Interpreting BJP’s Pasmanda
outreach in New India
KHALID ANIS ANSARI
PRIME MINISTER Narendra
Modi’s instruction to the BJP to reach out to the Pasmanda Muslims in its two-day National Executive Meeting
held in Hyderabad on 2-3 July 2022 seems to have surprised many. However, Modi’s interest in Pasmanda
Muslims, a conglomerate of the OBC, Dalit, and Adivasi
Muslims that constitute about 85% of Indian Muslims, is not new. As Gujarat
chief minister, he had listened patiently to a contingent of Pasmanda activists from Uttar Pradesh for about forty-five
minutes during Ramadan (July-August) in 2013.1
By the end of 2013, the UP BJP had formed
the ‘weavers’ cell’ to reach out to Pasmanda Muslims.
An explicit reference to Pasmanda Muslims by PM Modi was made in the BJP Conclave in Orissa in 2017, where
he said ‘that there are OBCs even among the Muslims and other religions. The
benefits meant for OBCs are also for them and should go to the Muslim OBCs too…
these welfare measures are usurped by the Syeds and Pathans.’2
In the recent Hyderabad conclave, he
stressed the ‘need for exploring new social equations within minority
communities, the need to look at communities not as monoliths but with
different interests and different positions within the social and economic
hierarchies of these communities. That issues on which the elites or different
ethnicities of particular communities respond to are different from what the
other ethnicities and poor and marginalized within these communities respond
to.’3
The reference to elite domination within
variegated minority communities was combined with the BJP’s universalist
development language of welfarism and the need to
carry out ‘sneh yatras’ for
bridging the trust deficit with Pasmanda Muslims.
There have been two broad responses to the
BJP’s overtures from the Pasmanda community. The
first response is from the section that may be labelled as the political
worker. The political worker may be characterized as a unique product of
electoral politics that mediates between the political parties and the concerns
of the masses and gets work done through networks across parties and
institutions of governance. Extremely catholic in terms of loyalties to
ideologies and parties, the political worker, quite akin to the Turk,
Abyssinian, or Purabiya Rajput mercenaries of the
medieval era, is driven by personal ambition and offers her services, mainly
the ability to fetch votes, to the highest bidder. This class of workers among
the Pasmanda community, captured in the vernacular as
‘lobharthis’, has welcomed the BJP’s Pasmanda outreach.
Building on the legitimacy accorded to the Pasmanda category by PM Modi, on
which most opposition parties have maintained a deafening silence, the
allocation of a ministry and other critical positions to Pasmanda
Muslims by the Yogi 2.0 government and the welfare benefits to the most
deprived, including Pasmanda, sections (‘labharthis’), this class is out in the field transacting Pasmanda votes for the BJP. While the figures of 8% of Pasmanda votes shifting to the BJP in the UP Legislative
Assembly elections in 2022 need to be scrutinized for their validity, one
cannot deny that there was some traction for the BJP among the direct Pasmanda beneficiaries of welfare programmes.
The BJP,
being one of the most resource-rich political parties in the country today,
holds a definite appeal to the class of Pasmanda
political workers, who sources tell me, have been given the responsibility to
fetch ten thousand votes for the party from each constituency in UP. In closely
contested elections, where often the margin of victory is less than ten
thousand votes in many constituencies, this may cause worry for the opposition
parties.
The second response has been from what may
be characterized as the ideological worker. The ideological worker
imagines herself as an ethical and self-sacrificing ‘missionary’ (‘karyakarta’) that indulges in conscientization
and awareness raising action on behalf of emancipatory ideological/identity
formations. The Pasmanda ideological spaces,
particularly the Ali Anwar-led All India Pasmanda
Muslim Mahaz (henceforth Mahaz),
avowedly locate themselves in the anti-caste (Ambedkarite)
and social justice (Lohiaite-Mandalite) tradition of
politics and characterize the RSS-BJP combine as a Brahmanical-Manuvadi
and communal formation.
The Mahaz has
taken a cynical, if not rejectionist, view of the BJP’s Pasmanda
outreach framing it as a paternalistic move inspired primarily by electoral
calculus. In an open letter to Modi, Ali Anwar
opined, ‘It was a pleasant surprise to hear you talk about “Pasmanda”,’
but the Pasmanda Muslims want “sam-maan”
(equality and dignity), not “sneh” (affection). The
term “sneh” has a specific connotation: That the Pasmanda Muslims need “sneh”
denotes that they are an inferior lot requiring patronage from the ones who are
superior... Has the sudden move to take out “Sneh Yatra” for Pasmanda society
something to do with vote-bank politics?’4
However,
the distinction between the political and ideological worker must be construed
as analytical with much more porous boundaries in empirical reality. While the
motivations of the political worker are too instrumentalist and immediate, that
of the ideological worker may be more utopian and prone to ideological closures
that may impede a more persuasive interpretation of the dynamic changes in the
political sphere. The limitations of the ideological become more glaring as one
begins to unravel a core question: why has the BJP explicitly launched the Pasmanda outreach campaign in a context where it can forge
electoral majorities sans Muslims and has made the Muslim vote almost
irrelevant to its electoral fortunes?
While the intuitive temptation to answer
this question through electoral calculus may have some justification, I would
contend that one needs to take a detour to a different political landscape to
better grapple with it. The logic that I want to work with is that more than
the immediacy of the electoral, the BJP’s Pasmanda
outreach is intimately connected to attempts of the RSS-BJP to transact its
foundational schizophrenia vis-ŕ-vis the ‘Muslim’ question itself.
A few assumptions will be in order here. My
approach to understanding social phenomena is broadly constructivist and
interpretative, dispensing with any objectivist or essentialist meanings.
Knowledge is contingent on discourses, which are systems of meanings that work
with inclusions and exclusions in a field of power. No discourse can exhaust
the field of meaning. Therefore, the ideological character of any discourse is
revealed when it tends to forget its origin and contingency and present its
partial view as a totality.
In this
sense, the Hindutva project is a discursive formation
that attempts to institute the social order in a particular manner among rival
possibilities. It works with specific exclusions and inclusions of meanings and
renderings of ‘us’ and ‘them’, just like any other
political project. If it gains traction, it is owing to specific meanings and
truths that resonate with the masses rationally or affectively. Hence, the
evaluation of Hindutva from an ‘ethical’ (good versus
evil) lens must be reconsidered in favour of the ‘political’ lens that
plots its discourse and attendant consequences in a field of power.
Two, the Hindutva
discursive space is not monolithic and subject to internal contestations and
new articulations in the face of emerging challenges. The RSS-BJP confronts a
perpetual tension between the high caste, conservative motivations of its top
leadership, and the dynamic challenges from intensifying capitalism and
democratic deepening. The Sangh Parivar
has consistently adapted to new situations and reworked its cultural,
political, and economic vision. BJP’s New India is its most recent articulation
in a neoliberal-plutocratic context. Andersen and Damle
assess that ‘RSS is a very cautious group that slowly evolves, a generalization
that one could make about India itself. The RSS has never been revolutionary
and is not likely to be so any time soon. Its goal is social harmony and
cultural assimilation. However, it does change….’5
In its formative stage, several factors
colluded to produce the cultural vision of the RSS: (a) The orientalist-colonial mapping of India and reading of
history from a religious lens that privileges the simplistic story of perennial
Hindu-Muslim conflict. The pan-religion high caste elite increasingly began
using religion as a proxy to secure its interests and compensate for their
numerical deficit after the installation of semi-parliamentary practice from
the 1920s onward; (b) The supremacist polemical tradition of Christian
and Islamic missionaries that held a disparaging view of the Hindu faith and
labelled the Hindus as ‘pagans’ and ‘infidels’; (c) The emergence of
anti-caste and labour militancy, particularly in Maharashtra; (d) The
increasing instances of communal violence, particularly between 1920-1940s,
where Muslims were usually framed as the prime instigators, and so on.
In a world where the privileged classes
were increasingly insecure, a few Brahmins in Maharashtra formed the RSS in
1925 as a cultural organization for the Hindus. The RSS discourse over time
borrowed heavily from ultra-nationalist Nazi and fascist visions of mythocracy, corporatism, soil and blood narratives,
militarization, and nationalization of culture, and the ends justify the means
logic on behalf of the nation.
The RSS’s founding vision was inspired by
the Savarkar-Golwalkar framework that articulated
‘territorial nationalism’ with ‘cultural nationalism’ and imagined a
homogeneous Hindu race inhabiting the territory of Bharat and unified by a
common Hindutva (Hindu-ness) culture. Savarkar defines a Hindu as ‘a person who regards the land
of Bharatvarsha from Indus to the Seas
as his Fatherland, as well as his Holy land – that is the cradle land of his
religion.’6 This
foundational imagination combines internal Hindu catholicity with the exclusion
of those religious communities that have a foreign origin.
The
Muslims and Christians, mainly because of their proselytizing faith traditions,
become the Other and objects of demonization that must
be accorded limited citizenship rights. Hindu identity is stabilized by
deflecting the internal assertion from the lowered castes and Adivasis to the Muslim/Christian Other. While most Muslims
and Christians are indigenous converts and therefore definitionally
share the imagined Hindu race and Fatherland (pitrbhumi),
the innovation of the Holy Land (punyabhumi)
also renders them alien. To regain equal citizenship, they must revert to the
Hindu faith, ghar-wapsi (homecoming), as it is termed
in the RSS literature.
Interestingly, most founding icons of the
Indian nation shared the foreign-Indic distinction in religion, including the
cosmopolitan Babasaheb Ambedkar,
when he argued that conversion to Islam and Christianity would ‘denationalize’
the Dalits. Article 25 (b) of the Indian Constitution
and the Hindu Code Bills (1955-56) definitionally
incorporates all sections of the Indian population that do not practice Islam,
Christianity, Zoroastrianism, or Judaism (foreign faiths) as ‘Hindu’. In fact,
in the absence of centralized ecclesiastical authority in Hinduism, the Indian
state has played a crucial role in defining, unifying, and reforming the Hindu
faith.
Intimately
connected with this is the process of ‘Semiticization’
of Hinduism, where Hinduism is reworked in the image of the Abrahamic
traditions in its theocratic, soteriological, and organization dimensions.
These are manifested in the desire for the state to be governed by Hindu
principles, the attempts to save the non-believers by sending Hindu
missionaries across the globe and forging a centralized ecclesiastical
authority in the form of the RSS, VHP, and the four Shankaracharya’s.7 Traditionally,
Hinduism was theologically pagan, tolerant of propositional truths, and
socially hierarchical. The semiticized Hinduism works
with core revealed truths and a definitionally
monolithic, egalitarian community as reflected in the RSS’s slogan of ‘Ek Mandir, Ek
Kuan aur Ek Shamshaan’ (a common temple,
well, and crematorium).
Culture is the crucial category in Sangh Parivar’s lexicon. The RSS
has never clearly defined Hindutva. Hindutva plays the role of a ‘myth’: it performs a
metaphorical function by offering a surface of inscription for varying emerging
demands and unifying the discourse. Myths can mobilize affective energies and
sub-conscious fantasies and are an invitation to action. The enacting of myths
may be termed as ‘ritual’, which in the case of the RSS ideology may embrace
the character-forming sessions in the daily shakhas,
campaigns like the Ram Mandir movement that produces
the unified Hindu, or even violence against Muslims and Christians as a
sacrificial ritual to propitiate the ‘Nation God’ a term that Golwalkar used.
The
present RSS, steered by its chief Mohan Bhagwat, has
distanced itself from the far more radical interpretations of Hindutva in the Savarkar-Golwalkar
imagination in favour of a more reflexive and assimilationist position on
Muslims/Christians in the Mukherji-Upadhyaya
framework of ‘Integral Humanism’ and ‘Indianization’
(Bharatiyata). Bhagwat’s
recent utterances betray a more marked slide from the religious to regional
connotations of the term Hindu. While Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee dissociated from the Hindu Mahasabha and
formed the Bhartiya Jan Sangh
in 1951 on the core question of membership of Muslims and Christians, the RSS
opened its membership to the latter in 1979 under the stewardship of Balasaheb Deoras. Since 2002, the
RSS-backed Rashtriya Muslim Manch
(RMM) has been outreaching Muslims to bring them to the ‘mainstream’.
To paraphrase the relevant points in this
revised formulation. One is the distinction between ‘Dharma’ as righteous
conduct and code of duties and ‘Panth’ as alluding to
various sects and their modes of worship. In Balraj Madhok’s view, ‘While following this Dharma people
are free to follow different forms of worship and adopt different approaches to
realise God and attain salvation. They have come to be described as the
different paths of worship or “Panthas”… Christianity
and Islam have also been added to this plethora of panths
or ways of worship that co-exist in this country.’8
Issues are taken with translating Dharma as
religion and secularism as Dharma-nirpekshita. The
RSS understands secularism as Panth-nirpekshita and
has historically levelled the charge of Muslim appeasement against secular
parties like the Congress.
Two, a
distinction between religion and culture is made, ‘Culture is associated with a
country and not with a religion. The whole of Europe follows Christianity, but
there is a distinct German culture, French culture and Italian culture. The
whole of West Asia is mainly Muslim but there is a distinct Turkish culture,
Iranian culture and Arab culture. There is no such thing as Muslim culture or
Christian culture in India. There is only one Indian culture which is common to
all Indians.’9 In this respect, Indian Muslims are expected to pride
themselves on the Indian nation, culture, and revered icons like Rama and
Krishna. Indonesia is cited as an exemplary case that is predominantly Muslim
but glorifies its connection with its Hindu past.
Three, the focus on the
historic vivisection of Bharat by Muslims in 1947, Islamic militancy,
particularly the Sunni-Deoband orthodoxy, and the
modernization of Islam.
Fourth, a distinction between ‘rashtra’ (nation) and
‘rajya’ (state) is drawn to dissociate the meanings
of theocracy associated with the Hindu Rashtra. The
Constitution is reaffirmed while simultaneously adapting it to RSS-BJP’s
cultural-political vision through a method that Hilal
Ahmed has dubbed ‘Hindutva Constitutionalism.’10
There
are certainly points of affinity and conflict between the revisionist RSS-BJP
discourse and the Pasmanda narratives. In the first
wave of Pasmanda politics (1926-1947), the Abdul Qaiyum Ansari-led Momin
Conference contested the bi-nationality thesis and the demand of Pakistan that
the Jinnah-led Muslim League raised. The leaders of the Momin
Conference were characterized as ‘nationalist Muslims’ as opposed to the Muslim
League’s ‘communalist Muslims’. However, the Muslim League members who could
not relocate to Pakistan turned into Congress supporters overnight. Their
rehabilitation at the expense of nationalist Pasmanda
Muslims was facilitated by upper caste Ashraf leaders like Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad.
In Ali Anwar’s view, ‘The very sections of
the Muslim society that sacrificed the most for the Independence of the
country, that fought against Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory, were thoroughly
marginalized in Independent India.’11 In Pasmanda
discourse, ‘Muslim appeasement’ is deconstructed as Ashraf appeasement. The Mahaz has foregrounded nationalist icons like Veer Abdul
Hamid, a Pasmanda Muslim from the Darzi
(tailor) caste, who was heroically martyred in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965.
Another Pasmanda
spiritual icon is Sant Kabir,
belonging to the Julaha (weaver) community. Ali Anwar
mentions the poet Taju, belonging to the Rangrez (dyer) caste, and quotes Ram Manohar
Lohia, ‘I have recently heard of the poetess Taju, dyer by trade and Muslim by birth around the time of
1857, whose Krishna poetry matches Mira’s devotion.’12 There is a reference to Saint Daryadas belonging to the Muslim Darzi
(tailor) caste, who had spoken against religious and caste-based discrimination
in the late 17th century and had followers from all communities.13
Babasaheb Ambedkar had interpreted
the Hindu-Muslim struggle ‘as a struggle for mastery for dominance… The masses
whether of the Hindus or of the Musalmans are merely
used for establishing the ascendency of the classes. This struggle that is
going on is really a struggle of the classes. It is not a struggle of the
masses.’14 In
contrast to the high caste Ashraf political motivations embedded in the
nostalgia of being the historical ruling class, Ali Anwar suggests that the
struggle of the Pasmanda Muslims is not ‘to achieve
“dominance” of any kind over any other group or groups inside or outside the
Muslim society. Our fight is for equality.’15
The Mahaz has
emphasized contesting Muslim communalism and the imperial theologies of
conquest articulated, for instance, by the Deobandi
tradition as a precondition to contain Hindu communalism that often masquerades
as nationalism. The Pasmanda discourse has privileged
regional-vernacular languages and parochialized the
claim of Urdu as the language of Muslims. The arbitrary tradition of Triple Talaq was consistently opposed, and the modernization and
democratization of madrasas is a persistent theme. The Mahaz
has taken issues with the concept of minority and has articulated pan-religion
horizontal solidarity of indigenous lowered castes and Adivasi
groups.
The
RSS-BJP has favoured the language of ‘Samrasta’
(harmony) over the anti-caste imagination of ‘Samta’
(equality). It has attempted to symbolically integrate and coopt various lower caste and Adivasi
communities not taken seriously by the social justice parties by reworking
their spiritual-community narratives, giving them samman
(respect) and some representation. The inclusion of Danish Ansari in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet in UP, allocation of some critical
positions to members from the Pasmanda community, and
the organization of Pasmanda Samman
Samaroh (minus the pictures of any Pasmanda icon) in Uttar Pradesh is an extension of its
tested strategy. This is what Gramsci called ‘hegemony through neutralization’
or ‘passive revolution’, referring to ‘a situation where demands which
challenge the hegemonic order are appropriated by the existing system so as to
satisfy them in a way that neutralizes their subversive potential.’16
The Mahaz has
raised the issue of the caste census as a precondition to any significant
categorical revision within SC, ST, or OBC quota. On this issue, the BJP has
backtracked. However, a more contentious issue has been the religious
neutrality of the SC category on the lines of OBC, ST, and EWS quota. While
pan-religious caste groups are included in all categories, the SC category
excludes the Muslims and Christians belonging to Dalit origins (while the Dalits belonging to other minority faiths like Sikhism and
Buddhism are included). The background logic governing
this exclusion is the Indic/foreign dichotomy regarding religion, which renders
Islam and Christianity as ‘foreign’ faiths and the related anxieties over
religious conversions. The BJP has taken a strong position against it. In the
face of Hinduism taking a soteriological shift and strong anti-conversion laws,
the Mahaz has pressed for a new conversation on this
exclusion.
The
BJP’s embrace of the neoliberal and plutocratic economic order has been
disastrous for non-corporate forms of capital. Several peasants, artisans,
labourers, and small shopkeepers – and most Pasmanda
Muslims belong to these categories – have been pauperized. While this
pauperization is being compensated by welfarism, it
can only ensure survival, not the dignity of work. However, the most striking
point of discontent is the shrill anti-Muslim discourse and violence launched
by the organizations close to the Sangha Parivar in the form of cow protection, love jihad, and so
on, in which most victims belong to the Pasmanda
communities. The recent felicitation of the remitted perpetrators guilty of
violating Bilqis Bano, a Pasmanda Muslim, and murdering her family during the
Gujarat riots in 2002 can only be interpreted as a symbolic injury by Pasmanda Muslims.
The BJP’s Pasmanda
outreach has less to do with expanding its electoral base than a response to
its constitutive schizophrenia in its approach to the Muslim question: Hinduization of Muslims through conversion or Indianization of Muslims through assimilation? PM Modi’s unequivocal acknowledgment of the Pasmanda category marks a definite shift towards the latter
and resolution
of the Muslim question through the Pasmanda route.
While the conversation on the Pasmanda question has
been ongoing within the RSS-BJP for some time, one
may speculatively attribute its precipitation to the recent diplomatic
humiliation the Indian government has faced from West Asian countries over the Nupur Sharma fiasco. The high caste Ashraf Muslim elite,
owing to their West Asian genealogies and theological and cultural connections,
have probably been identified as active interlocutors against Delhi.
With the mooting of Sneh-Yatras and Pasmanda outreach, the BJP has hit many birds with one stone. It has advanced a healing language and hypothetically expanded its electoral base. At the same time, it has signalled a containment strategy for the dominant Ashraf intelligentsia, political parties, and community organizations. However, there is a clear cleavage in the moderate language employed by the top RSS-BJP functionaries and the more fundamentalist language and actions of affiliates and fringe organizations like the VHP, Bajrang Dal, and so on. Is this cleavage a case of strategic doublespeak or a genuine difference of opinion? The success of the BJP’s Pasmanda outreach will depend on how convincing an answer it gives to this question.
Footnotes:
1. As told to me by the senior journalist Yusuf Ansari who was a part of the contingent.
2. R.M. Chaturvedi, ‘PM Narendra Modi Speaks for Pasmanda Muslims at BJP Conclave’, The Economic Times, 17 April 2017. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/pm-narendra-modi-speaks-for-pasmanda-muslims-at-bjp-conclave/articleshow/58212241.cms
3. N. Hebbar, ‘PM Modi’s “Minority Move” Aimed At Delinking Them from “Elite” Concerns’, The Hindu, 5 July 2022. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pm-modis-minority-move-aimed-at-delinking-them-from-elite-concerns/article65602672.ece
4. The Satyashodhak Staff, ‘Ali Anwar Ansari Writes Stern Letter to Narendra Modi on BJP’s Pasmanda Outreach’, The Satyashodhak, 21 July 2022. https://thesatyashodhak.com/ali-anwar-ansari-writes-stern-letter-to-narendra-modi-on-bjps-pasmanda-outreach/
5. W.K. Andersen & S.D. Damle, The RSS: A View to the Inside. Penguin/Viking, 2018, p. xxiv.
6. Cited in T. Basu, P. Datta, S. Sarkar, T. Sarkar & S. Sen, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right. Orient Longman, 1993, p. 8.
7. Sebastian Kappen, Hindutva and Indian Religious Traditions. Notion Press, 2019.
8. Balraj Madhok, Indianisation. Orient Paperback, 1970, pp. 22-23.
9. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
10. Hilal Ahmed, ‘New India, Hindutva Constitutionalism, and Muslim Political Attitudes’, Studies in Indian Politics, 2022, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221082833
11. Ali Anwar, Masawat Ki Jung (The Battle for Equality). Vani Prakashan. 2001, p. 171, Tr.
12. Ibid., p. 57; Rammanohar Lohia, Guilty Men of India’s Partition. B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2000, p. 9.
13. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
14. B.R. Ambedkar, ‘Civilization or Felony’, in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Volume 5 (Third, pp. 127-144). Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 1979, p. 128.
15. ‘Open Letter to the PM Shri Narendra Modi’ released by Ali Anwar Ansari, Founder President of the All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz and former MP (Rajya Sabha) on 15 July 2022.
16. Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. Verso, 2013, p. 77.