JOIN USRSS must recognise why many Muslims live in fear
Born Brahmin, raised without any sense of caste superiority, I had little realisation of the power wielded over Scheduled Castes by most among Upper Castes till a conversation with the deceased Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, Kanshi Ram. Early in 1990, when the BSP was beginning to stir up Uttar Pradesh's political cauldron with a steady rise in vote share, he argued that unless one led at least a "day in discrimination", it was impossible to sense how low self-esteem undermined the confidence of average Dalits. Only the politically empowered overcame this, but they constituted a miniscule percentage of the community.
The conversation made me recall what a Sikh friend said months after the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. He was contemplating chopping his hair and shaving his beard. It was tough to fathom his reason because after three days of mayhem, the situation had returned to 'normalcy'. There was also widespread condemnation in the strata of society he and I moved in. Every time I attempted dissuading him, his stock reply was: "Bro, you do not know what it feels like to be looked at with suspicion in public places." I had indeed no answer and he went ahead although till date he regrets his altered physical identity.
Months ago, I was in discussion with a Muslim friend on alienation and anxiety of the community. My friend, a noted social scientist, does not ‘look a Muslim’. That is, he does not sport a beard or wear a skull cap that would distinguish him from a mass of Indians anywhere. During our conversation, he shared a troubling personal detail. He said he was always on the horns of a dilemma whenever travelling in a bus or a train or when at a public place in the hearing range of strangers when his mobile rang.
"If it is one of my Muslim friends or a family members, more often than not I am greeted with ‘as-salaam-alaikum,” he said. And continued, "The split second before I frame my reply, mostly garbled, is the time when I too sense fear." In the millisecond that he had at his disposal before responding, he would decide whether or not he should respond with a ‘wa-alaikum-salaam’. Using the traditional reply would "reveal his identity". Now this is again is a dilemma only Muslims would face.
These different exchanges spread over three-and-a-half decades returned to haunt in the backdrop of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) sah sarkaryavah or joint general secretary, Krishna Gopal, questioning the belief that Muslims in India "are afraid". He made it out as if there was something 'wrong' in being afraid and did not examine why Muslims were fearful while other religious minorities were not.
His assertion is part of the organisation's overdrive to dispel the image as one that thrives on Islamophobia. While this stance is necessary during campaign and during political expansion when cementing its flanks, it is inconvenient when one of its affiliates is wielding power and this benefits the RSS hugely.
Krishna Gopal used a mistaken argument to state his case against the sentiment of fear, alienation and anxiety among Muslims. "They are more than 16 crore then why are they afraid...Why and from whom?” Gopal asked. He further contended that it was difficult to comprehend Muslim fear because other minorities such as Parsis, Buddhists and Jews, who were much smaller in number, did not feel insecure in India.
"How many Parsis are in India... hardly 50,000, Jains 45 lakh and about 80 lakh Buddhists are there...Jews are only 5,000," Gopal said. "They are not afraid of anyone," the RSS leader said with a flourish. However, it was surprising he did not mention Sikhs. Does this indicate that the RSS has stopped viewing the community as a religious minority?
That apart, there are two flaws in Krishna Gopal's line of reasoning: First he asked if Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and Jews, although numerically smaller communities than Muslims, were not fearful of living in India, why were Muslims running scared?
The snag in this argument is that if Muslims begin to look at their numerical presence as a matter of strength, it would further jeopardise their security because the likes of Krishna Gopal would then term it as an instance of minority communalism or an illustration of herd mentality within the community.
Secondly, the RSS leader said that he failed to comprehend why the community which "ruled" India for five centuries should now fear for its existence in the country. This line of reasoning follows the hackneyed approach to history by dividing it into Hindu and Muslims periods. That is, the past is a story of the emperor and not that of the ruling classes. It ignores the fact that Muslim emperors could establish hegemony only because local kings and chieftains collaborated with them and became partners in state power.
Fear among Muslims is because citizenship has been linked with religious identity and the incessant spread of social prejudice against them. Moreover, fear among a majority of Muslims is not just about the worry of being targeted by violent mobs, but also the internal dread that some would foist on the community the false image that was stuck in the first tenure of the Narendra Modi government: That Muslims are intrinsically anti-Hindu, have pan-Islamic aspirations over nationalistic sentiments and believe in taking the law into their own hands.
The Muslim fear stems from the community being targeted in a majoritarian polity. The political leadership sets the example from the top – the prime minister during election campaign targeted his principal rival, Rahul Gandhi, for shifting to Wayanad only because the "majority is in minority there". This line of attack was chosen not just because it vilified Gandhi but chiefly because it also provided an opportunity to raise the spectre of a Muslim conspiracy to reduce Hindus to a demographic minority in ‘their own country’.
It is common knowledge that Muslim fear finds expression in self-censorship like in the case of the friend cited above. There are also innumerable accounts of mothers warning their children not to crack jokes in public places and to act with restraint. Muslims kids are discouraged from playing video games involving shooting and there are many reports of Muslim parents disallowing children from wearing traditional dresses on social occasions.
Violence against Muslims and their 'othering' has become so frequent that it no longer appears as something that is happening suddenly but rather as occurring as a result of constant encouragement in non-political units.
In a country where members of a community are fearful of revealing their religious identity unless they are in a place where they feel 'safe' because there are many of 'them', shows how deep the sense of fear has set in. There are numerous reasons for Muslims to live in fear. While organised violence in the form of riots may be in decline as a way to score political brownie points, the daily onslaught continues.
Instead of dismissing this, it is time that the RSS as the conscience keeper of this regime recognises this. If fear among Muslims if not addressed, it is likely to worsen internal security and will not be good for the health of the nation, especially its economy. It is well established that if alienated communities are not included in social and political conversations by the State and its supporters, they get further estranged. Going by the curve that home-reared terrorism has followed in Kashmir and other parts of India, after a sense of alienation comes the sentiment of separatism and when even this is not addressed, some in those regions consider taking recourse to violence. The majority does not turn to the violent path, but the handful who do, threaten already tense security environs.
(Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is a Delhi-based journalist and author. His latest book is RSS: Icons Of The Indian Right. He has also written Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times (2013))
The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.