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Aminah Mohammad-Arif (2/2): “Muslims in India find themselves at the bottom of the social ladder”

Residents are gathered around a bulldozer during a demolition operation targeting a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in New Delhi, India, May 9, 2022. © AP / Manish Swarup

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

7 mins

With 195 million Muslims living on its soil, India is one of the countries with the highest number of Muslims in the world.

Indian Muslims today constitute a beleaguered minority, especially since the coming to power in New Delhi of Hindu nationalists who want to reduce religious minorities to second-class citizens.

Second part of our interview with Aminah Mohammad-Arif, research director at the CNRS and specialist in Islam in the Indian subcontinent.

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RFI: The Hindus in power today in New Delhi like to say that their predecessors in the Congress party had favored Muslims for electoral purposes and to the detriment of the Hindu majority.

Historically, would it be wrong to say that the Congress years were a kind of golden age for Muslims in India?

Aminah Mohammad-Arif:

It is clear that when the Congress Party was in power (i.e. for about fifty years), the minorities enjoyed significant freedom of worship and equality before the law thanks to the respect by the successive governments of the Democratic and secularist constitution which India adopted at independence.

However, the accusation of favoritism towards Muslims does not correspond to proven facts, since since 1947 there has been a considerable deterioration in their condition on the socio-economic and political level.

While seventy-five years have passed since independence, the literacy rate of Muslims remains lower than that of the lower castes of Hindus whose situation has improved somewhat, in part thanks to affirmative action policies.

Muslims, they

benefited very little.

In terms of economic development, they are now at the bottom of the social ladder.

There are, of course, endogenous reasons for this situation, such as the withdrawal into oneself linked to their condition as a vulnerable minority, the loss of the elites during the Partition or even the defense of conservative positions by the leaders of the Muslim community. … But the discrimination of which the Muslim minority has been the victim since independence also represents a not insignificant factor in its marginal situation in Indian society.

►

: Aminah Mohammad-Arif (1/2): "We are witnessing in India a trivialization of anti-Muslim violence"

Demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, northern India, by a mob of Hindu extremists in December 1992 AFP/File

How did the rise to power in New Delhi of Hindu nationalists, driven by their desire to promote a Hindu nation and a Hindu civilisation, accelerate the marginalization of Muslims and their exclusion from the body politic?

We are indeed witnessing an acceleration.

Hindu nationalists first ruled India between 1999 and 2004, in a coalition government.

It was at this time that they laid the groundwork for the “

” of the country, with in particular the first attempts to rewrite school textbooks.

These tendencies were reinforced when the party representing the Hindu nationalist movement, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), returned to power in 2014, winning the legislative elections under the leadership of

.

His first term was marked by the return to center stage of subjects historically exploited by Hindu nationalists, such as conversions to Islam, mixed marriages and the slaughter of cattle.

But it was above all from 2019 when Narendra Modi was re-elected, with a more overwhelming majority in Parliament, that Hindu nationalists implemented a series of measures that institutionalized discrimination against the Muslim minority.

Among the most significant measures is the

of article 370 of the Constitution which ensured a relative autonomy of the State of Kashmir, with a Muslim majority.

This suppression was accompanied by thousands of arrests and other physical and symbolic violence towards the inhabitants of this State.

Three years after the introduction of the new status in Kashmir, the situation has not yet normalized there.

The year 2019 was also marked by the

to authorize the construction of a temple dedicated to the God Ram on the ruins of the mosque of Ayodhya dating from the 16th century and destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992. This judgment, pronounced by the highest magistrates of the country, was lived as a great victory by the Hindu nationalists who had made the construction of the temple at Ayodhya one of their main demands.

The Prime Minister has just laid the foundation stone for the construction of the temple of Ram, in the city of Ayodhya, in the north of the country, on the most disputed place in modern Indian history.

SANKET WANKHADE / AFP

What are the other important legislative measures taken since 2019 by Hindu nationalists that have contributed to the polarization of Indian society between Hindus and Muslims?

Particularly worrying are the new census methods which pose the threat of denaturalization to nearly two million inhabitants in the state of Assam, in the north-east of the country, among whom is a majority of Muslims.

As they could not provide proof of their Indian nationality, they were excluded from the list of citizens approved by the Supreme Court.

A further step was reached in December 2019 after the passage of the citizenship law, called the

.

This law grants the right to persecuted religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to apply for naturalization if they have resided in India since 2014. But it is a discriminatory law because it excludes from this right also persecuted Muslim minorities, like the Shiites and Hazaras in Pakistan, and in doing so it goes against the secularist principles of the Indian Constitution.

The passage of this law was experienced as a shock wave.

It provoked mobilizations on an unprecedented scale throughout the country, bringing together students, intellectuals, human rights defenders and ordinary citizens of all religions.

Then the Covid arrived, leading the government to suspend the application of its bill.

But this can be put back on the agenda at any time.

Is the future of Muslims in India threatened?

Given the situation with which Indian Muslims find themselves today, one can legitimately wonder about their future.

Are restrictions on their individual and collective freedoms not likely to increase?

We can also fear that the current violence will intensify, to the point of leading to larger-scale phenomena such as pogroms.

There are also concerns about the long-term effects of anti-minority policies, which could result in the political radicalization of Muslims.

So far jihadism in India has been a limited and fairly circumscribed phenomenon, despite the oppression of which Muslims are the victims.

During the protests against the Citizenship Law, Muslims have been seen to demonstrate in peaceful modes of action,

of the "citizen" type, proclaiming loud and clear their attachment to the Indian nation.

But if the daily humiliations intensify, it is difficult to know what their reactions will be in the long term.

► Publications by Aminah Mohammad-Arif

2021

 "Muslims in India: a minority like no other",

, Paris, La Documentation française.

2020

With Jules Naudet, "Indian democracy put to the test by the Hindutva",

, 236, October-December, pp.

205-223

2012

(co-edited with Christophe Jaffrelot), Puruṣārtha 30, Paris, Editions de l'EHESS.

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