Hamid Ansari and civic nationalism—Dissecting IPS officer Najmul Hoda’s criticism of Ansari – The Milli Gazette

Ever since he demitted office, former Vice President Hamid Ansari has been subjected to unrelenting criticism by the right-wing. Every statement and action of his is carefully examined for incriminating material. From casual bloggers to popular writers, everyone seems to have an opinion about him. He is alleged to be an ‘Islamist’, ‘anti-national’, and ‘anti-Hindu’, among epithets. He is constantly trolled and there have been calls from prominent members of government to strip him of his privileges.
The latest barrage of criticism came after his address at the Indian American Muslim Council earlier this year. At that virtual event, Ansari voiced his concerns over the replacement of a ‘civic nationalism’ based on common shared values by a ‘cultural nationalism’ based on the values of the majority community. Ansari went on to deplore signs of intolerance and discrimination at the highest level and the growing divisions in the Indian society. He then asked how a society with such a long history of pluralism and accommodation could accept a ‘distorted reading’ of the past? He exhorted citizens to fight it ‘legally and politically’.
While all criticism of the nation and the current government is anathema to the right-wing groups, the fact that this criticism originates from a member of the Muslim elite, seems to particularly provoke their wrath.
There was the predictable official reaction from the government as well as the usual criticism from right-wing commentators. Defending him were civil society groups and liberal media outlets such as The Scroll and The Wire. The lone Muslim opinion on him in mainstream media was published by a serving IPS officer Najmul Hoda in the Times of India.
The piece by Najmul Hoda deserves special scrutiny in as much as his criticism of Ansari as for his prescriptions for Muslims.
Echoing the criticism made by the Ministry of External Affairs, Hoda starts by berating the former Vice President for attending an event hosted by what he calls a group with ‘pronounced ideological angularity’. He does not explain what this ‘ideological angularity’ is, but one supposes it would translate as ‘anti-national’. (For the record, the meet was hardly a fringe event. It was attended by four US lawmakers and well-known social activists and Church officials from India, who incidentally also voiced similar concerns as Ansari).
Hoda then turns to his main argument and questions whether Indian nationalism is ‘cultural’ or ‘civic’ in its nature as claimed by Ansari. He asks if it is the nation that created the civic values and the Constitution to guide itself, or the other way round? He argues in favour of a pre-existing cultural nation giving itself the Constitution and the values it chose to live by and goes on to state that denying the cultural aspect of Indian nationhood was to deny its very existence.
Hoda then goes on to mention the diversity of the country but again subordinates it to the cultural unity (which he does not explain) and finds Muslims guilty of not associating themselves more with the cultural ethos of the country. Echoing the invader mentality thesis of the right-wing, he speculates that the tendency of Muslims to keep their culture distinct from the majority community can be traced back to the Muslim conquerors who strove to keep their identity apart from the natives.
After an unwarranted discussion on the concept of ‘Darul amn’ or abode of peace, which he somehow links to the discredited civic nationalism of Ansari, Hoda brings in Sir Syed, blaming him for creating a ‘religio-electoral minority’ which he claims created a ‘religio-electoral majority’, without explaining how one led to the other, and without clarifying its relevance to the present time.
Finally, he urges Muslims to shun the false binary between ‘belief and belonging’, urging them to revive their ‘cultural roots’ in the country. This presupposes that Indian Muslims do not have a culture of their own, or if they happen to have one, it is not part of the national culture. Reminding us of the oft-repeated claim of the RSS that all Indians are culturally Hindus, one may thereby plausibly assume that Hoda wants Muslim to shun their cultural distinctiveness and merge into the majority Hindu culture, or at least not have any problems with a nationhood identified with it. Those who don't agree with this vision of nation, like Ansari, are naturally wrong in view of Hoda.
It is interesting to note that while Hoda finds fault with Ansari’s views on civic nationalism, he does not engage at all with the core issue of growing intolerance and majoritarianism in the country raised by Ansari. As an elite civil servant and presumably a well-read man, it would be difficult to believe that Hoda was not aware of the change in the country's politics and society over the last few decades.
Hardly a week passes by before some news of intolerant actions or words by the right-wing groups and a biased administration does not come in. For instance, when Bajrang Dal activists had heckled and broken the sets of the Ashram web series at Bhopal, the home minister of the state, Narottam Mishra, spoke out not in favour of the aggrieved but against the makers of the series for its alleged anti-Hindu content.
Hoda could have read any of the global reports on the freedom of the press or freedom of religion where the country’s ratings have been sliding constantly over the years. If he wanted yet more evidence for the fears expressed by Ansari, he could have consulted the recent work on Ethnic Nationalism by Christophe Jaffrelot, which in its 600-odd pages offers a detailed tableau of the changing nature of Indian nation.
Perhaps, the most incriminating evidence for growing majoritarianism would be in the majority Hindu electoral polarisation in the Hindi heartland states, where caste Hindu voters continue to vote en bloc in favour of the BJP, setting aside all other considerations. Yet, Hoda does not engage with these issues at all as he should have as a concerned Indian and a member of the Muslim elite.
That this is not an unintentional oversight but rather a deliberate omission can be gauged from the previous opinion pieces by Hoda. In a previous Op-ed, he advised Muslims to give up using loudspeakers for Azan. This seems a reasonable position at the outset until when you realise this is not a general plea for reducing noise pollution as Hoda makes no such demands on other peoples’ places of worship. He also willfully ignores the changed social background in which the use of loudspeakers in mosques has become part of the targeting of Muslim symbols by increasingly assertive right-wing groups.
His suggestion in another Op-ed asking Muslims to give up eating beef as a precondition for inter-communal harmony has already been strongly refuted by Mr. Asthana. In that piece, Hoda had gone so far as to absurdly compare anti-beef laws to the laws on wildlife protection, and suggest that Muslim clerics should outlaw beef eating in India to maintain communal harmony.
At one place in the piece on Ansari, Hoda blames the ‘imperative of motivated narrative’ and ‘monotheistic thinking’ behind the inability of some (like Ansari) to recognise the cultural unity in India. Yet, would one not be justified in probing the motivation behind Hoda’s own views which always seem to place the burden of action on Muslims? Mr Hoda has to answer why reading him feels like an intellectualised, rehashed version of popular right-wing Hindutva harangues, and not a balanced and honest analysis as one would expect from a serving senior police officer.
Ansari has nothing left to lose by speaking out his mind. Only time can say what Muslim elites like Hoda stand to gain by propagating right-wing prescriptions and advice for Indian Muslims.
—The writer works as a financial analyst. He is a freelance contributor to several publications including the Kathmandu Times.

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