The political philosopher Antonio Gramsci once compared a hegemonic political project to an “orchestra” in which differently attuned political and social forces “come to life as a single instrument”. “New India” is definitely one such phenomenon. The ambition of the Narendra Modi–led BJP is not merely to reorient the country’s politics. Rather, it seeks to transform the underlying political ground: reconfiguring our historical imaginations, cultural sensibilities, and sociological ties. How do we then make sense of the “new reality” we are living in? Or, to borrow from Gramsci’s metaphor, how do we tune out the daily noise and recognise the hum of the paradigmatic chorus?
A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India by the political sociologist Hilal Ahmed is a sophisticated engagement with the totality of all these questions. The intellectual breadth of the framework—cutting across thematic concerns of history, heritage, society, culture, and electoral politics—bracingly matches the hydra-headed phenomenon under study. Through a kaleidoscopic interrogation of contemporary Muslim behaviour, the book advances a fresh understanding of New India.
The German sociologist Norbert Elias had based his theory of the “Civilizing Process” on the notion that all social actors constrain themselves to adapt to (or reshape) their given sociological environment. In a somewhat similar vein, Ahmed argues, the environment of New India presents Muslims with certain daunting challenges, and they are creatively moulding themselves to survive in it.
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He frames the participation of Muslims in the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act as a form of “participation as instrumental action”, highlighting that Muslims have not shirked away from active political participation despite the growing hostility of their political environment. Rather, they are eking out their own political space, something he also alludes to in an example on the rise of the AIMIM in the Seemanchal region of Bihar. Noting how far removed the media coverage of the 2020 Assembly election in Bihar (which focussed on ideological issues) was from reality (having to do with subaltern caste locations and material backwardness), he advocates for attending to local contexts while interpreting Muslim political behaviour.
A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India
Viking
Pages: 256
Price: Rs.599
An enduring commitment in Ahmed’s work has been the refusal to essentialise Muslims as a community tethered to fixed moral and political concerns. In an earlier book, Siyasi Muslims, he persuasively argued against the common mis-recognition of Muslims as a homogeneous community, guided by an all-pervasive ulema, in thrall to a set of sectarian concerns (the status of the uniform civil code, Urdu, Aligarh Muslim University, and so on). These stereotypes yoked to the Muslim community melt away, as Ahmed suggested, once we learn to separate the domain of “discourse” and “everydayness”.
While the discourse around Muslims is constructed from the top-down by a nexus of political parties and community elites, according to Ahmed, the domain of everydayness presses forth from the bottom-up as livelihood issues of ordinary Muslims. And it was these everyday concerns that determined their political behaviour of Muslims much more than ideological discourse. In an example, he noted how the votes of Muslims more often swung away from the party backed by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, a kind of clerical kiss of death.
An enduring commitment in Ahmed’s work has been the refusal to essentialise Muslims as a community tethered to fixed moral and political concerns. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Here also, Ahmed refuses to yield to a lens of Muslim exceptionalism. As he notes: “Muslims, like other social groups, take part in political processes, especially in elections, as stakeholders to secure certain material benefits.” The rise of the politics of labarthis (welfare recipients of cash transfers) has also not left Muslim untouched, as they “behave like consumers/clients and respond to welfare packages” offered by different political parties. With the aid of survey datasets, he similarly holds that the electoral choices of Muslim voters “cannot be reduced either to communal polarisation or identity-specific considerations” since “everyday life issues” tend to trump “any imaginary anti-BJP-ism”. Similarly, he charts out the multi-vocality of Muslim politics (pasmanda, women, liberals), without losing sight of how these voices tune themselves to fit the structure of constraints and opportunities provided by the evolving nation state.
Dose of caution
Ahmed also wades into the “memory-wars” taking place around the places of worship (Gyanvapi, Ayodhya) and historical figures (such as Aurangzeb). Characteristically, he advocates a dose of caution in political engagement with these topics, arguing against ideological reactionism to the right wing. For instance, he notes: “Our public discourse... relies on a strong assumption that Muslims admire Aurangzeb as a respectable Islamic figure and that any attempt to defame him would eventually upset them.... The secular reception of Aurangzeb is equally one-sided. A section of scholars wants to destroy the communal ‘myths’ to discover a ‘tolerant and secular Aurangzeb’.” As a matter of political praxis, Ahmed recommends a sort of democratising engagement with our historical heritage, treating monuments as part of everyday lived culture rather than props for grand ideological contestation.
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Over the last few years, we have seen a welcome new phenomenon in the scholarly study of Indian politics. A growing crop of academics has started situating Muslims squarely within the central story of the Indian nation state as protagonists and creative agents, not as marginalised subjects confined to a subordinate intellectual ghetto. The historians Amar Sohal (The Muslim Secular) and Pratinav Anil (Another India) have produced remarkable re-evaluations of postcolonial India traced through the trials and tribulations, intellectual thought, and political behaviour of its Muslim minority.
In a similar vein, A Brief History of the Present approaches the beating heart of Indian politics through the pulsating rhythm of its margins. As Ahmed observes, the BJP has ingeniously reinterpreted the meanings of secularism, social justice, constitutionalism, and nationalism, thus shaping the popular “common sense” to a large extent. The orchestra of “New India” roars “as a single instrument” in the streets (to the hypnotic beat of Hindutva pop) and in the corridors of power (as chanting priests conduct monarchical rituals in the new Parliament). Gramsci reminded us that the nature of hegemony can only be grasped by visualising the totality of the power structure, which demands a creative multidimensional enquiry. In this regard, this book is a commendable and valuable work.
Asim Ali is a political researcher and columnist based in Delhi.
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