South Asian minorities have often been considered in standards and habitual patterns of behaviour. But this pattern is being broken in interesting ways and this provides possibilities for a new imagination for geopolitics in the region.
New Delhi: Following my essay in this newspaper last Sunday (“Subcontinent’s greatest illusion is crumbling”), I received a flurry of comments on phone, messages, and emails, some despairing, others full of questions. Many asked about the future of minorities in the Indian subcontinent, and where the three main major countries of the Indian subcontinent, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, are headed.
There are a few things in this regard that are critical to note. First, contrary to popular belief, and despite the very serious scenario of increasing religious violence, minority behaviour in these countries is changing, arguably for the better. How do we know this? For one, consider Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, Islamist violence has been rising over the years as more and more groups become radicalised. From killings of atheist popular bloggers a few years ago to the continuing violence against Hindus, there has been endless violence targeting minorities and especially Hindus in that country.
After the departure of Sheikh Hasina in August, things have consistently grown worse, but for the first time in years, there has been a more united resistance from the Hindu community including organised protests on the streets of Dhaka, mass participation from many Hindu organisations, and common Hindu citizens of Bangladesh. Even though steadily declining over the years, Hindus still make up around eight per cent of Bangladesh’s around 170 million. This is a significant number that has discovered a voice, and a street footprint, to organize effective resistance and protest in the face of extreme provocation.
This resistance has a direct geopolitical impact. It has forced the United States and the United Kingdom, which, to start with, preferred to either ignore the violence against Hindus, or treat it as Indian hyperbole, to comment directly and strongly against such incidents. It has forced politicians in both countries to raise the matter officially and publicly with the interim government in Bangladesh led by banker-turned-politician, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. British politicians have been compelled by this strong resistance to raise the matter in parliament, and the US government nudged to express concern publicly.
This kind of behaviour from the Hindu population in Bangladesh, often considered beleaguered like its counterpart in Pakistan, has raised hope that a different narrative could emerge despite current strife. The contestations being provided on the street, and in media, by the Hindus in Bangladesh have also roused India to action and the issue of persecution of Hindus has become a major bone of contention between the two countries, including between the two Bengals, the Indian side and the Bangladeshi side.
Consider India where the narrative is the reverse, of a beleaguered Muslim population with various instances of communal strife on issues of food (beef), historic conflict on temples and mosques and other related issues. Even though the usual framing of this question puts the Indian National Congress (INC) party as sympathetic to Muslim causes and rooting for secular solutions, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindutva politics as against the will and desires of the Muslim community, this traditional positioning is also under question with new developments in the Indian political firmament.
Consider Telangana, a Congress-ruled state, which was supposed to, in theory, demonstrate pro-Muslim politics, and yet some of the loudest complaints in Telangana recently have come from Muslims. Whether it be about the removal of the iconography of the Charminar in Hyderabad from the official state logo, the attack on a clinic during the treatment of a Muslim patient, communal riots in Jainoor damaging four mosques, desecration of a two-hundred-year-old mosque in Moinabad, or even the seizure of dargah land in Nizamabad, a flurry of complaints from the state’s vocal Muslim groups have come against a Congress government. This has put the government of the state, which aspires to be renowned as a global R&D hub, and for its ability to attract technology-driven investments, on the back foot. Recent news suggests that Revanth Reddy, the chief minister, even had to rush into Delhi to discuss the matter of Muslim complaints with party bosses when a Congress-led government was supposed to put an end to such criticism and thereby develop a narrative on how the Congress is able to give sustainably peaceful and harmonious governance to the state assisting its rapid growth.
The question has been asked—not least by Muslim leaders—on why the Congress is not able to fulfil its promises of changing the narrative of persecution of Muslims, and ignoring Muslim causes, even though that is one of its prime political planks. With instances of Hyderabad being referred to as Bhagyanagar, something sections of the BJP have long demanded, appearing even in some government documents under the Congress governments, Muslim leaders are asking has anything really changed? A key point of conflict is that there is still no minister in the state’s cabinet from the community. More than 12 per cent of Telangana’s population is Muslim, with half of them in Hyderabad. The Congress government has responded to this by arguing that that are no Muslim MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly), but Muslim groups point out that there is an option to appoint a Muslim MLC (Member of Legislative Council) and make that person a minister. In the past, this was how Mohammed Mahmood Ali became home minister and deputy chief minister.
Muslim groups also accuse the Revanth Reddy government of failing to fulfil several of its manifesto promises, including a hike in the minority welfare budget and a subsidy scheme for minority youth, and the redevelopment of the Musi riverfront which, critics say, would lead to the demolition of mostly Muslim homes.
Contrast this flurry of accusations, and counter-accusations, in Telangana, with what has happened under what is considered an ideologically committed Hindutva government led by Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh. In recent assembly byelections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won a Muslim dominated seat which it had not won in three decades. The Kundarki assembly seat was won by a Hindu candidate beating 11 Muslim candidates in a Muslim-majority constituency. Videos of Muslims voters talking about why they voted for the BJP and how they will continue to vote for the BJP in future elections to ensure good governance flooded social media after the victory. This was unprecedented, even in the BJP’s scheme of things, but the voters seemed assured that the developmental goals they had for their constituency would be delivered through the victory of the BJP candidate.
Uttar Pradesh is India’s largest state and also has one of the biggest Muslim populations in the country. It is trying to push through rapid industrialisation and infrastructure-building which can propel it to a $1 trillion economy. In India’s most industrialised state, Maharashtra, a magnet for major investments and which has a GDP (gross domestic product) roughly the size of Norway, recent polls showed that more seats were won in Muslim-dominated seats by the BJP-led alliance rather than the alliance which had the Congress as a major player and which made it a point to particularly target the Muslim vote.
All of this is showing an interesting picture: in some of the most geopolitically strategic states, the way minorities behave electorally, and politically, is changing. This opens up the possibility of new kinds of dialogue and a new imagination for what it means to be “minority” and “majority” in India, and its impact in the rest of the Indian subcontinent.
In Pakistan, where Hindus have faced the worst-kind of atrocities historically, loud and persistent criticism, led by local Hindu communities, and amplified by India and increasingly echoed in other parts of the world this year led to two things that are worth noting. First, the government of Pakistan’s influential state, Punjab, handed out cash benefits of ten thousand Pakistani rupees each to Hindu and Sikh families before Diwali (a total of 2,200 families received this amount), and the Punjab government in Pakistan has also started poverty profiling of Hindu, Sikh and Christian families (these communities traditionally tend to be the poorest and most deprived in Pakistani society). The realisation that in the US, the incoming Donald Trump administration might well have Tulsi Gabbard, a vocal critic of the role of Pakistan and its army and politicians in persistent atrocities against minorities, especially Hindus, as the new intelligence czar may have promoted some rethinking in Pakistan.
These are small but significant moves. A beleaguered Pakistan, which is economically more downbeat than ever, is particularly susceptible to trying to changing its social conversation. Also, some of the worst cues as far as behaviour with minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh were concerned used to come from major Gulf states—several of these states are embracing a more plural, post-oil future today, and some of that impact could find its way to the Indian subcontinent. The flip side is that many of the worst radicals are now making their way to the subcontinent from the Gulf and even the UK and Europe, and their vicious impact can only be better countered by building dialogues and interactions and negotiations of a better quality among South Asian minorities.
All of this is important to note because, even though on one hand, certainly, religious strife is rising across South Asia, on the other changes in patterns of behaviour among minority populations must be noted, and acknowledged, even cheered, to ensure that the window for a better, more integrated region is possible. With change in minority behaviour, a more comprehensive and less limiting dialogue about interactions between various minorities within, and across, borders could potentially occur. It opens up the space for other outcomes rather merely endless strife. A better conversation on development could also occur because of this—this is particularly relevant because whether on water or air or natural resources, countries in this region need to work together to find better solutions that ensure a healthier future for everyone. And that we never give up on the possibility of peace.
* Hindol Sengupta is professor of international relations at O. P. Jindal Global University, and co-founder of the foreign affairs platform, Global Order.