Umar Nizar
The progressive movement among the Muslims of Kerala had for long been cornered by non-mainstream organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami. The organization was one of the few Muslim formations to have aligned itself with the mainstream left in Kerala, till the time they parted ways. The local ramifications of global events such as the Iraq invasion proved galvanising points for the `reformists’ to seek common ground with the mainstream. The progressive movement has piggy-backed on the influx of wealth from migrations mainly to West Asia that have accumulated to the level of Islamophobic spectacle. The shunning of violence and the adherence to a more acceptable middle path has made such organisations more palatable to intellectuals and secular bourgeois in the state. But the hidden menace is the retracing by the ‘reformists’ of a Neo-caste society through their focus on `mediated status’ and respectability. The fact that money alone cannot confer respectability has not been lost on the OBCs in Kerala. While the SNDP and similar organisations have aligned themselves with pan-Indian formations to garner some hard-earned social respectability and elitist status for themselves, the reformists Muslims in Kerala unwittingly have fallen prey to the age-old structure of graded hierarchical inequality.
The `reformists’ have divided the minority populace of the state geographically, with those falling to the north of the river Bharathapuzha (Nila) qualifying to the elite status and those coming underneath bringing up the rear. This binary has a short history that goes back to the Mandal movement and the division of Muslims in the state into `Mappila’ and `Muslim’ categories. The `Muslim’ category is being sought to be cast into the underbelly of the social imaginary in the state by the `reformists’ who have acquired new found prestige through their news channel and media wings.
C.Radhakrishnan, a Malayalam language novelist in his biographical novel `Theekkadal Kadanju Thirumadhuram’ (on the life of Ezhuthachan who is often called the `father of Malayalam language’) has described how the collapse of caste society in Kerala left the Mappila Muslim minority groups intact, because of their adamant disavowal of any sort of caste system within their ranks. Such a principled stance coupled with the positive impact of global resource allocations and geopolitical realignments between the orient and the occident, helped the minority groups in Kerala to rapidly advance. The groups that have exploited such developments are now staring down the barrel of social decrepitude due to competitive communalism and lack of social reform.
The Elusive Brahminical Cachet
Muslims in Kerala had a different system of social organization that was more egalitarian. The priestly/martial/mercantile/service division of strata was unheard of except for aberrations that proved the rule. Maududi, a turn of the century reformist leader with priestly elite class antecedents inspired such a movement in Kerala. In spite of the influx of wealth, the `reformists’ have found themselves sorely missing the elitist caste credentials.
`There are no castes without outcastes’ – Babasaheb BR Ambedkar
The above quote, made into a universal mobilising point by Slavoj Zizek, has been the operative unconscious for the reformist minority group in Kerala. The Muslims of southern Kerala, have for long enjoyed better educational facilities due to the activities of missionaries from minority persuasions. This had tilted the balance in favour of southern Keralites when it came to the government job sweepstakes. This has been deeply resented across religious and caste boundaries. But the cumulative impact of remittances has for long eclipsed the craze for government positions. But the residual prestige and stature that such jobs confer on their occupants created a `ressentiment’. The apotheosis of `reformists’ requires the Vamana like netherization of the subaltern Muslims from the south of Kerala. Policy-wise attempts to recalibrate graded inequality are fought tooth and nail. While this might not be a conscious project, the emerging scholarship on a global scale bears witness to this development.
Arabi-Malayalam
The reams of scholarship on Kerala Muslims has exponentially increased. From the days of Stephen Dale, the anthropology of Kerala Islam has truly acquired globalised agential dimensions. The merging of unique theological-ethnic-linguistic-geographical characteristics gives the Muslims in Kerala a unique advantage their compatriots elsewhere have not enjoyed. Like in much of the rest of India, such coveted social positions are relentlessly sought to be undermined by fascist forces. The potential appropriation of linguistic and cultural repertoire can leave the Muslims of southern Kerala high and dry. The political agency of Muslims in Kerala has been much studied. But the main Muslim political formation had so far kept itself aloof from the `reformist’ controversies and fissiparous tendencies and has competently navigated the secular, democratic waters, despite a religious sounding moniker. But the mediated success of the `reformists’ attracted the politicians to their `brilliance’ and `intellectualism’. For long rather unfairly castigated as a group of Biryani-swigging simpletons, they have seemingly lost that innocence and have woken up to the stark reality of Islamophobic fascism raising its head, while the accumulated wealth has been doing exactly zilch. The need for some kind of caste cachet has become imperative for politically-oriented reformists and non-reformists alike. One has to bear in mind the adage that reform is an index of that very orthodoxy which it purports to criticize in the first place.
Walking the Realm of Monsoon Islamophobia
In the age of Artificial Intelligence and effacement of human values, one is reminded of the monologue from Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic, `Blade Runner’:”I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe….I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in the rain”-David Peoples, scenario for Blade Runner.
Ontological multiplicity in India can be made sense of sans hierarchy and graded inequality. Reformists have preferred walking in the rain for long, because nobody can see them cry. The minority political experiments elsewhere in India have mostly been unfruitful examples of shooting oneself in the foot. But the recent developments in Kerala can be pernicious, because the game this time revolves around that most perfidious of social constructs, viz. the caste system.
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Umar Nizarudeen is at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has a PhD in Bhakti Studies from the Centre for English Studies in JNU, New Delhi. His poems and articles have been published in Vayavya, Round Table India, Muse India, Culture Cafe Journal of the British Library, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, The Bombay Review, The Madras Courier, FemAsia, Sabrang India, India Gazette London, Ibex Press Year’s Best Selection etc.
