This is the best post I’ve read this year, and, perhaps, in a long time. For the first time, someone from the so-called left, secular intelligentsia in the country has chosen to handle these sacred ideas called ‘Hindu majority’ and ‘Muslim minority’ (and not observe them from a liberal distance), hold them upto the light and actually study them. Yoginder Sikand observes:
A general and widely-held assumption is that India is a largely ‘Hindu’ country, that Hindus form the country’s ‘majority community’ and, consequently, that Hinduism is the religion of the ‘majority’ of the Indian people. Hence, non-Hindus are described as ‘minorities’ and the religions that they claim to follow are considered as ‘minority religions’. This, what is now ‘commonsensical’, assumption is reflected in most writings about India, in the country’s politics and by the Indian state.However, as numerous critics as well as social activists have pointed out (notwithstanding the fact that their pleas continue to fall on deaf ears), the assumption that Hindus are the ‘majority community’ in India and that Hinduism is the ‘majority religion’ is actually fallacious. [...] The immense and continuing valence of social categorization on the basis of religion (as opposed, for instance, to region, language or caste), one that continues to be backed by the Indian state, must be seen as reflecting the efforts of Hindu and Muslim elites, minorities among their ‘co-religionists’, to promote their own respective fortunes using religion and religious-based identities as a means for this. Yet, social categories, once they come into circulation and become part of the social ‘common-sense’, exercise their own influence and have their own real consequences, no matter how stiffly socially-engaged academics and activists might critique them. The same is true for the notions of ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ as representing the ‘majority’ and the single largest ‘minority’ community in India respectively.
Well, haven’t the deafest ears always been those of the secular parties, the Congress and Communists? Their singleminded fostering of the idea of a Hindu majority, ignoring all divisions, has been more effective than all the machinations of the many arms of the Parivar itself. Sikand’s article has more lessons for the centre-left parties of India, than for the average Hindu or Muslim in the country. And the first lesson would be that there are no average Hindus or Muslims in the country.
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Maybe not Congress and the Communists (I don’t know for certain), but certainly people like Aijaz Ahmad–as left as one gets–have pointed this out.
I liked the overall thrust of the article but as the author says:
“This paper is not a rigorously argued or academically-grounded presentation. Rather, it seeks to lay out some stray thoughts that come to the mind as I reflect on my involvement in writing about issues related to Muslims and inter-community relations in India over almost two decades.”
Perhaps, he did not want to quote too many authors and decided to write a coherent and readable article. I wonder whether there are some academic studies along these lines. Is there any relation to the idea of “Sanskritization” of M.N. Srinivas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskritisation
swarup garu,
what kind of academic rigour would satisfy the pundits, i wonder.
Kuffir,
Sorry; I was thinking aloud. The author seems to be an academic and an activist and may be he deliberately wrote that way to get his message across. I think the message is that the hegemony of privileged groups continues and that religion is used as a tool by them. This seems to be a reasonable thesis. But I was not sure of some of the local statements like “In other words, ‘Hinduism’ is not a single religion. Rather, it can be said to be a collection of religions, cults and traditions, some of which uphold beliefs and practices that others included in the broader ‘Hindu’ fold would find obnoxious or heretical, or, to say the least, greatly objectionable. Hence, to argue that ‘Hinduism’ is India’s ‘majority religion’ is fallacious, there being no clearly-defined and universally accepted empirical referent for the term.” This might have been true long ago, but over time deities from various cults seem to be have been adopted by ‘Hinduism’ and many ’so called Hindus’ seem to know about Rama, krishna, Karma and such. So, perhaps there is some common denominator. (There is a discussion of an extreme example of a deity ‘Bamma’ adopted by Hinduism in “In an Antique Land” by Amitav Ghosh and I think that this sort of practice is still common). I wish he had given references and some ‘emperical referents’ about such statements. Perhaps they are not very relevant to his main thesis.
But I do look for some ‘empirical referents’ compared to anecedotal statements. When I first visited UK, USA in 68-69, most Telugus I found in those countries were either Brahmins or Kammas or Reddis and almost no Dalits or Muslims or Telanganis. But I do meet quite of these others now in Australia and USA. From this, I could think that the lot of various ‘weaker’ groups is improving. But from the numbers I checked last time about govt. employees, the percentage of muslims in govt. services has gone down after independence. So. it seems to me what we see in our experiences can be sometimes misleading if not backed by some numbers.
It is possible, after spending too much time in mathematics, I have trouble understanding social issues. But these issues bother me now, and I would like to understand.
swarup garu,
i notice that you’ve used one tool to measure the hinduness (and thereby the *success*) of any particular community (categorized, broadly, as hindu) in the country. i’ll reserve my comments on such usage and also on the efficacy of the tool itself for now.. i’ve two little items of information to offer- i’d like to know what you think of them:
* there are 59 scheduled caste communities in andhra pradesh and no aspirant from over 50 of those communities has ever been elected to the state assembly (or council),
* the other backward class communities in the state number 93- no aspirant from over 70 of them has ever been elected to the state assembly (or council).
Kuffir,
These are the types of things that I am trying to understand. There may be development in one area but not another for a particular group. As you said elsewhere “…it’s my opinion that ‘the opportunity structure’ for a certain section of the lower castes, dalits and obcs, has actually improved a lot after the 90s. let me illustrate with one minor factoid - in the state i live in, andhra pradesh, the number of lower caste students in professional courses like engineering, medicine, law, business etc., has gone up by 10 to 20 times in the last 15 years or so(these are rough but not overly optimistic estimates). “. The World Bank has developed development indices in 900 areas and there is cumulative development index HDI in which India ranks about 128th; see for example:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_geography . I do not know whether there is a sperate one for groups with in a country. There some Institutes which study specifically under privileged groups, perhaps they may have some information. I understand that there were some Dalit millionaires in Agra up to 70’s supplying leather goods to the Indian Army but they slowly lost their business to more influential groups. So even if there is temporary progress in some areas, it is not clear whether it can be sustained. I look forward to inputs from knowledgeable local people like you to understand these matters.
Aside: A.P. had a Chief Minister by name Anjaiah who I thought was from the less privileged classes. What about Rajasekhara Reddy?
swarup garu,
coming back to your comments again, i’ve a few thoughts-
your aside, first: anjaiah was a reddy, rajasekhara reddy is a reddy ( he qualifies as a ‘pedda reddy’ in rayalaseema - traditionally large landholders who are paid a certain feudal respect). that he is a christian is largely irrelevant- no political analyst in the state would consider it an important factor in his rise. unless one is a hindutvavadi and would like to cook up some interesting theories. like: christian sonia selects christian chief minister.