“Republican Party doesn’t care for the Blacks as they won’t vote for it. Democratic Party doesn’t care either, as Blacks must vote for it.” This quip about American politics pretty much sums up the plight of the Muslims in contemporary India.

While every other social group can choose to vote on bijali, sadak, pani or on padhai, dawai, kamai and what have you, Muslims are condemned to vote for survival, to escape lynching, bulldozers and riots. The party they cannot vote for treats them with antipathy and the party they cannot but vote for treats them with indifference, if not contempt.

This hostage-like situation is not of their own making. The rise of the BJP riding on vicious anti-Muslim vitriolic, cannot but push India’s largest religious minority into a corner. At the same time, it must be remembered that Muslim political leadership and the politics of “secular” parties contributed in no small measure to this fate. After all, the politics of keeping Muslims insecure and vulnerable, so as to pocket their en bloc votes, did not begin with the rise of the BJP.

This manifests itself in an intellectual trap. Very often, the responses of the “secular” camp on Muslim issues are no more than a mirror image of the “communal” Hindu majoritarian politics it opposes. The RSS-BJP set the agenda, we just invert whatever they say. BJP trolls would like to paint Muslims as one unified community of villains; we present Muslims as a homogenous group of victims. Both sides share the image of Muslims as a unified political bloc.

As the BJP moves ahead with its project of reducing every Hindu voter to his or her religious identity, we too collaborate by reducing every Muslim to his or her religion. The RSS-BJP insinuate that secularism is nothing but pro-Muslim posturing; we often confirm their........

© Indian Express