Researching India's Muslims
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
2020FHAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10 (3): 776–785 CURRENTS: INDIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS Researching India’s Muslims Identities, methods, politics Hilal AHMED, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies This article maps out the relationship between the academic/intellectual work and political positioning of a Muslim researcher in contemporary India. It is divided into three parts. In the first part, I raise conceptual and methodological questions, especially in relation to my ongoing research on the politics of Muslim political representation. Through these questions I make an attempt to share my own anxieties and the problems that I encounter while engaging with the issues of Muslim identity. In the second part of the article, I discuss the methodological moves which I make or intend to make to deal with these questions. These moves are primarily organized as self-clarifications. In the final section, I make a broad argument for what I call intellectual politics. Keywords: Muslims, Islam, intellectual politics, Citizenship Amendment Act, Hindutva The recent protests against the Citizenship Amend- Arguments of this kind led to a short-lived yet highly ment Act of 2019 (CAA)—a law passed by the Indian controversial debate. It began in January 2020 when Parliament that offers citizenship to non-Muslim reli- the anti-CAA protests were going on throughout the gious communities from three Muslim-majority states country and Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh had emerged as the (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan)—have posed epicenter of this new politics of resistance. A prominent a serious intellectual dilemma for researchers and aca- Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader shared a video clip demics like me. A segment of the protesters argue, in of a speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru University fact quite stridently, that Muslims (including scholars (JNU) student Sharjeel Imam.2 The police took swift ac- and academics with Muslim names) should come for- tion and Sharjeel Imam was arrested under the National ward and reclaim their Muslim identity as an affected Security Act. The pro-BJP media described the student minority. Irena Akbar, for instance writes: as the mastermind of the anti-CAA protests. The Orga- nizer, the mouthpiece of the Hindu nationalist organi- If Muslims are asserting their religious identity with zation Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), published their religious slogans, it is because they have been tar- a detailed cover story on the “separatist” anti-national geted on account of their religion. If the state wants to politics of Imam in its February 2020 print edition.3 bully me because of my faith, I will only publicly assert The anti-CAA protesters were confused on this issue. it. Hannah Arendt, the Jewish political philosopher who There were two rather conflicting responses. The orga- fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, wrote, “If one is at- tacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not nizers of the Shaheen Bagh protest took a very clear po- as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder sition. In order to provide an inclusive character to the of the Rights of Man.” A democracy allows you to pro- anti-CAA protests, the Shaheen Bagh Committee issued test from your standpoint. An unaffected majority can protest solely as an Indian. An affected minority has the right to protest as an Indian and as a minority.1 2. https://www.boomlive.in/politics/sharjeel-imams-amu -speech-sparks-row-assam-police-slaps-sedition-6662. Ac- 1. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/why cessed on June 4, 2020. -i-protest-as-a-muslim-citizenship-act-lucknow-6197041/. 3. https://epaper.organiser.org/index.php?editionpMpage Accessed on June 4, 2020. &datep2020-02-01&pagep5. Accessed on June 4, 2020. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Volume 10, number 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/711892 © 2020 The Society for Ethnographic Theory. All rights reserved. 2575-1433/2020/1003-0009$10.00 777 RESEARCHING INDIA’S MUSLIMS a statement asserting that “no one individual’s videos, This short article is a modest attempt to unpack this statements or articles can represent the movement.”4 On poser. It is divided into three parts. In the first part I the other hand, a segment of the protesters supported raise a few conceptual problems and methodological Sharjeel Imam’s freedom of expression. Some of them, questions, especially in relation to my ongoing research in fact, recognized him as the “voice of young Indian on the politics of Muslim political representation in post- Muslims.”5 colonial India. Through these questions I make an at- I did not intervene in this debate directly (though I tempt to share my own anxieties and the problems that had written a few articles in newspapers and web por- I encounter while engaging with issues of Muslim iden- tals on the overtly communal nature of the CAA).6 I tity. In the second part of this article, I discuss the meth- was not in India and did not have sufficient informa- odological moves which I make or intend to make to deal tion to make any substantive comment or argument with these questions. These moves are primarily orga- on this episode. Nevertheless, I gave an interview to nized as self-clarifications and I do not wish to present the television station, NDTV, underlining the nature them in an instructive way. In final section, I make a of BJP’s CAA politics and its keenness to appropriate broad argument on what I call intellectual politics. the figure of Sharjeel Imam for transforming the anti- fl CAA protest into a Hindu-Muslim con ict. I also made I. Some questions it clear that although I was not fully aware of the con- tents of Imam’s controversial speech, I found his views The conceptual/political category called “Indian Mus- objectionable and counterproductive. This minor com- lims” poses the first kind of challenge. The Muslimness ment was taken very seriously by pro-Imam intellectuals of an individual or of a group as a lived experience and and activists.7 I was criticized for being a passive, in- the Muslim identity of a social/cultural group as an ob- active, self-contented, arm-chaired liberal-secular intel- ject of analysis introduce us to two very different formu- lectual, who would not dare to speak as a Muslim.My lations. A Muslim who lives in India may accommodate professional affiliations were also invoked to describe various social, cultural, linguistic, and even religious af- me as intellectual elite, who would intentionally make filiations as lived experiences, without classifying them an unclear, tentative, less political critique of the CAA as either Indian or Islamic. However, when such lived ex- in the name of “nuanced” analysis. periences are transformed into the object of analyses, the I do not respond to these kinds of allegations. I find notions of identity or identities emerge as conceptual them extremely essentialist, polemical, intellectually in- tools by which we try to make sense of the multifaceted adequate, and politically rhetorical in nature. This type cultural engagements and religious-ideological commit- of criticism is deeply rooted in the cultural universe of In- ments of an individual or a group. Thus, a number of dian academic and public life. However, I do not under- groups and communities who live in different regions estimate a serious intellectual question that emerges of India and in fact practice various forms of Islam in- from these criticisms: do I need to speak only as a Mus- variably become “Indian Muslims” (see Faisal, this issue). lim? If yes, how should I deal with my professional iden- Legal-constitutional discourse in India, which recog- tity as a researcher? If no, how to justify my deep cultural- nizes Muslims as a religious minority, is another im- philosophical associations with the version of Islam I portant source that provides a legal homogeneity to a recognize as my religion? pan-Indian identity of Muslims.8 Indian Muslims are 4. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/shaheen-bagh -sharjeel-imam-organiser-protest-assam-agitate-video 8. It is worth noting that the Constitution of India introduces -1640170-2020-01-25. Accessed on June 4, 2020. the terms such as minority, Schedule Caste (SC), and 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?vplzH2RGS_oq8. Ac- Scheduled Tribe (ST) as secular administrative categories. cessed on June 4, 2020. However, this schema changed in the 1990s. In 1992, the National Commission for Minorities Act was passed, 6. https://theprint.in/opinion/who-represents-indias-mus which led to the establishment of the National Commis- lims-thanks-to-caa-protests-we-now-know-the-answer sion for Minorities (NCM) in May 1993. Following this /350709/. Accessed on June 4, 2020. mandate, the Government of India notified five religious 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?vpCt8pPxKZQGs. Ac- communities, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and cessed on June 4, 2020. Zoroastrians (Parsis), as national religious minorities in Hilal AHMED 778 to be recognized not merely as individual citizens but may be called the innermost domain of the concerned also as members of a nationally recognized religious Muslim community. However, the Muslim identity of a minority. This legal duality—secular citizenship versus researcher has its own limitations. Many a time, it be- minority rights as a religious community—has been comes very difficult to draw a clear dividing line be- one of the most contentious aspects of postcolonial In- tween the research questions and the cultural practices dian politics. Indian Muslims are often called a “pam- and affiliations which one shares with the group or com- pered community” and the minority rights given to munity. This becomes more complicated when Muslim them are described as a sign of “Muslim appeasement” researchers are asked to respond as some kind of repre- by the Hindu right wing.9 sentative of a Muslim community.