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The BJP in India:
Since the first arrival of Islam to India in A.D. 711, and especially after the establishment of the Muslim Mogul empire in India in 1526, relations between the Hindus and the Muslims have been tense, albeit to varying degrees during different periods. For a brief period, the struggle for independence from British colonial rule brought India's Hindus and Muslims together. Tensions simmered beneath the facade of unity, however, and finally led to the partition of India and the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan, while leaving the fate of Muslim Kashmir undecided. The undetermined status of Kashmir sewed the seeds of a conflict between India and Pakistan, which has led to three Indo-Pakistani wars — in 1948, 1965, and 1971 — and has engulfed Kashmir itself in violence for the past 50 years. Even Mahatma Gandhi, the founder of modern India, became a victim of Hindu-Muslim animosity when he was assassinated on January 30, 1948, by a Hindu extremist, Naturam V. Godse, ostensibly because of his concessionary attitudes toward the Muslims. Nevertheless, Nehru and his Congress Party tried to create an Indian society and state where sectarian, caste, and other parochial loyalties would be submerged by a broader secular Indian identity and nationalism. For a time, this policy seemed to ease Hindu-Muslim tensions. But in the last several years, as this secular and transcendental vision of India has come under pressure from various sources, especially by a resurgence of Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim relations have once again become tense. More important from a long-term perspective the coming to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has caused the Indian Muslims to think hard about their future in India and the political choices available to them.
Nehru, who never fully recovered from what he saw as the tragedy of India's partition, was determined to prevent sectarian and other parochial interests from further undermining India's unity and perhaps even leading to its fragmentation. He was fully aware that in order to achieve this goal India's political system must be secular, and it must allow all religious groups a share in power. This vision appealed to India's religious minorities, notably its Muslims, who became loyal supporters of the Congress Party. Legally, India abolished caste and other parochial privileges, but in reality, the influence of these deep-rooted forces remained strong. Thus, today after 50 years of secular politics, religion has again become a key — if not the key — determinant of political identity, and strong caste-based affiliations have become an effective tool of political mobilization.
In sum, 50 years after independence, the Indian political system has failed to create a unified national Indian political identity, and the divisive bonds of religion, caste, region, language, and ethnicity not only have survived but have grown stronger. In modern-day India, it has become more important to be a "backward caste" Hindu, a "tribal" or a sectarian Muslim, than to be an Indian.1 Ironically, the style of governance of the Indian National Congress contributed to its failure to achieve a nonparochial and transcendental Indian identity, because the Indian National Congress's dominance of the political scene hampered the evolution of a multiparty political system. Congress, which was largely the party associated with the freedom movement, the party that had led the Indian people to swaraj, failed to represent and accommodate regional, religious, and caste-based sentiments. Therefore, when the Congress Party began to weaken, Congress politicians became tempted to redefine their political identity and, therefore, organized themselves around parochial identities other than party.2 India's weakening secularism and the erosion of the Congress Party's power offered an opportunity to the Hindu revivalists, particularly the Sangh Parivar, and its ideological and political members like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the orthodox Hindu nationalist party Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and Shiva Sena (a Hindu nationalist party, allegedly responsible for the Hindu-Muslim riots of Bombay in 1993) to make a serious attempt at redefining the concept of national identity. The Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Philosophy The Bharatiya Janata Party has benefited from being a well-organized ideological and political alternative to the Congress. In order to better understand the BJP mind-set, one has to look at the history of Hindu nationalism, its ideological foundations, and the family of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar, of whom the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
The Sangh Parivar's conception of Indian history maintains that India was a great civilization whose influence spread from East Asia to Central Asia. Although this great civilization absorbed the attacks of different imperial powers, including the Greeks, it became weak in defending its glory against the Muslim Turks. Nevertheless, India remained an unbowed country, despite 1000 years of bloody resistance to the Muslims, and Indian civilization was saved by the Hindu empires of Vijayanagar, Shivaji, and Rana Pratap, all heroes of the Indian civilization. The RSS, which was founded in 1925 by Dr. Hedgewar and whose base was consolidated by Guruji Golwalkar, considers itself the true heir of this religious, historic, and heroic struggle. It proclaims that it has nothing against the Indian Muslims, but it stresses the fundamental point that India was and still is a Hindu nation, and that change of faith does not necessarily mean change of nationality. The RSS believes that the "majority of the Muslims of India are converts to that faith from Hinduism through force of circumstances. They are still Hindu in many essential ways, and in a free, prosperous, progressive India they would find it the most natural thing in the world to revert to their ancient faith and way of life."3 The underlying principle of BJP ideology is that the salvation of India lies in the self-conscious unity of Hindus as a religious and cultural group. The problem, however, is that Hinduism is an extremely diverse and complex religion. On the one hand, a significant component of the
Yet, the BJP and its ideological and political allies have repeatedly said that they are not against Muslims, because they believe that Muslims are only Muslims by birth and not by blood. By blood they are still Hindus. They also believe that the true culture of Muslims is the Hindu culture. Hindu revivalists argue that it is unfortunate that the Indian Muslims do not recognize and accept this "truth." They also say that they respect Muslims not because they are Muslims and believe in Islam, but rather because they are not "Muslims" (in the intrinsic/inherent sense of the term).4 Hindu revivalists try to arouse a sense of fear and deprivation among the Hindus. But in post-colonial India, Muslims have always been subordinate to the Hindus; consequently, their strategy has not been very successful. Therefore, the revivalists have attacked the central and state governments for favoring Muslims and have tried to make the notion of "appeasement of Muslims" central to the strategy of Hindu unification, both psychologically and emotionally, and to somehow try to transform it into cultural and political Hindu unity.
The demolition of Babri Mosque on December 6, 1992, in Ayodhya, mainly by RSS cadres (the BJP's fountainhead), forced the Indian Muslims to reevaluate their relationship with the state. This demolition has the importance of a landmark in Indian Muslim political thought. For the first time, the Indian Muslims reevaluated their "patron-client"
In post-independence India, Muslims have had a patron-client relationship with successive Indian governments, particularly with Prime Minister Nehru's government. The patriarchal Jawaharlal Nehru ordained a client status for the Muslim community at independence. This position remained unchanged for 50 years, despite the fact that the Muslim community in India today is one of the most impoverished minorities, lagging far behind the Sikhs and the Parsees, in political and socioeconomic status. The Muslims' client status also remained intact, despite the increased frequency with which Muslims have become scapegoats in politically sponsored communal riots. Even in 1977, during the emergency rule under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when the Muslims experienced horrifying conditions, their loyalty to their political masters remained intact. The Muslim passivity and lack of political organization meant that they were looked upon as captive vote banks, and consequently no efforts were made to improve their conditions.5
The end of the era of the patron-client relationship, the weakening of secular institutions in India, and most importantly the revival of Hindu nationalism, have forced Indian Muslims to undertake a deep soul searching and to try to devise strategies to cope with India's new cultural and political realities. Options available to Muslims are not many, however. In fact they consist of the following three choices: (1) The Muslims might try to form a political party in order to protect, conserve, and promote their political, social, economic, and religious interests. But the chances of this happening are not good, first because of intra-Muslim divisions, including those deriving from conflicting loyalties. The two main Muslim political parties in India are the Muslim League and the Jamaat-I-Islami. Throughout the 50 years of parliamentary democracy, both parties have done poorly, because the secular and nationalist-minded Muslims have overwhelmingly preferred Congress over the Muslim League. Also, the Indian Muslims have never forgiven the All India Muslim League of Jinnah for the independence holocaust, in which 200,000-500,000 people lost their lives, and 12 to15 million were displaced. Thus today the party is only influential in the state of Kerala. This means that a Muslim party modeled after the pre-independence All India Muslim League would not be able to survive in India's current changing political conditions.6 Second, the chances that Jamaat-I-Islami may be transformed into a Muslim party are not good. The Muslims would not vote for the Jamaat-I-Islami primarily because of the fear of possible backlash from Hindu revivalists and nationalists parties. If the Indian Muslim political stand is hardened, it would lead to a hardening of Hindu revivalist and nationalist positions. And this is the last thing the Indian Muslims want to see happen. They know that, should this happen, they cannot expect protection from the state, and there is no patriarchal Nehru alive to protect them. Nor can they expect much help from the traditional elements of leadership of the Muslim community, which in the past has failed to protect and promote Muslims' interests and values. Moreover, the purist Islamic interpretation of Jamaat-I-Islami is not appealing to the secular-minded Indian Muslims. (2) Muslims can turn toward communal and regional parties for the conservation, protection, and promotion of their political, social, economic, and religious interests and values, a path that they have already been following. For example, in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), where Ayodhya is situated, the Muslim-Dalit backward-castes combination brought devastating electoral results for the BJP in 1993 state assembly elections. Among UP's voters, Harijans are about 21 percent, Yadavs about 17 percent, and Muslims about 19 percent. In the past, their votes had split, but this situation changed in the 1993 and led to BJP defeat.7 (3) Muslims can join mainstream political parties, including the BJP. For various reasons Muslims have already started to follow this route, and the BJP for its own reasons has welcomed Muslim participation. Thus, many Muslim politicians joined and voted for the BJP, a fact that reflects the political flexibility of Indian Muslims. This flexibility, however, has not convinced the BJP to grant the concessions that Muslims have demanded and have received from other political parties.8 Even today, the BJP is steadfastly standing by those positions, slogans, and principles: the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya in place of a demolished Mosque; the development and enactment of a common civil code, which would undermine the Muslim family code; and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants special status to the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. These positions and policies have brought the BJP into direct clash not only with the Muslim community but also with secular norms and values of India. The only reason behind this historic Muslim shift is that the Muslims feel confused and threatened by the new forces that are animating India's political scene and have not yet had time to develop a coherent strategy to cope with the new conditions. The BJP has its own reasons to include minorities, particularly the Muslims, among its ranks. First the BJP's leadership understands well that the Hindu-Muslim divide could seriously damage India's social and political fabric.9 For this reason they do not want to completely marginalize the Muslim community and force it to resort to extreme measures, including perhaps violent actions. India is home to more than 100 million Muslims, and although a modest 11 percent of the country's total population, they make India the fourth-largest Muslim country in the world. And since the Muslims constitute a sizeable minority throughout the country, a Hindu-Muslim conflict could not be confined to a particular region as have been the Hindu-Sikh problems in Punjab. Following the results of the 1996 elections, the BJP realized the importance of tactical compromise and seeking minority votes, and this has led to its encouraging Muslims and other minorities to join the BJP, and to its milder attitude and tone towards the construction of Ram Temple, the uniform civil code, and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.10 But, the question still remains whether the recent and preelection centrist development within the BJP is genuine? To find even a partial answer to this question, one should not look to the policies of the federal government but to those of the states where the BJP has absolute majority. At the federal level the BJP is the dominant party among a group of 18 partners, and its first priority has been to maintain the fragile alliance, rather than fulfill its ideological goals. Thus, if one wants to see how India would look under a purely Hindu revivalist and nationalist regime, and how such regime would treat other minorities, one should look at those states or provinces where either the BJP has been elected with an overwhelming mandate or where it has formed a coalition with like-minded parties, such as the Shiva Sena in Maharashtra. To illustrate, in the state of Maharashtra, the state government has started to deport the Bangladeshi Muslims. The state claims they were illegal immigrants, but in reality they were skilled workers, proficient in the art of diamond cutting and gold embroidery, and had lived in Mumbai (Bombay) for decades. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, schoolbooks are being rewritten to disparage the Muslim historical personalities. In the state of Gujarat, interreligious marriages are officially discouraged. Hence, wherever BJP and Hindu revivalists and nationalists have formed governments with overwhelming majorities, they have spread the culture of intolerance and have tended to use the Muslims as scapegoats.11
The weakening of secular institutions and values and the subsequent rise and spectacular comeback of Hindu revivalist and nationalist parties in India, have set the Indian Muslims on an uncharted journey. There is an internal debate going on within the Muslim community regarding the path to follow in order to preserve and promote their political, social, economic, and religious interests and values. Only time will tell how Muslim politicians will lead their community through this difficult period of reevaluating their position in the new Indian society and subsequently shedding their deeply inbred minority complex. Muslims are likely to be forced to become politically active in order to become an integral part of India's political process, and assure a voice for themselves in state and national governments. In short, Indian Muslims can no longer afford to be taken for granted by any political party. Thus even if the BJP loses its appeal, Indian Muslims would need to become more organized and active in shaping Indian politics if they want their rights to be respected. Notes
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