A false spring

A revolution is underway among Indian Muslims, or so it seems to veteran British-Indian journalist Hasan Suroor.

Suroor argues in his book India’s Muslim Spring: Why is Nobody Talking about It? that this so-called ‘spring’ is marked by a newfound liberalism — a forward-looking attitude that, until now, was absent among Indian Muslims, or only present in a small, irrelevant, leftist elite.

Rather than point the finger at the state and political parties – which, many would argue, have allowed communal violence to occur across India and, in some cases, even instigated this violence – Suroor declares the self-appointed fundamentalist Muslim leadership the prime culprit in keeping Indian Muslims backward since Partition.

According to the author’s findings, the Muslim community is finally waking up from what he calls its “comatose slumber” by rejecting this leadership and embracing India’s secular democracy. The big change that we should all be talking about, he says, is the fact that there is now a growing educated middle class that is both religious (in a ‘moderate’ and unthreatening manner) and yet also loyal to the ideals of Indian democratism. The great hope for Suroor is that this new, enlightened middle class has the potential to lift the Muslim masses out of the darkness imposed on them.

While Suroor makes some valid observations in his book, his overall argument is extremely problematic, creating a dangerous dichotomy between ‘good’ Muslims (liberal and moderate yet religious) and ‘bad’ Muslims (conservative and fundamentalist). This idea has been extremely popular around the world in the post-9/11 period as a means of silencing dissent. Suroor clumsily superimposes this dichotomy onto the Indian context, which serves to legitimise the majoritarian policies of the Indian state.

The author highlights the ongoing marginalisation and discrimination experienced by many Indian Muslims as a result of communal violence and the growing influence of Hindu nationalist groups. He points to the issue of housing discrimination faced by Muslims and the fact that their loyalties to the Indian state are constantly under doubt, evidence for which has been presented in study after study of Indian Muslims. His analysis of this marginalisation, however, is fundamentally flawed Suroor traces the “social and economic backwardness” of Muslims to the depletion of the Muslim elite after Partition.

The “rump” of Muslims, the labouring classes who were left in India, “led miserable insular lives with little or no aspiration”. This poor mass of Muslims, he argues, was captured by a villainous, fundamentalist leadership which, for its own benefit, conspired with political parties to hold Muslims back. While his observations about the fragmentation of authority among the traditional Muslim elite is valid and has been recognised by scholars such as Justin Jones in his research on the loss of authority of certain institutions like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, the characterisation of the Muslim working classes as poor, ignorant, incompetent and in need of rescue by a modern and liberal elite, is not only highly flawed but simply offensive.

If Suroor had bothered to research the actual diversity of Muslims across India, rather than speak to a handful of middle-class Muslim professionals in Delhi, as he seems to have done, he would have found multiple instances of struggle and resistance to oppression both at the individual and collective level. For example, the Muslim group Satyashodhak Mandal, established in Maharashtra in 1970 by Hamid Umar Dalwai, worked for social reforms among Muslims and, in particular, advocated women’s rights. In his 2001 book, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay, Thomas Blom Hansen highlights the multiple ways in which the Muslim working classes in Mumbai have mobilised for increased rights and representation in the face of growing influence of groups such as the Shiv Sena. My own work on Muslim women in Delhi underscores the many ways in which lower and middle-class Muslim women continuously negotiate for increasing rights in the context of their everyday lives. And the list goes on.

Muslims offer evening prayers at Delhi's Jama Masjid

Underlying Suroor’s confused and muddled argument is the notion of the ‘good Muslim’ versus the ‘bad Muslim’ — a dichotomy that has been critiqued by many scholars, most notably by Mahmood Mamdani in his 2005 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror. This dichotomy was first popularised by the United States government in order to support its interests by arguing that ‘good Muslims’ were those who supported the US foreign policy agenda, which embraced neoliberalism, and ‘bad Muslims’ were those so-called fundamentalists who opposed US policies. Asma Barlas, in a 2004 paper titled Mainstreaming Extremism, argues that the underlying function of this presentation of Islam as a pair of ‘good and evil twins’ serves to portray ‘militant Islam’ as the main threat to global security. This absolves the US of all responsibility and shifts the burden of resolving the problem to ‘moderate Muslims’ who will support US foreign policy. This binary has been replicated in various parts of the world, and it seems Suroor has also fallen under its spell.

He blames the ills of Indian Muslims on their obscurantist, fundamentalist leadership and finds hope in the supposed new generation of ‘moderate Muslims’ whom he met during his travels. What distinguishes these ‘good Muslims’ is the fact that they can be Muslim (by wearing a hijab or sporting a beard) while also supporting the Indian state, and that they are willing to forgive and forget the ills of the past such as the state-supported pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat, in 2002. This is a strange assertion at a time when the man who oversaw this pogrom is set to become India’s next prime minister. To prove that Muslims in India are moving on from the past, Suroor goes so far as to celebrate the fact that he met Muslims who were voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

false-spring-1By the end of this poorly researched and repetitive book, the reader is left confused. On the one hand, Suroor expresses concern and sympathy for those Muslims in India who have experienced marginalisation, discrimination and violence. On the other hand, he seems to be chastising them for their incessant whining and blaming them for their own lack of progress. In a not-so-subtle way, he is actually echoing the ideology of the Hindu right, which has long argued that Muslims must assimilate or be annihilated. While the author mentions the ongoing discrimination against Muslims, he also repeatedly highlights the community’s supposed role in its own self-destruction. This argument is not only odd, as Suroor himself is from an Indian Muslim family, but is also extremely dangerous at a time when the BJP is set to take control of the national government, threatening any minor gains Muslims might have made in recent years.

Suroor may have the noble intention of breaking the stereotype of the backward, fundamentalist Indian Muslim, but he replaces this with an even more dangerous dichotomy. In this dichotomy, the only ‘good Muslims’ are the ones who stay silent even when an increasingly majoritarian state continues to marginalise them as well as other Indians who suffer at the hands of such a state.

By Nida Kirmani