Separate and unequal, the Muslim in Gujarat

GUJARAT: POLLS AND AFTER

The last Gujarati Muslim politician of any consequence was MA Jinnah. This bald, shocking statement testifies to the historical marginalisation of Muslims from the Gujarat mainstream.

The 2007 Assembly elections show that this continues and is unlikely to change soon, if ever. The BJP had no Muslim candidate and the Congress had just six, in a state where it made inclusiveness an issue and whose 9 per cent population is Muslim.

Muslims comprise around 25 per cent voters out of the total one-million plus in Sarkhej, the state's largest constituency, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. This is the largest Muslim concentration anywhere in the state but Sarkhej has been electing a BJP candidate for the last three elections or more. This time was no exception.

While the proportion of Muslims in Gujarat is less than the national average, it is not entirely insignificant. Muslims comprise just 8 per cent population of Rajasthan, which has had a popular Muslim chief minister. The percentage of Muslim population in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka is comparable with Gujarat's but they have occupied significant political space in these states.

The isolation and side-lining of Muslims in Gujarat did not begin with the ascendancy of Modi or the BJP. The roots of this phenomenon lie in Gujarat's history of the last 1,500 years. The paradox of the otherwise mild, gentle Gujarati, characterised by his pursuit of commerce to the exclusion of all else, displaying strong, almost rabid, prejudices against Muslims "" which has troubled many to the extent of inching towards labelling the Gujarati society as fascist "" also needs historical analysis.

As every Gujarati schoolboy knows, the state's first brush with Islam was traumatic: Five of the seven famed Somnath temples were destroyed by Muslim potentates, starting with Junayad, the Arab governor of Sind in 725 and ending with Aurangzeb in 1706.

The worst sacrilege was committed by Mahmud Ghazani in 1024. This led not only to loss of 50,000 lives but also to the destruction of the lingam, pieces of which were used to make the steps of the Jamiah Masjid in Ghazani.

Jain temples and centres of learning, too, suffered similar fates at the hands of the invaders. The fabulous temples of Sidhpur-Patan were sacked in the middle ages, compelling local guilds to move their valued idols and illuminated texts to Jaisalmer, where they remain to this day.

Although Gujarat was nominally under a local Muslim sultanate in 14th and 15th centuries and later a part of the Mughal empire (Shah Jehan conquered it and became the local governor; his Ahmedabad palace served as the first Raj Bhavan of Gujarat), Islamic influence was always peripheral. It had no feudal past to speak of, with trade guilds dominating local administration and affairs. The absence of local rulers' courts meant that the kind of social and cultural influence that pervaded even the Hindu kingdoms in Rajasthan and elsewhere was absent in Gujarat. Arts and crafts, music, literature and cuisine in Gujarat remained traditional, without any significant Muslim influence, unlike in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and even as far as Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Thus, Gujarat remained free of any vestiges of Muslim cultural influence, a trait it shares with Tamil Nadu, Orissa and to a large extent, Madhya Pradesh.

Gujarat had no significant Muslim artisans either. It had a rich tradition of its own weavers, carpenters and builders, who found enough work in a relatively prosperous environment and never converted. Muslim cultural and trade influences were confined to small pockets "" the Memons of Kutch, the Bohris of Banaskantha, small artisans and traders in Ahmedabad, Junagadh and Bharuch, where there were local nawabs, just about exhausts the list. The more enterprising and restless among them migrated to Mumbai from the 18th century onwards, which further weakened what little influence Muslims had on Gujarat. The significant monetary contribution of the Mumbai Muslims to the cause of Partition added to the Hindu resentment.

The Gujarati has thus never accepted Muslims as a part of his society, going well beyond the garden-variety xenophobia common to all communities. There was never a need even for a token integration. The Gujarati Muslims have carefully kept their distance, not wanting to arouse the Hindu ire. They speak Gujarati (some have taken to Urdu patois lately) and have generally not made an issue of their religion or its observance. Yet small symbols such as the muezzins' calls, roadside dargahs or Muharram processions have aroused strong majority reactions. The 1969 riots in Gujarat were the worst religious strife after 1947. Sporadic bouts since then resulted in Gujarat being labelled the communal tinderbox, culminating in 2002. It is common knowledge that Gujarati representation among the foot soldiers of the 1993 Ayodhya destruction and subsequent kar seva was disproportionately large. This should explain, though not justify, the eruption of rage after Godhra.

The habitat patterns have reflected the separation of the two communities. Even small efforts to break out of the ghettoes have failed. In the 1960s, some well-off Muslims formed a housing colony, called Sadaqat Society, adjoining the IIM-Ahmedabad campus, thinking it to be a peaceable area free of the communal tension of the inner city. After 1969, most of them sold out and renamed the society as Satkar. The 2002 carnage showed that there were really no islands of peace in any major city, thereby building invisible but impenetrable walls around the segregated areas, which will not come down soon.

Baroda lustily cheered its famous son Irfan Pathan on being named the man of the match for the T20 World Cup, but Pathan had to buy his new apartment in an upmarket, yet wholly Muslim locality.

The plight of the poor Muslim areas is, of course, far worse. Britta Ohm describes this in a dispassionate manner in Economic and Political Weekly of December 8, 2007, concluding that "Post-democracy, in interaction with a liberalised economy, is thus able to legitimise exclusion more effectively than a mere authoritarian regime." Damning words, but they should hold up a mirror to even those who would bask in the afterglow of a not-so-famous electoral victory.

The author is ex-professor of IIM-A and founder-director of the Institute of Rural Management