A conversation with Khalid Anis Ansari of the Patna Collective
Hilde van ’t Klooster
From PLURALISM WORKING PAPER | 2010 / NO 7
EXPLORING NEW SITES OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Conversations with the founder members of the Patna Collective in India
ELISE VAN ALPHEN, HILDE VAN ‘T KLOOSTER
First published in December 2010 by the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Program.
Download the paper from this page
Confrontations with identity constructions
You are one of the founding members of The Patna Collective, which calls itself a research-activist collective that aims to rethink the relationship between religion, or faith, and social action. In the context of The Patna Collective, you currently study the Pasmanda Movement, a term that refers to recent movements among lower-caste Indian Muslims. A short time ago, you were also appointed as a PhD student in the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Program, where you will continue your focus on the Pasmanda Movement.
I would like to talk with you about what motivates your research on this topic and in particular, about your view on the research-activism related to your own work. But maybe before we go into that, you could tell me something about the relationship between your personal background and The Patna Collective. You are one of the founding members of The Patna Collective. Why did you participate in this initiative?
I think my personal background and experiences in life so far are particularly relevant in contextualizing my motivation behind forming The Patna Collective and doing the kind of work that we have been doing ever since. I come from a Muslim family and received what could be considered a mainstream, secular education in a Catholic school in Lucknow, the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh. When I was in class twelve, that was the year 1992 to 1993. I was seventeen or eighteen at that time, I suppose. The demolition of the Babri Masjid (mosque) took place on 6 December 1992,3 during my preparations for board exams. Though my parents are both devout now, I was raised in a very secular environment, as my family was not particularly religious during my youth. I could not really make sense of what had happened. I didn’t actually find the incident very disturbing. There was no real connection between my Muslim identity and the demolition of the mosque, because I did not really relate to religion in that sense.
But I remember quite clearly that after the demolition, my classmates directed strange and sarcastic remarks toward me. Some of them even addressed me as katwa, which is a pejorative term that alludes to someone who has been circumcised. Circumcision is obviously a part of Muslim faith. For the first time, circumstances led me to believe that I was different. I had never felt this way before. My friends and I played cricket and other sports together, just like normal students who got along. Yet following the demolition, things were never the same again. I was forced to realise that I was a Muslim. I was bracketed as belonging to a particular identity, and began to develop an unprecedented sense of “being Muslim.” After my board exams, I enrolled in the Honours Bachelor programme in Economics at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). It is based in a small provincial town of Aligarh in western Uttar Pradesh.
Aligarh University had a unique history. It was built by Muslims in the first quarter of the last century and was also somewhat implicated for the Partition between India and Pakistan in 1947. Many of the university’s students were then active in the Muslim League Movement, the party which sought a separate Muslim state. According to the movement, Muslims were a separate ‘nationality’ and had a right to self-determination. But following Independence and the tragic Partition riots, which resulted in many casualties, the university was, arguably, cleansed of Muslim League elements and co-opted into the state education system. In a way, it became a mainstream university. Historically speaking, even the initial impetus behind the Aligarh Movement in 1875 was to carve out a new, modern, educational space for Muslims that religious knowledge alone could not provide. This point of view stood in striking contrast to the dominant opinion of the Muslim religious scholars, who were acutely sceptical of western knowledge systems and languages, especially English. It was a progressive movement that sought to forge a neat balance between Western and Islamic systems of knowledge and encourage English as a language. But as it turned out, Aligarh also served as a haven for elite ashraf Muslims and, in many remarkable ways, continues to be that even now.
Narratives reveal how students from poor and lower-caste Muslim families were looked down upon and mocked by those students stemming from feudal-aristocratic families. I joined AMU in June 1993. The day I arrived in Aligarh, I was made aware of a conflict surrounding the burning of the national flag of India in the canteen a while back. This was a second shock for me within a period of six or seven months and felt like an affront to my secular sensibilities. The national flag had a special place in my heart. How could someone burn it like that? But over a period of time, I became acquainted with the narratives regarding problems faced by the Muslim identity in India. I also became familiar with the discourse on victimhood generated by anti-Muslim riots. It was the first time I became sensitised to such subjectivities and understandings.
One day afterwards, I was standing in a queue in the canteen when a classmate, whom I hardly knew, shouted at me from behind. “Julahe*…jaldi kar!” This translates to, “Make it fast, you julaha!”. When I turned and looked at the student who had shouted, I saw that he was smiling, suggesting therefore that the remark had been made in jest. But this memory has stayed with me ever since. Later, when I discussed this incident with some other friends, I learned that julaha, referring to
someone from the weaving caste, was commonly used in a pejorative manner, especially by the Muslim upper castes. I found this strange, because my father was not a weaver, but a civil servant. In an economic sense, I did not stem from a disadvantaged group.
During the course of my stay in Aligarh, I regularly overheard and sometimes encountered similar kinds of remarks. I realised that even the Muslim identity is not monolithic. Castes exist within it, and people from upper castes look down on people from lower castes, even when they are educated and stem from a good economic background. A sense of contempt subsists against lower-caste Muslims, which is embedded somewhere in the upper-caste Muslim consciousness. I must admit, however, that I was unable to understand the rationale behind this at the time.
*The surname ‘Ansari’ is a title that was adopted by the Muslim weaver caste in the late nineteenth century. The Urdu or the Hindustani word for weaver is julaha, which is usually employed in popular folklore as a synonym for ‘ignorant,’ or more accurately ‘ignoramus.’ Various pejorative proverbs and stories are linked to weavers: ‘One expression stems from a story: Julaha bhulaile teesi ka khait refers to the julaha who went to a mustard field by moonlight. Mistaking the blue mustard flowers for water, he dove and tried to swim. Another tale tells of a julaha who wept while listening to his family maulvi [religious teacher] read the Quran. The old maulvi was very impressed and asked which part of Quran had motivated the julaha to weep. The julaha replied, “I was looking at your beard, which sadly reminded me of my goat, who died yesterday.” Another well-known story tells of one julaha who was about to go on a journey with his eleven friends. They decided to count themselves before they leftt. The julaha began to count, but kept forgetting to count himself. He broke into tears, saying, “I am dead. Make arrangements for my burial [...]”. Source: Anwar, Ali. Masawaat KI Jung (The Struggle for Equality), trans. Mohammad Imran Ali and Zakia Jowher. New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 2005.
Ideological Search: From Radical Islam to Marxism
So during this period these experiences made you more aware of two aspects of your identity: your Muslim identity and a caste identity.
Yes, and all in a very short time period. I continued my education and then got in touch with a few Islamic radicals on the campus. They were inspired by a host of writers: Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Banna, Ali Shariati, Murtaza Mutahhari, Maulana Maudidi, Kalim Siddiqui. I started to read these texts out of an interest in discovering Islam and what this discourse on religion and identity was all about. I should note that it was precisely during this period that I was also facing a crisis within my own immediate family, as my parents’ relationship reached a low ebb which led to a divorce a few years later.
I wanted, thus, to make some sense of my own ‘self,’ the changing context and a means to relate to that, both in the personal and public spheres. I soon developed a very strong normative sense of Islam. At that point, I was hardly twenty. I had strange ideas. I wanted to transform India into an Islamic state. I believed Islam to be the only true religion, that anything beyond Islam was false, and that it was my duty to propagate the Islamic ideology. But in hindsight I would say that my secular background was not reconciled with this approach to Islam. In a way, I was sceptical about both secularism and the Islamic discourse, though increasingly drawn to the latter.
What kind of questions did you have? What caused the tension?
It was a state of tension born of two ways of life. I had turned into a practising Muslim, someone I had never been before. Praying had made little sense to me prior to that. But there I was, praying five times a day, crying for the suppression of Muslims in Chechnya, Bosnia and elsewhere, trying to make sense of why Muslims were being persecuted everywhere. I stayed in this phase for a considerable time. I was simultaneously, however, being exposed to other secular ideologies like
Marxism, whose emphasis on social justice was very appealing. One particular lecturer in the University, who belonged to a communist party, was instrumental in sparking my interest in Marxism. I met him quite often. But even while I read about other ideologies, the Islamic vision had a privileged place in my scheme of things.
Later, another strange event took place on campus. About eighty or ninety students suffered from food poisoning due to adulterated food served in the dining hall. They were admitted to hospital. Students assembled outside the Vice Chancellors’ (VC) lodge in protest, but the VC didn’t engage with them. Eventually, after I had already left the site, the VC called in the notorious Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). The PAC fired at the students in response to the slightest provocation. One student was killed and several others were injured.
The following day, we asked various student leaders and unions from other colleges and cities to join our protest against this barbaric act. When a few of us went to the VC to discuss the incident, he callously remarked, “You are talking of only one student. In Kashmir eighty or ninety people are killed every day.” Before becoming Vice Chancellor, this man had served as a senior civil servant in Kashmir. He continued, “Why is the campus community making such a fuss over the death of just one student?” We were absolutely stunned at this statement. A few students, including me, openly challenged the VC once in a public programme, accusing him of violating the democratic rights of free expression and peaceful protest of the students. He publicly responded by saying, “I do not believe in any damn democracy!”
Such events continued to take place on campus quite frequently. Since the elected student union had been banned and elections suspended, we had no organised forum to raise these issues. Some formed an organisation called the Forum for Democratic Rights (FDR), of which I became a member early on. FDR provided us with an opportunity to express our views on various concerns affecting campus life. It struck me that, amid these various protest actions and the campus unrest, the Islamists usually refrained from participation and maintained a distance. I don’t know why. At the time, I suspected they had some kind of connection with the VC. Yet in contrast, all the left-wing student groups, which were largely based in Delhi, joined and supported us wholeheartedly. This also made me wonder. If Islam is a religion of justice, and these events were explicit incidents of injustice, then how could those who claim to follow Islam and Islamic ethics
refrain from becoming involved in these protest movements? The distinction between the Islamists and the Left became ever clearer to me. When it actually mattered, the Marxists, not the Islamists, came to our rescue.
Start of an Activist Life
So during this period, you were confronted with various events and identity constructions that deeply touched you. What impact did these experiences have on your aspirations?
All these events shaped me in various ways and forced me to become engaged with many perplexing issues. I had no clear idea of what to do in life. My desire to resolve these questions was a motivating factor, but I did not know how to go about it. I completed my MBA degree but hardly paid any attention to my academic studies. In the classroom, I was reading on marketing management and other subjects that really disgusted me, but outside of class I would read other political writings by Shariati and Marx, for example. Luckily, I graduated. Since the corporate sector was completely out of question for me at the time, after a few initial hiccups and hesitations, I decided to join a leftwing party as an activist.
What kind of party is that? Is it a political party?
Yes and no. I mean, it was a political party in the sense that all parties are ‘political’. But this party did not support electoral politics or a parliamentary form of governance. It had more radical ambitions, aspiring for a systemic change in favour of a socialist state. As an activist, I was able to learn firsthand about the problems faced by the Indian labouring classes. Exposed to the labour movements in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, I got an opportunity to interact with a lot of veteran Marxist intellectuals and activists whose commitment really impressed me. Still, I was equally cynical about the young Marxist activists with whom I met and worked. I found them very mechanical, to say the least. Every word of Marx made sense to me at that time, but the question of religion kept hovering in the background. I encountered various problems with the personalities of the leaders, cadres and with the organisational operations there, but I was particularly disappointed with the party ’s singular understanding of religion. The dominant understanding reflected that religion was the opium of the masses, and that we therefore had nothing to do with religion. I found this worldview very stifling. I was of the opinion that there were two sides to the same story, as religion could also be liberating. Historically speaking, it was a bit unfair to believe that religion exclusively served the interest of dominant groups. I thought we should engage with the religious, because religion is important for the people. This seemed particularly relevant, given the rise of Hindu and Islamic right-wing forces in India, which articulated a regressive and
exclusivist reading of religion. Due to various personal and ideological conflicts, I eventually decided to leave the party, once again finding myself at the crossroads with no idea of how to move forward. It was at this point that a friend put me in touch with someone else who wanted to start a school for children in a small rural town called Naugawan Sadat, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. I had lived exclusively in urban contexts and acquired little experience of rural India. A majority of the Indian population, about seventy percent, lives in rural areas. I thought this would provide me with a new
experience and decided to help develop this proposed school.
The town of Naugawan had a big bidi industry, whose labourers were very poor and exploited. Talking to them, I found out that they couldn’t afford to pay the fees of good primary schools that were only available in Amroha, a district town about fifteen kilometres away. Hence, they were forced to send their children to a local government school that barely functioned. Moreover, these parents were keen that their children learn English, which would help them get established outside the village and find better jobs in bigger cities. We worked hard to develop this school in Naugawan. After facing a lot of challenges, the school is now very reputed with a substantial student base. A large number of students have also joined good institutions in bigger cities, like Delhi, after receiving their early education in Naugawan. In this sense,
the school has made a positive social impact.
The four years that I spent there were very personally instructive. Apart from the experiences and insights that I gained in the field of education and pedagogy, I was also able to experience rural India first-hand, learning about the way it functioned and the issues it faced. I discovered, for example, that caste identity took prevalence over religious identity in rural India. Almost all public policies were negotiated and translated through caste networks; ‘politics’ got things done. In contrast to the urban middle class, the rural folk had a rather optimistic account of what politics had to offer. However, I
eventually began to grow bored and thought I had nothing more to learn there. Since the school was
doing well, I decided to move on.
It was then that one of my friends introduced me to Shahrukh Alam. Shahrukh had just returned to India after a short stint with Dr. Farid Esack, a progressive Muslim theologian based in South Africa. Shahrukh had worked in South Africa on Islamic liberation theology. When she first called me on phone, she explained her plans for Patna and said that she wanted to experiment with Islamic liberation theology in India.
This immediately struck a chord. I had already been thinking along those lines after reading texts by the Iranian revolutionary Ali Shariati. So when we finally met in Patna, at the close of 2005, Shahrukh and I engaged in much intellectual exchange, and I returned a week later to Naugawan very excited and inspired. I was really impressed with Shahrukh’s ideas. Shahrukh introduced me to a whole new set of stimulating writings and concepts. After a few other conversations, we finally decided to start a collective in Patna. That took place in January 2006. If I recall correctly, the collective was then named The Patna Collective following the suggestion of our friend, Jason Keith Fernandes.
What kind of collective is the Patna Collective? Can you describe your initial objectives in founding it?
We worked within a framework of Islamic liberation theology, inspired in particular by the ideas of Farid Esack. We wanted to test these ideas within the Indian context and see how they could be employed here, if at all. In our view, there were two kinds of Islam. One was the ‘Islam of the ruling class,’ which was very hierarchical and thus not very egalitarian. There was also an ‘Islam of the people,’ which was liberating. Historically speaking, these two types of Islam have always been in a state of tension. We wanted to explore if an ‘Islam of the people’ existed within the Indian context. If it did not exist, we wanted to know if we could create a space for it.
What makes this ‘Islam of the people’ liberating?
In this version of Islam, religion is more than just an identity marker. It becomes a faith and a liberation theology. This faith addresses not only those who are born as Muslim, but encompasses all those who are marginalized, whether they are poor people, women, lower-castes or blacks. Islam then becomes a worldview which relates to anyone irrespective of his or her identity. The central focus shifts to socio-economic justice. We began by exploring whether there were elements of
liberatory Islam in the Indian context. How could they be practised in the context of community work and social action? How could they be best articulated and placed into the foreground of the public sphere? We wanted to develop a discourse that would articulate religion from the vantage point of the marginalised in such a way that transcended circumstantially-bound identities. We wanted to ground religion in social realities.
Read the rest of this interview with sections on The Journey with the Patna Collective, The Pasmanda Movement & The Role of Interlocutor in Part 2 of this interview.
From PLURALISM WORKING PAPER | 2010 / NO 7
EXPLORING NEW SITES OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Conversations with the founder members of the Patna Collective in India
ELISE VAN ALPHEN, HILDE VAN ‘T KLOOSTER
First published in December 2010 by the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Program.
Download the paper from this page
The Pluralism Working Paper series for the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme provides a vehicle for early dissemination of knowledge and aims to reflect the broad range and diversity of theoretical and empirical work that is undertaken by academic researchers and civil society based development practitioners in association with the Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme.
The Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme (PPKP) is carried out in an international cooperative structure that includes the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos) and the Kosmopolis Institute of the University for Humanistics, both in the Netherlands, the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS, Bangalore, India), the Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies (CRCS, Yogyakarta, Indonesia) and the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU, Uganda).
