The rise of Jinnah-style politics in India shows limits of faux "secularism". Time to reinvent

Over the last few elections, India has seen the steady decline of “secular” parties and the gradual rise of Muslim parties. The latter are not yet a significant part of the Indian political process, but they mirror the rise of Jinnah-style Muslim League politics in pre-partition India. 

In the forthcoming West Bengal elections, where the Muslim vote will significantly impact outcomes in more than 80 constituencies, a new Muslim party called Aam Janata Unnayan Party has been formed by Humayun Kabir, a former Trinamool Congress politician, to fight on 182 seats, with Asaduddin Owaisi of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen backing him. In Assam, the largely Muslim-dominated All India United Democratic Front headed by Badruddin Ajmal is again backed by Owaisi. In the recent Maharashtra local body elections, Owaisi’s party scored big wins, in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Malegaon and Mumbai at the cost of traditional “secular” parties like the Samajwadi Party. In the Bihar assembly elections last year, Owaisi bagged five seats, just one less than the “secular” Congress party in alliance with the RJD. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party has often been blamed for the rise of “communal” politics, but the real truth is that the BJP’s rise is directly proportional to the politics of minorityism that the so-called “secular” parties have been championing. In fact, if India had truly become secular after 1950, when the constitution was adopted, there should have been no space for Muslim-only parties like the Indian Union Muslim League or Owaisi’s AIMIM, a party originally started by Hyderabad’s razakars, and whose founder ultimately opted for Pakistan. While Hindu parties like Ram Rajya Party and Hindu Mahasabha gradually faded from the scene, Muslim parties grew in number and spread in state after state. In Kerala, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDFI) is another Islamist party, and in the past parties called the Welfare Party of India or Peace Party of India have nurtured Muslim constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. The rise of Owaisi essentially highlights a return to Jinnah-style politics in “secular” India. In the recent Malegaon local body elections, a party specifically called the Islam party was the winner, with Owaisi’s AIMIM also doing well. This is clear repudiation of mainstream “secular” parties, which are no longer seen as secular by both Muslims and many Hindus.

Here is the truth no one is willing to acknowledge: Muslim communalism cannot be fought by “secular” politics for the simple reason that it privileges the rights of one community while subsuming the rights of the majority community under vague constitutional principles which are unenforceable. The burden of one-way secularism has cost Hindus dearly, and this is why the BJP has risen.

If Indian “secularism” is dying, it is probably a good thing, for India works best under Hindu pluralism and not an imported hybrid “secularism” that is tilted against the majority community. This is not to suggest that Muslims got any special deals from the “secularists”, just that they were used by “secular” parties even while trying to divide Hindus on caste lines. Hindus were deliberately prevented from protecting their religious interests in order to allow “secular” politicians to use bloc Muslim votes and a divided Hindu vote to win elections. 

Two examples show how “secularism” actually works against Hindu interests.

One, despite the need to keep the government away from religious activity, it is only Hindu temples- over 1,00,000 of them in the southern states alone - that are run by the government, often like poor public sector companies.

Two, contrary to the promise of article 25, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, the same article also perversely mandates state intervention in religion in the name of social justice. Clause (2) of article 25 says: “Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the state from making any law (a) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice; (b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus.”

This is not to suggest that religious reform is not needed. But would a truly secular state restrict its intervention only to one religion? Or did the framers of the constitution implicitly assume that India was a Hindu nation de facto, if not de jure. If the presumption is correct, why not make a de facto Hindu rashtra a de jure one? You need to give special protections to minorities only in a constitutionally-mandated Hindu state. The judiciary did its own damage to Hindu rights by interpreting the constitution to interfere in Hindu religious activity.

Ronojoy Sen, a former journalist and research fellow at Singapore’s National University, in his paper Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism, and the Indian Supreme Court, notes that the Indian judiciary has gone far beyond its remit of maintaining a safe distance from defining religion or religious scripture. 

He writes:

“American courts have usually tried to avoid sitting in judgment on ‘religious error’ or ‘religious truth’.The Indian Supreme Court has travelled an opposite path, seeking to cleanse Hinduism of what it reads as superstition, and providing it with a modernist and rationalist definition of religious error and religious truth….the courts in adjudicating cases related to Hinduism have drawn a distinction between the sacred and the secular. Unlike the way it is in the United States, the Indian Constitution combines freedom of religion clauses with a mandate to the state to intervene in religious affairs. Article 25 allows the state to regulate or restrict any ‘economic, financial, political, or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice’. It also provides for ‘social welfare and reform’ of Hindu religious institutions.”

Legal challenges to state interference in Hindu religious practices and traditions have meant that the courts were “frequently asked to decide what constitutes an ‘essential part of religion’. The most striking aspect of the essential practices doctrine is the attempt by the court to fashion religion in the way a modernist state would like it to be, rather than accept religion as represented by its practitioners.” (You can download Sen’s paper here).

If one accepts that Indian secularism, both as defined in the constitution, and by judicial interpretation, impacts largely one religion, why is it any surprise that there is pushback from Hindus? This is not majoritarianism, but a demand for equal treatment.

The larger question is: what does this new Hindu assertion mean for community relations? And does the rise of Muslim parties threaten or weaken India’s religious peace?

The answer is simple: it will weaken community relations if we try to use “secularism” as the way to make peace. We flunked the test of “secularism” after partition, where the state allowed Muslim parties to rise, but did nothing to defend Hindu interests or maintain any kind of balance between interests.

The only way to create a durable situation of communal peace and common spaces is for the two communities to directly negotiate their red lines and compromises, with the state only playing honest broker. The state can maintain peace only if the two communities have agreed on a broad approach on how they recognise each others’ rights and obligations.

A secular state cannot negotiate peace with either Muslims, or Hindus. It is only “Hindu pluralism” that can form the basis for a durable peace, for Hindu pluralism does not have a problem with anyone’s forms of worship. The rise of Muslim parties all over India shows that the Indian version of “secularism” has spectacularly failed. Time for a new approach to communal peace.