Book Review: Muslims, Law, and Violence in India

While the partition of the British Indian Empire into two States was an ordeal for everyone, Muslims bore and continue to bear the brunt of it.

In a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the mullah–military alliance has made lives miserable for most of the population. Historically, attempts at democratising politics have been met with assassinations, exile and (judicial) executions.

Bangladesh, born through the sacrifice of over three million people (the overwhelming majority of whom were Muslims), continues to suffer from political and economic instability.

Muslims in India have been systematically marginalised and kept backward. Since 2014, this has become more overt as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh–Bharatiya Janata Party (RSS–BJP) and their pliant media do their best to turn Muslims into enfranchised second-class citizens, i.e., they will have the right to vote but no voice.

Would a united India have served the Muslims better? My thesis is that a united India would have served the Muslims much better.

All this begs the question: Would a united India have served the Muslims better? My thesis is that a united India would have served the Muslims much better.

The reasons for this are threefold. First, Bengal and Punjab would have carried a much heavier electoral weight at the centre. No federal government would be formed without a party winning or doing well in these two states. And since Muslims enjoyed a demographic advantage in Bengal and Punjab, a communal government at the centre would have been out of the question.

Secondly, the process of ‘Othering’ that feeds fundamentalism would not have reached current proportions. The forces of Hindutva blame the Muslims for dividing the ‘Motherland’. This has been their simplest yet most effective ideological weapon. Moreover, ‘Othering’ of a socio-religious group accounting for 33 percent of the population would not have been feasible.

Interestingly, writing for the Hindustan Times in 2017, historian Ramachandra Guha had raised doubts about this proposition. He wrote, “Had there been an undivided India where Muslims would be one in three … the demographic balance would have been more delicate and prone to being exploited by sectarians on either side.’’ This shows how a historian with secular credentials is prone to soft-communal undertones.

In December 1946, Dr B.R. Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly: “I know today we are divided… But, Sir, with all this, I am quite convinced that given time and circumstances nothing in the world will prevent this country from becoming one…

“I have no hesitation in saying that notwithstanding the agitation of the Muslim League for the Partition of India, someday enough light would dawn upon the Muslims themselves and they too will begin to think that a United India is better even for them.”

Thirdly, the social question of the Muslim marginalised castes would have been broached with a much higher intensity in a united India. The two-nation theory which presented the Hindus and Muslims as monoliths played a huge role in downplaying the caste question among the Muslims.

The forces of Hindutva blame the Muslims for dividing the ‘Motherland’. This has been their simplest yet most effective ideological weapon.

While India succeeded at instituting reservations for the marginalised castes (albeit excluding Christian and Muslim Dalits), no such corresponding measure was visible in Pakistan. Bangladesh instituted quotas for the Muktiyodhas which in the long-run proved discriminatory and led to the undoing of Sheikh Hasina’s government recently.

Practices of the State

The anatomy of the Partition is key to the anatomy of the body-politic of Muslims in South Asia. Professor Tanweer Fazal’s first chapter ‘Bangladeshi as a Metaphor’ supports this proposition. 

The biggest conundrum faced by Independent India was the question of citizenship. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1955 marked the triumph of the principle of jus soli over jus sanguinis as the basis of citizenship. Despite this, the ‘Other’ was constructed in every claim of citizenship.

Studying Assam, Fazal shows the violent ‘otherisation’ of the Bangladeshi. The Assam Accord of 1985, which marked the cut-off date for availing citizenship to March 24, 1971, served to undermine the jus soli principle. The creation of the Bangladeshi ‘Other’ later transmogrified into abhorrence for the Bengali Muslim.

Fazal shows that the anti-immigrant movement had different stages of development which were tempered by the changing political economy of Assam.

Criticising identity-oriented theorisations, Fazal shows that the first wave of anti-immigrant student movement in Assam was fomented by the Assamese industrial bourgeoisie who were unable to compete with big capital in the state; the petty bourgeoisie who nursed hatred for the Bengali professional/salaried classes; and the landlords who earlier benefitted from the migration of cheap labour and now feared the rise of tenancy rights.

Interestingly, the All-Assam Students Union (AASU) was not a vehemently anti-immigrant and ethnicity-oriented organisation from the start. Till the mid-1970s, AASU had associated itself with the “politics of material distribution, land reforms, nationalisation of industries, security of poor peasants and distribution of free food grains” (p. 33).

Only after AASU secured a sympathetic base among the masses, it began to employ aggressive ethno-symbolism to get patronage from the media and the Assamese ruling elite.

Following the work of economist Vani Barooah, Fazal also breaks the immigration myth. He shows that between 1971 and 2011, 730,000 people entered Assam, of which 502,000 were Muslims and 228,000 non-Muslims. Between 1991–2011, 307,000 Muslims and 345,000 non-Muslims left the state.

Even if we assume that all Muslim migrants who entered Assam during this period came from Bangladesh (which is certainly not the case), we would have 195,000 Muslim immigrants in Assam, a little over 1 percent of the state’s Muslim population (p. 48).

The high growth rate (77.42 percent) of Muslims must be attributed to socio-economic backwardness and not some innate desire to outnumber the Hindus. Nearly 94 percent of Assam’s Muslims live in villages. A high incidence of poverty and lack of education is prevalent among them.

The social question of the Muslim marginalised castes would have been broached with a much higher intensity in a united India.

Other deprived groups in Assam such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes also witnessed higher growth rates of 81.84 and 78.91 percent respectively.

The sacred cow

In the second chapter ‘State Practices, Hyperlegality and the Politics of the Sacred Cow’ Fazal shows how the colonial court, the early postcolonial court and the later ‘shining India’ court dealt with the question of cow slaughter.

The colonial court in the Queen Empress versus Imam Ali case in 1887 opined that cow slaughter was not to be considered blasphemous. In 1957, the Supreme Court prohibited cow slaughter on utilitarian grounds but allowed for the slaughter of unproductive cattle on grounds of them being “a wasteful drain on the nation’s cattle feed”.

In 2005, former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ramesh Chandra Lahoti overturned the earlier judgment under the reasoning that cow dung was a useful product and given the technological advancement in biosciences even older animals could be made to procreate. This legal cordoning of the cow has fuelled Hindutva sentiments.

In North Indian states, where this is a sensitive issue, thugs have cloaked themselves as gau rakshaks (cow protectors) and are wreaking havoc. Recently, a Hindu was mistakenly shot by these gau rakshaks on suspicions of being a Muslim cow trader. Today, almost 80 million stray cattle roam the streets. They destroy harvestable crops and create a nuisance for traffic in cities.

Emboldening cow protectors

In the third chapter ‘The Production of Truth and the Culture of Impunity’, Fazal interrogates the role of civil and police administration during episodes of communal violence. Taking the Bhagalpur communal riots as a case study, Fazal shows that the ideal secular impartiality of the State is barely recognised in the actual working of the administration.

The presence of communally inclined senior officials, such as Justice R. N. Prasad, who headed the inquiry commission on the Bhagalpur riots, emboldens the ‘men on the ground’ to act on their own accord.

Despite the immense discrepancy in the number of deceased— 900 Muslims and 100 Hindus— Justice Prasad was inclined to blame Muslims for the rioting. Other commission members, however, disagreed and pinned the blame on the police and hoodlums among the Hindu processionists.

In North Indian states, where this is a sensitive issue, thugs have cloaked themselves as gau rakshaks and are wreaking havoc.

Justice Prasad deliberately sidelined evidence such as the inspector general of police threats to the Muslim community in a peace meeting that he ‘would turn Bhagalpur into Karbala’ (p. 104).

In 1995, when, after much dillydallying, the commission’s report was tabled before the legislative assembly, Lalu Prasad Yadav, then Chief Minister of Bihar, promised to bring the guilty to book. Unfortunately, no action was taken.

When the Nitish Kumar-led government assumed power, a new commission was set up under the chairmanship of Justice N.N. Singh. After stretching the inquiry for almost a decade, the commission submitted its report in 2016.

It recommended actions against 125 officers. Unsurprisingly, no action was taken. Instead, K.S. Dwivedi, the then superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, who was indicted by the commission, was recommended by the state government for a police medal and later appointed as head of the state police force (p. 110).

The politics of reservations

In chapter five ‘Law of Exception: Caste, Conversion and Anxieties of Nationhood’, Fazal takes us through the legal history of the exclusion of non-Hindu Scheduled Castes (Muslims and Christians) from availing the benefits of reservation.

Interestingly, the Scheduled Caste Order of 1950 that led to the exclusion, had its predecessor in the 1936 Caste Order of the colonial government that prohibited Indian Christians from availing the benefits of affirmative action reserved for the Scheduled Castes (p. 147).

This fact should be marshalled against the new intellectuals of Hindutva who are out to decolonise everything. Their vigorous opposition to the inclusion of Muslim and Christian Scheduled Castes under the ambit of reservation must be called out as colonial.

The politics of the Presidential Order of 1950 began with the lobbying of the Sikhs to include the marginalised caste Sikhs within the ambit of reservations. The Sikhs feared the loss of marginalised caste converts to Sikhism.

Interestingly, the Scheduled Caste Order of 1950 that led to the exclusion, had its predecessor in the 1936 Caste Order of the colonial government.

Showing deep signs of sectarianism, the Scheduled Caste leaders in the Constituent Assembly opposed this step. Later, Sardar Patel intervened and had the marginalised caste Sikhs included within the fold of reservations.

In 1980, P.J. Kurien, a Congressman representing the Mavelikara constituency of Kerala, presented a private member Bill in the Lok Sabha that sought to delete Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order that denied Scheduled Caste status to Muslims and Christians.

During the deliberation, Kurien put forth arguments from the Pillai Commission of 1964 and the Damodaran Commission of 1971. Both commissions held that the degree of segregation and discrimination remained unchanged after conversion to any religion. Kurien’s Bill failed to excite the members of Lok Sabha and died a natural death.

Professor Fazal must be congratulated for his effort. The book is a must-read for those who are on the brink of making or forming an opinion on the ‘Muslim question’ in India.

My only complaint with Professor Fazal is that he did not include a chapter on Indian secularism and its future. I hope he will consider doing a book on the topic very soon.  

Shubham Sharma is a research scholar at the Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, US.