Violence And Its Discontents: Counter-mobilizing Muslims in Contemporary India

Abstract

How does religious persecution and political violence impact political agency and democratic conduct among religious minorities? Under the BJP, political consensus in India has shifted dramatically away from secular democracy and toward the normalization of a majoritarian and exclusivist agenda of Hindu nationalism. A key feature of the BJP’s rule since 2014 has been the intensification of anti-minority violence and state-sanction persecution of religious minorities, particularly Muslims. This is significant as Muslims in India form the world’s largest religious minority group and hold significant historical, cultural, and political valency. Through ethnographic and interview data collected in Rampur, one of the few Muslim-majority constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, my study seeks to analyze how a climate of everyday insecurity affects the terms of political participation and democratic being for Muslims. I draw attention to the contradictory impulses that emerge among the electorate from the presence of a populist leader like Azam Khan. Khan has prominently mobilized around his Muslim identity but has come under intense legal pressure from the BJP government, limiting his ability to extend patronage. In light of this, I trace the potential for Muslim counter-mobilization beyond electoral politics through incipient subaltern alliances in the region and the role of Hindu nationalist mobilizers in countering this shift. I conclude by hypothesizing about the future of Muslim identity politics at a time when the unprecedented rise in mob violence, police harassment, and state repression threatens their political future.