Today is our Focus: POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN INDIA
POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN INDIA
The communal question that deprived India of its unity on the eve of T freedom still haunts us and our political discourse is still dominated by communal idiom and terminology. The two-nation theory had claimed that it is the commonality of a religious faith that constitutes a nation and hence the country is divided on the basis of religion.
The Partition movement acquired such ferocity and fever that ultimately the national leadership of India had agreed hoping that at least truncated India will emerge as a united nation free from internal divisions and be in a better position to march to development and prosperity.
It is clear from the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly that the leadership of free India was absolutely determined to create a constitutional framework that will not leave any scope for the revival of communal politics. The decision to replace the system of separate electorate by territorial constituencies to elect representatives effectively foreclosed any possibility for any party or individual to claim to be sole spokesman of any particular community or try to turn a community into a political constituency.
In fact, there was hardly any constituency in the country which solely consisted of one exclusive religious or social group and any candidate after getting elected legally represented not just those who voted for him but the entire constituency.
But the experience has shown that laws alone do not have the capability to change the attitudes and habits developed over a period of time. If pre-Partition political discourse was dominated by separatist demands in the name of special political importance of the community.
the post-Partition refrain has been the preservation of special identity Under the old system of separate electorate the Muslim League claimed the status of being sole representatives of the community, but after adoption of the new system the elected members who happened to be Muslims were projected by the media and others as Muslim representatives without most of them making any such claim. This practice contributed in no little measure to revive and enhance the community consciousness which had taken a back seat after the Partition of India.
It can be argued that after the communal holocaust following the Partition, the situation had started improving slowly but steadily. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 effectively signalled collapse of the two-nation theory, and raised the hopes that now the bitter memories of the separatist politics shall be relegated to the dustbin of the history.
But strangely despite the realization that the Muslims of India had suffered most at the hands of the communal politics of the Muslim League, the Muslim Personal Law Board succeeded in reviving the specter of separatism in 1986 when it launched a protest movement directed against the judgment of the Supreme Court in Shah Bano case.
The judgment was termed by the Personal Law Board as amounting to interference in religion and threat to the special identity of the community. They initially demanded not only a Parliamentary Act to reverse the ratio of the Shah Bano decision but also demanded repealing the constitutional directive principle providing for Uniform Civil Code.
The Shah Bano Judgment was delivered under Section 125 of Criminal Procedure Code. a provision rooted in social justice and aimed at prevention of vagrancy and destitution. This provision provides a quick summary remedy to persons unable to maintain themselves by compelling those identified persons who can support them.
It is important to remember that this provision does not come into play automatically after the annulment of marriage. The affected individual needs to move the court to invoke the provision and then have to prove that the said individual lacks physical means to keep his or her body and soul together.
This is not a civil law, much less a religious law, instead it is a criminal law designed to promote social justice, an ideal close to the teachings of any and every religious system.
But still, if the Personal Law Board found it impossible to accept this measure of social justice on religious grounds, they could have advised the Muslim divorced women not to avail this provision as in their view it conflicted with the religious law. But either they lacked confidence in their own authority or doubted the religious conviction of Muslim women they chose to take to streets to demand a legislation to deny this facility to indigent divorced Muslim women.
Even their agitation was not normal kind of democratic protest It was marked by intemperate language of threat and violence. Outside Parliament threats were held out to break the legs of those Muslims who dared differ with them and inside Parliament most objectionable epithets were used about the Supreme Court Judges and their authority to interpret the laws of religion was questioned.
Finally, the Board succeeded in moving the government to agree to their proposal to reverse the Supreme Court decision by enacting a new law. Again, it is important to bear in mind that every Minister who participated in the parliamentary discussion defended the measure not on merits but talked about the precarious law and order situation and the need to enact a new law to avert the apprehended threats to the security.
It was a remarkable achievement for the clergy of Personal Law Board as they had prevailed over the government to ignore all objections raised by sections of Muslim intelligentsia and impose their version of religion on the community. In fact, for all political purposes the Personal Law Board leadership assumed the role of sole spokesman of the community and the political establishment helped them to broaden their influence in the community.
The agitation of the Personal Law Board and abject capitulation by the leadership caused a severe backlash against the government, which was sought to be offset by opening the locks in Ayodhya leading to one communal faux pas after another. Then demands like setting up a parallel judiciary to administer community-specific laws as made by the Board last year keep the communal cauldron boiling and ensure that political normalcy is not restored.
Since Personal Law Board is a body of clerics who claim exclusive knowledge of religious law it is pertinent to see whether their standpoint about maintaining separate identity of the community on the basis of religion finds any sanction in Quran, the Magna Carta of Islam.
Quran clearly says: ‘O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you (49.13)
The prophetic traditions further reinforce this line. Bukhari and Muslim have reported the following saying: ‘An Arab is no better than a non-Arab. In return, a non-Arab is no better than an Arab. A red raced man was not better than a black one except in piety. Mankind are all Adam’s children and Adam was created out of clay. On another occasion the Prophet is reported to have said: ‘Undoubtedly God has removed from you the arrogance of the age of ignorance, and the glorification of ancestors. You are all the children of Adam and Adam was made of clay’
It is clear from above passages that identity of a people is determined by their nation or tribe and religion is the instrument to fashion and shape their morals and character. Islam is not an inherited culture or set of legal and social values. It is a creed or thought that brought immense transformation because it associated honour with righteous deed and not with inherited attributes of family, tribe or community.
Maulana Azad in his commentary on Quran has written that Quran differentiates between religion and its outward observance, ‘the former is called Deen and the later is Shariat (Law) Deen (Religion) was but one and the same everywhere and at all times and vouchsafed to one and all without discrimination. In respect of Shariat (outward observance), there was variation and it was inevitable. Variation of this nature could not alter the character of Deen or the basis of religion’ Maulana calls this essence as unity in truth (Mushtarak Haq), the spiritual content that is found in all the religions of the world and in practical terms it means devotion to God and righteous living.
In fact, while addressing all the Prophets (who came in different times and different places) Qunes says O you apostles! Enjoy (all) things good and pure and work righteousness: for I am well-acquainted with (all) that you do. And verily this Brotherhood of yours is a single Brotherhood and I am your Lord and Cherisher therefore be conscious of Me (23.51-52) Here, the emphasis on one single brotherhood of all the Prophets (named) and unnamed) is important to note.
So, the question arises that if Quran holds that the basics of religion are same and the only criterion of honour is righteousness that is personal merit and not inherited attributes of family, tribe or community then how come the history of political Islam reflects a different attitude insofar as the political rights of persons belonging to different denominations are concerned.
Here, it can be said that the human behavior and psychology has this tremendous propensity to institutionalise any and every revolutionary message and use it to pursue its own selfish interests. Before Islam the Arab society was a tribal society without any state or central authority.
It was through the instrumentality of tribes that some modicum of social stability was achieved in the society. Scarcity of resources to sustain human life on account of large uncultivable tracts and strong notion of ‘my tribe right or wrong’ found expression in a popular saying ‘1 and my brothers against my cousin’s sons, I and my cousin’s sons against the neighbours; I and the neighbours against the members of the other clan; I and the members of the other clan against outsiders’
Islam since its inception worked to curb tribalism because in practical terms it denoted not just social cohesion among the members of a tribe but had the overtones of their being against others and linked it to the morality of pre-Islamic period that is known as period of ignorance The Arabic term used to describe it is Asabiyya, is the same that we use in Urdu to describe communalism and in Hindi it is translated as Sampardayikta.
In place of the Asabiyya, Quran emphasised that each and every individual is personally accountable for whatever he or she does and that no one individual shall be held responsible for the acts of another individual despite consanguinity.
It says ‘And your creation and your resurrection is in no wise but as an individual soul’ (31.28) Further, it says. “Namely that no bearer of burdens can bear burden of another (53.38) In fact, this message is not simply for ordinary individuals but even the Prophet has been told in no uncertain terms that his Ministry is responsible only to convey the message and not its enforcement. It says: And so exhort them, your task is only to exhort. You cannot compel them to believe] (88.21-22).
It is true that Quran seeks to create a brotherhood but makes it clear that a brotherhood based on creed and spiritual fellowship is totally different from a brotherhood based on ties of blood and kinship.
The creedal brotherhood obliges to help each other in doing good and strictly prohibits any cooperation in pursuing sin and rancour: ‘Help you one another in righteousness and piety but help you not one another in sin and rancour fear Allah: for Allah is strict in punishment’ (5.2) The Quran warns that man motivated by Asabiyya (group feeling) may try to defend the evil doers in this world but who can defend them before God, who does complete and perfect justice.
In a famous case of Islamic history one Taima bin Ubayraq, was suspected of theft and when the trail was hot he planted the stolen item in the house of a Jew, where it was found.
The Jew denied the charge, but the Muslim community sympathised with Taima on account of his being a Muslim. The case was decided by the Prophet in favour of the Jew and the verses revealed on the occasion constitute part of the Quran to ensure that extraneous considerations like profession of a particular faith are not allowed to derail the process of justice.
This is what Quran says: Contend not on behalf of such as betray their own souls: for Allah loves not one given to perfidy and crime. They may hide (their crimes) from men but they cannot hide (them) from Allah seeing that He is in their midst when they plot by night in words that He cannot approve and Allah does compass round all that they do. Ah! these are the sort of men on whose behalf you may contend in this world, but who will contend with Allah on their behalf on the Day of Judgement or who will carry their affairs through? (4.105-107)
The Quran and Hadith literature is full of references that deprecate and censure the Asabiyya, but the fact remains that barely 36 years after the death of Prophet the Arab Muslim society revived it and used the tribal Asabiyya successfully in their internal wars, and later in their military campaigns outside Arabia the same feeling of Asabiyya was injected into the new religious community to pursue the goals of conquering new people and areas and build their empire
This they did despite the fact that the Prophet while on his death-bed had said to those sitting around him that I say to you what God has told me and you both’ and then recited a verse of the Quran. That House of the Hereafter We shall give to those who intend not high-handedness or mischief on earth: and the End is (best) for the righteous (28.83).
The famous Arab historian Ibn Khaldoon in his classic Muqaddimah (Introduction to history) has dwelt at length on the subject of Asabiyya and has described it as the motive power of history that has played a defining role in building dynasties and empires. He has taken great pains to reconcile the Islamic scriptural ordinances that censure Asabiyya and the Arab Muslim military campaigns that mobilised and consolidated Asabiya to build their empire.
Ibn Khaldoon in his analysis of the correlation between ‘Asabiyya’ social cohesion or group feeling, and political power has argued that the strong group feeling of tribal peoples enabled them to conquer urbanised regions and build regimes and civilisations, but that these conquests were undone by the tribes’ gradual loss of ‘Asabiyya’ in the urban setting, leading to new conquests by tribal peoples still strong in desert cohesiveness.
Although power was the basis of Rulership and royal authority was established through military might. the glue that held societies together was ‘Asabiyya’, based on kinship and religion and stronger in tribal than in urban society.
So, one can say that it was the revival of Arab Asabiyya that took precedence over Islamic teachings in Arab society and it not only helped them to build their political empire but played great role in shaping the Muslim attitudes, ethos and even the jurisprudence all over the world. It was the revival of Asabiyya and its universal impact that explains how a creedal or spiritual fellowship was successfully turned into a
hereditary social group that saw itself not only as a group that enjoyed common faith but also shared common secular interests that were distinct and different from other groups rather antagonistic and hostile to the secular interests of other groups. It also explains the movements like the one spearheaded by Muslim League for the Partition of India and the feeling of enmity and hatred that is nursed by this new country towards India.
In the Indian context where organisations like Muslim Personal Law Board who equate personal law with religion should not be taken as their genuine concern to protect the religion. An objective reading of Quran makes it clear that it does not give any precedence to family laws over criminal, civil or mercantile laws, rather it deprecates the tendency to be selective in adopting a selective approach and go for convenient laws:
Then is it only a part of the Book that you believe in and do you reject the rest” (2.85) It strongly censures laws that discriminate between one community and another: “Truly Pharaoh elated himself in the land and broke up its people into sections depressing a small group among them, their sons he slew but he kept alive their females, for he was indeed a mischief-maker’ (28.4).
In Islam like any other system the laws are important but they are not part of the basic ingredients of faith known as ‘five pillars of Islam’ that is, belief in God and Apostle, Prayers, Fasting Charity and Hajj. Secondly, the Islamic laws again like any other system require that the enforcement of the laws must be the responsibility of an authority that has been duly constituted in accordance with the Islamic requirements of Bait (popular consent) and Shoora (consultation). If we go by the provisions of the Quran, then there is no way that Islamic laws can be enforced by the instrumentality of compulsion and force.
It is time we realise that in terms of religion, language and culture. India is a pluralistic society with diverse identities, but in terms of nationality, it has only one identity. We have all the freedom to pursue our faiths but also have the obligation to strengthen our national identity by asserting equal and fair treatment in secular affairs and shun the practice of demanding community-specific special rights. Justice, equality and fairness to each and every individual citizen and no special provision for any section of the population alone can help India to emerge with one strong unified national identity that can put an end to the scourge of communalism that has done enough harm already.
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