Muslim Political Agency in Meerut, India, C. 1950-2004
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Coalition Politics, Ethnic Violence and Citizenship: Muslim Political Agency in Meerut, India, c. 1950-2004 Kayoko Tatsumi A thesis submitted to the Development Studies Institute of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. October 2009 UMI Number: U615505 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615505 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 awrutxaryot Po 12.1 Declaration This dissertation is the result of my own work and contains nothing which the outcome of work in collaboration. A bstract This dissertation examines the responses of the Muslim community in Meerut city, in western Uttar Pradesh, India, to the rise of militant Hindu nationalism and to the anti-Muslim violence that shook Meerut in April-May 1987. I show how Meerut Muslims engaged in adaptive economic and political strategies in the wake of the 1987 violence and how these strategies culminated in a new style of participatory politics. This emerged under the leadership of the hitherto low status Qureshi (butcher) community. I show how Qureshi political activism has worked to create a Muslim political community which can be mobilised in terms both of civic and Muslim identities. I also demonstrate how Muslim political leaders have engaged in an instrumental politics of vote-trading with Hindu low- caste political parties. Both communities are exploiting new possibilities for representation in an era of multi-party coalition politics at state and national levels. My account of the ‘new Muslim politics’ in Meerut examines how Islam is understood alongside civic, or even secular, accounts of what it means to be a Muslim in contemporary India. More generally, my discussion of the production of ethnic peace in Meerut since c.1990 allows me to contribute to an ongoing debate on the causes and differential geography of‘communal’ violence in India. I do not attempt to adjudicate between the competing accounts of ‘votes and violence’ offered by Steven Wilkinson, Ashutosh Varshney, Paul Brass and others. Instead, I seek to build on their work by offering a more considered discussion of Muslim political agency in the face of provocative militant Hinduism. Behind concerted campaigns for security and survival, the ‘new Muslim politics’ mirrors a commitment to the goals of respect and dignity that is also to be found among the region’s poorest Hindu communities and the Scheduled Castes ( dalits). Acknowledgments The creation of this thesis has been supported by the great deal of intellectual, psychological and financial help and institutional assistance received in the long and slow process of collecting data and formulating it into a scholarly work. A scholarship from the Matsushita Foundation (Panasonic) made possible my extended fieldwork in India. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi kindly offered me the necessary institutional base in India. I wish to particularly thank, among many scholars at CSDS, Professor Ashis Nandy for his warm support and introduction to the institute, Dr. V.B Singh for his strong support and protection and Ms. Chandrika Palmar for her everyday care and good advice. At the Delhi School of Economics I owe special thanks to Professor Andre Beteille for his intellectual guidance and warm hospitality and Professor Patricia Uberoi for introducing me to the Institute for Economic Growth, which provided me with accommodation facilities as well as with a valuable meeting spot with scholars from all over the world. Mr. Naresh Goswami and Dr. Satendra Kumar of the Delhi School kindly worked as my key research assistants, helping me to open up my way through to different parts of Uttar Pradesh in general and to Meerut in particular. Their translations of historical and contemporary documents from Hindi to English were particularly valuable in my historical analysis. I wish to also thank all my friends and respondents in Meerut, without whose guidance, patience and warm hospitality this work could not have taken any shape. Among them I owe special thanks to Mr. Amit Prasad, the District Magistrate at the time, and his wife Mrs. Rani Prasad, both for help offered in the former’s official capacity and for the hospitality and generous personal support that they both gave me as I started my life in Meerut city. I wish to also thank Mr. Arum Kumar, the Director of Inspector General of Police at that time, for his introduction to the real world of riot control from the police side. I wish to thank respondents and friends from both the Qureshi and Ansari communities for their hospitality and support and for sparing large amounts of time for my (repeated) interviews. I owe special thanks to Professor Shahabbudin Ansari in Meerut, who translated archival materials from Urdu to English. In London, among the many people who provided me with valuable intellectual support along the way I particularly wish to thank Dr. Jonathan Dijon and Dr. Ben Jones for their insightful comments on and criticism of parts of my chapters. Miss Diana Syrat read through all my chapters for proofreading with an enthusiasm which always fortified me so that I could find renewed energy to continue. I would also like to thank my architect friend, Mr. Puneet Khanna, for creating original maps of Meerut city, the state of Uttar Pradesh and the Indian subcontinent for this thesis. And lastly, but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my two supervisors, Professor John Harriss, my former supervisor, and Professor Stuart Corbridge who ‘inherited’ me from Professor Harriss upon his departure. I wish to particularly thank Professor Corbridge for his strong intellectual support and warm encouragement based on which this thesis was given a new life with full light and meaning. Thank you, Stuart. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV TABLE OF CONTENTS VI Maps xi Tables xi Figures xii Abbreviations of Selected Term xiv Glossary of Selected Terms xv PROLOGUE XVI Overview xvi Fieldwork and Research Methods xxi PARTI l CHAPTER is ON THE CAUSES AND GEOGRAPHY OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN INDIA 2 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 The Construction of Communalism in Colonial India 4 1.2.1 Technologies of rule 8 1.2.2 Hindu revivalism 8 1.2.3 The birth of Hindu nationalism 12 1.2.4 Endgames of empire and the partition of India 14 vi 1.2.5 Hindu nationalism and the politics of communalism in post-colonial India 16 1.2.6 Hindu nationalism in the 1980s 19 1.3 The Causes and Geography of Communal Violence 28 1.3.1 Political and socio-economic approach 31 1.3.2 Electoral incentives for ethnic violence 33 1.3.3 Institutionalised riot systems 39 1.3.4 Inter-communal civic engagement 42 1.3.5 An anthropological approach to violence 47 1.4 Conclusion 50 CHAPTER 2: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND MUSLIM POLITICS IN UTTAR PRADESH 53 2.1 Introduction 53 2.2 A Brief Political History of Uttar Pradesh 56 2.2.1 Political geography in UP 58 2.2.2 UP Congress policies concerning Muslims in UP 69 2.2.3 Political formations among UP Muslims 73 2.2.4 Hindu-Muslim violence from the 1960s to the 1980s 77 2.3 Meerut City 78 2.4 Local Politics in Meerut City, 1951-1986 83 2.4.1 Grass-roots efforts at political representation among non-elite Muslims 98 2.4.2 Dr. Wahid Qureshi’s initiative in the 1977 Assembly election 101 2.5 Conclusion 104 Appendix 2.1 The Meerut District constituency for the Lok Sabha election 106 CHAPTER 3: BARE LIFE? ANTI-MUSLIM VIOLENCE IN MEERUT AND THE EVENTS OF APRIL-MAY1987 108 3.1 Introduction 108 3.2 Communal Violence in Meerut after Independence 110 3.2.1 Academic literature on communal violence in Meerut 112 3.2.2 Build up to the 1987 violence, 1984-1987 124 3.2.3 The events of April-May 1987 127 3.2.4 15-23 May 1987 129 3.2.5 The Massacre in Hashimpura 132 3.2.6 The economics of violence 141 3.2.7 The politics of sacred space and time 146 3.3 Everyday Forms of Violence 149 3.4 Conclusion 156 Appendix 3.1 Maps 159 PART II 162 CHAPTER 4: ECONOMIC MOBILITY AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION WITHIN MEERUT’S MUSLIM COMMUNITIES 163 4.1 Introduction 163 4.2 Economic Mobility among Low-Status Muslims 165 4.3 ‘Modern’ Education 179 4.3.1 White-collar jobs 188 4.3.2 Changing social organisation among the Qureshi community 191 4.3.3 The Other Backward Classes (OBCs) category 193 viii 4*4 Islamisation and Muslim Ethnicity 196 4.4.1 Islamisation 198 4.4.2 Muslims in the Old Town 199 4.4.3 The process of Islamisation of Qureshis 205 4.5 Resettlement after Partition 217 4.5.1 Muslim politics vs. Hindu politics 221 4.6 Conclusion 222 CHAPTER 5: THE NEW MUSLIM POLITICS IN MEERUT, 1993- 2004- I : CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY 224 5.1 Introduction 224 5.2 Political Entrepreneurship of Haji Akhlaq Qureshi 226 5.2.1 The UP Assembly election in the Meerut city constituency 228 5.2.2 Haji Akhlaq Qureshi 231 5.2.3 Religious institutions 238 5.2.4 Religion and politics in Mumbai 239 5.2.5 Coexistence of religion and politics in Meerut 241 5.2.6 Religiosity and secular organisations 245 5.3 Electoral Mobilisation by Haji Akhlaq 248 5.3.1 ‘Saviour of Muslims’ 250 5.3.2 Appeals to civic identity 253 5.4 The Local Political Scene from 1994 to 2004 255 5.5 The Lok Sabha Election in May 2004 258 5.5.1 Electoral mobilisation of Shahid Akhlaq in 2004 260 5.5.2 The hoardings’ effects on Muslim viewers 266 5.5.3 The public spectacle of procession 272 5.5.4 The BSP banners of civil rights 274 ix 5-5-5 Islam for Integration 277 5.6 Conclusion 284 CHAPTER 6: THE NEW MUSLIM POLITICS IN MEERUT, 1993- 2004 - II: NEGOTIATING NEW ALLIANCES 286 6.1 Introduction 286 6.2 Political Parties and the New Muslim Politics 287 6.3 The Political Ascendancy of the Qureshis and the Ansar is 292 6.4 Pragmatism vs.