The American-Israeli political scientist Daniel Elazar famously warned that it is a “mistake to present unity and diversity as opposites”. Instead, he contrasted them, respectively, with disunity and homogeneity. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the ultimate sovereign, and the real parmatma, of our nation has told the new government in unequivocal terms: Do not undermine the noble ideas of diversity, constitutionalism and federalism.
Constitutionalism is the idea of limited government. It demands that governmental power should not itself be destructive of the values it was intended to promote. Civil liberties operate as restrictions on the power of the state.
The real masters of our Republic have told the incoming government that India is a “Union of States”, not of Union Territories, and so nothing should be done to diminish their importance and powers. Cooperative federalism should not be reduced to mere rhetoric.
Our Constitution begins with the expression “we, the people of India” — diverse groups bound together, not by religion, language, caste or region, but by the idea of “constitutional patriotism”. Can we really exclude over 15 crore Muslims from the “people of India”? Should the government not pay heed to the RSS chief’s assertions that “Hindus and Muslims have the same DNA” and that “Hindutva cannot be imagined without Muslims”? No ruling party leader referred to these statements in their election speeches.
Since 2019, several liberal scholars have been predicting a bleak future for Indian Muslims. In a previous article, this author had written that Muslims need not worry (‘Note to the minority’, IE, May 28, 2019). As an eternal optimist, this author had little doubt that the rhetoric of elections would soon prove to be just a strategy or chunavi jumlabazi which would soon make way for the slogan of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas”. Still, the vishwaas, or trust, of Muslims stands shaken by statements of the kind that used to be made only by the fringe earlier, but are now part of the mainstream.
One of the primary issues on which this election was fought was the treatment of Muslims. Some of the statements about them were patently false, some were part of the myth system and some were outright aimed at polarising voters. In the past, Indian Muslims have faced several existential crises but each time, they have survived with support from enlightened sections of Hindus. After Babri Masjid’s demolition, did the people of Uttar Pradesh not vote against Kalyan Singh? The 2024 election results in general, and the results from Ayodhya-Faizabad and other places related to Lord Ram, like Chitrakoot and Sitapur, in particular, tell a similar story.
The diminished strength of the BJP in no way means that religious polarisation would lose its attraction. If we want future elections to be fought on the development agenda, the performance of the incumbent government and election manifestos, we must put an end to our biggest fantasy — that of the Hindu Rashtra, which includes the idea of Muslims being thrown out or denied citizenship or, at the very least, being disenfranchised.
In a previous article, this author has gone so far as to say that even assuming that one day India becomes a Hindu Rashtra, the heavens are not going to fall for the Muslims as all their fundamental rights as citizens shall remain intact (‘Minorities, too, are fed up with this facade of secularism’, IE, March 21, 2020). The Hindu Rashtra cannot deny any citizen the right to vote or equal rights with fellow citizens. As a matter of fact, the declaration of Hindu Rashtra may help in ensuring non-communal election campaigns in the future. There are things which people understand only after experiencing them. This author continues to believe that declaring Hinduism as the dominant spiritual heritage of India may be a good thing for our secularism. Unlike Europe, we do not value secularism because we never experienced a real theocracy.
The silver lining of the election results is that at least some of us have realised that the salvation of souls is not the business of the state. A few are now convinced that secularism is good for religions, including Hinduism. It is the idea of secularism that protects religions from the control of the state.
Despite provocative speeches, Muslim Backward Classes would continue to enjoy the benefits of reservation as OBCs and some Muslim tribes would continue as STs. A liberal Supreme Court bench may, in the future, even order their inclusion within SCs. With the TDP and JDU as coalition partners, the new government cannot take a position against backward Muslim classes. The Uniform Civil Code too may not be enacted easily and without consensus within NDA in the near future. However, this author believes that Muslims should themselves initiate reforms in their personal laws. These laws must be made gender just and consistent with the Constitution. The UCC cannot be postponed forever. Of course, a just code is far more desirable than a mere UCC.
Let the government implement the slogan of “justice for all, appeasement of none”. The absence of minority MPs in the NDA coalition is bad for the government’s international image. The nation’s diversity must be reflected in it. Muslims want nothing but justice — social, economic and political. Each Muslim citizen as an individual is fully entitled to live with dignity. Let the government punish those who routinely indulge in hate speech, give calls to boycott Muslim businesses and publicly vow to take up arms. There is no unity without diversity and an organised and meaningful diversity is unsustainable without unity. Let the myths about Muslims outnumbering Hindus and Hindus being under threat be dismantled and make way for a more harmonious relationship. Let the unique characteristics of our civilisation and Constitution, such as heterogeneity, federalism, and constitutionalism, be implemented in both letter and spirit.
The writer is vice-chancellor of Chanakya National Law University, Patna. Views are personal
