‘M’ for misleading...or magic of vote bank? : The Tribune India

Join Whatsapp Channel

‘M’ for misleading...or magic of vote bank?

THE mainstream media commends the Prime Minister for his acknowledgement of the special needs of backward Muslims and Muslim women.

‘M’ for misleading...or magic of vote bank?

THE MESSIAH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is firm on abolishing triple talaq. The BJP supporters at the Prime Minister’s roadshow at Varanasi



Apoorvanand

THE mainstream media commends the Prime Minister for his acknowledgement of the special needs of backward Muslims and Muslim women. It is being said this pronouncement makes a decisive departure from his consistent insistence on taking no names, of letting the concerns and sensitivities of minority groups be subsumed in the wide and apolitical slogan of Sabka saath sabka vikas, which papers over the many inequities built into notions of “development” and the “people”.

 It has been noted that the Prime Minister broke his silence on Sunday at Bhubaneswar. Was it the first historic time the Prime Minister uttered the “M” word? Silence on this front was broken at least six months ago in an election rally at Mahoba, where he, pained by the destruction of the life of his Muslim sisters, said the “lives of Muslim women cannot be allowed to be ruined by triple talaq”.

The earlier occasion was an election rally and the recent one was the national executive meeting of the BJP. This time there is an addition, apart from the hapless Muslim women, he now seems to care for the backward among the Muslims.

Let us also not forget the unsubstantiated claim made after the victory of the BJP in the UP Assembly elections that this time Muslim women voted for it in large numbers. It would however be difficult for non-Muslims to realise that this is a well-thought-out strategy to “humiliate” Muslim men. 

The Prime Minister, this time, is asked to break the silence of his government on attacks/killings of Muslims either on the pretext of cow smuggling or beef eating or luring Hindu women into their fold. The litany before the supreme leader gets longer. With each new horror, a new past also gets created. We are then asked not to remain stuck in the past and move on.

The man who is presenting his government as the saviour of the Muslim women from oppressive Islamic practices has, as yet, not expressed sorrow over the comments of his minister of the local civil supplies — when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister — who tried to justify his efforts to close down relief camps after the 2002 riots, claiming that the camps were breeding centres of terrorists. Let alone admonishing him for his insensitive remarks, the Chief Minister went a step ahead. In an election speech he mocked his critics, “When we spend money on the development of Bahucharaji, then also you feel bad. Should we run relief camps?”

Here, the then Chief Minister was putting the local Hindu deity of Bahucharaji against the Muslims who were displaced in the riots, under his watch. He was telling his people that state resources could not be spent on Muslims. State support for the development of Bahucharaji had to come at the cost of the welfare of those displaced. As Chief Minister, it was his duty to ensure the safety and well being of these internally displaced Gujaratis who happened to be Muslims. He berated these relief camps as “children-producing factories” that needed to be shut down. A concerted campaign to treat every birth in a Muslim household as a potential threat for the nation has long been in operation, but the way it was done in Gujarat was extraordinary.

 The new-found concern for the “backward Muslims” is also to be noted in the context of the warning by the present Prime Minister to the socially backward people, who were necessarily Hindu, during the election campaign of Bihar that the state government was conspiring to steal their quota to give it to a particular religious community. He was then pitching the extremely backward castes and Mahadalits against Muslims.

The RSS and the BJP has always used the special treatment or provision in state schemes to create “Muslim envy” among Hindus, as was clear from the Prime Minister's speeches during the Bihar campaign. As was pointed out by an activist, all those killed in the cow-protection drive happened to belong to the same communities among Muslims for whom the Prime Minister wants to ensure social justice. They are mostly Pasmanda Muslims. Before they get social security, they would need to live. So, how about first disbanding and disarming cow-protection groups that attack and kill Pehlu Khans — the backward among Muslims? How about arresting and punishing those who attacked and destroyed everything that the Telis and Faqirs had in Atali in Haryana? Close on the heels of this sagacious pronouncement came the announcement of the BJP in Gujarat that it would go all out to court Muslim women using the triple talaq card and the Pasmanda Muslims by promising them special treatment.

The game plan is clear: this time it is to break the religious identity of Muslims. It may sound strange to many, but this has been a long-held view of the RSS that Islam in India is not a different religion. Learning from the gender and social justice discourse, it has now decided to move aggressively in this direction — to treat gender discrimination as the defining feature of the Indian Muslim life and presenting the state as the benevolent protector of women from their tormenting men. Also by recognising the need to uplift the Pasmanda Muslims, to deny anyone Muslim-ness which needs recognition in India. So, Muslims no longer remain a religious minority with special rights and treatment, they are a bunch of social or gender groupings. You never say Muslim, you either address the needs of the victim — Muslim women or backward Muslims.

That it was to be the language of social justice which would be used to erase Muslim reality by fragmenting it could not have occurred to its protagonists. We have also to realise that when pronouncements like these are made, they are addressed more to Hindus: to reinforce their view that Muslim men are cruel, even to their women, and that they are mostly backward, to be uplifted by an outside support. At the same time, it leads them to imagine themselves as the rescuers of the victims of this male Muslim-backward cruelty. Since Hindus are naturally liberal and eternally progressive Indians, it is their duty to save others. We have to see through this devious rhetorical game and call it by its name — unadulterated deception.

—The writer is a Professor of Hindi in Delhi University

Top News

High alert across Uttar Pradesh after gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's death

High alert across Uttar Pradesh after gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's death

Umar Ansari alleged that his father was subjected to slow po...

Mukhtar Ansari was subjected to slow poisoning in jail: Son

Mukhtar Ansari was subjected to slow poisoning in jail: Son

Ansari's post-mortem to be conducted in UP by panel of five ...

Enforcement Directorate wants AAP's Lok Sabha poll strategy details from Arvind Kejriwal's phone: Atishi

Enforcement Directorate wants AAP's Lok Sabha poll strategy details from Arvind Kejriwal's phone: Atishi

Says actually it is the BJP and not the ED that wants to kno...

10 killed as SUV falls into gorge in J-K’s Ramban

10 killed as SUV falls into gorge in J-K’s Ramban

The vehicle, a Tavera, was on its way from Srinagar to Jammu


Cities

View All