It is his sense of belonging to the idea of plural India, mediated through his inclusive understanding of Islam, which made Arif Mohammad Khan a crusader for Muslim women’s rights, opposing the 1986 Act that superseded the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano judgment. However, the increasing Islamisation of Muslim spaces, strengthening of Muslim religious boundary and lack of reformist process within the community have significantly contributed to the “process of otherisation” of the community and produced “siege mentality”, incapacitating a large section of Muslim youths from participating in the developmental process
Arif Mohammad Khan, who rose to fame by quitting the Congress in protest against the then Rajiv Gandhi Government’s stand on the Shah Bano case, was once again in spotlight recently due to two momentous events in the Indian polity.
First, because of his vociferous support to the passage of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 (hereby 2019 Act), by the Narendra Modi Government, which abolished the practice of instant triple talaq among Hanafi Sunni Muslim population. The 2019 Act is both a personal and political victory for Arif Khan’s relentless struggle against attacks and vilification by the conservative and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim religious bodies over four decades. The second reason for his grabbing the headlines is Arif Khan’s appointment as the Governor of Kerala, ending his political oblivion, particularly from the Governmental office. The critics, mostly from secular and Muslim intelligentsia and political spectrum, have seen the gubernatorial appointment as a reward for his support to the 2019 Act and accused him of being an opportunist. Such criticism is perfectly understandable as Arif Khan has long defied the “secular framing” of a politician with Muslim identity as primarily representative of Muslim community and understanding of Indian politics in terms of secularism vs communalism.
Beyond these two immediate contexts, a more serious reason for public attention lies in his constant refusal to play the role of “Muslim politics” in accordance with the rule book of “secular politics” and of so-called “secular” political parties. In this political tradition, both “secular politics” and “Muslim politics” complement each other; wherein “secular politics” tends to demonstrate its sensitivity towards accommodating the religious demands of Muslim community to affirm its secular identity in exchange for Muslim electoral support but without allowing the Muslim political agency to wear the mantle of Indian nationhood. One consequence of this interplay of secular politics and Muslim politics is that Muslims have become “other” of Indian nationhood more due to internal dynamics of “politics of Muslim identity” and less due to larger external Indian political process.
None other than Arif Khan in contemporary times signifies the dilemma of a Muslim politician to appropriate his Indian national identity while either performing the constitutional duty as elected/nominated member of Parliament to represent Indian people or even in participating in public debates as an ordinary (Muslim) citizen. Throughout his political career and scholarly engagement spanning more than four decades, Arif Khan asserted his Indian identity in public role while being proud of his Islamic/Muslim heritage, and forcefully intervened in the matters of national importance, including the issues connected with Muslim community from the vantage of Indian citizen and national unity. His scholarly work Text and Context: Quran and Contemporary Challenges (2010) reveals this approach. Rooted in Indian ethos, he did not shy away from reflecting critically on the role of State administration in the 2002 Gujarat riots and Goa speech (April 2002) of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
It is this sense of belonging to the “idea of India” mediated through his inclusive understanding of Islam and India’s plural ethos that Arif Khan forcefully opposed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 (hereby 1986 Act), brought by the then Rajiv Gandhi Government (of which he himself was a part), at the cost of his political career, and he also took initiative in convincing the Modi Government to enact the 2019 Act.
In both instances, Arif Khan primarily acted from the point of view of constitutional and Islamic values and ethics. For him, the 1986 Act constricts the constitutional right to life of divorced Muslim women and thus violates the constitutional and Islamic notion of justice; while the Act of 2019 expands constitutional right of equality to Muslim married woman, at least to an extent that the law protects Muslim married woman from arbitrary exercise of pronouncement of instant triple talaq and its immediate effect on dissolution of marriage. This explains his vociferous opposition to the former and support to the latter.
Interestingly, in both circumstances, Arif Khan emerged as “anti-Muslim” figure in the Muslim collective imagination, primarily shaped through pan Indian network of Muslim religious clergy and its control over Muslim religious institutions including mosque, dargah, khanqah, madrasa, and maktab. With his “anti-Muslim” tag, Arif Khan quickly lost his relevance for the “secular” political parties, which are accustomed to express secularity primarily through deference to Muslim/Islamic identity. Almost all secular political parties, whether national or regional, save for a brief moment with Jan Morcha and
BSP, shunned Arif Khan in post-1986 phase for his refusal to play
“Muslim politics”.
Arif Khan as “anti-Muslim” figure in the collective Muslim imagination rests on the ground that he legitimises the interference of (non-Muslim) Government in the domain of Muslim personal law/Islamic jurisprudence, which today mostly flows from closed, narrow, insular, hierarchal, modern legalistic vision of Islam. Herein lies the dilemma of “Muslim politics”: should it be guided to use Indian Constitution, democracy and secularism only for the purpose of expansion and consolidation of Islamic religiosity and identity at the cost of Indian national identity?; or should it be envisioned as an integral part of larger Indian political process to utilise the constitutional opportunity structure to empower themselves as well as to democratise its internal structure by injecting the State mandated reform? Unfortunately, it is the former that has dominated Muslim lives and as a consequence a vast section of Muslims has failed to utilise the latter.
Arif Khan has always preferred the latter course of Muslim public action without subscribing to the identity-centred discourse of Muslim politics. However his “reformist politics” collapsed in 1986 Act with the complete abdication of the modern state in upholding the decision of Supreme Court and injecting democratic reform among the Muslim community. One consequence of the political exit and later political marginalisation of Arif Khan is the weakening of reformist voices within the community on the one hand and increasing assertion of conservative Islamic religious groups in the political domain of the country on the other. The increasing Islamisation of Muslim spaces, strengthening of Muslim religious boundary and lack of reformist process within the community — all combined — have significantly contributed to the “process of otherisation” of the community and produced “siege mentality”, incapacitating a large section of Muslim youths from participating in the developmental process.
The test of a liberal-secular-democratic state lies in the protection of well-being of the minority community and ensuring a representation in the power structure of the country. It does not lie in its reluctance to carry out the meaningful reform in the domain of personal laws belonging to minority community on the ground that it must come from the community first. By pursuing this line of argument for decades, the Indian state contributed to the strengthening of conservative religious voices among the Muslim community and indirectly kept a large number of Muslims away from the politics of development. A liberal state has constitutional mandate and duty to undertake those measures that enable the people to become more equal and capable to exercise the freedom of choices. From this point of view, the 2019 Act, irrespective of political intention of the Modi Government, is a welcome move.
Interestingly, while a good section of “secular jamaat” had openly come out in support of Arif Khan in 1986 for his fight against the capitulation of Congress Government before Muslim fundamentalist bodies, particularly the All Indian Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), today the same secular jamaat is circumspect in extending their support to Arif Khan for 2019 Bill. It is partly because of the fact that in 1986 the “secular jamaat” had found in Arif Khan a struggling liberal Muslim politician. With the Modi Government, Arif Khan ceases to be a liberal Muslim figure and hence not worthy of support of “secular Jamaat” irrespective of the merit of legislation.
In the context of the 2019 Act, a section of media personalities from “secular jamaat” deliberately framed Arif Khan as “Muslim leader of a Muslim community” despite his well established track record of conducting himself as one of Indian national leader, and then tried hard, though unsuccessfully, to squeeze him for implications of the Modi rule for the well-being of Muslim community! Given such secular obsession with politics of Muslim identity, it is not difficult to agree with Arif Khan’s observation that Indian secular politics has remained frozen in 1986.
(The writer is Senior Fellow, Policy Perspectives Foundation, New Delhi. Views expressed in the text belong solely to the writer)
