Looking for Muslims in an Indian ‘State Nation’
This is a shortened version of my article on the exclusion of Muslims from public and political spaces in India
Recently, controversy erupted when Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) gave an ultimatum to the Maharashtra government to shut down loudspeakers in mosques. Though his demand was framed as a ’social issue’ concerning ’noise pollution’, chiefly on trial was the booming sound of the azan, the Muslim call for prayer. Thackeray threatened that if the offending loudspeakers were not removed, MNS would “put loudspeakers in front of the mosque and play Hanuman Chalisa”. The statement needs some unpacking. By ‘threatening’ to play Hanuman Chalisa, Thackeray converted the religious mantra into a weapon to beat Muslims with. More importantly, by posing his threat as a tit-for-tat response to the playing of azan, Thackeray betrayed his assumption that public spaces in India are, by default, Hindu, and any Muslim presence in them is an imposition which the Hindu may graciously allow, or not. So much for the famed Hindu tolerance that underpins India’s ‘Unity in Diversity’.
Radical Potential of ‘Unity in Diversity’
‘Unity in Diversity’, today, occupies a position akin to the beauty pageant cliché ‘world peace’ — it is, at best, a fanciful homily and, at worst, a cynical lip-service. Yet, it was once a necessary phrase for Indian nationalism. In the late 19th century, as Indian political leaders from various parts of the subcontinent tried to develop a nationalist political consciousness, they were compelled to look past differences in language, religion, dress, cuisine and most other aspects of daily life. To do so the nationalists invoked a unifying civilisational thread that had bequeathed upon our people a distinctively Indian “set of morals and mental qualities”. Over time the idea of unity in diversity became embedded in our political culture, and even became mythicised.
The civilisational ‘dream of unity’ that Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged in The Discovery of India was to be achieved without imposing any kind of uniformity. Quite the opposite. This was a unity that not just recognised, but encouraged, difference. The seemingly banal phrase thus had the potential to re-conceptualise nationalism, far beyond the narrow European idea that demanded high level of conformity to a ‘national culture’. This radical reconceptualisation, however, couldn’t be achieved by members of the Nationalist elite, a class that “came to (India) via the West and looked at her as a friendly Westerner might have done”.
While the ‘romantic’ Nehru celebrated India’s diversity, the ‘scientific’ Nehru sought a centralised state power that would usher in a rapid industrialisation post-independence. This state would inevitably create in its image a uniform, secularised citizen, possessor of ‘full and equal rights of citizenship irrespective of religious, linguistic or other cultural differences’. In this ‘progressive’ vision, diverse cultures would be reduced to mere quirks of domestic life, devoid of any political significance.
’State Nation’ as a solution
A glimpse of what a radical reconceptualisation of nation-state would look like appears in Yogendra Yadav’s idea of the ‘state nation’ which accepts that political boundaries need not coincide with cultural ones, and that a political community can be imagined across deep diversity. Yadav first highlights that the presumed default model of ‘nation state’ is a relic of 19th century France, a place where “advocacy of federalism was at times a capital offence”. This model in its attempt to match the political boundaries of the state with the presumed cultural boundaries of the nation can lead to the use of social pressure to suppress alternative cultural practices and “coercion that might, in the extreme, even involve ethnic cleansing”.
The ’nation’ in the ‘state nation’ model can contain multiple politically salient cultures. It envisions “not only multiple but also complementary identities within a multinational, federal, democratic framework”. The success of this model can be witnessed in countries like Spain, Belgium and India. In India, for instance, a 2005 survey revealed that only 15% of citizens had an ‘exclusively Indian’ identity, while 73% felt connected to their state identities (to varying extents). Conservative nationalists, believing that national identities are mutually exclusive, assert that encouraging multiple identities will necessarily lead to separatism. Yadav argues that this is a ‘gross oversimplification’, highlighting that despite the high level of attachment to state identity seen in India, only around 20% of citizens privileged their state identities over their Indian identity.
Yadav credits the success of the ’state nation’ model to policies which not only provide a platform for the public expression of different identities and mediate on competing claims but also require “respect for the common institutions of the state”. Though he identifies various societal ‘ideal types’ allowing for both geographically concentrated social cleavages and diffuse ones, all the examples presented in support of ‘state nation’ policies refer to identities that invariably have a territorial element.
Conspicuous Exclusion from ’State Nation’
Yadav’s focus on geographically concentrated identities has the effect of leaving out the most explosive social cleavage in India, the Hindu-Muslim division, given that Muslims are geographically dispersed to a large extent. In the conclusion to his paper, Yadav makes all the right noises about rising ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ and the 2002 Gujarat riots, going as far as to recognise the ‘Gujarat model’ as a threat to India as a ‘state nation’. He does all this despite not discussing Muslim identity as a constituent of the ’state nation’ at any length.
One of the ‘ideal types’ that Yadav identifies but does not discuss is a society “where socio-cultural divisions exist but are not geographically concentrated and are not articulated in a ‘nationalist’ vocabulary”. This type is called a ‘multicultural’ society, with the author refraining from the use of the N-word. Perhaps implicit in this formulation, is the assumption that ‘national’ identities cannot form in a geographically diffuse community; this plainly contradicts the two-nation theory which resulted in India’s partition. Perhaps it is the painful history of India’s partition that prevents Yadav from discussing an independent and politically active Muslim identity, in the same way that he does regional or linguistic identities.
Whatever the reason, it is clear that Muslim identity has not benefited from the same ‘state nation’ policies that have helped create political space for other cultural identities. While Muslim identity in domestic life is barely tolerated, any display of ‘Muslimness’ in public is viewed with suspicion. As Hindu fundamentalism grows in confidence, every attempt is being made to stamp out any sign of ‘Muslimness’ from public spaces — be it hijabs in Karnataka or azans in Mumbai. As Hilal Ahmed notes in his book Siyasi Muslims, “Every aspect of Muslim life is problematized to create an impression that Muslim identity is an irresolvable political phenomenon.” This includes the birth of a Muslim, his madrasa education, his married life, and even his burial upon his death.
It is important to recall that regional and linguistic identities were once viewed with suspicion too. When the first National Integration Council was convened by PM Nehru in 1961, among the ‘evils’ targeted were ‘regionalism’ and ‘linguism’. It was only through the ‘political strategies and specific institutional responses’ of the state-nation model that these identities were mainstreamed in Indian politics. Muslims, certainly, have a larger hurdle to cross since they carry the albatross of Partition (despite the fact that less than 9.5% of Indians could vote at that time), and since divisions forged in violence and massacre cannot be easily bridged.
A good first step towards including Muslims in an Indian state-nation would be to distinguish between a politically active Muslim identity and Muslim separatism, and understand that the former doesn’t necessarily lead to the latter. Just as a linguistic and a national identity can be complementary, so too can a religious and a national identity. Once this is accepted we may investigate the specific sites at which linguistic identities were mainstreamed and how these sites were closed off to the Muslims. The process will not be easy; it will inevitably be resisted by the foot-soldiers of Hindutva who depend on the permanent Otherisation of Muslims to “hide its ambiguities and internal contradictions”. It is nonetheless the only way that a Muslim can exist in India, not just domestically but also in the public sphere, not as the permanent Other but as an Indian.
