The Muslim Question in the Indian Republic

The idea of India—or as Perry Anderson calls it, Indian ideology—is seldom recognized for what it is, and that being its predominantly Hindu character—India being a constitutionally secular country notwithstanding. It is against this hegemonic Hindu political dominance that Ambedkar had struggled to achieve political representation for India’s marginalized. That political representation had to be secured inch by inch from a bellicose political community—largely drawn from the Hindu upper castes—is a story not many people want to hear. One has to go through the discussions that took place during the Constituent Assembly proceedings, and later the debates around the Hindu Code Bill to grasp the overwhelming presence of Hinduism in India’s polity. The fact that the making of a modern nation state is also the story of its vast and real majority—comprising its marginalized communities—struggling for representation in the modern polity is lost on most people. The fact that one cannot have a nation and not recognize its cultural pluralism by running them roughshod politically is also something which this country is still trying to grapple with.