1938], “in the mind of Maulana Husain Ahmad [Madani] and others who
think like him, the conception of nationalism in a way has the same place which the rejection of the Finality of
the Holy Prophet has in the minds of Qadianis” (Shamloo, ed, 1944, p. 219; rendered into Urdu as well; available
on Rekhta. Shamloo, the pseudonym was of Lateef Ahmad Sharvani). This was just weeks before Iqbal passed
away [on April 21, 1938]. Iqbal [replying to Nehru's essay, “Orthodox of all Religions, Unite!” (The Modern Review,
vol. 58, Issue 5, 1935)] confessed his exclusionary-separatist nationalism:

“It becomes a problem for Muslims only in countries where they happen to be in a
minority, and nationalism demands their complete self-effacement. In majority countries
Islam accommodates nationalism; for their Islam and nationalism are practically identical;
in minority countries it is justified in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit”11.

Iqbal even went to the extent of accusing Nehru to having “no acquaintance with Islam or its religious history
during the nineteenth century”. Nehru, however, didn’t counter-accuse Iqbal of “no great acquaintance of
Hinduism”. Iqbal keeps addressing Nehru as “the Pandit”. I am still looking for Iqbal’s essay (or poetry) in
sympathy with the pre-Islamic Spain. No luck, as yet!

While presiding over the Muslim League’s annual session in Allahabad (December 29, 1930), he said, “Ï
lead no party. I follow no leader”. In other words while delivering a political address of and for a political party
he claimed for himself no to be a politician. And prior to arguing with Nehru (1935), Iqbal had written as many
as nine letters to E J Thompson (Oxford University) in 1933-34. These were exchanges on political questions. A
comprehensive analysis of Iqbal’s political writings and many self-contradictions therein, reveals him more as a
separatist and less as someone who advocated inter-faith cooperation and mutual co-existence in economy,
administration and mutual co-existence12.

Muslims Need to Understand and Appreciate Hindu Culture

In other words, Muslim thinkers of the Indian subcontinent have all along been avoiding to understand
the Hindu culture the way they should. The Sangh Parivar in our era has been approaching “power through
culture” and the new, educationally and economically “arrived” Hindu articulates majoritarian victimhood
accordingly, argues Sugata SrinivasaRaju, in his recent book, Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul
Gandhi. Sugata Raju adds, “In India after Gandhi, Nehruvian Secularists appear to have mistaken cultural
memory for religious memory” (p. 139). The same can be said about the Muslim thinkers of India. Most of them
have failed to make sense of the Hindu culture and therefore they have failed to negotiate with them for more

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creatively meaningful living in harmony. They have looked upon the Hindu cultures more as victors and rulers
and less as someone with a shared heritage and ancestry of the era prior to the Muslim rulers.

Such a corrective (of Muslims reclaiming their past prior to Muslim rulers) has begun to come out only
now. For instance, a young Pakistani historian of the Columbia University, Manan Ahmed Asif, in his book, The
Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India (2020) and in his previous volume, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and
Muslim Origins in South Asia (2017) has approached the historical past in that way. For harmonious and dignified
living, such exercises of reclaiming the shared ancestry are required to be made a popular narrative across the
subcontinent. India’s Muslims as much as the majoritarian Hindus of India are needed to be told that religious
frenzy has ruined Pakistan. This has been demonstrated in a recent book, Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future by
the nuclear Physicist and public intellectual, Pervez Hoodbhoy. This book examines longstanding complex
themes and issues – such as religious fundamentalism, identity formation, democracy, and military rule – as well
as their impact on the future of the state of Pakistan. We, Indians, need to learn from the self-destructive
mistakes of our neighbours and others.

Summing Up

By way of conclusion, what comes out of the foregoing discussion that the India’s Muslims need to
take themselves out of the three banes, viz, Victimhood Syndrome, Power Theology, and obsession with
Identity Politics. Conversely put, more and more Muslims have to make their own contribution to invest in
secularizing India. They must realize that communalism is no antidote to communalism, and in competitive
communalism, majoritarianism would always be victorious; minority communalism will be an eternal loser. Are
Muslims prepared to realize and introspect about this in order to take up the challenge of the rising
majoritarianism? Are the Liberal-Left forces prepared to tell the Muslims that their conservatism and
communalism can no longer be tolerated with silence and by hiding behind an oft-repeated weak argument that
“this is not the right time to ask the beleaguered religious minorities to ask for internal reforms”? There has
always been less favourable time to ask the minorities for internal reforms and all the time this has consistently
been contributing to further strengthening majoritarianism. India’s Muslims must join the ongoing battles of
reclaiming rationality and pluralist co-existence to fight out bigotry and fanaticism. It is already too late. Yet, it is
never too late.

1 Ziauddin Sardar (2014), Meccah: The Sacred City, p. 338.

2Mohammad Sajjad, “How to Fight the Eclipse After the bhumi Pujan””, Newsclick.In, 13 August 2020,
https://www.newsclick.in/how-fight-eclipse-after-bhumi-pujan

3Shekhar Gupta, Inderjit Badhwar, Farzand Ahmed, “Shah Bano judgement renders Muslims a troubled community, torn
by an internal rift”, India Today, 31 January 1986. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/19860131-shah-
bano-judgement-renders-muslims-a-troubled-community-torn-by-an-internal-rift-800516-1986-01-30

4Also see, Shoaib Daniyal, “A short history of Muslim personal law in India”, Scroll. In. September 4, 2017.
https://scroll.in/article/849068/a-short-history-of-muslim-personal-law-in-india.

5 For the separatist politics of Jinnah in the 1930s, around the theologically non-sustainable provisions of the Shariat, and
the afterlife of that politics, see these three books: Saumya Saxena, Divorce and Democracy, 2022; Julia Stephens, Governing
Islam, 2019; Rina Verma Williams, Postcolonial Politics and Personal Laws, 2006].
6Reba Som, “Jawaharlal Nehru and the Hindu Code: A Victory of Symbol over Substance?”, Modern Asian Studies, 28, 1,
February 1994.
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7 Mohammad Hayat Khan Tiwana (1833-1901), Sikandar Hayat Khan Tiwana (1892-1942; the Premier of the Punjab (1937-

1942) and Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana (1900-1975; Premier of Punjab, 1942-1947). They lorded over the united British
Punjab. The Punjab Muslim League, led by the Nawab of Mamdot, declared Khizr as “biggest obstacle in the creation of
Pakistan” and also as “secular, honest, humble and courteous”, by R. K Kaushik, The Tribune, 30 March 2024.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/comment/remembering-khizar-hayat-tiwana-371749. Kaushik, perhaps with
exaggeration, asserts that “the family owned one lakh acres of land”.

8Also see, Mohammad Sajjad, “On UCC, Personal Law Reform & the Politics of competitive communalism”, 17 July 2023.
https://sabrangindia.in/on-ucc-personal-law-reform-the-politics-of-competitive-communalism/

9Also see, Mohammad Sajjad, 20 July 2020, “Shaheen Bagh: Symbol of Assertion and Slice of History”,

[https://www.newsclick.in/shaheen-bagh-symbol-assertion-slice-history]

10“Rare Interview of Hamid Dalwai Gives Insight into the Social Reformer’s Thinking”, The Wire.In, 23 May 2023.
https://thewire.in/history/rare-interview-of-hamid-dalwai-gives-insight-into-the-social-reformers-thinking
11 Shamloo, ed., Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, 1944, p. 130.

12 S. Hasan Ahmad, The Idea of Pakistan and Iqbal: A Disclaimer. KBL, Patna, 2003/1979.

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