The Minority Myth
“We all have multiple identities in India, we are all minorities in India. Our heterogeneity is definitional.” ~Shashi Tharoor
The world celebrates December 18 as Minorities Rights Day to uphold the right of freedom and equal opportunities for the ethnic minorities in one’s country and create awareness about the respect and dignity of the minorities.
For a long time now, the current Indian government has faced continuous backlash from international media and foreign governments over their treatment of the minorities in the country. Whether it was the lynching of Mohammad Alhlaq in 2015, the NRC & CAA fiasco, harassment of Jamia students over protests, the vicious Tablighi narrative or several controversial statements made by Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath among many others, the saffron party has made a clear stand on the Hindu dominance in the country.
Boastful display of Hindu triumphalism has become a common spectacle during elections. Whether it’s an on-camera meditation in the holy caves of Kedarnath or a dip in the Ganges of Varanasi, the Prime Minister kicks off every election campaign by triggering the majority’s religious sentiments. I will not even bother by saying how it’s unsuitable for a PM to demonstrate religious acts merely to swing votes in a secular democracy. If you still don’t get it, you never will. But since this day is designated to the minorities of the country, why not look back to how we survived so many years of ‘Hindu khatre mei hai’ struggle.
Even though it’s not a great time to be a minority in India, the foundation of the country was laid on very different ideologies & ideas concerning the minorities. When Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah constantly emphasised on a two nation theory where he suggested Indian Muslims must have a separate nation to themselves since Hindus and Muslims cannot live in peace together, Gandhi-Nehru aimed to build the nation as an inclusive society where Hindus and Muslims could live together in friendship and solidarity.
Supported by a highly descriptive and inclusive constitution India ditched Jinnah’s two nation theory and lived up to its vision of secularity. (Or at least pretended to)
A newly independent India had its highs and lows post 1947, but Indira Gandi’s historic win in 1971 and creation of Bangladesh as an independent nation became a huge landmark for the secularists of the country.
Pakistan that claimed to run a nation based on an Islamic identity had drastically failed. The population of East Pakistan associated itself more with their Bengali identity. The 10% Hindu population in East Pakistan gave rise to many important leaders and intellectuals from the minority community who played a crucial role in Bangladesh’s freedom struggle. They included the army commanders, Jiban Kanai Das and Chitta Ranjan Dutta, and the veteran communist activist, Moni Singh. Bangladesh visioned itself as a secular nation which came to an unfortunate end after the assassination of Majibur Rehman in 1975 and and the rise of military regime.
Even though Bangladesh remains as an Islamic nation today, its Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed has continuously condemned attacks on minorities in her country. Our prime minister, however, has stayed resolutely silent on the persecution of minorities in his country.
After the appointment of Amit Shah as Home Minster in 2019, the stigmatization and humiliation of Muslims have become active ingredients in the policies of the Union government. But the biggest concern now is the hate that has set deep in the hearts & minds of citizens. Let’s face it, India never loved its minorities especially Muslims even before BJP. Political parties wooed them for votes, yes, but a social change never happened. Yet there was a constant effort to make that change. To finally make that shift from pretentious secularism to an actual one. Today’s climate of communal rhetoric that pervades India has led to a partition, not of territory, but of the hearts and minds of citizens.
Leaders like Maulana Abdul Kamal Azad, Allama Iqbal, Bi Amma who contributed in India’s freedom struggle were vastly read and acknowledged.
They have now started to disappear not only from our history books but from the very soul of this nation.
Revolutionaries like Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah Faizabadi best known for his role in the first ever revolt against the British regime in 1857, or Yusuf Meher Ali who gave us the ‘Quit India Movement’ and ‘Simon go back’ were regarded as worthy enemies by the British. They are no where to been mentioned, heard of or read anymore.
I’m not writing this piece to list down the contributions of the Muslim community in our freedom struggle or even in the making of an Independent India. Mainly because it’s not possible to do it in a single write- up.
It’s only to remind us of the fact that India has flourished through its pluralism despite of the hate inciting forces that have always been present within our community.
Being the most diverse nation in the world does not come easy. Each one of us has a different idea of India, yet we managed to live together and also keep those ideas alive.
But over the last seven years in India, the persecution of Muslims has been gradually normalized, and Indians have become increasingly inured to it. Sometimes it’s a cricketer, or a journalist, even a comic, and we are becoming desensitized to the routine expression and practice of anti-Muslim bigotry.
We are often disregarded in foreign press, human rights organisations, by intellectuals all over the world, yet we take pride in the fact that suppressing a section of people is somehow protecting and benefiting us.
Also I’m quite aware of the fact that many of you will argue that a population of 200 million doesn’t make one a minority community. Central to the characterisation of minority is not just numbers but their comparative, disempowered position vis-a-vis the majority community in a given polity.
To quote the country’s first education minister, “In political parlance the word minority… means such a weak community (jamat) which because of both its number and capacity (salahyiat) finds itself incapable of protecting itself in relation to a larger and more powerful community… Here the issue of capacity (nauyat) is as important as that of number.
So while we observe this Minority Day, let us try to be more inclusive, forgiving and not let this massive communal polarisation destroy the very soul of this country and the peace of the minorities living in neighbouring countries. Because communal violence in one nation often becomes fodder for the narrow nationalism of the other.
Governments will come and go, what stays is the history we’re making right now. Let’s try to be on the right, bright side of it.
Thanks for the read, really.
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