Rishi Raj and after: Liberal fallacy of connecting India’s plurality with a Muslim Prime Minister

In an ironic twist to the fulfilment of the Macaulayian wish of having a class of people, “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”, Rishi Sunak has been called upon to rule the United Kingdom.

For a people, denigrated by their colonial masters as incapable of self-rule, this is a moment of poetic justice. The euphoria it has generated among Indians has an interesting side show — the taunts are being hurled at India for not yet having a prime minister of foreign origin, or, more specifically, a Muslim.

The fact, however, is that for about a thousand years, till a mere 75 years ago when we became independent, our rulers had been foreigners — not merely of foreign origin, but self-avowed foreigners.

One may ask, does Sunak represent the Indian desis, and has he acquired power on their behalf, or is he so integrated in the British society and culture, so steeped in its ethos, and so committed to its interests that his skin colour doesn’t matter for the British?

Would they still be so accepting of him, if the Indians had ruled over the British Isles for centuries, and when the time came for them relinquish power, they partitioned it into three; keeping two parts for their exclusive ethno-religious rule, while having equal rights in the remaining third part, where they continued with the old separatist politics with an ever sharpening Hindutva ideology?

Would Sunak be acceptable if he were an identitarian, and not an integrationist; if he wore identity politics on his sleeve and foregrounded his ethnic and religious identity before his British one?

If the identity politics is shunned, Islam is depoliticised, and the Muslim community ceases to be a political group, in the fullness of time, India might have its own Obama and Sunak — someone who is Muslim in religion, but Indian in taste, opinions, morals and intellect.

Kalam’s case

Actually, we did have one such in APJ Abdul Kalam. True, he wasn’t an executive president. But seeing his enduring popularity among the masses, there is little doubt that if he were made the prime minister, in the manner of Manmohan Singh, he would be as popular as he was as president.

Fifteen years after he demitted office, his pictures are ubiquitous in public places and private spaces; they are painted in the rear of buses and printed on the covers of students’ notebooks; his inspirational quotes circulate in social media and his books remain best sellers.

His mausoleum at Rameshwaram has become a pilgrimage place. His religion — he was regular with his namaz and roza — never came in the way of his popularity. However, the Indian Muslims and the official liberals remained cold towards him. He wasn’t Muslim enough for them. He didn’t belong to the elite Muslim class of Ashrāf which has a monopoly on high offices; he didn’t speak Urdu, and didn’t wear sherwani. He played Veena and quoted from Bhagwad Gita.

As Missile Man he added muscles to India’s military might. He neither wasted money on Iftar party in Rashtrapati Bhavan nor, after retirement, ever felt insecure for being a Muslim. Naturally, he couldn’t be a darling of the identitarian Muslims and official liberals.

Analysis of Owaisi’s dream

The AIMIM chief, Asaduddin Owaisi, has a dream of seeing a Hijabi woman as prime minister of India. Why does he specifically want a Hijabi woman, and not a Muslim woman irrespective of her dress?

Could such a strident communal identity represent the whole country?

Does identity politics facilitate the modus vivendi of acceptance and mainstreaming or it leads to social secession and self-inflicted marginalisation?

Even if Owaisi’s wish were to be granted, shouldn’t charity begin from home, and AIMIM, in order to set an example, have a hijabi woman chief for itself, and propose another for All India Muslim Personal Law Board?

But, would it be possible till the time Muslim women continue to be half a person with half a right under the Muslim Personal Law, instead of a full person with full rights as envisaged by the Constitution?

Moreover, since a hijabi woman is foregrounding her religious identity, what about her right to equality in the mosque, and opportunity to lead her fellow Muslims in prayer? Shouldn’t she first have an equal access to the mosque — to the main hall, and not some sequestered section in the rear? Would she have the confidence to lead the country if she couldn’t lead her own faith mates in the mosque?

Opposite historical trajectories

India might have overtaken the UK as the fifth largest economy of the world, but the historical trajectories of the two have been the exact opposite of each other. The UK has been a colonising, not a colonised country. It has ruled the world, and not been ruled by any. India, on the other hand has been a colonised country, and been subject to the rule of foreign invaders for many centuries.

The British didn’t settle here. The ruled; drained the wealth, and left at the end of their tenure. The Muslim invaders, however, settled here, colonised the country, and lived here to rule.

If the British system was like a sponge, “drawing up all the good things from the banks of the Ganges and squeezing them down on the banks of the Thames”, the Muslim ruling class’ extravagant consumption poured the country’s wealth down the drain.

Broadly speaking, the rulers and the subjects were divided by race and religion. The rulers came as foreigners and remained here as foreigners. By choice, expediency and ideology.

They predicted the legitimacy of their rule on racial superiority as foreign conquerors. Till the mid-18th century, the Muslim ruling class replenished itself with new arrivals from Arabia, Iran and Central Asia. So much so that the founders of some of the succession states in the 18th century had freshly arrived from abroad.

Islam’s religious claim to rule the world was the ideological justification for their racial superiority. Till the end of the Muslim rule, 70-80 percent of the ruling class were foreigners.

They proudly claimed foreignness. Bernier very perceptively notes, “The Great Mogol is a foreigner in Hindustan…he finds himself in a hostile country…he is under the necessity of keeping up numerous armies, even in the time of peace.”

Their descendants, the upper class Muslims — the Ashrāf — continue to base their social superiority and political entitlement not only on their foreign origin but on their perpetual foreignness.

Assimilation in the broad Indian society has been an anathema to them since it would end the distinction between them and their former subjects.

Such an attitude wouldn’t let them forge any relation with the land of their domicile except the political. They regarded India merely as their Rajbhoomi. The idea of Matribhoomi, Motherland or India as Mother, was considered idolatrous.

Idol worship, being the Hindu way, was an abomination. The idea of Punya Bhumi, sacred land, became the extreme form of apostasy, even though, Muslims all over the world adore their respective countries as sacred.

The concept of Punyabhoomi is different from Teerth Sthal or place of pilgrimage. Christians from all over the world have their holiest shrines in Israel-Palestine, and Buddhists in India. Their reverence for these places has nothing to do with their love and adoration for their respective motherlands.

Likewise, for Indian Muslims, reverence for the holy sites of Islam in Arabia, shouldn’t interfere with their sense of nationalism. If it does, it’s a case of bad theology which has less to do with religion and more with politics.

This practice of separateness led to the ideology of separatism in politics, and theology of puritanism in religion. The process culminated in the partition of India. Now, the same current has resurfaced in the avatar of identity politics.

After the partitioned independence, this process gathered even more momentum. Besides being a religion, Islam has also been the political ideology of the Muslim ruling class, the Ashrāf.

But with the rise in literacy level, and exposure to Islamic literature, the indigenous Muslims — about 80 percent of the Muslim population, those who had converted to Islam during the Muslim rule — became more indoctrinated with the ideological claim of Islam to rule the world.

Thus, while the Ashrāf created a culture industry out of the so called Ganga-Jamni Tahzeeb, the indigenous Muslims, with the characteristic zealotry of the convert, fanatically seceded from their past, history and culture in order to climb the mobility ladder customised by their converters, the Ashrāf.

The official liberals cheered this process as they needed the Muslim mercenaries on their side in the fight against the cultural nationalists.

If the liberals really think that someday India’s plurality should reflect in a Muslim prime minister, they should promote liberal, secular, democratic and nationalist ethos in the Muslim community, rather than keeping it bogged into the communal quagmire, for their own vested interests.

Ibn Khaldun Bharati is the pen name of a student of Islam who looks at Islamic history from an Indian perspective.
He tweets at @IbnKhaldunIndic
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