 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Harsh Mandar and Seema Mustapha. And we'll be discussing the debate about how the Muslims are slowly being rendered invisible in Indian politics. Seema you have written about this after the Gujarat elections that the Congress seems to have appealed for the Muslim vote but kept them out of either the number of candidates put up, the speakers who were there and even the Muslim leaders of the Congress not being visible. Do you think this is something that is far more insidious than simply targeting the Muslims which the RSS and the BGP are doing? Yes, in fact you know if you look at all the recent assembly elections after the BGP came to power at the center the regional parties as well as the Congress who talk of secularism have kept the Muslims away from the front lines. The Muslims themselves the voters tell you that don't ask us for anything. We are voting where we are voting because they are also very aware of the fact that if the Muslim even asserts his preference they are not going to, the voters will consolidate. And the Congress instead of fighting this is contributing to the RSS and the BGP's plan to push the Muslim away from the front by not fielding candidates, by not supporting, not allowing the Muslims to come out and assert their support it's like just tucking them away making them invisible. Harsh, you've written this piece which has generated quite a bit of controversy that other leaders have been saying the Muslims can come to the meetings but they should not carry the markers of their identity and this interestingly enough is something which some of the liberals have also sort of spoken about but no such demand is being made of the markers say of the ayangas who have the caste marks or shall we say other marks which are also there and this is becoming increasingly a Hindu identity assertion which we didn't see 30 years back for instance. We saw yesterday or day for yesterday this tablo which had even ragger in the tablo. So do you see that this retreat of the liberal to arguing for what would be called in French terms the secular ideals in which all religious identities are banned but essentially asking only the minorities to come without their identity? I think we're hurtling in that direction and so the piece that I wrote I really wanted to underline the fact that the BJP may have rendered the entire Muslim community politically irrelevant but it is secular political parties which are actually rendering them politically untouchable and cast away and it is a very conscious decision as Seema said I also wrote after the Gujarat election that it is so conspicuous even in Rahul Gandhi's speech it was a good speech he spoke about the other two crises that India is facing which is jobless growth and the agrarian crisis but he didn't talk about the rising hate and the targeting and the lynchings that are going on he talked about Oona but pointedly they didn't talk about the Muslim but there's a you know this council of despair and I've been attending many meetings as I wrote my article where Muslim friends sit together and they actually even they are saying that our presence if it polarizes let us become invisible almost as I said my article I said they're almost saying to save us abandon us and I think it is terrifying that people are even thinking about this seriously for many reasons one of them is that it is assuming that every Hindu is communal now we're already in a Hindu raster and we have to sort of you know negotiate our political and social spaces within a Hindu raster within a majoritarian consensus so I think that by accepting this logic you are actually reinforcing and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if instead secular political parties say that no I mean they should have the courage and you know Mahatma Gandhi is somebody I keep remembering I mean imagine a million people had died a million people had died in Hindu Muslim rights a Muslim country had been formed people were here in anger there were grief and in the middle of that you say no this country belongs in every way equally to Hindus and Muslims and his last battle was they had taken over the cannot place mosque and converted into a temple and he wanted them to be returned I mean I feel that that is the only way that we have to fight this battle right up front we cannot accept the logic of Hindutva and then try to negotiate which is what I am seeing secular political parties doing of course what the secular political parties are doing is one part do you also see the impact also the Muslim community for instance in Gujarat the retreat from public space but also therefore accepting the markers of the identity therefore shall we say also taking over the Muslim community by forces which would like a kind of secluded space where the Muslim identity is certain and political identity is not yeah I think you know also just before I answer that directly I think this assault on the Muslim community began even under the Congress and under Manmohan Singh where the intelligence network was used to target Muslims they were arrested innocent people in Hyderabad locked up beaten by the security agencies same in Maharashtra so this process of bastardizing the Muslim had begun and it has become of course under the right wing government and coalition today it has become much much worse the Muslims in this whole period of 15 years in particular have been completely rudderless you know and they don't know where to go to because what they depended on they've always voted for non-Muslims as the Muslim leaders and suddenly they're being told that you should have your leader who can speak for you there are the liberal Muslims why are others not speaking for you and they found themselves bereft, rudderless, without sanctuary and started then moving into all kinds of directions which also took the form of regression you know so if you go to Gujarat today and you go into the villages of Gujarat you will find hardly any women visible where the Muslim areas are and all the Muslim men with the identity markers because they feel that by asserting your identity you are somehow preventing it from being subsumed under the assault now that is the real issue are you or are you not is religious symbols a solution or do they become a problem in what is a very vicious circle of Communism that is being created you also have written recently about the Burqa which has drawn quite a sharp response from different people because of the shall we say the state of siege and partly the Ram Guha article what would you say that how do we fight this twin assaults one for making you Muslims invisible and the other for the regression of both communities including the Muslims see it's pretty clear to me I wasn't really I mean I think that what Ramchandra Guha said about Muslims not coming to rallies and their skull caps and Burqas is reprehensible and totally condemnable I was actually coming from another side of the debate which is an argument amongst women, Muslim women about the Hijab and about the Burqa and how valid it is in today's context or yesterday's context I think that all of us who have been part of women's movement and the secular movement have taken great very strong positions and trying to move Muslim women away from the Hijab and from the Burqa and from religious identity and move more towards empowerment so it was really my argument and what I've written is coming from that perspective I believe that you have to take you cannot mesh the two you cannot say that I will I'm going to fight for secularism as a Muslim or I'm going to fight for secularism as a Hindu you are going to fight for secularism as secularist it's a political ideology that you have to fight for I do believe that you cannot wear a tilak and saffron dhoti or a Burqa and a beard and a pajama and actually stand up for much more than your own identity and your own community That's an interesting question and I have to look to you for answer on that that is it possible for a Gandhi for instance who asserted he was a Hindu and yet was a secularist so the religious identity and the secularism in that sense is not a religion how do you negotiate this complexity of identity See on the last thing that Seema said I don't agree and I think all of us from the left have had a problem over time in dealing with people's religious beliefs I'm an agnostic but when you look back and it's important to remember in the freedom struggle that the two people who fought and sacrificed the most for the secular idea of India were Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Naza deeply devout and Maulana had his dadis, he had his cap he was a very deeply practising Muslim but I think he's done more he and Mahatma Gandhi have actually the reason why India is a country where Muslims and Hindus and people of every faith live as equals the two people who fought most were religious states Savarkar was a self-professed atheist and Jain was a non-practising Muslim so I think we're getting confused it is not a battle I think that with your dadi and with your tiller you can still be deeply secular and without any markers you can actually be deeply... the worst in our drawing rooms I mean all of us go to Delhi's upper middle class drawing rooms and I see the worst communism in people who look very vain so I think let's do that but I wanted to make one more point in this discussion because we're talking about politics I think what secular political parties are doing is deeply worrying but I'm even more worried about secular civil society and let me unline that see what has happened in my opinion is that the last four years, it's the last 15, I think it's the last 25 which was the first moment of triumph for majority in Hinduism in this 100 year fight that they've been fighting since the formation of the Hindu Mahasabha and since then they never looked back they've gone from strength to strength but the last four years I think is a distinct phase because we have a leadership right from the very top who is legitimized hatred and prejudice in a way that is which is brazen Mr. Modi didn't ask Shambhulal Reger to go and hack somebody to death but he has created an environment where this kind of hatred has got legitimized within that I think a sense of fear that I see that has settled in the hearts and minds of Muslim brothers and sisters across the country, across class is something that is unprecedented and every friend is telling me the mother says, you know, don't reply salam alaikum on a train if I call you somebody should make out if there's an argument, never get into it never let people know that you're Muslim and this is really appalling that we have allowed our country to come to this path you know in the Karwan when we go out I've now gone to 10 states it's not just that they're attacking Muslims but the brutality with which they're attacking them and we came back from Bengal for instance these three Muslim boys were called up and they were called cow thieves they would return the bodies of their families got their bodies with their genitals stoned where is this hatred coming from? these are strangers so I think in this context what is civil society doing? and I'm finding that even civil liberties groups even progressive friends, comrades are hesitant in the end to be seen as defending Muslims and so in every state I'm finding I'm finding it difficult for people to come forward so I'm saying that the data shows 86% of people killed in lynching a Muslim and 8% are Dalit 6% are identity unknowns so it may be a little more so I will stand with Muslims and Dalits when I'm fighting against hate violence how can I not be standing with them? and so I think that there's a crisis we are living in these four years in a majority in consensus nearly Hindu Rashtra and if we accept the logic of it try to manoeuvre our progressive agendas within this I think we've already given up the battle I think on that note we're going to close this discussion thank you very much for watching NewsClick do keep coming to our website YouTube channel and our Facebook page