Book: Nation-State and Minority Rights in India: Comparative Perspectives on Muslim and Sikh Identities
Author: Tanweer Fazal
Routledge, 2014,pp. 256, price not stated.
By Shefali Jha,
With numerous incidents of what the RSS offshoot, the Dharm Jagran Samanvay Samiti calls ‘ghar wapsi’, (250 Muslim families being reconverted to Hinduism in Agra in November, 2014, and 40 Mazhabi Sikh families who had embraced Christianity being reconverted to Sikhism in Amritsar in December 2014), Tanweer Fazal’s book is certainly a topical contribution to the continuing debate, or if you like, confrontation, over the religious rights of minorities in India. One of Fazal’s main arguments is to discount ‘the commitment of the Indian polity towards minority rights’ (p. 32).
Fazal rightly, I think, marshals the acrimonious debate over religious and cultural rights, including ‘the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion’ (Article 25) as well as other minority safeguards, in the Indian Constituent Assembly. He argues that Indian nationalist leaders, following the model of western nationalism which imposed a linguistic and ‘cultural monism’ on a heterogenous population, were loathe to grant differentiated rights to minorities in India. Whatever minority rights that were granted, were, first, limited to the cultural domain, second, justified on the twin grounds of either being necessary to pull up ‘backward’ groups or to prevent dissatisfied minorities from becoming a ‘canker sore’ in the body of the nation, and third, have often been under threat in the history of Independent India. The debate about minority rights has been addressed in other work as well; what is interesting about Fazal’s book is the other strand of the author’s argument. His position is that the focus on minority rights has not really furthered the cause of the Muslims or the Sikhs. He critically analyses the process of ‘minoritization’ of both these communities before Independence, as well as the stance of ‘minorityism’ of the sovereign Indian polity. He also presents to us the views of the members of these communities, both during the freedom struggle, as well as in contemporary times, questioning these processes. Fazal analyses the gradual transformation of the Muslims in colonial India from a cultural community into a political minority which needed to be safeguarded.
The intervention of the British colonial state in the form of the Government of India Acts of 1909, 1919, and 1935 which provided for separate electorates, and extended reserved seats from Muslims to Sikhs to Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and many other categories, furthered this process. Eventually some Muslim groups claimed that minority safeguards would not be sufficient to protect the Muslims and ensure their welfare; for that they needed their own nation state. Fazal’s third chapter, however brings out the disparate positions within the Muslim leadership on this issue: Maulana Husayn Ahmad Madani, the head of the Deobandi Jamiat-Ulema-i-Hind held on, for example, like Abul Kalam Azad, to the idea of a composite nationalism, while Jinnah and the Muslim League proclaimed the idea of religious nationalism. Another position was that of Maulana Maudidi and the Jamaat-i-Islami which opposed any kind of nationalism in the name of a universal religious community. A fourth position was expressed by the Muslims of the Muslim majority provinces in India. These Muslims were ‘neither a part of the Urdu elite nor believed in any theocratic political philosophy; their comprehension of nationhood had local influence and inspiration…Abu Hashim, the chief organizer of the Bengal League…claimed India as a multi-nation, rather than Akhand Bharat or two nations, and Bengal as one of the constituent nations’ (p. 74) .
Some of these differences are also reflected in how Muslims today respond to their identification as a minority. In this context, Fazal also criticizes the stance of minorityism: ‘Minorityism is a culturalist myopia that appeals to identity mobilizations, religiocultural symbolisms and homogenous profiling of communities while glossing over the inequities of power and deficits of development faced by such groups . . . Inherent in minorityism is the tendency to even out internal differentiation and persisting hierarchies within minority cultures’ (p. 86) . The author has interviewed about twenty Muslims including men and women drawn from different areas of Delhi, from different professions and castes, of different ages and educational backgrounds, and with different degrees of religiosity. Some of the respondents refuse to accept their identification as a minority—instead, they refer to themselves as India’s second largest majority and talk about their contribution to the Independence struggle. The leaders of the Pasmanda Muslims also argue that a focus on minorityism leads to neglect of the less well off in the Muslim community.
With respect to the Sikhs as well, Fazal shows how under colonialism, the British recruited large numbers of Sikhs into the Army and British officials encouraged the Sikhs to think of themselves as separate from the Hindus: ‘Sikhs in the Indian Army have been studiously “nationalized” or encouraged to regard themselves as totally distinct and separate nation. Their national pride has been fostered by every available means’ (p. 105). Some of the Singh Sabhas that were formed in the late 19th century, for instance, the Singh Sabha of Lahore, also emphasized the distinctiveness of the Sikhs in terms of their Khalsa identity. Khalsa Sikhs who followed the five Ks—kes, kangha, kara,kachha and kirpan—were considered the true Sikhs, and there was a push towards an exclusive Sikh identity rather than a more liminal identity. ‘Sikh syncretic moulds such as Nanakpanthis, Udasis, and other Sahajdhari and Sanatan groups’ were excluded from being part of Sikhism (p. 113). The Punjabi Suba movement of the 1960s and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 also contributed to the crystallization of a separate Sikh identity.
Fazal interviewed about twenty Sikhs from different parts of Delhi, representing a diversity of backgrounds. He found that the Sikhs of Delhi, unlike the Jat Sikhs of Punjab do not have a demand for a separate Sikh homeland. They position themselves as more integrated with the rest of Delhi’s population—as evidence Fazal points to how respondent after respondent referred to only an inchoate mob or slum dwellers as responsible for the anti-Sikh riots. The valuable lesson that one can take away from this book, if one listens to the words of the Muslims and Sikhs interviewed, is the sense of India as a nation that belongs to diverse communities.
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(Shefali Jha is with the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The review was first published in The Book Review, VOLUME. XXXIX NUMBER.2 FEBRUARY 2015. )