Hilal Ahmed on the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 | Nous Interviews

Dr. Hilal Ahmed is an associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

His work is centered around political Islam and Muslim politics of representation in India. Hilal has written multiple books in multiple languages: Allah Naam ki Siyasat (2023), Siyasi Muslims: A story of Political Islam in India (2019), and Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in contemporary India (2019) – documenting and theorising the Muslim political experience in India.

In this interview, Hilal historically contextualises the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and chalks the constitutional journey of India’s citizenship story. He unpacks the binary framework of Hindutva vs the Constitution, and looks at CAA through the lens of what he calls ‘Hindutva Constitutionalism’. Delving into the legal technicalities of the act, Hilal also explains why he describes CAA 2019 as ‘anti-Hindu’, and how the law is entwined with the idea of ‘Hindu victimhood’.

Transcript
Yusra Hasan:

My first question for you – It’s been three years since this Act was passed, if we can go back and look at what this act was about and why do you see so many protests erupt, across the length and breadth of the country?

Hilal Ahmed:

Basically, I think we need to examine what really happened before 2019. We have to go back. Historicization is very important. This law has its own history. It goes back to the days of Partition and we have to remember one thing about the time the Indian Constitution was being made. It is very easy to say that we have an idea of India, but it was very difficult to have a constitution that would actually correspond to that idea. Why? Because the empirical realities of the subcontinent were very, very fuzzy and very uncertain. So the Constitution came into existence at a time, when things were not completely tangible. Things had not become clear, that we could say that this is the territory in which this ‘idea of India’ and the Constitution of India is going to be implemented. This is from 1947 to 1952. At that point of time, the Constitution actually introduced the idea of a secular citizenship, and that secular citizenship was introduced in such a way that your identity, your secular identity would be important. Secular, not in terms of religion, but also in terms of caste. But, I would say the constitution makers were conscious of the fact that ultimately, it would be the Parliament, which would design a new frame of things by which a workable interpretation of citizenship can be worked out, which led to 1955, when we got this Act [Citizenship Act of India, 1955] passed. Hindu right organizations were not very comfortable with that, because for them, India should grant citizenship to Hindus, who were actually living in Pakistan, and then later, Bangladesh as well. So the initial demand, that “we must give Hindus a special privilege, give them citizenship without any consideration”, that's the background. We usually use Hindutva and Hindu nationalism interchangeably, but these are two very different things. Hindu nationalist politics was already there, when the term Hindutva came into existence. It is specifically related to the politics of Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar coined the term ‘Hindutva’ and he was very active in using it. But the RSS and Jan Sangh were very uncomfortable with the term Hindutva.

Yusra Hasan:

Initially…

Hilal Ahmed:

Initially, yes. It became a part of their discourse only in the 1980s. Before that, it wasn't. This is important, because Hindu nationalists’ position on the question of citizenship was something like, Hindus must be given citizenship without any hurdle. Hindus, those who are not living in India must be given some kind of citizenship. So that is one story, but the ways in which Hindutva became an acceptable term for BJP and the RSS in the 90s, also had some kind of effect on this debate on citizenship. So what did they do? They started using the Constitution, or the Constitution’s provision in a very, very interesting way. This bill was introduced in 2016 and sent for review to the Joint Parliamentary Committee [JPC], for three years. So the story of CAA should begin from 2016, not from 2019. This law is an amendment law, which says that the three neighboring countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, are Muslim dominated countries, and the non-Muslim minorities of these countries, which they have named, will have some kind of a privilege to get Indian citizenship. It is called instant Indian citizenship. But this instant Indian citizenship does not mean that people who belong to these communities will come and automatically get Indian citizenship. The opposition to this law was so vibrant. People actually oppose this law primarily because religion is used as a criteria to demarcate certain communities for granting instant citizenship. So, in a way, the whole discourse of citizenship was communalised . And that's the reason why non-Hindutva forces were opposing it. So now the story, again, our focus is entirely on the happenings of 2019, which I find rather misleading, because what really happened in the JPC is important. By the way, the JPC was deliberating on this for three years.

Yusra Hasan:

JPC is basically the Joint Parliamentary Committee that the bill went to. Once it was introduced in the parliament, in the Lok Sabha. It was sent to that committee, which was going to review it and…

Hilal Ahmed:

And in this committee, not merely the people from BJP were there, but also other opposition parties. So there, a lot of discussion happened. I'm really surprised that people did not take the report of the JPC very seriously. Obviously, it was dominated by the BJP. But if you look at the deliberation, all the critical questions which we find, the questions which were raised by people protesting against this law, were also raised by the Joint Parliamentary Committee. Unfortunately, I am really surprised. You do not find the link between the discourse that was there in the Joint Parliamentary Committee, and what was happening on the streets when this law was implemented. So this is something of a gap. The technicalities of the law and issues discussed in the JPC, were, in my view, not taken very seriously by the opponents of this law.

Yusra Hasan:

In the paper that you've written, you speak about how a lot of the discourse in the protests was in the binary politics of the Hindutva versus the liberals. So on one hand, you have people who are proponents of Akhand Bharat. On the other hand, you have these liberals who were like, ‘oh, no, we're a secular country and have a secular constitution’. You argue that this is sort of like a simplistic reduction, and you use the term Hindutva constitutionalism. What do you mean by Hindutva constitutionalism?

Hilal Ahmed:

The distinction which I just made between Hindu nationalism and Hindutva is crucial because, as I said, it is very convenient to use the term Sangh Parivar and it is true that there are many organizations, which would ideologically make very similar kinds of gestures in politics. It is convenient that the interconnection between these organizations can be described as Sangh Parivar. That is fine, but there is a lot of contestation and contradiction among these organizations. So, we also have to take care of taking into consideration these conflicting positions. What I mean by Hindutva constitutionalism can basically be answered by first asking what is constitutionalism? Technically speaking, constitutionalism means that you have written a constitution, certain protection of separation of power and the protection of rights of people are given. Some sort of a normative support is called constitutionalism, meaning rule of law based on a constitution. This is one interpretation, which is the technical normative interpretation of constitutions. But there is another meaning of constitutionalism in my view, that is entirely political. What do I mean by political constitutionalism? It means every political party in India in 1951, accepted the Constitution as a reference point for doing politics. But at the same time, they were coming from different ideological positions, from extreme left to extreme right, they accepted the Constitution, not merely for the game of elections, but also to extract a certain vocabulary of politics. So, if you look at Indian politics, you find that the vocabulary of politics is coming out from the constitution. So that's why, on the one hand, they were uncomfortable, all of them were uncomfortable with the Constitution. On the other hand, because it was implemented and the first general election took place successfully thereafter, they had to rely on that. So therefore, there was a compulsion to define their position in relation to the Constitution. That's why the different interpretations of the Indian Constitution came into existence. So, for instance, the undivided Communist Party of India came out with a very interesting resolution, criticizing the Constitution. JP [Jayaprakash Narayan] also came out with a book called Reconstitution of Indian Politics in 1959. Similarly, both Hindu Mahasabha and Jan Sangh, were also critical of the Constitution. So the constitution was not worshiped at that time. The worshiping of the Constitution started only in the 1990s, when the state started rolling back from its welfarism. So in order to get some kind of legitimacy for this new polity, it was very important for the political class to start worshiping the Constitution. What BJP did was that it continued to engage with the idea of the Constitution rather critically. They were uncomfortable initially. In 1999, when the NDA government was formed, a committee was constituted to evaluate the function of the Constitution. It is called the Venkatachaliah Committee. It was criticized by others initially, but because the committee came out with a very good assessment of the Constitution, the NDA government accepted it and everybody was happy after that. But this episode actually gives us a very interesting insight. That is, that BJP, unlike other forces, did not stop its critical engagement with the idea of constitution. So the first thing was that, if you look at all the manifestos of Jan Sangh from 1952, to say, before 1971, because in 1977 they merged with the Janata Party, you find in all manifestos, they were uncomfortable with the idea of constitution, and they would say that we need dharam rajya, and dharam rajya is not to get to that theocratic state, but rather, a rule by duty. That was their interpretation of that. So, they were very uncomfortable with the idea of constitutionalism. But, the first position of Hindu nationalists was to actually reject the Constitution completely. Second position was, fine, we cannot reject it. Let us just review it. So this is what they did in 1999.

Yusra Hasan:

In 90's, under the Vajpayee government.

Hilal Ahmed:

After that they realized that the constitution is actually central. They had to change their position. I would say that it was Narendra Modi, who actually offered a new interpretation of the Constitution. When he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I remember one very interesting episode. When the Sachar Commission went to Gujarat, he said, “I don't do anything for Muslims.” Then the counter question came, “Why?” He said, “Because I don't do anything for Hindus.” So the point he was making was that I am a constitutional head, and therefore, constitutionally it is my duty. Duty to protect all. That led to the Constitution being interpreted as a holy book. So, when he became the Prime Ministerial candidate in 2013, he came up with this idea that the constitution is a holy book. Now, why I'm telling you this story is because Hindutva constitutionalism is actually inextricably linked to this story in an interesting way. When Modi won the election, he did not stop that engagement.

Yusra Hasan:

With the Constitution?

Hilal Ahmed:

Yes, and for the first time in the history of India, Constitution Day was introduced, and we started celebrating 26th of November as Constitution Day. So, if we keep this story in mind there are three characteristics of the Hindutva constitutionalism: First, they would always make a distinction between the normative ideas and the principles by which certain laws are made and given some kind of a shape to the Constitution, and the rules and explanation that were given in the constitution. So, they are saying that principles are the settled issue. What is needed is implementation. That's why a new imagination of the Constitution was introduced, as if that constitution is nothing but a rulebook. That's the first characteristic of what I call Hindutva constitutionalism. The second thing is, and this is something which is very important, because liberals, who claim themselves as liberals, as if the others do not hold liberal ideas, they claim that they're going to change the constitution. And I was very uncomfortable with this idea, because there is a very interesting engagement going on with the idea of constitution. So that's one thing, that you have to make a distinction between principles that make the constitution a normative document, and the rules and laws that are associated with the Constitution. So you would say that principles are settled issues. What we really need is to focus on rules and laws, so that you can convert the Constitution into a rule book. This is what they did.

Yusra Hasan:

You can reimagine it, in terms of your own ideas.

Hilal Ahmed:

Yes. Second thing is, a feature of Hindutva constitutionalism was this idea of minority and in fact, CAA is inextricably linked to that. This ‘idea of the minority’ was important because they were not interested in majoritarianism. Others are actually blaming BJP and RSS for doing politics of majoritarianism. They are saying no. We are not doing any politics. Rather, we are doing politics of minority in a different way. That's why there was a court case, still going on about how, in 8 states Hindus are not in majority.

Yusra Hasan:

In terms of numbers…

Hilal Ahmed:

Yes and they should be given minority status. So therefore, this idea of minority was central and CAA is actually the best example to illustrate that. This is something which is very important to realize. That they engaged in the ‘minoritisation of Hindutva politics’, not in majoritarianism. So that's the second thing. Third crucial aspect of Hindutva constitutionalism was ‘one nation, one constitution’, and they used it when article 370 was abrogated. Look at what the explanation was given by both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. The explanation was that ‘Article 370 was something that was not in the Constitution originally’. As if [Article] 370 was an attached thing. It was an abnormal thing attached to something called the structure of the constitution. So that's why this abnormality must be dealt with, and that's why we are removing it. So now we have one nation, one constitution. All these three contributed significantly in their politics, to propose that whatsoever they are doing is legal, justifiable and constitutionally valid. So Hindutva constitutionalism is actually a framework which is used to offer new legal interpretations to different forms of politics. Hijab is one of them. If you look at the hijab judgement, it is actually coming out from the framework of Hindutva constitutionalism. CAA is also coming out from that and I'm sure that whatever form this UCC thing is going to come in, it will certainly correspond to the framework of Hindutva constitutionalism as well.

Yusra Hasan:

So you're saying that there's actually a historical trajectory that you can see, from the 1950s, where you have an open critique of the Constitution, in the form of the demand for dharam rajya, to a place now, where the Constitution is being revered by the Prime Minister as a holy book. It's a complete appropriation of the Constitution…

Hilal Ahmed:

No, everyone appropriates the Constitution. It is, as I said, that the constitution is a document which is subject to multiple political interpretations. Every political party does it. So when we say Hindutva constitutionalism, in my view, it is a very creative reinterpretation of the Constitution. So, unlike other political parties and forces, who actually started worshipping the Constitution as if that the Constitution would come and protect itself, Hindutva constitutionalism is an example, which says that you need some kind of politics to support or to offer a critical interpretation of the Constitution, which would contribute in a direct manner, to the legality of your politics, and the appropriateness of actions which we're going to take.

Yusra Hasan:

Just a sub question from what you spoke about earlier. You said that there was a whole constitutional review which happened under the Vajpayee government. Did anything interesting come out of that?

Hilal Ahmed:

Many interesting things.

Yusra Hasan:

Anything that you want to speak about?

Hilal Ahmed:

For the first time, I think, Muslim political representation was seen as a problem. The lack of representation of Muslims in the legislative body is an important issue. Therefore, there is a need to increase it. It was probably for the first time after independence that the issue was highlighted by a commission constituted by the government. The Sachar Commission actually inherited the findings of the Venkatachaliah Commission in some sense, which is interesting and it was constituted by the BJP. I think these things are interesting and they are in the public domain. These things are available to all political parties, opposition’s political parties now, but they are not using them to construct any alternative narrative of politics.

Yusra Hasan:

Just going back to one of the things that you were speaking about. There is this whole idea of the governing dispensation using the idea of a minority. Basically the idea of ‘Hindu minority’. CAA is the law which feeds into this long term project of ‘Hindu victimhood’, a lot of which we have seen in the mainstream media, where you are constantly fed with this narrative that, “oh, the Hindus are going to become minorities in their own country”, or you have debates on prime-time television, where you're saying that “in 2047, Muslims are going to overtake Hindus in the country”. How does CAA fit in this whole idea of ‘Hindu victimhood’?

Hilal Ahmed:

Again, I think it will be important for us to look at the technicalities of CAA in 2019, to understand why it's a very interesting political move by the BJP, and that would explain this whole notion of ‘Hindu victimhood’. But let me just first explain the meaning of ‘Hindu victimhood’. When we say victimhood, what does it mean? It means that a group of people is not adequately getting what is due to it. This is one explanation for it. But why is Hindu victimhood relevant in our context? This is because it is an outcome of what is called competitive victimhood. Competitive victimhood, means that say, for instance, the Sachar Commission report came out, and it exposes that Muslims are poor and marginalized. Now, in order to counter that, you need to also produce some kind of discourse, which would actually make you equally vulnerable. Also, remember one thing, you cannot do politics in this country without evoking the idea of social justice. Why? As I said, because of two reasons. One, that our constitution is actually an outcome of a movement. Since it was an outcome of a movement, it inherited some characteristics of a movement. So justice is something which is central to the Constitution. Second, the political party system. The party system that evolved, most of the parties were basically the movement parties. They transformed into political parties in a professional electoral sense later. That also contributed immensely in transforming the idea of justice. So whenever you have to start a new discourse of politics, electorally, or even non-electorally, you have to have some kind of injustice as a reference point.

Yusra Hasan:

To which you're responding.

Hilal:

Yes, that I am actually a victim of something. If you look at the whole Babri Masjid question, it is not a majoritarian argument. It is actually a problem of historical injustice. Why did people accept it? Because it was coming out from a social justice framework. So it became acceptable, because some kind of injustice was shown. Remember, that it was not possible for the Jan Sangh of the 1950s and 60s to make this a national issue. Why? They have been involved in the ‘desecration of Hindu temple’ debate for a long time. But why was it unimportant at that time and why did it become important only in ‘98? It is because they reshaped the argument. Now, the argument they made in the 80s was a social justice argument. But before that, it was not a victimhood question. It was a claim question. That we are Hindus and our claim is this. They changed that in the 80s. They started saying that, “despite the fact that we are in the majority, we are not getting adequate benefits. See, the minorities are benefiting.” That's one. Second thing is that, politics and constitution, these are the two things that would contribute to the language of politics. As I said, all political parties extract these things as resources. So naturally, every political party, in some sense, would rely entirely on victimhood. So competitive victimhood is actually an unwritten norm of Indian politics. Hindutva politics is not merely successful at the moment in electoral terms, it has successfully created its hegemony. It is the defining discourse of Indian politics at the moment. No political party, can ignore it. So, Hindu victimhood is actually an outcome of these processes. It is also, as I said, competitive victimhood. That we are basically equally depressed, and equally marginalized, so that a discourse of equality can be established. Remember, it is also linked to the debate on secularism. In the 1990s, and even before that, BJP would say that the secularism of equality must be established, meaning that the distinction between minority and majority must be abolished, and there is one one criteria for all. This ‘one criteria for all’ is used differently, when it is argued that minorities are in a privileged position. If they are in a privileged position, therefore, there is a need to have parity, and this parity cannot be established, if we do not do a politics of competitive victimhood. So, Hindu victimhood is actually an outcome of competitive victimhood. Now, why is CAA linked to that? In what ways is it linked to CAA? Because the argument is that you need to expand the scope of this victimhood in such a way that you can compare Muslims who are legitimate citizens in this country, and who are also recognised as a minority in constitutional terms [to a constitutional majority]. You start comparing them with the minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. When you start comparing them, you can also make the point that “we are victims in our own country, look at our minorities, they are equally protected, and there is no harm in giving some sort of support to the depressed people who are coming from these three countries.” It is a logical argument. So, CAA is actually a reflection of Hindu victimhood politics.

Yusra Hasan:

This is almost like a leading question, but do you think that then, the end goal of a law like CAA would be more to contribute to this narrative rather than actually offer citizenship to the so-called ‘religious, persecuted minorities’. Even if we look at it in terms of numbers, or the fact that they're not handing them over citizenship, do you think that the idea is to make sure that this whole polarizing discourse of competitive victimhood, that ‘I'm more of a victim than you are’ prevails? Is that the end goal of CAA, and not to actually offer refuge?

Hilal Ahmed:

It's a good question. Why this is a very relevant and central question in my view, is because of two reasons. One reason is that it would push us to look at the technicalities of CAA. Suppose I'm a Hindu, coming from say, Pakistan, when something bad has happened to me. So, I am not going to get citizenship on my arrival. First of all, I need to clarify that I am here as a Hindu and I would like to take citizenship of this country. So technically, as per CAA, I need to spend five years in India and suppose if I spent only one year and go back, then again, I need to stay here for the next five years. Second, I need to also give supporting documents to the concerned authority at the bottom level of my arrival, that something bad has happened to me, precisely because I was not a Muslim in Pakistan. So, the burden of proof is on me. Third, suppose I managed to get some proof from that very country. Are you going to accept it or not? Suppose I get an FIR that my daughter was raped in Pakistan. Are you going to accept that FIR? This is actually a technical-legal problem. So, if that is the case, the question arises that then I have to spend five years. After five years, suppose you decide and then the ultimate decision will be taken by the concerned authority at the bottom level, not by the Parliament of India. Suppose if you decide that no, you are not eligible for Indian citizenship, despite the fact that I am a Hindu, then what would be the option for me? Can I go back? No, I can't, because I have already come from Pakistan, and you are not going to give citizenship to me. Automatically, it means, in that situation, I am going to be a completely stateless person. In that sense, CAA (2019) is anti Hindu. That's one part of the answer to the question, which you asked. Now the second part is that there is no end goal of anything in politics. The nature of Indian politics is very much election-centric. Remember, that earlier in the 50s and 60s, elections were seen as a part of a larger political game. But now everything is reduced to elections. But in electoral discourses, you have to keep things alive, you have to keep certain issues alive, if you want to capitalize on them in the market of election. So, there is no endgame of anything. In politics, and especially in electoral politics, things are not introduced to settle. Rather, things are introduced to make things unstable and unsettled. This is the point, which I would like to emphasize: we have to understand what kind of State we have. This is a different State. This is a State which has redefined its character in a significant way in the 90s. It is not a welfare State, it is a charitable State. This State is time and again, reminding us that the task of the State is to create a dividing line between State and society in such a way that the purpose of having this State is to resolve the conflict of competing groups. So the State is saying that my job is to resolve conflicts. Now, in order to get a certain kind of legitimacy, if I am a State or [belong to the] political class, I need to create new conflicts as well. That's why settling conflict is not the norm of contemporary politics. Suppose BJP did not come [to power] in 2014. Suppose, Congress won the election in 2014. They would be doing exactly the same thing, what is happening at the moment, because it is an acceptable norm of politics to actually not settle things. Create new conflict, in order to get legitimacy. That's why the end game thing is not an end game. It is different. You need to create conflict, so that you can play competitive victimhood. You can also mobilize people in different directions and because, as I said, that the State has already rolled back from welfarism, whenever any group is dissatisfied, you would actually go and provide some kind of a benefit to that particular group. That is the reason why you can see these posters of “Shukriya Modi ji” and “Shukriya Kejriwal” .

Yusra Hasan:

Or his [Narendra Modi] photo on every ration bag…

Hilal Ahmed:

Not merely his photo. Every chief minister is doing exactly the same thing. Everyone. So now politically, the nature of the political class has changed. Therefore, there is no end game of anything. Actually, this is a new norm, of unsettling things in such a way that you can draw some kind of legitimacy out of it.

Yusra Hasan:

But this specific kind of polarization that's coming out of a law like CAA where you're saying, ‘oh, this competitiveness would be there, regardless of which political party comes into place’, but you have a specific kind of polarization that's based on the politics of hate between ‘us’ and ‘them’. So do you think that this is something that's specific to the Bharatiya Janata Party?

Hilal Ahmed:

It's a good question. Yes and no. Their task is not difficult. It is the easiest task to do. If you are a Muslim and I am a Hindu and we say we have different interests, it is easy to create a conflict. So their task is easy and because BJP is the dominant hegemony of politics at the moment, every political class will play that game. But, if that is the case, then suppose BJP is not in power. Remember this cow thing was actually not started in any BJP ruled state. It was started in a Congress ruled state. The Bharat Mata issue. That you cannot say bharat mata…etc, first became an issue in Maharashtra. It means that you accept certain rules of the game in such a way that you are going to use them to maximize your profit in terms of electoral gains. Now, is it specific to BJP? The Hindu-Muslim conflict or politics of it? No, because it has become a norm. So, every political party would do it in future.

Now, what is the difficult task? Difficult task is, because our understanding is, as I said, so centered on elections, that we cannot think of what is happening in the realm of politics outside elections and that is something which is very crucial. I'll give you two examples to justify my interpretation of present-day politics. One example is our survey and especially the survey, which I did with Pew. In the Pew survey, when we asked this question - “Whom India belongs to?”,

90% of Hindus, said all. We then categorically asked, do you mean that India should belong to Hindus only? People said no. This is an important finding. Why is this an important finding? Because now, no one would talk about communalism. Communalism is something that has completely gone, but communal peace is still surviving. So, there is an interesting way in which communalism is detached from communal peace. For instance, the Ministry of Home Affairs has stopped collecting data with regards to communal violence for five years. So, you get [to know about] an incident of communal violence when an MP asks a question about it in the parliament. But it used to be a practice in the Ministry of Minority Affairs report, that they would collect data and they would present this data to the country in the form of their annual report. So they have stopped, publicizing it in that way. But at the same time, the same report emphasizes communal peace . So violence is detached from peace, as if peace is an entity that has to be achieved. I'm linking it to my first example, the Pew example. Now, if we do not have violence, what is the relevance of having peace? When people say that we would like to live together, what is it that they are demanding for? They are demanding, they are making a point that violence is a bad thing. But there is no possibility of talking about communal violence these days, in official terms, as well as in the political discourse. That's why we have a discourse of peace without violence. This gap between peace without violence is the sphere where politics is played out. All political parties are playing the same game. By the way, it is a difficult task. It is a difficult task for a political party. But it is an easy task for a social movement. That's why if you just shift your focus from the electoral arena, to look at non party formation, you find that people are struggling in this country for a variety of different issues and in that space, solidarities of different kinds are formed. But unfortunately, we give lots of importance only to electoral politics, where these hateful things are happening. That's the reason why the finding is important. This finding is coming out from the grassroot. The people who are living at the bottom level of society. That grassroot has still got some tendency to move towards secularism and to form a coalition of a different kind, because for them, communalism is an important concern.

But for the political parties, as well as the official discourse, communal peace without violence is a new norm. That's why this question of hate must be interpreted in the growing norms of electoral politics, as well as its placing in the non-electoral form.

Yusra Hasan:

Just coming back to CAA, and the protests around CAA. It was understood as the largest political participation by Muslims in post-Partition history. Visually, you had Muslim women on streets who were protesting against the State. So how do you understand this Muslim participation in terms of protests against CAA and for a movement like Shaheen Bagh, what were the limitations?

Hilal Ahmed:

I think, first of all, we have to make it clear that it was not an entirely Muslim protest, because other communities were also participating in that, but in my view, it was very much central to three things. First of all, probably for the first time in independent India, we find that the constitution is used as a symbol of protest. This was not the case earlier, I don't find any reference in postcolonial history, wherein the constitution was used in this way, especially the normative ideas of the constitution. So, people are reading the preamble etc. This is a remarkable experiment. Second, is that it was led by women, and this is something which is very important, not merely were they in the leading position, but also, they rejected the established Muslim leadership in an interesting way. In fact, they did not allow any Muslim leader to come and appropriate this. This is the second important aspect of that movement. The third important aspect was simple. Again, first is that the constitution was used. Second is that it was led by a new leadership, and that is a gender sensitive leadership. The third aspect is that people from social movements also participated in it in a significant way. So, it means that it was not an elitist moment of some kind. It was a participation of people from a people's movement, which transformed it into a people’s movement. I would say this movement must be understood in its entirety. I don't think that we can reduce it to Muslims. It was actually led by Muslims, but others also participated. If you compare this, remember that something of a similar kind happened, I'll give you two examples. One in 1985, the protests against the Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Bano case. But it was led by the elite ulema. They were leading that and it was highly problematic. Similarly, when the Babri Masjid issue came up, there was a coalition that came into existence. It was called the Babri Masjid Movement Coordination Committee, and they organized a very long march from Jama Masjid to Boat Club, and this is, I think, considered to be the biggest rally of all time. But in that rally, not merely the Muslims participated, but as again, it was elitist. It was dominated by conventional Muslim jurists of that time.

But if we compare those two big events with this event, we find a remarkable contrast. On one hand, I really liked the way in which liberal constitutionalism is evoked and a position to see is transformed into a people’s concern. That is one thing. But the second thing is the failure part, the critical part. The critical part was that, because these were obviously people, we do not expect them to be intelligent. Obviously they are intelligent, but we do not expect them to behave as a very legally informed person. They know that this law is problematic. They were legally equipped. Common Indian people are very much aware of law. In fact, they know how to use law. That's why we have a number of court cases, increasing every year. If I want to harass you, I'll put a case on you. So Indian people know how to use the law. I won't say that it's a problem of legal literacy. But it is something which is related to sensitization. How would you sensitize someone who is not a Muslim? Or who is not part of your protest? How would you sensitize him or her that this issue, the CAA is a problem for the other person? I think that sensitization was not there. For instance, whatever questions were asked, in the Shaheen Bagh protest, all of those questions were there, in the JPC. So why didn’t they use JPC to make their protest more legitimate? That's one criticism of the protest. The second criticism is not of people, but certainly there were people who became leaders of that movement and they actually designed the protest in different ways. Why did they fail to show the people who were not part of these protests that this law is anti Hindu - which is anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, anti-Christian. So, in my view, they failed to expand the scope of the protest and because of this failure, sensitization towards the issue, in political terms, could not happen.

Yusra Hasan:

There was another liberal critique that came out in response to Shaheen Bagh which was the idea of using religious symbols. For example, there were slogans, you had Muslim women, visibly-Muslim women, etc. So, my question is, does an Indian Muslim, have to strip oneself of his or her religious Muslim identity, in order to be more acceptable and more credible?

Hilal Ahmed:

It is a good question, but it should be asked at two different levels. One level is the level of where the Shaheen Bagh protest happened, where I would say, it was dominated by an elitist perception of Indian reality. In the elitist framework, you can only be one, either you are secular or a Muslim. This is an elitist question, in my view. But at the grassroot movement, I don't see this as a problem. I'll give you one very relevant example. I did some work on Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha. It was a left organization, left movement, one of the most creative movements of all times. This movement was started by people who were the workers in Bhilai Steel Plant, way back in the 70s and 80s. Shankar Guha Niyogi was their leader. It was a strange movement in a way that people came in this movement from different walks of life. It was not a small movement. They had two MLAs in the undivided Madhya Pradesh assembly; it was a very powerful movement. When I did my research, I came to know that their meetings were happening in the mosque. Their meetings were happening in temples. So they did not have any problem with people having their own religious affiliation. So at the grassroot level, religious people participate in politics without giving up their identities. At the grassroot, it is completely irrelevant. People know you are a Muslim, I am a Hindu. So, if we both are coming together, obviously, we will come with our own sense of identity and belief and that would become acceptable. It [religious identity] will become meaningless, if we are concerned about a particular issue. So, the issue will become important. Now, in this case, because it is an elitist discourse, it was very difficult for elitist liberals to think of a Muslim raising the issue of grassroot without giving up his or her identity. I think that we need to understand the reality of India in such a way that people do participate in politics without giving up their identities. The Left movement in Jehanabad at one point of time, the CPI (ML) had support of many practicing Hindus, and many practicing Muslims. They did not have any problem with doing Marxist politics without giving up their identities, but it would become a problem for central leadership here, in Delhi. How could you become a Marxist, without becoming completely atheist? So it is actually an elitist question. For people at the grassroot, issues are different.

Yusra Hasan:

So, just tying up our whole conversation: We started by talking about how it's been three years since, CAA was passed and the law is yet to be implemented. It has also disappeared from public conversations. What is the future political trajectory of this law? If you look at the Assam NRC, which also took place in 2019, of the 3.3 crore applicants, 90 lakh people were not included in the list. But no action has been taken on what happens to these 90 lakh people, who are just stuck in a limbo right now. So, what is the political trajectory of a law like CAA, in context of NRC?

Hilal Ahmed:

See in reality, Indian citizenship is not an easy thing to get, and as I just explained that, it is not an easy task, even for persecuted religious minorities to get Indian citizenship easily, if they are going to apply for that. First of all, rules are not framed. So, a lot of technical issues are there, but as far as the question of the afterlife of this law is concerned, obviously, it will create new political configurations. Look at the success of BJP in Assam. It is inextricably linked to the manner in which CAA was given a new twist in the border state of Assam or say in Rajasthan. They are going to use it in Rajasthan as well as in Gujarat. So, when we say that the political life of CAA is long, meaning we cannot say that this is going to happen, and it is going to stop etc. It will become, and this is my anticipation, that suppose something bad has happened with non-Muslim minorities in the neighboring three countries. They would use it to justify CAA (2019) and also to reproduce Hindu-Muslim divide in the country. For example, remember, there was an attack in a gurdwara in Afghanistan. So, there were many TV debates on that. That see, that's why CAA was important. So, that is one thing. That CAA is going to be a reference point and this is what I call Muslim political phobia. That whatever is happening in the world, you will ask a question to me. That okay, you tell me what is happening in say, Israel or what is happening in, say, the different parts of the Muslim world, as if every Muslim in India has got some kind of responsibility to explain things on behalf of people whom they do not have any contact or any connection with. So, the political afterlife of CAA is long. We can certainly anticipate that, especially with regards to Assam. Fortunately or unfortunately, CAA is the first law which came into existence with regards to the refugee problem in South Asia, and that too in India. We do not have any specific refugee law. We need to know what other political parties are doing. Why are we expecting BJP to stop? Obviously, as a political party, it is natural for BJP to use these things to maximize their political game. But what is the other's position on these things? What are they doing with regards to other refugee laws, or other refugees? Remember, that very recently, I think four days back, the Tamil Nadu assembly…

Yusra Hasan:

Yeah, the DMK. They asked the Supreme Court, “why are you not including Tamils in CAA. That's discriminatory.”

Hilal Ahmed:

This is an example of expanding the scope of politics around these. If something is given to you in the realm of politics, it is, as I said, possible for you to interpret it the way you like. But the non BJP parties are not interested in that. Why? Because, they have also accepted the hegemony of Hindutva as a political narrative. Now the NRC question. NRC is, in my view, not a Muslim issue at all. It would become a Muslim issue only if it is linked to CAA (2019). So, this famous statement of Mr. Amit Shah is something which makes things more complicated. It would make NRC an important question, an important concern for Muslims living in India. Now, do we have resources? Obviously there is no harm in having a register of citizens. But to evaluate Indian citizenship on the basis of a certain kind of documentation is a long process. Now, the question is - is it worth doing? When the economy is in a really bad shape. So, these are the crucial questions. We must have a national debate on that. Surprisingly, no one is interested in that national debate. So, the point is that if we really want to think of CAA, we need to do two things. One, we detach it from Muslim centric politics. That would actually create a new discourse. Why, at a time when the Indian economy is doing very badly, we need a discussion on citizenship? Second, is the question of disparity. Now, no one is asking that question. Technically, after this EWS thing, the Economically Weaker Section, reservation if you ask the Government of India, in technical terms, the Government of India is saying that 60% of the Indian population is marginalized. Around 60% So, you have got 59, 49.5 plus 10, meaning 59.5. You are saying that 60% of Indian people are poor and marginalized. So, what are we going to do with these 60%? The point is, that CAA must be linked with regards to the growing disparity in the country. Only then you will be able to understand the motives and the political games that are played around these things. I think that these two things must be kept in mind while discussing CAA.