In Tamil Nadu, an overtly minority-favouring and Hindu-baiting DMK has been shown the door in the assembly elections, with the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), led by a Christian, drawing a lot of Hindu votes – though not for religious reasons. Actor Joseph Vijay, who started the party barely two years ago, has broadly steered clear of the DMK’s divisive Dravidian politics and also kept himself equidistant from all religions – at least the part that is visible to the public. This suggests that performative politics will now determine the future of which community votes for whom in Tamil Nadu, and not which party represents which community the best.
In other elections, parties like the AIMIM have managed to knock out “secular” parties like Samajwadi in local body elections in Maharashtra, and other parties in assembly elections in Bihar.
The endless tapping into Muslim vote banks by “secular” parties is now slowly, if painfully, beginning to wane.
While this is the underlying message for all parties, including the BJP, how Muslims themselves embrace non-sectarian politics will be a crucial determinant of whether we end up with the separatist politics of MA Jinnah, or a genuine politics where communities keep their identities at bay, and work towards their collective good through dialogue and compromise.
The fact is even a Humayun Kabir seeks to get Muslim votes by proposing to build a Babri Masjid in West Bengal, and Owaisi has yet to reconcile with the reality of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Nor has he even acknowledged that there is some unfinished work to be done to assuage Hindu feelings in places where iconoclastic rulers destroyed temples repeatedly.
India will become less polarised and less sectarian when a Muslim can be elected from a Hindu majority constituency, and vice-versa. We are far from that situation now, as narrow-minded politicians want vote banks, not citizens.
Muslims, for their part, should be asking themselves why reformists among them, like Arif Mohammed Khan, have to find refuge only in the BJP and are sometimes seen as traitors to the community. They should be embracing the politics of the late Hamid Dalwai, who sought deep reforms within the Muslim community, but the broader community never accepted him or his reforms. He is not a hero to the Muslim community even today, and for “secularists”, he is anathema. No “secular” party has asked Muslims to embrace reforms. On the contrary they oppose waqf or divorce reforms, or even the uniform civil code, in the belief that this is what Muslims want. The goal of our “secular” parties is to keep Muslims isolated and fearful.
It is time Muslims themselves stopped seeing themselves as only Muslims, seeking to differentiate and distance themselves from Hindus in every possible way, whether it is in adopting yoga for good health, singing Vande Mataram, or retaining some of their Hindu customs (which organisations like the Tablighi Jamaat want to eradicate).
They should be seeking wider relationships with fellow citizens. Their quam is not the global umma, but fellow Indians. Just as Hindu parties like the BJP should seek to understand and accommodate Muslim aspirations of a secular nature, Muslim politicians should be willing to espouse Hindu causes like – for example – the freeing of Hindu temples from state control and seeking a negotiated settlement for contested spaces like Kashi and Mathura in return for benefits to the community.
There are some hopeful signs, with RSS Sarsanghachalak Mohan Bhagwat meeting some Muslim intellectuals, and, more recently, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval meeting with Muslim leaders to understand the community’s concerns. After Operation Sindoor, Asaduddin Owaisi was a critical member of the national outreach teams sent to foreign countries to explain India’s position on Pakistan-based terrorism.
But these engagements are too sporadic and too meagre to bridge Hindu-Muslim mistrust. They have to be expanded.
And one cannot repeat this enough: It is also high time Muslims themselves took the trouble to engage with Hindus and Hindu organisations. It takes two hands to clap.
