Prologue

The Prologue contextualises the socio-economic conditions of Muslim minorities in contemporary India. It points out severe income inequality as the most significant feature of contemporary India, which is governed by the logic of neoliberal economic policies. This chapter reviews the political, policymaking, and academic discourses in the socio-political and economic contexts of neoliberal reforms in India. It introduces the questions that the book addresses in the later chapters. This introductory chapter also narrates the theoretical framework, the conceptual clarifications regarding the specificity of the Indian Muslim identity, the particular characteristics of the Indian version of neoliberalism, and the peculiarities of the political and policy regimes that sustain Indian neoliberalism and spells out the chapter plan in the book.

Political Articulations of Indian Muslims in an Era of Globalization

This chapter primarily analyses the politics of Muslim particularism. This politics is predominantly focused on the issues of Muslim identity (such as personal laws, blasphemy, minority status of educational institutions, and so on) and security. The chapter is also concerned with delineating the limits of such a narrow sectarian politics. It argues how the absence of progressive political leadership among Indian Muslims has created conditions in which the theo-political identity of the community has been foregrounded at the cost of class and citizenship identities of the Muslim minorities. This chapter tries to locate Muslim politics in India as part and parcel of a particular genre of subaltern politics with its specific dynamics of the peculiar rhetoric of victimhood, discrimination, and exclusion. Finally, the chapter charts out a possible political agency of progressive political articulation among Indian Muslims.

Imag(in)ing Indian Muslims in Post-liberalization Hindi Cinema

This chapter depicts the nature of image constructions of Indian Muslims by the ideological state apparatus of popular Bollywood cinema. It argues that a constant process of vilification of Muslims in Hindi cinema has produced the image of a ‘Muslim Other’, which is contradictory to the image of a law-abiding citizen. Such a cultural process of homogenization via a stereotyped image of Muslims in Hindi movies creates a suspicious mind-set towards Muslims. This chapter argues that the mythical imagination about Muslims as represented in popular Hindi cinema has labelled certain cultural fixations of the Muslim community. In effect, Hindi cinema has been continuously propagating a stereotyped model of Muslims in both foreign territories and different parts of the country. This chapter shows that Bollywood films have not significantly dealt with the livelihood problems of Indian Muslims arising out of the economic and educational backwardness of the community.

Indian Muslims and the Politics of Affirmative Action

Chapter 3 assesses the underlying political logic of community-based affirmative action and reservation that is promoted as the new ameliorative policy, addressing the deprivation of Indian Muslims under conditions of economic reforms. It does so by engaging with the findings and policy prescriptions of the Sachar Committee Report, the Ranganath Misra Commission Report, and the post-Sachar Evaluation Committee Report. Besides, the chapter points out the missing links of the Sachar Committee Report and presents a host of other suggestions that the committee did not recommend for the socio-economic development of Indian Muslims. While evaluating the merits of the Sachar and Misra Commission reports along with defending the ethical grounds for the affirmative action for Muslims in India, this chapter also tries to unearth the limitations of the approach of the government towards Muslim minorities in the context of neoliberal dispensation.

The Muslim Question in the Neoliberal Regime

Chapter 1 points out the socio-economic backwardness of Indian Muslims while analysing various data sets from the Census and NSSO reports, the India Human Development Report, various reports prepared by several important committees appointed by the government of India along with and other relevant literature. The chapter argues that the Muslim question had been traditionally trapped in a communal–secular binary within dominant political and academic discourses. The data provided by various sources give us ample opportunity to look into the Muslim question from the perspective of socio-economic deprivation, political under-representation, and social marginalization. The chapter also provides sufficient empirical evidence to think about the Muslim question in India as a class question along with the problems of discrimination and exclusion faced by the Indian Muslims. The chapter further elaborates on the conditions of possibility for the formation of the ‘Indian Muslim’ as a political identity.

Epilogue

The Epilogue argues that a politics of social justice with core democratic demands for affirmative action and representation needs to be complemented with a politics of distributive justice that has a concern with equity. Thus, to address the issue of marginalization, a progressive politics needs to articulate the arguments of both ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’. The chapter suggests that a radical democratic politics needs to be constructed in such a way that its political appeal is relevant for the marginalized groups, including the Muslims, by emphasizing both social justice and distributive justice with a vision of transcending neoliberal capitalism. In response to the hegemonic presence of neoliberal regime in India, a radical democratic project of creating a platform for articulating the demands of various marginalized sectors of the population namely, workers, peasants, Dalits, Adivasis, women, and Muslims are being proposed in this chapter.