There is no All India purely Hindu party. So, four fifths of Indians have no 'collective political platform' that directly represents them in India. Incidentally, Muslims are thought to be 14 percent, not 20 per cent of the Indian population.
A stark fact. It’s the world’s largest democracy, one-fifth of the planet’s population. And one-fifth of that—India’s largest minority, the Muslims—have never had a collective political platform that directly represents them in independent India.
The fact relates, in a way, to the very fitness of Indian democracy.No it doesn't. Nor does the fact that there is no 'White People party' in England or America nor an Islamic party in France where Muslims are 9 per cent of the population.
The burden of ensuring their well-being has always been outsourced to ‘secular’ parties (who have borne it with very indifferent success). Why? Because the idea of Muslim political representation has a risky, dangerous past.No. It is because Muslim Parties are shit more especially to non Muslims. By contrast, there are plenty of parties with the word 'Christian' in them in Europe. Non Christians vote for them. Why? Christian parties aren't necessarily utterly horrible to non Christians. By contrast, the few non Muslims- people like J.N Mandal- who allied with the Indian Muslim League- lived to regret it.
After all, the fear of under-representation is what bought support for the Muslim League, eventually leading to Partition and its infinite madness.The stupidity of Muslims is what brought support for the Muslim League. This was a case of turkeys voting for Thanksgiving with a vengeance.
Any loud, visible Muslim assertion thus stokes those subterranean fears. Its bequest: a stark political vacuum.Muslims, as Muslims, were rubbish at politics. Non Muslims who united against fanatical Muslims may have been less rubbish but then again they may not.
And so, the first towering Muslim leader with a pan-India acceptance across communities—Maulana Abul Kalam AzadAzad never towered for Hindus and stopped towering for Muslims with the end of Khilafat. He really was a 'Congress show-boy'. He was comprehensively rejected by Urdu or Bengali speaking Muslims and had no following elsewhere. In 1946 the Muslim League won 113 out of 118 reserved seats in Bengal, 54 out of 64 Muslim seats in the United Provinces and 34 of Bihar's 40 Muslim seats. It captured all Muslim seats in Bombay and Madras. The party demonstrated conclusively that it was the representative of Muslim minorities in India.
—is perhaps also the last one who answers to that description.Azad does not answer to any description save that of a stupid windbag. The fact is, after Khilafat, the Muslims had no magical rabbit to pull out of a hat. Gandhi had his khaddar and Harijans and Nai Talim and Satyagraha so forth. But after Hijrat & Khilafat, the Muslims had nothing aimed at either the Brits or the reform of Indian Society. All they could do was ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims which, as Iqbal had foreseen was simply to disguise 'zamin bhook' (land hunger) as 'jihad'.
The erudite Azad, India’s first education minister, leaves behind a template that’s almost inconceivable now.Azad's erudition was of the traditional Islamic sort. But, by the Forties, nobody wanted that shite. Lawyers and Soldiers and Economists and Diplomats had some salience. But nobody thought Mullahs had anything to contribute in the age of atom bombs and jet planes.
Azad could have been a good education minister if he had got behind compulsory primary education and a concerted effort to tackle adult literacy. But then he'd have had to demand that the Urdu script be dropped. He'd have got into trouble with his own people if he became an advocate of the 'la deen' Latin alphabet.
Muslim politicians like Rafi Ahmed Kidwai who were identified with specific issues like land reform could have an impact. But they tended to prefer to move to the Center rather than sweat the small stuff in the Provinces. Kidwai died young but given the casteist trajectory of 'Socialist' politics, it is doubtful if Muslim politicians could have taken the lead.
One 'towering' politician whose home state was majority Muslim turned out to be utterly horrible for not just Hindus but also the Union of India. The Abdullah dynasty- who can scarcely be called Islamists- has been an unmitigated disaster not because they are stupid but because they are corrupt, incompetent and just don't give a shit.
In Kerala and other cohesive States, a competent man can rise regardless of Religion. But competence was never highly prized in elite Muslim political culture. Generosity meant nepotism and corruption. Patrimonialism was the preferred form of Government for charismatic Muslim leaders. Honor and Manliness meant vendetta. Consultation meant giving ear to crazy shitheads of various descriptions. Political Ideology meant working oneself up into a frenzy over all sorts of irrelevant shite.
The reason Indian Muslims were shite political leaders was the same reason Pakistani Muslims were shite political leaders. But this was also true of Iranians and Iraqis and Syrians and Egyptians and so forth.
Indian Muslims, like Muslims in other countries, would show loyalty to a Dynasty. They could be recruited to emerging dynasties on various different types of 'ideological' platforms. But this type of 'patrimonialism', in a segmentary society, chokes off the possibility of 'catch up growth'. It has nothing to do with Democratic Social Choice of a type which can mobilize resources for National Development.
And invites the question. Can’t a Muslim leader be not just ‘only for Muslims’?There could have been a Muslim technocrat Prime Minister of the Manmohan Singh type. There still might. But Singh wasn't seen as a Sikh prime-minister. Come to think of it, if Rajiv had married a Turkish or Moroccan Muslim, we might have had a Muslim P.M who wasn't a technocrat. But she'd have been seen as the pativrata bahu (dutiful daughter-in-law) protecting the inheritance of the Dynastic scion.
A potential answer to that comes from the streets. Look at the ongoing anti-CAA agitations. They possess one striking facet: they are leaderless.No. They are foolish. Plenty of leaders are instigating this nonsense. However, if crazy young Muslims try to turn themselves into Hardik Patels, using this agitation as a spring-board, they will get arrested and sent to jail. But things might not stop there. The non-Muslims of India- like non-Muslims elsewhere- have a high tolerance for strong measures against militant Islam. But this is also true of many Muslim countries.
There is no group or political party or leader who or that is, or claims to be, the one propelling them.Because these guys have been set up to lose.
At one level, that frames the political orphanhood of Muslims.Everybody is 'politically orphaned' unless they are born into a dynasty or rise by their own efforts in a proper political party like the BJP.
But also, very saliently, the agitation is turning a whole battery of notions on their head.This is an agitation by Muslims against non Muslim refugees getting to escape forcible conversion or death at the hands of Muslims in Islamic Republics. It is highly beneficial to the BJP because it consolidates the Hindu vote across caste lines.
Yes, it’s an agitation that has the Muslim community at its centre—a natural consequence of how the CAA/NRC process is seen to leave them singularly and most vulnerable. But it’s also a general agitation—on constitutional points, with the Preamble, the national anthem and the tricolour on full display. Very strikingly, Muslims are leading a political movement from the front, from a space of belonging, and everyone else who believes in those ideals is joining in!This is the crux of the problem. No one else is joining in.
In his famous speech of 1947, Azad exhorted Muslims to stay back and embrace the country as their own.Why? Because if there were no Muslims in India he couldn't get a cushy berth as a token Muslim.
“Where are you going? And why are you going? Look here, the minarets of Jama Masjid ask you something. Where have you lost the pages of your history? It was only yesterday that your caravans performed ablutions on the banks of Yamuna here. And you are scared of living here now? Remember, Delhi has been nurtured with your blood.... Come, let us pledge today that this country is ours. We are meant to be here and without our voice, the fundamental decisions of this country’s destiny will remain incomplete.” In a crucial way, Shaheen Bagh answers that call.Indian Muslims have expressed their strong objection to people escaping Islamic persecution- be they Dr. Taslima Nasrin or Ahmadiyas or, now, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians or Buddhists. Taslima Nasrin was chased out of the country and is now a Swedish citizen. However, it is unlikely that India will repatriate non Muslims who have managed to escape Islamic mobs. Indeed, the Shaheen Bagh protesters have reminded people of Refugee origin in Delhi of the sufferings of their ancestors. This helped the BJP gain a few more seats than it did in the last Assembly election.
A credible strong Muslim political presence correlates with very bad outcomes not just for Muslim people but for anybody who has the misfortune to be in their vicinity. On the other hand, nobody gives a toss about the Religion of a guy who is good at his job. Boris Johnson's first Chancellor of the Exchequer was Muslim. The Mayor of London is Muslim. Both make tougher statements about certain problems in their community of origin. Neither seeks to advance a chauvinistic agenda.
But what happens from here on, in the absence of a credible, strong Muslim political presence that could echo and amplify the aspirations of the community?
Does that leave them without sufficient political agency? The number of Muslim MPs in the Lok Sabha has varied between 21 (1952) and 49 (1980), with the figure parked at 27 at the moment. The CAA moment may come and go, the question of representation will remain alive and vigorously contested.The Muslims had reserved seats before Independence. They won't get it again. Why? As a political grouping, Muslims are lethal to non-Muslims save if the non-Muslims are stronger than them in which case it is Muslims who suffer.
At one level, so entrenched is the idea that ‘Muslims caused Partition’, it debars any reckoning with the paradoxes of that history.Pakistan and Bangladesh and then Afghanistan ethnically cleansed non Muslims. Had they not done so and instead pursued a Democratic Path under the Rule of Law, Partition would have been irrelevant. There would be something like a European Union in the sub-continent.
That Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar propounded the two-nation theory 16 years before the Muslim League.He did so after the 'Hijrat' movement and statements made by Muslim politicians that it would be 'haram' to oppose an invading Afghan army. This did not much matter because 'the butcher of Amritsar' had made qeema out of the Afghans and the local Waziris preferred to loot the Afghan's baggage train rather than risk making mischief for the Brits. The problem for people like Savarkar was that if the Brits left they would take their Dyers with them. Gandhi & Co would present their shitty backsides to any and every invader.
Or that, while a London-educated, ritually-scant, ambitious barrister helmed the demand for a separate Muslim state, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), a body of theologians rooted in the Deobandi school, opposed it tooth and nail.Quite true. But they were very backward in their thinking. In the Fifties, one of their number popularized the view that everything Modern constituted Jahiliyat (pre Islamic ignorance).
And so, aside from a handful of chief ministers and Union ministers, and token Presidents, the slate is still empty.On the other hand, people like Abdul Kalam achieved a lot for the country.
And anyone in the mould of Badruddin Ajmal in Assam, not to speak of Asaduddin Owaisi, still evokes the old fears—sometimes struggling against it, sometimes using it. But what about the Azad template?What about it? Azad was trained as a theologian. I can't see a Muslim, or Catholic theologian having much impact on Indian politics. Why? Hindus predominate. By contrast, a Yogi can become Chief Minister. A Maulana can at best be a token 'show-boy' who says 'Islam is a Religion of Peace' every time some jihadi nutters run amok.
Rizwan Qaiser, professor of history at Jamia Millia Islamia and Azad’s biographer, says the leader gave great stability to Muslim concerns in the initial years. “But during the 1940s, he started losing out to the Muslim League. Many considered him a renegade, but post-Independence they realised there was no other voice left for Muslims,” says Qaiser. And Muslim anxieties, immense in those years after Partition, came to be allayed by Nehru’s unwavering commitment to secularism. The Left too offered similar refuge in later years. The power of attorney phase was truly on.Azad had not been able to prevent widespread ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Even close associates of his chose to emigrate in the Fifties. Could things have been worse for Muslims in India? Yes. Suppose Sheikh Abdullah had succeeded in getting Kashmir to separate from India. Hindus in the Valley would have been massacred. This would have set off a wave of ethnic cleansing in U.P, Bihar, Assam etc.
Azad died in 1958 and for the next few decades there was no Muslim leader of prominence on the national landscape.Thus, the position of Muslims improved- more particularly after the Indian Army thrashed Pakistan twice.
There was a reason for that, Qaiser argues. The concerns of Indian Muslims, by no means a monolithic community, diversified after Independence and that made the idea of a pan-India Muslim leader a difficult proposition, he says. And so it was that the vacuum in the decades after Azad was often filled by bodies of clerics like JUH or outfits such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board or the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat.Who, quite predictably, fucked up.
The lone figure who cropped up in that phase—Syed Shahabuddin—did nothing to alter the stereotypes or the discourse, or earn wider endorsement. An erudite foreign service man who was thrice elected to Parliament, his starring role came in opposing the court judgment in the Shah Bano case and calling for a ban on Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. By the time of the Babri Masjid episode, his bargaining power vis-a-vis the State had already been marred by the image of a hardline man. “No doubt he was a bright man and one of great scholarship. But his politics was retrograde and divisive. He saw Indian society only through the prism of clergy and elites,” says Shajahan Madampat, a keen commentator on Indian politics and culture.Shahabuddin was in tune with a world wide resurgence in political Islam.
The next phase, marked by the BJP’s arrival on centrestage—and a new precarity in Muslim livesnew precarity? There is no evidence for this. Under Indira, it was police and paramilitary forces which were the biggest killers of Muslims.
Development improves Law and Order which makes all lives less precarious.
—also saw the emergence of parties premised on ideas of social justice, who now took ownership of the secular guardianship mantle. Parties such as the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal also opened up some limited avenues for Muslim leaders to come up (though never all the way to the top).But they were corrupt, incompetent, criminals same as everybody else.
One such leader offers an interesting case-study, for the gap between what he communicates to the wider public and to his constituency, and for his own feelings about the ‘Muslim question’. Azam Khan of the SP, known to television audiences more for his intemperate and casual sexism, is also a man whose occasional presence in government reassures the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh. He also buys credence for the SP among them, while calling himself a secular leader and never much doing overtly religion-based politics. At present enduring a witch-hunt by the state’s BJP government (with over a hundred cases, ranging from book theft to land grab), the nine-time MLA contested a Lok Sabha election for the first time in 2019 and won.Azam Khan appears to be guilty of some things but is by no means the worst crook in politics. The big question is why Muslims are reassured by people of his stamp. The answer is simple. He isn't a Liberal or a Socialist nor is he interested in modernization. He just wants to grab land and subvert Waqfs (Islamic trusts) in the traditional manner. He supports the status quo.
Why have Socialist parties never been led by capable Muslim politicians? Surely, there has been no lack of Muslim intellectuals, lawyers, administrators, Trade Union leaders, Peasant organizers, etc of a committed Communist type? Why was the Bengali Left Front a High Caste Hindu affair? Traditionally, the answer given was that Muslims were more urbanized and thus had to play second fiddle in an overwhelmingly agricultural nation. They couldn't achieve much even in the Cities because Hindu Forward Castes were better entrenched in Commerce, the learned Professions, and the Administration, even in Cities. However, there is another possibility. Perhaps Islam is an essentially spiritual religion which best protects its ethos by steering clear of Politics. The Chishti Saints kept away from Royal Courts. Still it seems strange that while the Dalits and OBCs have their own Samajwadi Parties, the Muslims have nothing similar. I suppose that is what the author is getting at when he quotes Azam Khan as saying
Azam Khan represents a type of Muslim politician whose job is to enrich himself while delivering Muslim votes in a manner which reduces their life chances. Even if the Muslims did not want the vote, it would be forced upon them because of the manner in which they are obliged to exercise it.
Days before that, in an interview to Outlook, he had put forth an astonishing proposition: “I suggest the voting rights of Muslims must be revoked and the right to study, right to earn livelihood and right to exist be ensured to them. It’s when a Muslim goes to vote that the fascists take objection. If Muslims don’t have a vote, there will be no resentment,” he had said. What more dire sign of the community’s political attrition than the idea that they forfiet their franchise itself!
Congressman Ghulam Nabi Azad’s lament that he was not being called for campaign by candidates, and former Rajya Sabha MP Mohammad Adeeb’s suggestion that Muslims withdraw electorally for some time, all attest to the same straitening of space. The political air, in fact, made all parties keep Muslims at an arm’s length.Why? It is because Political Islam had turned into a murderous type of Fascism. A Muslim who shows no interest in it and who behaves just like everybody else can, on the basis of merit, become the Home Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tory ruled Britain. But so can a Hindu or a Jew or a Confucian or an Atheist.
This begs the question, are there no meritocratic parties in India? How come Muslims have risen to national prominence through them? Why didn't the Left Front or other Socialist parties throw up no Muslim leader of the stature of George Fernandes- who kept getting elected from Bihar though a South Indian Catholic?
Looking at Kejriwal's AAP, which has retained Delhi purely on merit, the question arises as to why Muslims are under-represented in it. One answer is that a Muslim MLA is obliged to support hooligans who desecrate temples so as to chase away Hindu residents from Muslim majority neighborhoods. This scares the pants of Hindus in other areas and reinforces an informal type of 'zoning' and worsens the problem of over-crowded ghettos with inferior access to municipal services.
Ahead of the 2019 polls, Azam Khan had also made an impassioned speech with words strikingly similar to Azad’s in 1947. “No matter what anybody calls you, know that the country’s picture is incomplete without you. The borders were open in 1947; we could have gone, but we didn’t. Because this is our country. This land is ours. This sky is ours. Ashfaqullah Khan’s sacrifices, Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Qutub Minar’s majesty, Taj Mahal’s beauty, Ambedkar’s Constitution, the holy book that teaches you how to live, swear on them, swear on your ancestors, this country is yours,”Ambedkar's Constitution says that cow-protection is a Directive Principle. Thus, this 'Holy Book' tells Muslims that beef is haram.
Khan had told a riveted crowd in Rampur. That the rhetoric has changed little in 70 years speaks copiously about the continued precarity of Muslims.No. It suggests that Muslims are either stupid or lazy or simply can't be bothered to speak intelligently.
Within the Congress, faces such as Salman Khurshid, Ahmed Patel or Ghulam Nabi Azad have little appeal among the Muslim populace, and they themselves have rarely tried to address the concerns of Muslims forthrightly.It is because they had no appeal to Muslims that they were useful to the Congress Party.
Zoya Hasan, professor emerita of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, says the Congress accommodated minorities through cultural recognition, but was reluctant to provide affirmative action or proportional representation to minorities. “The rise of the BJP, on the other hand, has seen a shrinking of political representation and agency of Muslims as it has more or less declared that there can be no political or cultural representation of Muslims under a majoritarian dispensation,” says Hasan.I suppose Hasan means thinks like Hajj subsidy and triple talaq. The problem is, Hajj subsidy, as Syed Shahabuddin said, is un-Islamic. Triple talaq means a gangster can abduct your wife and then refuse to hand her over by suborning witnesses who falsely swear that they heard you give her triple talaq in a fit of anger. You may have been in U.A.E when this happened. It doesn't matter. You did it over the phone which was on loud speaker. The Police will drop the case. They saw some lady in a burqa who swears up and down that the gangster married her after iddat because he took pity on her wretched condition.
Don't forget Hindus had all sorts of crazy laws. Some cousin of yours could bring a case against you claiming your father's property. He could say he had evidence your parents' were 'swa-gotra'. They may have been, but at the time of marriage the wife is adopted into the officiating priest's gotra. This can't be proved but it is what happens. Democratic India was able to use the Legislature to put an end to mischief, under color of law, of this sort.
“Congress provided cultural recognition to minorities, but was reluctant to give them affirmative action or proportional representation.”Why? Because they were not worthy of it- at least this was India's experience in the inter-war period.
It’s in this economy of scarcity that an Owaisi comes as a very striking, potent presence—sharp, ardent, articulate, legally erudite, demonstratively Muslim, a kind of new claimant to the ‘sole spokesman’ slot in the Indian context who punches way above the weight category demarcated by his small Hyderabad-based party with single-digit MPs and a dozen-odd MLAs.Owaisi inherited power from the Razakar movement which massacred Hindus before itself being massacred. He is useful to the BJP because he is a reminder that Indian Muslims have been the worst enemy of non-Muslims.
The way he speaks consistently and combatively on issues that concern Muslims all over, indeed the way he calibrates his voice even to general national themes—once, in 2013, even offering the most eloquent defence of the Indian system on a Pakistani debate platform—gives him way more potential than, say, Ajmal of Assam (who is richer in purely electoral terms).But, the fact is, he inherits power from the Razakar movement.
To wit, Owaisi is now making inroads into states such as Bihar and Maharashtra, and his national ambitions are writ all over his politics.But this only benefits the BJP. Whoever allies with Owaisi loses a substantial section of the Hindu vote.
The accusation that he eats into the vote share of secular parties, in a way helping the BJP, lingers.Because it is true.
He has ready answers, though, and responds by saying he wants one MLA in every assembly who can seek accountability from secular parties (as he told The Print once).One MLA or even a dozen can't get accountability. That's not how Parliament works.
“His gaze is pan-Indian,” says Adnan Farooqui, who teaches political science at Jamia, “and his felicity with language, teamed with his understanding of issues, set him apart. In fact, he understands media better than many leaders, let alone Muslim leaders.”But the legatee of the Razakar he remains.
But Owaisi has a problem. Foremost, he hasn’t disowned, apologised for or condemned a rabid hate speech of his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi.If he did, he wouldn't be so useful to the BJP.
Also, as Madampat puts it, what he does is more of identity politics than communitarian politics. “Identity politics is always about emotive issues of religion, caste, language…communitarian politics focuses on material development and real-life issues of the community,” says Madampat, who confesses his admiration for Owaisi’s speeches in Parliament, but violently disagrees with the tone and tenor of his speeches in election rallies. This is perhaps what alienates other communities and holds him from leading a broader social group of underprivileged sections, as per the stated vision of his party. Whether he intends to is debatable.Owaisi, like other dynasts, is doing well by his family and cronies. But the price is paid by his vote-bank.
An interesting point of comparison is the Indian Union Muslim League of Kerala, which had, albeit for less than two months, even a Muslim chief minister in 1979. The party, Madampat argues, has shown strands of identity politics, but largely remained communitarian; it has at times been conservative, but never communal. It has furthered Muslim aspirations without antagonising any other segment—and hence has retained its centrality in the larger Kerala polity. “This is why Muslims in Kerala feel a greater sense of equal citizenship, as opposed to their counterparts in other states,” he argues, “while not discounting other factors such as the state’s deeper social harmony. In the face of secular, umbrella parties failing to sate the aspirations of communities, communitarian politics might be the way forward for Muslims in the rest of India.”In other words, doing sensible stuff which benefits your constituents helps your party. Look at the four I.U.M.L MPs in the current Lok Sabha. Each is a self-made man who has risen on merit. Where are the dynasts in that party? Surely its leaders had sons same as other politicians? Why didn't they inherit their father's power in the way that Owaisis and Abdullahs and Nehru-Gandhis do?
There is an obvious lesson here. A dynasty lines its pockets while pretending to represent some particular caste or community. A cadre based party- like the BJP- promotes on the basis of merit. That's it. That's the whole story. Work hard for the voters not for your family. Your religion does not matter. Your caste does not matter. Even your mother tongue does not matter. Do the work and you will be re-elected on the basis of your achievements, not who your Mummy or Daddy happened to be.
But can this succeed in north India? Pockmarked as it is with a history of riots, lynching, cow vigilantism and the deep faultlines laid by the Ayodhya movement?Sure. It is against the law in most parts of North India to possess beef. Muslims can create supply chains for meat such that along with halal certification, beef too is inspected for. This can be publicized. It is good for business. The thing could be a win-win. As for Ayodhya- the Supreme Court has made its decision. If the Constitution really is a 'Holy Book' for Muslims, then ensuring that the Ram Temple is constructed represents a religious duty. This fact can be publicized.
The most important thing is for a cadre based party to do 'last mile delivery' in a non-sectarian fashion. If you serve the people, they will vote for you because they are poor and their life depends on that 'last mile delivery'.
The deeply polarising rhetoric ahead of the Delhi assembly elections might offer a clue. The most recent example is of BJP MP Giriraj Singh, who said Pakistan was created for people like Owaisi (very ironic, given that 2013 speech in Pakistan, which may have been safely beyond the voluble Singh’s league).It is a fact that many Razakars fled to Pakistan. Indeed, they wanted to make the Nizam's dominion a part of Pakistan. Still, it must be said that given Owaisi's stern rebuke to Imran Khan for posting fake videos, the BJP is repenting the shrill tone it took in the recent elections.
References to Pakistan abound in BJP campaign speeches, of course. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in the run-up to the Telangana assembly elections in 2018, had said if the BJP came to power, Owaisi would have to flee just the way Nizam did.The result was that the BJP lost 4 of the 5 seats it previously had. Owaisi's party got 7 of the 8 seats it contested and its unofficial partner, the TRS, got re-elected with a bigger margin. It is noteworthy that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao- a staunch Hindu- is siding with Owaisi on the CAA bill.
Owaisi, an archetype of Muslim assertion, is erected as the enemy time and again by the BJP to ignite the dormant fears of the majority, in a way telling them, ‘See, they are rearing their head again.’ But with the magnitude of churning at present, with a language more open and creative than Owaisi’s, perhaps the old fears will metamorphose into something else. The reign of token secularisms and ahistorical ideologies with their out-and-out absence of nuance have had their run. The streets now brim with an air of expectancy.Sadly, the reverse is the case. The CAA bill will be found to be perfectly constitutional. It will become apparent that the States have no power to oppose it. Meanwhile, the BJP has gained a little from this essentially unimportant Bill. However, it may seek to pivot over the next few years by changing its rhetoric because the impression is created that it has given up on Vikas (Development). Still, unless the Opposition gets rid of Dynasties and unites to put forward meritocratic candidates, the BJP will win again- probably with support from regional satraps like KCR. Even if they go out of office, a coalition government is bound to come apart at the seams unless Cabinet posts are awarded purely on merit. Indian Muslims- who being poorer, work harder- have an important role to play in ensuring this outcome. But this can only be done by focusing on genuine issues- not fake news. Sooner of later people will see that the CAA bill does not harm Muslims. Then they will wonder why they were lied to and mobilized to go sit on the street in the freezing cold.
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