Reversing the mistakes of the last 100 years: A case for Pradhanmantri Scholarship
A century ago, while Turkey shed the shackles of Ottoman Caliphate and became a modern state, Indian-Muslims were pushed towards Orthodoxy. A discussion of historical reasons for minority alienation.
On 5th June, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi announced the Pradhanmantri scholarship scheme. Naqvi’s statement that the scholarship will “cater to 5 Crore students” became a contentious issue, with many accusing the scheme of being an exercise in minority appeasement. India has a long history of disbursement of government benefits on the basis of social identities, a practice dating back to British India. This policy is often viewed as appeasement by groups which are not given such benefits (mainly the so-called forward castes). As such, there are significant misgivings on identity-based welfare among a large section of Indians. While concerns regarding appeasement politics are valid, there are some historical realities which make community upliftment a requirement in the case of Indian-Muslims.
The constitutional framework
Constitutionally, the basis for disbursing benefits available to the government was social identities. In fact, prior to the 103rd amendment, social identities were the only legal basis for disbursing benefits. The reason behind this goes back to 19th century British India. The introduction of social identities to governance was a colonial design. This is explained in detail by Professor Sanjoy Chakravorty of Temple University Philadelphia in his BBC article (link). The salient points of his article are:
The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century.
This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests — primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.
This model of governance continued post-independence. Article 15 and 16 of the Constitution mandate the use of these ‘social identities’ for identifying groups. Hence, the societal groups created for the purpose of ‘divide and rule’ under the British Raj have been institutionalized.
In 1992, Narasimha Rao’s government attempted to implement reservation for economically weaker sections among upper castes, but Lawyer Indra Sawhney filed a case against the move. The Supreme Court ruled against the move in Indra Sawhney and others vs Union of India (1992) (link). Following are the key points of the judgement:
Para 689, difference between [upper and lower castes] furnished reasonable basis for classification [of discrimination]. Same cannot be said for rich and poor…Any legislation or executive measure undertaken to remove disparity in wealth…based on economic conditions for purposes of Article 16(1) would be violative of equality.
Para 690 (1), No reservation can be made on economic criteria.
Para 697 (7), Economic backwardness may give jurisdication to state to reserve provided it can find out mechanism to ascertain inadequacy of representation of such class.
It was only in 2018 that the constitution was amended to enable the government to implement schemes targeting poeple based on economic criteria. The 103rd Amendment added the following amendments to Article 15 and 16 (link):
- Article 15 (6) added to provide reservations to economically weaker sections for admission to educational institutions. The amendment aims to provide reservation to those who do not fall in SCs, STs, and OBCs.
- Article 16 (6) added to provide reservations to people from economically weaker sections in government posts.
The 103rd amendment the first step in transitioning from identity-based governance to economic criteria based governance. Schemes targetting social groups will still be in effect for the foreseeable future. Such schemes have in the past been instruments of appeasement and vote-bank politics. However, there are realities which create the need for community-specific welfare and modernisation of Indian-Muslims, and they go beyond simplistic principles of minority-inclusion.
The link between mosque-madrassa ecosystem and radical Islam
The issue of Muslim mob violence is an old phenomenon. Kashmir has historically witnessed such mob violence, especially after the Friday prayer at mosques. It was on a Friday, 19th January 1990, when all Kashmiri mosques broadcast the message for all Kashmiri Hindus to leave the state or risk being purged. Palestine too has a history of inciteful messages being broadcast at mosques during Friday prayers. Parts of India other than Kashmir are also seeing attacks following Muslims congregations. UP, Kerela and most recently Delhi have witnessed such mobs.
What are the factors that are leading to the spread of this phenomenon? As discussed earlier, governance based on social identities enabled vote-bank politics. This brand of politics led to successive governments often ignoring dangerous communal developments. Rajiv Gandhi’s government went to the extent of constitutional amendment in the Shah Bano Case to appease orthodox Muslims. As such, there has been a gradual mainstreaming of fundamentalist elements of Islam. Partly due to the poor state of government education, and partly from religious ghettoization, a large number of Muslims enroll their children in madrassa education. The madrassa-mosque ecosystem has deep penetration by international and local Islamic hardliner groups. NIA recently revealed that the Khulafa-Rashideen mosque in Haryana was built on funds by Lashkar-e-Taiba. Video footage of Kulgam Mosque from Kashmir showing Lashkar slogans being raised on the day of Eid also went viral. Hence, generation upon generation of madrassa-educated Indian-Muslims are brought into direct influence of radical Islam.
The interesting convergence of Ambedkar and Atatürk
The man who drafted Independent India’s Constitution, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar, is widely regarded as a championing voice of equality and social justice. An often ignored facet of B.R. Ambedkar, however, is his view regarding radical Islam and Islam in general. In his book Pakistan or Partition of India, he made some scathing observations on the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’.
Hinduism is said to divide people and in contrast Islam is said to bind people together. This is only a half truth. For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and Non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is a brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-government, because the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Moslem ibi benc ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin. That is probably the reason why Maulana Mohammad Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India.
Source: Pakistan or Partition of India, B.R. Ambedkar, 1945. p. 325. (Link)
Dr. Ambedkar is not the only one to recognize this. About a quarter century before him, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was faced with the task of bringing the newly formed Turkish Republic out of centuries of orthodoxy under Ottoman Empire. He introduced the policy of ‘Kemalism’. Under him, Turkey went on to become one of the only Muslim-majority countries with a modern, secular government. In his own work Vatandaş için Medeni Bilgiler, Atatürk called Islam “religion of the Arabs” and said that its purpose was “to drag [its followers into] Arab national politics”.
After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn’t effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. [Islam] rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag all Muslims into Arab national politics.
Source: Afet İnan, Medenî Bilgiler ve M. Kemal Atatürk’ün El Yazıları, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998. p. 364.
In 1924, Atatürk instituted the creation of Diyanet or the Directorate of Religious Affairs. This body till today maintains strict control over religion in Turkey (largely Sunni Islam). Through it, the Turkish state employs imams in every mosque, funds religious schools which train those imams, appoints the teachers in these schools, and directs the curriculum just as it does in normal schools. The Diyanet was the principal tool which enabled Atatürk to delink Turkish people from centuries of entrenchment in hardliner Islam under the influence of the Turkish Caliph. As Jonny Dymond wrote in The Prospect (link):
Atatürk despised religion because he thought it held the Turkish population in a web of cultural and social backwardness. He did not try to ban it, however, but rather to control it, and to make sure that it was never a threat to the state.
When Indian Muslims became Muslim before Indian
Turkey was not alone in distancing itself from the erstwhile Ottoman Caliphate. Individual kingdoms and colonies across the Muslim world, Iran and Arabia included, were distancing their populations from the orthodoxy of the Ottoman Empire. There was one country, however, with a significant population of Muslims, which was going against the tide by declaring active support for the restoration of the Caliphate. That country was British India.
From 1919–1922, the Khilafat Movement in British India rallied Indian Muslims to pressure the British government and influence the Treaty of Sevres. This Treaty dealt with the breakup and re-organization of regions under the erstwhile Ottoman Caliphate. Khilafat was led by newspaper editors Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, Maulana Abdul Bari of Lucknow, Islamic scholar Abul Kalam Azad and Maulana Mahmud ul-Hasan, head of the madrasa at Deoband. Their main demands were:
- Reinstatement of the caliph with sufficient territories under his control
- The Jazirat-ul-Arab, which included the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine be placed under the caliph.
It must be noted that while ordinary Indian Muslims had connections with Iran and even Arabia, they had little to no connection with Turkey. Khilafat was therefore not an organic movement, but a deliberate attempt to create an Islamic Fundamentalist identity among Indian Muslims. Mahatma Gandhi, considered Khilafat as an opportunity to integrate Indian Muslims and came out in unequivocal support of it. An alliance was formed between Khilafat leaders and Indian National Congress in 1920. Many intellectuals — Muslims included — of the time and in later years were critical of the Khilafat Movement. Even Jinnah declared the movement an outcome of blind religious fervor. Stirred by the sentiments of Khilafat movement, the Moplah community of Muslim peasants in Kerela took up arms leading to the Moplah Riots of 1921. Yet, Gandhi — perhaps not realizing the long-term damage being caused — refused to withdraw support for the movement. A fringe-movement turned into a pan-Indian Islamic phenomenon.
Turkey remains a successful example of a successfully modernized Muslim State. In the century since the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate, Turkey, and some other Muslim nations, have moved towards modernity. India has taken a diametrically opposed stance and has aligned with forces from Saudi Arabia, who appropriated the old Caliphate and remain entrenched in its orthodoxy. Maulana Abul Kamal Azad, one of the founders of Khilafat, became the first Education Minister in Independent India. Successive governments in India engaged in vote bank politics and did not dismantle madrassas and mosques which propagated Sunni orthodoxy. The very orthodoxy and backwardness which most of the Muslim world pulled itself out of in early 20th century have been forced upon Indian Muslims.
Over the 100 years since the Khilafat movement, Indian-Muslims have been continuously pushed towards orthodox Islam. Even backward communities like Dalits have, in some ways, been integrated more successfully into the mainstream compared to Muslims. It is a wonder that despite not modernizing like Turkey, Indian Muslims have been largely immune to radicalization. While the ISIS recruited thousands of Muslims from counties in America and Europe (including Turkey) the extent of Indian Muslims joining such organizations have been very limited. That too despite India having the second-largest population of Muslims. It is a testament to the deep-rooted culture of the Indian civilization that a community perceived as alienated remains largely dissuaded from radicalization.
An Indian Diyanet?
Atatürk knew he could not ban religious beliefs and instead sought to control it. In India, even control of belief is out of the question, given the general attitude of Indians towards faith. It is also somewhat unnecessary, because most Muslims remain within the larger cultural milieu of India. The more feasible option is to build robust economic and educational aspirations among Indian-Muslims and bring them more decisively into the mainstream. Among the minorities, Muslims are somewhat of an exception. Other minorities such as Parsis, Jews, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists have – some despite being minuscule in size – historically and currently been very well integrated into the mainstream and have even prospered more than average the Indian. Muslims, despite being a sizeable 15 percent of the population have, for reasons discussed above, not witnessed such prosperity.
It must be understood that minorities, regardless of their beliefs, are very much Indians. India cannot hope to prosper while such a large chunk of Indians remain ostensibly separate from the mainstream. Expecting an entire community to simply snap out of decades (and in some ways centuries) of indoctrination is not a viable strategy, and the government must facilitate this transition. That being said, the Pradhanmantri scholarship may be only the beginning and will require careful follow up to prevent it from becoming yet another exercise in minority appeasement.
Considering the century of damage since Khilafat, this move is too little. Yet, executed properly, it may not have come too late.
