Shedding the stereotypes
Reviewed by Bhupinder Brar

Hasan Suroor, India’s Muslim Spring: Why is Nobody Talking about It?
Rainlight/Rupa, New Delhi, 2014. Pages xv+200.
Rs 395

This is a tiny little book. But if the book is small, the author offers in it an extremely inviting thesis. It is so inviting indeed that even if one were to find it unconvincing, one would still wish it gets thoroughly debated rather than dismissed out of hand.

Put simply, the thesis is this: over the last decade, young Indian Muslims have become a breed so vastly different from their parents and grandparents that one should talk of ‘tectonic shift’ rather than a mere generational change. These young men and women are educated, professionally skilled, aware and confident. They refuse to carry the baggage of past grievances. They suffer from no persecution complex. They ask for no special concessions. They want to be treated as equals on merit, and want to forge ahead in their careers and lives.

Many of them are deeply attached to their religion. They are unapologetic about signs of their religious identity such as beards and hijabs. But they are liberal in conceding freedom of choice to those who don’t bear these signs. They are secular vis-à-vis other communities and patriotic to the core.

Suroor, an insider-observer of the Indian Muslim community, finds this change so palpably visible that he is perplexed why Indian media have failed to sit up and take notice. The only explanation for this failure seems to lie in deeply entrenched conventional stereotypes, which label all Indian Muslims as illiterate, backward, fanatical, and unpatriotic. Having internalised these stereotypes for decades, the media now cannot believe that the young of the community could turn these stereotypes upside down.

Suroor is emphatic that the huge change could transform the sociology of community relations and the nature of political equations in India. Failure to grab this opportunity could prove very costly for all those who seek modern, progressive and secular future for the country.

How seriously should one take Suroor’s description of the new generation of Indian Muslims? Critics have already pointed out that while interviewing people is important, it is not sufficient. What is conspicuous in this book is lack of any statistical data. Again, Suroor talked to only a thin slice of Indian Muslims: young, urban, educated, and middle class. He did not talk to the rural, illiterate or semi-literate, and poor Muslims. How could he generalise from such a narrow base? He also tends to create binary contrasts between the older generations and the new one. Surely, there must be shades of grey, representing mixed up attitudes, orientations and behavior.

Some of these criticisms appear self-evidently valid to me. However, Suroor clearly qualifies his thesis by saying that he is pointing only to a tendency that is growing and could become dominant. Given this, I will grant him a very large part of what he is saying.

My problems with him are different. First, I do not find in the book any explanation of what has caused the so-called tectonic shift. Something must have happened some years before the impact began to show.

Did something change in the state policies? Not much, if we go by Suroor’s own account. He quotes Sachar Committee report to show how equity of access was denied to the Muslims over the decades. According to the author, the only government, which did something to give Muslims a secular platform, was led by VP Singh during 1989-90. But its gains were undone rapidly by the rabid communalization over Rama Janambhoomi - Babri Masjid conflict. Suroor also refers to the 15-point programme for minorities announced by the Manmohan Singh government in 2006, but only to say that "there has been little headway" made since then.

Could it, then, be that the opening up of the economy in the early 1990s and the expansion of the private sector offered new education and job opportunities that did not exist for half a century under the state-regulated economy? Is neo-liberal economy proving to be a greater equalizer of opportunities? This seems to make traditional wisdom on neo-liberalism stand on its head.

My second issue is with the change being described as tectonic. Are the changes vast, far-reaching, deep and foundational enough to deserve that designation? To me the change appears more like the emergence of a ‘creamy layer’ in the community; just as such a layer has emerged in the case of deprived caste groups.

If so, the impact of the creamy layer can be both limited and negative. This layer is known for not only grabbing disproportionate portions of available opportunities, but is also infamous for jettisoning those left behind like poor country cousins. Some refer to this phenomenon as the ‘secession of the successful’.

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