The Imam of Jama Masjid has said that in view of his experience in the last two years he would lay down specific terms for an electoral understanding with any political party. The least he expects is 20 per cent nominations for Muslims for both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha elections, 20 per cent reservation in the Union government, representation on the basis of population in the ministries in the states and 20 per cent reservation in the defence and police forces as well as the civil services.
Other Muslim leaders and organisations are not lagging behind the Imam in making similar demands. The Jamiat-Ulema-i-Hind is, in fact, asking for 33 per cent reservation in the security forces for Muslims and 33 per cent for other minorities.
This is not an altogether new development. Muslim leaders have from time to time given expression to the frustrations and expectations of the community. But the demands can acquire a new and possibly dangerous significance in the highly competitive political situation of today.
This is by no means a certainty or even a near certainty. Indeed, those who either fear or wish to promote a Hindu backlash would do well to remember that caste has become the most important political factor in the majority community and the rival castes and caste alliances are interested above all in defeating each other. But two other points deserve attention.
Choice
First, apparently the Muslims feel that they have a choice – between the Congress (I) headed by Mrs Gandhi and the Janata (S)-Congress (U) alliance which is also likely to have an electoral understanding with the leftist front which the CPM and the CPI are trying to form. They have had no such choice in the post. For, while up to the emergency in 1975 they looked up to the Congress to protect them and their minimum interests, they were so completely alienated from it by the end of 1976 that almost to a man they swung towards the Janata in March 1977. But choice can mean division and division can hurt the Congress (I) without benefiting much the Janata (S)-Congress (U) alliance if it is assumed, as I assume, that the latter is a much weaker political force than the remnant of the Janata. This will be particularly so if it is also assumed that a significant portion of the Harijan vote is likely to go to the Janata in north India on account of Mr Jagjivan Ram’s leadership of the party and that, despite his ‘soft’ attitude towards Mrs Gandhi, Mr Ram will not move over to her before the poll.
Secondly, while the upper and middle caste Hindus continue to be divided, with the Brahmins in north India leaning heavily towards Mrs Gandhi and the Rajputs and the Bhumihars in Bihar, for example, towards the Janata, all of them have been agitated over the reservation of jobs in the government for the so-called backward castes and the demand for reservation for Muslims can alarm them and push them towards the Janata in view of the Jana Sangh being it most important constituent.
On the face of it, the former Jana Sanghis are reluctant to talk an anti-Muslim and anti-backward caste stance and the presence of the socialist group and individuals like Mr Chandra Shekhar in the Janata is bound to make it difficult for them to do so. But as the election campaign builds up and as the Janata leaders find that they do not have much of a chance to win over a significant portion of the Muslim and the backward cast vote, they can be tempted to play on the fears of the upper caste Hindus. To put it no higher, it will be premature to conclude that the Jana Sangh will not adopt this strategy and that it will pay dividends.
Shrewd
As a national leader, Mrs Gandhi has, like her father, not leaned towards any community or caste alliance. She has, for example, kept quiet on the question of reservation of jobs for the so-called backward castes. Similarly, while as Prime Minister and leader of the Congress party she secured the appointment of two Muslims, Mr Barkatullah Khan and Mr Abdul Ghafoor, as chief ministers of Rajasthan and Bihar respectively, something no one else thought was possible, she cannot be accused of having “pampered’ the Muslims. On the contrary she infuriated many of them on the question of the status of Aligarh university.
Mrs Gandhi is also too shrewd to fall into the trap which some Muslim leaders like the Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi, are laying for her, deliberately or otherwise. They may secure whatever terms they can from the Janata(S)-Congress(U) alliance. Mrs Gandhi is not likely to engage in the dangerous exercise of bargaining with them. It will be surprising if she does.
This brings us to the basic question of the role of the Muslim community in the Indian political process.
As has often been argued in these columns, the Muslim vote has been an important factor in ensuring the victory of the Congress up to 1977 – the party lost elections to the state legislatures in the whole of north India in 1967 despite the Muslim support for it – and its defeat in March 1977. And it is obvious that if the Muslims vote more or less as a bloc in the forthcoming poll as they have done in the past, they can influence the outcome. As such the question stands self-answered. But not quite, for, the elections are only part of the political process. The two are not coterminous. Indeed, the weakness of the Muslim community is that while it may make its weight felt in the time of elections, it hardly participates in the political process the rest of the time.
It is possible, in fact necessary, to approach the issue from two angles. First, at least in theory the Muslims have had two options open to them in independent and democratic India. They could have either continued to live in their cultural shell in the conviction that it was necessary for them to do so in order to preserve their socio-religious identity or they could have actively participated in the secularisation process that has been on despite many obstacles. They have not been able to resist the latter development, as is evident from the rise of a new western-educated middle class among them and the secular aspirations of this class. But by and large the community has chosen to live in its ghetto. The problem is more acute in north India than in western India. But it exists throughout the country.
Secondly, the Hindu society has been so preoccupied with itself that even the debate between the protagonists of secular (territorial) nationalism and Hindu (culture and therefore religion based) nationalism has been conducted essentially within it. In a sense, this was so even before independence and partition. For whatever reason or reasons, the dominant section of the Muslim intelligentsia and community had kept away from the freedom movement and thereby denied itself the right and the capacity to influence the course of developments within the Hindu community. It had failed to appreciate that the freedom struggle was an extension of the social reform movement, that Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were successors to Raja Rammohan Roy, that the unrepentant representatives of the old order were opposed to them and their vision of independent India, and that their own future will depend greatly on the outcome of this debate in the Hindu society.
Different
But in the pre-independence era the Hindu intelligentsia was at least sensitive to the need to win over their Muslim compatriots if only to avoid giving the British the pretext first to delay independence and then to divide the country. This compulsion disappeared in August 1947. And whatever dialogue there was earlier also ended with the departure of a large number of educated Muslims to Pakistan. Nationalist Muslims slowly faded into the background, especially after the death of Maulana Azad in 1958. Also the culture of those who have grown up in independent India and have come to occupy leading positions in the Hindu society is quite different from those of men like Mr Nehru. It is less cosmopolitan and more local.
On this reckoning it is difficult to see how assertiveness on the part of Muslim leaders like the Imam can fail to be counterproductive, irrespective of the promises they may manage to extract from some of the parties, especially the Janata(S) and the Congress(U).
The Times of India, 26 September 1979