In Sambhal and Ajmer, we see the Hindutva playbook enacted again. Perfected over the last four decades, it has a pretty straightforward trajectory: pick any mosque or dargah you like, claim that it was built at the site of a temple centuries ago, mobilize public opinion through organizational and institutional heft, orchestrate manageable violence, including loss of a few lives and destruction of property, move court and get a favourable order, reap as much political dividend as possible. Of course, then find another mosque or dargah, repeat the cycle ad nauseam. This was widely anticipated after the spectacular success of the “destroy mosque, build temple” project of the Brahmin-Savarna at Ayodhya. A repeat was guaranteed by the Sayed-Ashraf who refused to undertake any systematic or structural democratic change despite experiencing such violence over the last 40 years. But some may argue why put the blame just on the Sayed-Ashraaf and not the Pasmanda, too? The answer is simple: It is the Sayed-Ashraf who continue to dominate and sustain all those practices that systematically block the possibility of democratic politics for anyone else identified as Muslim. How so? One may ask.
Let us start with democratic politics. Democracy institutes a mode of power acquisition in which anyone can mobilize the majority of people for the cause he/she stands for and wield power through legal institutional channels. However, the defeated minority groups get opportunities periodically to muster a majority and dislodge the incumbents. It is clear that everything depends on the ability of individuals and groups to construct a majority. There is indeed no limitation of any principle of governance for organizing the majority. Thus, the majority of people can be mobilized for building excellent public schools, hospitals or other public services but they could as easily be mobilized for the destruction of life and property of another people, even if it means using weapons of mass destruction. This is a necessary concomitant of every functioning electoral democracy, which introduces a certain degree of ambiguity in social life. Such an ambiguity is exploited by socially and economically powerful groups to organize a majority in order to capture political power. Moreover, as mobilizing the majority requires skills and resources, the initial phase of democracy is dominated by traditionally powerful social classes. Therefore, monopolization of politics by the Brahmin-Savarna and the Sayed-Ashraaf at the inception of representative democracy in British India was no surprise. However, while the Brahmin-Savarna experimented with strategies to mobilize the majority through various political projects, including Hindutva, at different historical junctures, the Sayed-Ashraaf took to mobilizing a religious minority only. The Sayed-Ashraaf persisted with this undemocratic mode of life despite the monumental tragedy and unprecedented violence of the Partition.
What are those specific social, cultural and political practices preserved by the Sayed-Ashraaf that sustain an undemocratic mode of life and facilitate Hindutva? Without going into the details, one can list out the following practices:
- Minority Educational Institutions (MEIs), both the modern type and the madarsa, are so organized that they erect a solid wall of separation between different sections of Bahujan students;
- Muslim Personal Laws (MPLs) ensure that the constituent parts of the Bahujan class born into different religious worlds cannot easily form family relations with each other;
- Exclusive Religious Organizations (EROs) operate in such a way that inter-religious interaction and communication between various Bahujan communities does not take place;
- Religious Political Parties (RPPs) constantly circulate religion-based political language and images reinforcing Hindu-Muslim binary;
- Promotion of Urdu as a Muslim language further cements social segregation;
- Triple sense of supremacy based on caste, religion and gender that the Sayed-Ashraaf carry creates all kinds of anxieties among the Bahujan and the Brahmin-Savarna alike.
Together, these undemocratic practices can be called the Ashraaf gospel. The cumulative effect of this Ashraaf gospel is increasing social, economic and political segregation of all things Muslim. Owing to this gospel, the Sayed-Ashraaf never make sincere efforts to organize a social majority in order to capture political power. Even if they did, social segregation achieved by the Ashraaf gospel would make it impossible. Hence, they prefer to negotiate democracy with the language of minority identity and rights. However, the Ashraaf gospel is very useful for the Brahmin-Savarna to mobilize a political majority. But why do the Brahmin-Savarna need the Ashraaf gospel to navigate through democracy?
By the 1980s, many Dalit, Pichhda (other backward classes) and Adivasi Bahujan groups felt empowered enough to attempt to mobilize a majority of their own and make legitimate claims on power. This development threatened the power-monopoly of the Brahmin-Savarna owing to their numerical inferiority and limitations of secularism in the wake of anti-caste democratization. They were forced to look for an alternative strategy of majority mobilization. At this moment, the Ashraaf gospel presented itself with ample evidence of the existence of a permanent minority based on which a fresh Hindutva playbook could be written and a permanent political majority achieved in saffron robes. Hence, the Brahmin-Savarna turned to Hindutva ideology with fresh energy and rewrote its playbook to generate anti-Muslim populism. But why anti-Muslim populism and not anti-Dalit, anti-Pichhda or anti-Adivasi populism? For the simple reason that these groups were trying to mobilize a majority and going directly against them could easily backfire, helping them fuse themselves into a Bahujan majority instead. With anti-Muslim populism there was no such danger as the Muslim pole, kept unchanged by the Sayed-Ashraaf, had a proven track record of not resorting to effective democratic politics even in the face of extreme brutality. Also, the long lasting, traumatic memories of clashes between the Ashraaf and the Savarna leading up to the Partition could easily be tapped to provide affective charge to anti-Muslim populism. Moreover, Ashraaf agitation against the Shah Bano judgment served as ample evidence of the existence of the undemocratic Muslim pole, which smart Hindutva strategists promptly weaponized through organized violence. It is evident that the Brahmin-Savarna have embraced the violent Hindutva ideology due to the increasing democratization of Indian social life on the one hand and the etched-in-stone Ashraaf gospel on the other.
So, what can be done to nullify the Hindutva playbook? More democratization, which means greater social, cultural and political integration of Dalit, Pichhda, Ati-Pichhda (Extremely Backward Classes), Adivasi and Pasmanda into a Bahujan majority to acquire political power. Since the Hindutva playbook draws sustenance from the Ashraaf gospel, is it possible to destroy the Hindutva playbook unless the Ashraaf gospel too is buried deep in the ground? But how do you bury the Ashraaf gospel? In fact, it is not that difficult. Moving towards a Common Education System by transforming MEIs and replacing MPLs with Common Family Laws; by abolishing EROs and RPPs, and dissociating languages from religions; and by challenging the Sayed-Ashraaf supremacist claims as vehemently as the Bahujan challenge such claims of the Brahmin-Savarna. For, it is when democratic expansion stops that fascist propensities take over.
