Politics and Religion in India

Narender Kumar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000691474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume examines how religion is intrinsically related to politics in India. Based on studies from states across the length and breadth of India, it looks at political formations that inform political discourse on the national level and maps the trajectory of religion in politics.

The chapters in this volume:

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• discuss contemporary trends in Indian politics, including Hindutva, citizenship bills and mob violence;

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• draw on fieldwork conducted across states and regions in India on critical themes, including the role of religion in electoral process, political campaigns and voting behaviour, political and ideological mobilization, and state politics vis-à-vis religion, among minorities;

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• focus on the emerging politics of the 21st century.

The book will be a key reference text for scholars and researchers of politics, religion, sociology, media and culture studies, and South Asian studies.

1
Religion, minorities and the Indian state

Himanshu Roy

Contextualizing Muslims as a minority

The minority question (particularly the Muslim question) emerged in post-1857 India. Its social process of emergence, however, had begun from the first decade of the 19th century, when the political sovereignty of the Mughal state was terminated by the British. It had a cascading effect on the traditional elite, particularly on the Muslim elite who were in a dominant position. The failure of the 1857 revolt and the termination of the Mughal dynasty was the final nail in its coffin which had earlier begun to feel the impact of replacement of Persian by English and vernacular languages as the official language of the new colonial state. Combined, these new developments had begun to create fear in them, for the monarchy was the safety box as well as their repository of culture and the centre of patronage. The elite had prided and identified itself with its lineage of Afghans, Persians, Arabs, Turks, Uzbeks, rather than being Indian, whom they had looked down upon.¹ The abolition of dynasty, therefore, deprived them even of emotional support. It made them distraught; the fear of losing their privileges, property and dominance haunted them amidst a Hindu majority bereft of state power.

Under the new colonial state, which had become hostile to Muslims for a while after 1857, there had emerged since the 1870s a section of the pan-Indian political elite that had begun to demand political rights premised on the principles of British liberalism. In other words, it meant to initiate the process of electoral politics and the formation of legislative bodies. Earlier, Rammohan Roy and other civil rights activists had already demanded legalizing civil rights under expanding colonial rule. Such developments had further enhanced their insecurity of being swamped by the Hindu majority; it was felt that a new emerging elite was challenging their dominance. In this socio-political context, we find two Muslim councillors in the Bengal Legislative Council expressing their fear of being a Muslim minority at a legislative-political forum and seeking safety from the colonial state in 1873–74, when Assam was being separated from Bengal as administrative unit.

Colonial state

Subsequently, when the Congress had begun to seek Indian representation in the legislative bodies premised on liberal principle of citizenship as an instrument of political modernity for India based on the British pattern of liberalism, democracy and good governance – which essentially meant focus on individualism and application of rule of law transcending the primordial relations of religion, caste and region – the Muslim elite, particularly a segment led by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association (M.A.O.) opposed it. It perceived this demand as a medium of Hindu domination and unfit for an unhomogenized population and for an ‘unwilling minority’. In fact, they felt ‘that the National Congress is strongly opposed and hostile to the political rights of Mohammedans’. In a speech delivered at Lucknow in 1887, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had remarked they (the National Congress) wanted to copy the English House of Lords and the House of Commons – the elected members were to be like members of the House of Commons and the appointed members like the House of Lords. Now, let us suppose the Viceroy’s Council made it this way. And let us suppose first of all that we have universal suffrage, as in the United States, and that everybody, chamars and all, have votes. And suppose that all the Mohammedan electors vote for a Mohammedan member and all Hindu electors for a Hindu member, and now count how many votes the Mohammedan members have and how many the Hindus. It is certain the Hindu members will have four times as many because their population is four times as numerous. And now how can the Mohammedan guard his interest? He questioned the audience and then he himself answered it. Let a rule be laid down that half the members are to be Mohammedan and half Hindu and that the Mohammedans and Hindus are each to elect their own men.² This questioning and proposal was further supplemented by ‘A Mohammedan Manifesto’, drafted by the M.A.O. Defence Association, ‘dealing with the issue of the representation of Mohammedans on the Legislative Councils and Municipalities’. The Association had sought ‘adequate representation … for minorities’ and had argued that the ‘Mohammedan community must be regarded as a political unit with its own interests and sentiments’.³ Here it must be noted that Sir Syed was the leading member of this Association. In fact, it was at his residence that the initial meeting was held to form this Association and he was one of the members of its rule-drafting committee. In their defence, he had argued that as the first essential for inaugurating any system of government, regulated purely and entirely by the majority of votes (as such systems must necessarily be), it is indispensable that there should be a tangible homogeneity among the voters in point of race, religion, social manners, customs, economic conditions and political traditions of history. In other words the franchise, or the right of voting by the representative system, necessarily presupposes homogeneity, that is similarity among the voters and the population of country in general in regard to the aforementioned points, before the representative system can have any application or be productive of any good.⁴ Similarly, their proposal of separate electorate was premised on the logic that Muslims were a separate nation (Kaum), which must have equal representatives at par with Hindus. The principle of one man one vote will lead to Hindu domination due to their numerical preponderance and will adversely impact power relations. It was explicitly posited ‘that Mahommedans can ever accept Hindus as their rulers’ and that they are ready to sacrifice themselves for that glory which they still inherit from their forefathers, who were erstwhile the rulers of India. Sir Syed himself had commented that our nation (Muslims) is of the blood of those who made not only Arabia, but Asia and Europe, to tremble. It is our nation which conquered with its sword the whole of India, although its people were all of one religion.⁵ Evidently, they treated Muslims as one homogenized community with shared political traditions of history and Hindus as their subjects. Their subjects becoming their rulers under the representative system of one man one vote haunted them. Inevitably, they opposed it with all their might and counterpoised it with an alternative proposal of a separate electorate. Unfortunately, the British in later years constitutionalized this alternative proposal through the 1909 Act and institutionalized the minority policy. More shockingly, the extremist faction of the Congress accepted this policy of the separate electorate in 1916 at the Lucknow Congress, which was a volte-face of the earlier secular stand of the moderate faction that had consistently opposed the communal electorate of the M.A.O. Defence Association and of the Muslim League. The extremists, in fact, in their zeal to counteract the colonial state after the 1909 Act moved a step ahead: (1) they extended the provision of the separate electorate to a greater number (seven) of provinces, and (2) they empowered the representatives of the Muslim community (three-fourths in number) to block any legislation they felt harmful for the community (clause 4 of section 1 of the Reform Scheme).⁶ In other words, they allowed the creation of an Augean stable among them by shutting the doors of reforms on the pretext of safeguarding their cultural-religious identities, which objectively benefited their elite and preserved their feudal cultural desideratum including that of their religious personal laws. In the process, the Congress facilitated the existence of and created the conditions for the emergence of two religious social categories – the minority and majority – which led to the demand for a consolidated Indian Muslim state in the northwest within India⁷ (1930), enactment of the Shariat Act (1937) and ultimately the partition of the country. It may be recalled here that prior to the enactment of the Shariat Act, the personal laws of Hindus and Muslims were regional in character and were fused; and it was during the process of their separation (1937) that Iqbal⁸ had proposed the formation of ‘a free Muslim State’ (1937). Derivatively, it was the communal compromise of Lucknow that subsequently catapulted the religious segregation and obstructed the secularization process in the colonial regime and in post-partition India.

Constituent Assembly and minorities

During the transfer of power, the Constituent Assembly classified the minorities in two categories – (1) Anglo-Indians and (2) the rest (Muslims, Christians) – and formulated its policy in two different stages. While the policy for the Anglo-Indians remained consistent in both the stages, the policy for the others changed. In the first stage, which was formulated before the partition, the minorities were granted the (1) social and the (2) political safeguards. In the second stage, which was formulated after the partition, while the political and social safeguards for the Anglo-Indians remained in fact as it was envisaged, the political safeguards for the rest (Muslims, Christians, etc.) were abolished. Only their social safeguards remained intact and were enshrined as their fundamental rights. An analysis of them shall elucidate the logic behind their incorporation, retention or deletion from the constitution. Beginning with the special minority right (fundamental rights) may be the appropriate method.

In the fundamental rights category, there was one specific minority right which was in the nature of education. It was Article 30 that conferred the right to ‘establish and administer’ their educational institutions. It was different from the rest in terms of certain legal privileges and civil immunities. While the rest of the institutions manifested the philosophy of individualism and of modern citizenship of one category, equal before the law and secular in nature, the minority educational institutions were distinct in terms of being representatives of a ‘religious community’. They were separated from the ambit of legal equality to be conferred a special right called their social safeguards to preserve their script, culture, language, religion and so forth. In other words, it meant that they had the right to be separate as a religious community and administer themselves separately in matters of their educational institutions. The specificity was that the educational institutions were (1) free to adopt their own selection procedure for admission of students, (2) free to choose their teachers and members in the management committee/governing body, (3) free not to subject all the appointments and terminations of staff to the prior approval of the Directorate University and (4) free to formulate their religious curriculum. Subsequently, it was added by the 25th Amendment Act, 1971, that in case of compulsory acquisition of properties of minority institutions, they had to be compensated, which was however not applicable in case of the acquisition of property of educational institutions of the majority community. Only one limitation was imposed on it (Article 30) that also evolved through the judicial process after numerous cases came to it for interpretation. It may be stated here that Article 30 itself did not ‘lay down any limitations upon the right of a minority to administer its educational institutions’. The judiciary, through numerous interpretations in different cases, evolved a bunch of regulations on the functioning of this Article. It declared that Article 30 was (1) not absolute, that (2) it must be consistent with the national interest and (3) its right to administer educational institutions must not lead to maladministration. It must follow its laid-out procedures and its constitutions, which must be ‘for the benefit of the institution’ and for the benefit of the minority community. It did not, however, transcend the minority paradigm, and in spite of imposing the regulations on the educational institutions, it juristically recognized them as separate and autonomous bodies and provided them with conditions that facilitated their perpetuation.

Now a question arises as to why the Constituent Assembly did not abolish this special minority right even after the partition, as it had abolished the other minority rights. A plausible, derivative argument may be that the Constituent Assembly might not have perceived this special minority social safeguard as harmful for the polity in the post-1947 period. Instead, it might have perceived it as the safest method to placate the minorities in India even after 1947 without risking the polity. It was more a harmless assurance in the absence of political safeguards which were abolished after the partition. It was also to show that India, despite partition, was a secular state and partition did not deter its character. However, in the process, it proceeded against the views of Gandhi, who had argued that the state should not aid and recognize religious education in educational institutions. It also failed to overcome the fact that the retention of religious personal laws along with the grant of a minority right of education occurred because the Indian bourgeoisie was not in a position to risk the possible antagonism of a large religious population for such ‘petty’ issues like education and personal laws. Moreover, it was a reflection of the backwardness of a society that treats education and personal laws as low in social ranking in comparison to the importance of executive power of the state. Therefore, the Constituent Assembly abolished the political safeguards for the minorities while retaining the minority education, for the political safeguards were a threat to the executive power of the state. A study of their initial insertion before partition in the constitution and then their subsequent deletion after partition may provide the logic for the changing stance of the members of the Constituent Assembly.

It may be repeated here that Constituent Assembly had appointed an Advisory Committee on 24 January 1947 to submit its reports on minority rights. In the pre-partition Assembly, the Committee formulated its reports as per the then prevailing situation which included (1) the minority right on education and (2) the political rights of minorities. The political rights covered the following points: (1) representation of minorities in legislatures; (2) abolition of a separate electorate; (3) representation of the minorities as per the Convention based on the 1935 Act in the Cabinets of Center and Provinces; (4) the embodiment of an appropriate provision in the constitution for the appointment of minorities in public services; (5) the appointment of special minority officers; and (6) the formation of a Statutory Commission for recommending the steps to be taken for their upliftment. It may be noted here that in spite of recommending such rights, as a matter of general principle, the Committee opposed the weightage for any minority community (CAD Vol. 5: 244), and its recommendations were with utmost restraint. In fact, except for recommending the reservation in legislatures for minorities that, too, after abolishing the separate electorate the Committee did not recommend any kind of reservation for them either in public services or in Cabinets. Instead of reservation, it suggested (1) an inclusion of a directive to the central and provincial governments, an exhortation to them, to pay due regard to the claims of minorities and the (2) the application of the Convention as per the 1935 Act. Both of them were, essentially, to be executive orders in nature rather than mandatory constitutional application (as reservations would have been). In order to make these recommendations applicable, the Committee further recommended the appointment of special minority officers, both at the Centre and in each province, to enquire into the cases if the rights and safeguards of the minorities were violated/infringed upon and to submit the reports to the appropriate legislatures. The Committee was more concerned with their backwardness; and in order to bring them up to the general community, it recommended for the constitution of a statutory commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes, to study the difficulties under which they labour and to recommend to the Union or the unit government, as the case may be, steps that should be taken to eliminate their difficulties and suggest the financial grants that should be given and the conditions that should be prescribed for such grants (CAD Vol. 5: 247). The motive was ‘to harmonize the special claims of minorities with the development of a healthy national life’. In fact, the approach was that the state should be so run that minorities should stop feeling oppressed by the mere fact that they are minorities, and that on the contrary they should feel that they have an honourable a part to play in the national life as any other section of the community (CAD Vol. 5: 247).

Keeping in tune with this motive and the general opposition to the principal of weightage to minorities, the committee at the first opportunity after partition debunked its own recommendations and arguments and instead noted that there should be no reservation of seats for re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Religion, minorities and the Indian state
• 2 Politics of religious polarization in India: insights from riots in Gujarat (2002), Kandhamal (2008) and Muzaffarnagar (2013)
• 3 Sikh politics in Punjab: Shiromani Akali Dal
• 4 Religion, ethnicity and politics: understanding the BJP’s rise in Assam
• 5 Church and political action in Mizoram
• 6 Identity, religion and development: the changing nature of political mobilization of Muslims in post-Sachar West Bengal
• 7 Hindutva as a ‘sacred form’: a case study of Karnataka
• 8 Nature and dynamics of religion-oriented politics in Kerala
• 9 Politics of Hindutva in Maharashtra: actors, causes and political effects
• 10 Religion-polity interface in Jammu and Kashmir: an analysis
• 11 Religion as a tool for political mobilization in Bihar
• 12 Beyond othering: a study of Hindu Political in Gujarat
• 13 Indian political space and religion: perspectives and exploring alternatives
• Index