"For some, Shaheen Bagh is dead. For others, it is alive and kicking – at least in thoughts, in memories, and imagination. And there is politics in thoughts, in memories and imagination. Shaheen Bagh is the protest movement that unleashed fresh air in a country that was feeling acutely suffocated by the unprecedented domination of the Hindu Right," writes Mujibur Rehman in his book on the political future of Indian Muslims.
The noted academician, who teaches at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi, has in his book 'Shikwa-e-Hind – The Political Future of Indian Muslims', dealt with the significance of the protest held at Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship Amendment Act and writes about how it is symbolic of the question about the political future of the Indian Muslim at this juncture.
He writes that the Shaheen Bagh agitation left behind an enduring legacy of a protest movement that challenged stereotypes regarding Muslim women, and aspirations for equal citizenship for people regardless of their class, creed, and gender.
The protest and its immediate political context provide the issue that the book deals with, which is the political future of Muslims in India, a sense of contemporariness. The author describes the backdrop. He says Indian Muslims are currently living under pervasive fear in an India that is increasingly embracing Hindu majoritarian politics. "Finding themselves as targets of lynching, bulldozer justice, frequent riots for trivial or often for no reason, and subject to random violence in this new majoritarian state, they have started asking if they have any rights at all as citizens in India," he writes.
Rehman notes that two political events have played a crucial role in shaping the present predicament of Indian Muslims – the partition and the Ayodhya movement. He assesses that if the partition made the Muslim identity vulnerable and provided the Hindu right to raise questions about Muslim loyalty forever, the Ayodhya movement has made the Muslim identity undesirable in modern electoral politics.
According to Rehman, for Indian Muslims, challenges regarding their future or political future are an internal issue and they have to deal with them by crafting strategies on their own.
“They have a lot to learn from Dalit activism or activism of the African American community as well, among others. India is an electoral democracy, and likely to remain so despite possible distortions under Hindu majoritarian regimes,” he writes.
Book: Shikwa-e-Hind – The Political Future of Indian Muslims by Mujibur Rehman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 999; Pages 360