Muslims in Uttar Pradesh have observed a “tactical silence” in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections, maintaining silence in the face of provocation to prevent polarization, voting strategically according to local candidature to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seat-by-seat, and voting in large numbers with as much coherence as possible.
This phenomenon should concern the democratic world at large. First, it tells us that Muslim voters have accepted the fact that their political participation is only limited to staying safe from majoritarian politics: Muslims will vote for candidates who appear to be able challengers to the BJP. The vote of a Muslim, therefore, is hostage to a threat and carries no political currency. Muslims cannot trade their vote for development promises, they can only exchange it for silent neglect.
Second, it shows that Muslims have developed a double consciousness where they feel that they contribute to the polarization of Indian society — hence the belief that their silence will mitigate polarization. The truth is polarization is targeted at, benefits from, and accepted and rewarded by the majority. Muslims are victims of polarization and the violence that it begets. For the Muslim community to have assimilated this double consciousness of being an element of causality while also being the victim, signals a disturbing shift in the larger political psyche of the community. It also indicates a moral downfall for the majority and its failure to take responsibility for the fissures that India has experienced in the last decade.
Third, the silence tells us that Muslims fear visible political participation. This is hardly surprising. Over the last decade, Muslim political action has met with State brutality and social ostracisation. While it is arguable that the Indian State has shown general disapproval of dissent, its response to protests by Muslims has been exceptionally oppressive. Police action during the CAA-NRC protests, house demolitions after the protests to Nupur Sharma’s remarks, and the legislative assault on Muslim rights have confirmed the State’s intolerance and society’s disdain for any Muslim political mobilisation.
Barring a few instances, Muslim rights are not an election issue. In the face of this silence and political neglect, young Muslims need to develop a new language of politics. First, we must reject historical essentialisation — a view of the community that assumes a special historical continuity between the Muslim monarchs of India and Muslims in India today. This view of the community, constructed by the Sangh Parivar, first demonises the Muslim monarchs of India as external invaders and then characterises Muslims in India today as their flag bearers — pushing Muslims into a corner where the sole purpose of debate is the community’s othering.
Muslims should reject this trap and claim the truth that the historical continuities of Muslim monarchs are as much theirs as they belong to the Hindus. Muslim rule in India has contributed to and shaped Indian culture in general. These continuities are Indian, not just Muslim. For instance, Urdu is a regional language of India, for example, and not a language of Muslims alone; Mughal architecture is Indian heritage, not just Islamic.
Second, Muslim politics must articulate a claim for equal belongingness to the modern nation today. The ethnic-nationalist politics of the Sangh premises the superiority of Hindus in modern India on the claim of original inhabitation and presents Muslims as an aberration to Indianness. In this narrative, if a Muslim accepts their “Hindu ancestry”, they are deviant and must embrace “ghar wapsi”; if they reject their Hindu ancestry, then they are the alien whose forefathers invaded Hindus. Either way, Muslims are denied belongingness to the Indian nation.
A new language of Muslim politics must reject the ethno-nationalist premise and lay equal claim to the modern nation-state in the present. History must be killed in this new language and a claim to rights must be rooted in the contemporary. Gyanvapi mosque must not be demolished, for example, regardless of whether a temple existed at its site because it is a Muslim’s right to pray in the mosque today — the mosque that was standing where it is on August 15, 1947, the day when we enacted a break from the past.
Third, a new language must cultivate a politics of solidarity and move beyond the politics of identity. While a monolithic view of the “Muslim vote” has been criticised by scholars, new research has revealed that Muslims have voted in a more unified manner against the BJP since the 2019 general elections. This political direction must translate to a social consciousness that is based on solidarity among those who suffer at the hands of majoritarian coalitions and can help intra- and inter-communal coalitions. Ambedkar’s idea of maitri , Kanshi Ram’s language of the bahujan in UP and Madhavsinh Solanki’s politics of Koli Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim (KHAM) in Gujarat are good instances of inspiration. A politics of solidarity does not rely on shared identity but enables coalitions that can cut across identities based on political empathy. Here, it does not require one to know what it means to be the other for a coalition to emerge. A Muslim does not have to be a Christian to feel solidarity when a church in Chhattisgarh is attacked, for example. Empathy for a desecrated place of worship can generate political propulsion against majoritarian coalitions.
As one of the largest Muslim populations of the world votes this election season, its historical othering, social exclusion, and violent suppression have pushed it into this “tactical silence”. But the vacuum created by this neglect can provide possibilities for new thinking, the emergence of a new kind of Muslim politics, and a re-articulation of what it means to be an Indian Muslim in a majoritarian India.
