Social justice for Muslims

For long, there has been almost no deliberation over the social and class backwardness amongst the Muslims. Therefore, in the recently concluded Bharthiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national executive meeting at Hyderabad, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered the suggestion that the party members engage with the downtrodden Muslims for their meaningful participation in the national discourse, it appeared to be an important political announcement.

In the UPA’s first regime, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also offered certain policy initiatives to ameliorate the social and class conditions of the backward-class Muslims. However, the secular-liberal discourse on the Muslim questions remained distanced from such deliberations and often addressed it under the rhetorical ‘minority-majority’ syndrome or to build a communal unity against right-wing political assertion.

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The popular debate on secularism in India has overtly been associated with the Muslim minority. The threat of a majoritarian Hindu onslaught offers a valid reason around which the social and political anxieties of the religious minorities are crafted. It helps to create a homogeneous collective identity of the Muslims that often pleads with the State for the protection of its cultural and religious rights. Though such construction appears necessary and realistic, it also blinds the debate about their internal class conditions and everyday social vices that have engulfed the Muslim community for all these years.

Major central-government-sponsored commission reports -- especially the Ranganath Misra (2004) and Sachar Commissions (2005) -- that studied the social and educational backwardness of religious minorities have empirically demonstrated that a vast majority amongst Muslims has been surviving under precarious class conditions. The Muslims are often concentrated into urban ghettos and their localities are distanced from basic public amenities (like hospitals, schools, and banks) and other entitlements (ATM machines, clean drinking water facilities, proper drainage system, and such). They face exclusion in market relationships and suffer discrimination while applying for employment. Also, it is substantiated that the social status of certain groups (called the Arzal Muslims) is worse than certain Untouchable castes among Hindus.

Second, within sociological discourse, it is an overt fact that Muslim political affairs and their social and educational institutions are dominated by the Muslim social elite, often identified as the Sayyids, the descendants of the Prophet. The social stratification among the Indian Muslims almost mimics the Hindu caste system, allowing the rich and socially dignified groups (the Ashrafs, mainly Shaikhs and Pathans) to control the political and class assets of the community. Such an arrangement side-lines the majority of the ‘lower’ Muslims such as Ajlaf or the Pasmanda (the ordinary working class), disallowing them from enjoying positions of power, class and social status. Though such caste-based divisions are antithetical to Islamic principles, the everyday social relationships amongst Muslims are contaminated by such hierarchical denominators.

Third, the Muslim women’s question has also not been discussed under the rubric of modern individual rights or within the radical feminist discourse. Instead, the policy initiatives by State institutions (like the judicial verdict in the Shah Bano case, 1985) or the current government’s Triple Talaq Act are considered as dictatorial interventions that malign the Muslims as a patriarchal and conservative community.

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Under the dictates of secular rhetoric, the Muslim woman’s problems are often privatised as the internal matter of the community and it is suggested that by initiating internal reforms (aligned with the Quranic teachings), patriarchal domination would be curtailed. The debate on Muslim issues is discussed under such a closed concept of secularism, that often disallows the State to perform its fundamental duty, that is, to reveal the sites of exploitative social inequalities in order to widen the scope of justice.

The community is marked by a propensity for exploitation, marginalisation and social discrimination. The secular doctrine proposes a narrow definition that strictly attaches to the protection of religious and cultural rights of the minorities but has no effective method to address the internal class and social troubles among Muslims. It unconsciously creates the Hindu-Muslim binary and provides a stereotypical cultural signpost to retain communitarian differences and ruptures. It escapes the fact that, like many other socially deprived social groups, the Muslims also suffered under abject poverty, caste-based inequalities, educational backwardness and patriarchal domination. Instead, secularism has become a tool in the hands of the social elites to promote a collectivist and homogenous understanding of the community that invariably perpetuate their own interests and domination. Such a method only highlights the threats of Hindu communalism and undermines the diversified social and class crisis looming over the Muslims.

The Muslim question should be scrutinised under the discourse of social justice as the problems faced by these groups in the current situation are related to the growing social inequalities, economic discrimination and political marginalisation.

The method of inquiry into the social justice prospects identifies that the Muslim representation in the State-led institutions and in the market relationships is inadequate. It reveals that the Muslim identity is structured around rhetorical communal appendages (like Babri Masjid, Urdu, beef eating, and burqa) that stalls the intervention of the State in addressing the problems of caste stratification and patriarchal domination within the Muslims. Therefore, the prospect of social justice offers a better policy framework to address the Muslim social and political claims.

The current Muslim question is primarily related to issues of political representation and redistribution of economic assets and should be resolved by adopting newer principles of social justice. The current social justice institutional premise is also not adequate to deal with most of the issues raised here.

Though the Prime Minister has given a popular slogan to engage with the Pasmanda Muslims, it is required that certain universally applicable principles of social justice should be formed to address the inadequacies of the secularism debate. The mechanism of Social Justice can defend the claims and rights of socially deprived communities and prescribe policy initiatives for their economic welfare, insuring social dignity. Under its purview, empowerment of the vast majority of Muslims can be promised, opening a new discourse on the status of Muslims in India.

(The writer teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU)