HVK Archives: Age of Empowerment Muslim OBCs Discover Mandar
Age of Empowerment Muslim OBCs Discover Mandar - The Times of India
Praful Bidwai
()
12 September 1996
Title : Age of Empowerment Muslim OBCs Discover Mandal
Author : Praful Bidwai
Publication : The Times of India
Date : September 12, 1996
What is common between Sharad Pawar, Sharad Yadav,
Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, Mrinal Gore, Hassan Kamal
(lyricist), Haroon Khalid (journalist), Shabbir Ansari
and Vilas Sonavane (non-party political activists)? They
are all supporters of the All- India Muslim OBC (Other
Backward Classes) Sangathan which held its first national
convention in New Delhi on August 29. Otherwise, they
share neither ideology, nor party nor even a political
culture. The fact that the last two managed to rope in
all the others speak of the power that the concept of a
subaltern organisation cutting across the lines of
religion has come to acquire.
The convention was a success much beyond the organisers'
expectations, drawing in delegates from all states except
Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the north-east (barring Assam.)
Although uneven, the delegates' composition revealed the
commonality of interests and concerns between quereishies
(butchers) and julahas (weavers), nais (barbers) and
raeens (vegetable-growers or malis), and dhobis
(washermen) and telis (oil-pressers.) The convention's
demands include, predictably, extension of Mandal
Commission recommendations to all Muslim OBCS, more
scholarships, etc; and, less predictably, land reforms,
funding for small entrepreneurs and restoration of
concessions to Scheduled Caste (i.e., non-OBC) Muslims
which were withdrawn in 1984.
Key Factor
The origins of the Muslim OBC initiative go back to the
1980s in activism in Maharashtra inspired by Lohia and
Karpoori Thakur. As a movement, however, the initiative
has gathered strength only in the last few years, partly
under the intellectual impetus provided by the Muslim
Marathi Sahitya Parishad, first organised in 1990 and
held four times so far. A key factor here is the
influence of progressive Muslims writing in Marathi
(repudiating the false, imputed link with Urdu as their
"natural" language) such as Y.M. Pathan - incidentally,
an authority on the (Hindu) Bhakti saint-poets of
Maharashtra - and Fakhruddin Bennur. The Maharashtra
organisers borrowed heavily from the Bahujan Samaj social
reform legacy of Shahu Maharaj and Phule, and the
modernist views of Ambedkar. Their activity acquired a
qualitatively new dimension in 1992 with the Supreme
Court's Mandal judgment and a December 1994 Maharashtra
order on OBC reservations.
Some of the Maharashtra organising was based on surveying
and compiling a list of Muslim backward castes. As many
as 115 were identified. These largely correspond to often
region-specific occupational divisions akin to those
among Hindus. In the true sense of the term, caste,
there is clear ritual status differentiation and no
marital exchange between them. The Sangathan estimates
that OBCs form over 90 per cent of all Muslims, but the
upper caste Sheikhs and Sayyads (the so-called ashraf)
are only two to four per cent. This "self-discovery" has
inspired an awareness that transcends religious
identities. The Sangathan has held over 3,000 meetings
in virtually all districts of Maharashtra. At the local -
village, taluk upwards level, it attracts the support of
the Left and centrist-secular parties.
BJP's Resistance
The Maharashtra experience is now being replicated with
some variation in other parts of the country, especially
in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere in the north. This is
bringing the Sangathan into direct confrontation with, on
the one hand, "traditional" Muslim leaders, no matter
which party they belong to, and on the other, the BJP
which stiffly resists the demand for extending Mandal
recommendations to Muslims, just as it opposes job quotas
for Dalit Christians. That is precisely where the
central thrust and ideological dynamism of the Sangathan
is located. It takes the stand that secular social
structures and class/caste hierarchies transcend and come
prior to religious identities. It is these structures
that provide the foundation for political organisation
and interest articulation.
Thus, by virtue of its foundational logic, the Sangathan
has to argue for a secular perspective on behalf of its
constituents. This runs counter to the "vote bank"
approach or demanding a special identity or role for
Muslims qua Muslims. Those who for years have thrived on
reinforcing that identity and trading it for favours
naturally oppose the Sangathan, just as they hate its
social reform agenda with its emphasis on rationalism and
education. The BJP, which, untouched by modernist
rationality, follows Muslim-communal stereotypes, is just
as hostile to this new trend. It knows that trans-
religious subaltern solidarity could be the nemesis of
the religion-based identity politics it pursues and
shares with the Jamait-i-Islami/Muslim League.
This is not to argue that the emerging Muslim OBC
politics is not limited and in a sense narrow. It is, as
all Mandal-type politics is bound to be, in its uneven
emphasis on caste and class, and its preoccupation with
affirmative action. But it has three noteworthy
features. Its primary character, concerns and leadership
are secular and secularising, with a plebeian commitment
to building an equal society based on caring and sharing.
Secondly, it is not as preoccupied with quotas as the
early Mandal mobilisation. Indeed, it stoutly opposes
reservations for Muslims. Many of its activists are
aware that the size of the cake to be shared is extremely
small: some 15,000 - and shrinking - jobs at the Centre.
Big gains are unlikely to accrue to OBC Muslims even if
their share is raised. Rather more important are the
liberating, self-empowering ideas that their activism is
generating.
Conscious Effort
And finally, there is a conscious effort to relate to
Dalit Muslims and Hindu OBCs and to create bonds of
solidarity across religious divides. This has the
potential of helping large numbers of Muslims break out
of the 'ghetto' in which their 'traditional' leaders and
many parties have placed them. Given the growing
disillusionment with and discrediting of such leaders
after the demolition of the Babri mosque - which they
built up into a big issue, but failed to protect - this
could radically transform the very complexion of Muslim
"community" politics.
Progressive secular modernists should not see this
initiative as something that creates caste identities
where none exist, while fragmenting plebeian
solidarities. The "casteless" Indian Muslim is a
complete myth. No mainstream, non-tribal Indian
community is free of caste. It bears recalling that
"caste" comes from the Portuguese "caste" which
missionaries discovered in Goa four centuries ago, where
it today thrives in a remarkably rigid form, making varna
and jati, co-terminous even among Christians. As Prof
Imtiaz Ahmad's outstanding work on social stratification,
caste and kinship among Indian Muslims has shown, Islam
could not break caste structures, especially those based
on occupations and a hierarchical division of labour,
with all their crippling, fossilising inequalities,
redressing which requires affirmative action and positive
discrimination.
The example of Gujarat is educative. It is not just Mr
Shankarsinh Waghela, but the broader phenomenon of OBC
mobilisation there, that is proving to be the BJP's
nemesis. Muslim OBC politics could perhaps be the best
antidote to all religion based identity politics which
thrives either on majoritarianism or ghetto-related
insecurities. The route to a liberal-secular-egalitarian
order may prove non-linear and more circuitous than we
imagined. It may inevitably have to take the detour of
Mandal, "social justice," "empowerment" and "advancement
of the backwards". The Muslim OBC mobilisation is part
of that detour.
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