Azad’s Discourse Juggling

Veteran politician Ghulam Nabi Azad created a stir when at a recent rally in a Doda village, he said almost all Muslims in India were descendents of Hindus. He, however, complemented the factual statement with more loaded ones, saying Islam is just 1500 year old while Hinduism is much older. Or that 600 years ago all of Kashmir’s population was Hindu. And that all people in India are born into Hindu religion, whatever that meant. The fraught nature of his utterances, spoken against the backdrop of a polarized political climate in the country, was further reinforced by his clumsy articulation: the tone, body language and the overall vibes showed Azad’s desperate need to nod to the reigning political creed in the country than to state any historical facts. In trying to counter the RSS narrative he ended up playing to it. Which of the two objectives was his intention is difficult to say. Or was the intention to play to both the narratives? If so, he has succeeded in pandering to the RSS side of the divide only, alienating large sections of Muslim population in the process. For, in the manner that Azad said it, he showed a certain defensiveness about being a Muslim. 

That said, did Azad state any facts? He did, after broadly analyzing what he said,  although some of his assertions do clash with the belief of Muslims. For example, Azad’s claim that Islam is younger than Hinduism runs up against the belief among Muslims – or for that matter, even among Christians and Jews – that the provenance of their faith dates back to prophet Adam, the first human being according to Abrahamic religions. 

But yes, as far as ancestry of Muslims in India, Azad is right: they are not outsiders but converts from Hinduism, a historical fact. Over a thousand years of Muslim rule, around one-third of Indians converted to Islam, a sizable chunk of the population which Jinnah came to describe as a “Muslim India”. It is also a fact acknowledged by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. In 2021, speaking at a function organized by Muslim Rashtriya Manch, Bhagwat said that Hindus and Muslims of India shared the same DNA and so, in cultural terms, Muslims in India were actually Hindus – albeit, the later part of his argument would be contentious from a Muslim point of view.      

While Azad’s argument seems to spring from the same RSS thought process, it is geared to contest an extreme nationalist narrative which sees Muslims in India as outsiders,  hence not entitled to a place in India or to equal rights.  So, one can justify it as a viewpoint that not only takes on a certain nationalist view but also expands horizons of Muslim politics – or at least opens space for a political party led by a Muslim politician, such as Azad’s own party. It makes the concession that even if one were to make accommodation for one’s rage over Muslim invasions of India, one couldn’t exact revenge on the Muslims who were native to India  – Hindus who adopted a different faith. Whether volitionally or forcibly is not the debate here – to speak on behalf of either is a political opinion, not a historical fact. What Hindu right, in fact, is doing is oppressing their own people to avenge a real or imagined history in which the latter had no role. 

Also, if go down the history, we can’t stop only at Muslim invasions: India has earlier witnessed the arrival of Aryans who swamped the then indigenous population, saw en masse conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism, then back to Hinduism, even as Buddhism that birthed in India spread throughout the world. And this time, Buddhism is the mainstream religion of China, the world’s No 2 power and India’s biggest global adversary.  The point is that history is extremely complex, so using it for ideological ends could serve to sway public opinion and advance political goals—even though it doesn’t guarantee that it’s accurate. 

Returning to Azad’s statements, all that he has tried to do is to spin the nationalist argument to his favour – albeit unsuccessfully so. His motivations again are essentially political. Once a towering Congress politician,  who held many important ministerial portfolios and senior organizational responsibilities at the national level, Azad’s exit from the party and the subsequent floating of his own party has drastically shrunk his stature, confining him politically to his small region in Doda. As things stand and with some revival of Congress party across the country and also within Jammu and Kashmir, Azad will find it increasingly difficult to stay relevant to the changing political scene. This calls for a certain modulation of his politics to suit the current political climate. He also needs to forge a political narrative that transcends his appeal across the Hindu-Muslim divide, building on his longstanding secular credentials that once made him acceptable to both Kashmir Valley and Jammu division. But then he was a national leader in a pan-India party like Congress. He currently leads a fledgling subregional party that hasn’t yet endeared itself to the people, let alone boast of their support in significant numbers.    

• Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer 

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