Is the economic marginalisation of Muslims becoming widespread?

Researchers say attacks on Muslims are to send a message that a market dominated by Hindu customers cannot be unconditionally exploited by Muslims

That the politics of polarisation in India keeps getting worse is hardly a secret. But can bangles and dosas be used to inflame old societal divisions and fuel the toxic narrative of an economic boycott of Muslim street vendors and micro-businesses?

Let us face it - India's scrap dealers, bangle sellers, dosa hawkers and tangawallas rarely make news. They are part of the vast army of unsung, uncelebrated individuals who comprise the informal sector, which props up India's economy. Mostly, they remain invisible.

What then explains the spate of attacks on such people, who happen to be Muslim, in recent days in different parts of the country?

The common thread in all the reports – everyone who came under attack was a working-class Muslim trying to earn a living in a pandemic-battered economy. First, it was a Muslim bangle seller in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. On August 22, Tasleem Ali, who sells bangles for a living, found himself catapulted to celebrity status after a video of him being thrashed by a mob went viral. He was allegedly using a Hindu name. Soon after, Ali had an FIR registered against him for allegedly possessing fake documents and molesting a minor. There are multiple versions of what happened, and the case is taking tortuous twists and turns with allegations and counter-allegations.

More recently, there has been another incident where a popular Muslim-owned dosa joint in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, was vandalised because a mob took exception to its name, Shrinath Dosa, and accused the owner of exploiting a Hindu name. The terrified Muslim family has now re-named the place "American Dosa Corner." In another recent incident, a Muslim scrap dealer in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, was forced to chant "Jai Shri Ram."

One has to be exceptionally naïve to see all these incidents as isolated cases. This is not the first time that poor Muslims working in the lowest rungs of India's vast informal economy have been targeted. Last year, two vegetable vendors in Uttar Pradesh's Mahoba district were allegedly stopped from selling their goods by a group of people who accused them of being members of the Tablighi Jamaat and spreading the coronavirus.

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New dangers loom even as old fissures deepen. Pratik Sinha, the co-founder of the portal Alt News, established to debunk misinformation, recently tweeted that Muslim tanga drivers in Telibagh, Lucknow, were accused by sections of the media of painting Pakistan's flag on their tanga. The reality, "The tanga was painted with Islamic symbols, not the flag of Pakistan," he pointed out. Sinha recalls that calls for boycotting Muslim street vendors happened last year during the first phase of the pandemic. What is new, he says, is more and more conversations on social media and blatant calls to boycott Muslims economically.

A May 2020 report by a Delhi-based civil society group, Citizens against Hate, notes, "Economic boycott of Muslims too have been reported from across the country, directly affecting the livelihoods of a community that has already largely been confined to the informal sector." The recent attacks on Muslim street vendors are tell-tale markers of deepening political polarisation and attempts at further economic marginalisation of informal workers of the minority community.

What makes it more worrying is the lack of systematic tracking of the situation of Muslims in the lower rungs of India's informal economy. While there has been work on the status of Muslims in the formal labour market, there is little granular data available on their status in the informal labour market/economy, says Dr Niranjan Sahoo, Senior Fellow with The Observer Research Foundation, a think tank based in New Delhi.

"The most systematic work exploring the status of Muslims in the informal economy was by the Sachar Committee in 2006. However, this too lacked the empirical depth," he adds. In recent years, Sahoo points out, the only credible way of knowing the participation (or absence) of Muslims in the informal labour market is through the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). The PLFS is part of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which provides comparative data among SC, ST, OBC, Muslims, etc.

According to the latest PLFS survey (2019), labour force participation in the informal sector among Muslims is lowest among all social and religious categories. Sahoo sees the recent harassment and attacks on Muslim bangle sellers, shopkeepers and others alongside the prickliness about Muslims adopting Hindu second names as "a continuation of the broad trend of discrimination/exclusion of Muslims since 2014."

He argues that given that Muslims have an overwhelmingly large presence in India's informal labour market and dominate certain low-end jobs such as hawkers, mechanics, barbers, bangle making, masons, these professions are now systematically targeted. "Initially, it began in 2015 with cattle trades, beef production, leather goods which disproportionately employ Muslim labourers. Thus, the recent attacks are part of a systemic effort to marginalise a vast chunk of the Muslim population from the informal sector that acts as the mainstay of the community," he says.

Sahoo authored a report titled, Mounting Majoritarianism and Political Polarization in India, last year for Carnegie Endowment, which also pointed out the role of social media in deepening the polarization and accelerating the pace at which misinformation and propaganda spread. WhatsApp, in particular, Sahoo noted, has emerged as a favoured tool for disseminating misinformation to foment communal discord.

Khalid Khan, Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, and co-author of a study, Muslims in Urban Informal Employment: A Scoping Study of Experiences of Discrimination (2017), also sees the recent attacks on Muslim workers in the informal economy as "an attempt to further economically marginalise the community".

A large number of Muslims are clustered in the informal economy as self-employed workers, points out Khan. Disturbingly, nearly 85 per cent of the wage-workers among Muslims do not have any written contract, according to the Periodic Labour Survey Data (2019-20), Khan says. The corresponding figures are 78 per cent for Hindus and 76 per cent for other religious minorities.

More than half of the workers in the Muslim community are engaged in self-employment. Another 25 per cent of their workers are engaged in casual work. So, the attempt of economic boycott will affect more than 80 per cent of the workers among Muslims, says Khan.

He argues that these incidents "are not simply a fanatic outburst." Rather, he says, "It is a well-thought strategy to create a narrative against Muslims to minimise their access to the market. The sentiment based on religion may play an important role in boycotting small businesses and casual workers effectively. The goal of such attacks is to send a message that a market dominated by Hindu customers cannot be unconditionally exploited by Muslim sellers and workers." He cites the recent attacks on working-class Muslims who adopt Hindu names, or "the practice of name-passing" as an indicator of "prevalent discrimination in the market."

While doing his fieldwork, Khan says, he found that Muslim domestic workers in one of the housing colonies in Delhi-NCR were changing their names merely to improve the chance of getting the job. Asked how they tackle religion-based discrimination in the market, many Muslims who owned small businesses and whom he interviewed also said they adopt "name change" to minimise the loss of customers.

Joining a union may be an effective way of dealing with such challenges. However, Khan points out that this requires a collective effort and alliance with other communities. Relatively fewer Muslim workers are members of any union in self-employment and casual work than Hindu workers. Khan says he has not come across any evidence during his fieldwork of Muslim workers joining unions as a strategy to cope with discrimination. "In fact, they preferred to adapt to the changing market conditions. Name passing is one of the ways of such adaptation in the changing market environment."

In 2020, The National Hawker Federation, an association of street vendors across 29 states in India, had come out to support street vendors from the Muslim community who faced discrimination during lockdowns. Last week, I spoke to the Federation's general secretary, Shaktiman Ghosh. He told me recent attacks targeted Muslim street vendors, such as the bangle seller in Indore. They were typically not part of any organised association and not part of the Federation. "They are going after the most vulnerable lot who can't fight back," says Ghosh.

What helps perpetuate the problem is a growing culture of impunity. Not that there are no arrests of people who are attacking Muslim street vendors, including in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The police do register cases. But they typically peter out.

Why?

Alishan Jafri, a young journalist who has been documenting anti-Muslim violence in India, offers some insights. Jafri says the police and law are more often than not prejudiced against the Muslim community, and "often the victims don't have the fight in them to pursue the painful and tiresome course of justice, partly because of economic woes and partly because their assaulters have patronage. Once the media attention fades, they are rendered easy targets."

There is another layer that complicates things further. Unlike Dalits and Scheduled Tribes to whom the law provides special protection from such targeted assaults, poor and marginalised Muslims, including converts from marginalised castes, ghettoised into very menial informal jobs, have no protection, Jafri adds. Asymmetrical power relations, weak legal protection and societal prejudices load the dice heavily against Muslims in the lowest rungs of India's informal economy.

But should it be left to the weakest to counter this? The many Indians who oppose such targeting of Muslims need to stand up and resist the current trend in their own individual ways.

(Patralekha Chatterjee is an independent journalist and columnist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.