India: Anand Kochukudy on ABVP-OBC Front alliance . . . Ambedkar, Marx, Maududi

The Wire
Ambedkar, Marx, Maududi and Mainstream Politics

By Anand Kochukudy on 07/11/2017 

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Ambedkar and Maududi cannot be part of the same tea party
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Now, the question of identities that are part of subaltern political movements need to be analysed further. Muslim identity politics has a unique relevance in contemporary politics – especially when it’s the Muslim identity that is being targeted. Post independence, 28 of the 73 All India Muslim League members of the Constituent Assembly stayed back in India, and the party was revived as the Indian Union Muslim League, to address community issues and to ensure the electoral representation of the largely poorer Muslims who stayed back in the Indian Union. But post the 1980s, the League has been relegated to Kerala and pockets of Tamil Nadu as part of multiparty coalitions. But not all Muslim political movements are based on identity, when viewed through the subaltern political prism.
The Maududian interpretation of Islam and the consequent formation of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941 is a theo-political movement where the ultimate aim is formation of an Islamic nation. Theo- politics, be it from minority or majority is something a democratic society cannot afford to not oppose. The Students Islamic Organization has tried since its inception in 1956 to influence campuses, infiltrate academia and muster popular support among Muslims which has not made much headway all these years; just like their parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. They were against the idea of their members cooperating with a non-Islamic democratic system and had requested their associates and members to resign from government jobs in the past decades.
But in 2011, the same organisation floated a political wing named ‘Welfare party of India’. SIO is probably the only student organisation which has protested decriminalising homosexuality in India and their country-wide protests on this issue have been documented on their website. The gender discrimination of the organisation is a brilliantly hidden fact. When the organisation enters comparatively progressive university campuses, they pretend to stand for gender equality. But when it comes to campuses where orthodox ideas prevail, a separate faction for girls called the ‘Girls Islamic Organization’ gets floated.
From gender to LGBT issues, the Theo-political movement of Jamaat-e-Islami has consistently exposed their conservative and regressive mindset which can potentially alienate the Muslim community further from the mainstream.
Dalit movements should introspect if they need to share a platform with theo-political organisations that can discredit their just cause. Somehow, the SIO in the campus succeeded in conveying the idea that ‘any stand against them is tantamount to Islamophobia’. On the other hand, the student community has failed to distinguish between Muslim Students’ Federation, which is an organisation practicing identity politics and the SIO, which is a theo-political Islamist organisation. It is important to distinguish Islamist politics from Muslim identity politics. [. . .]



 FULL TEXT HERE: https://thewire.in/195024/ambedkar-marx-maududi-mainstream-politics/