The “Securitisation” of Muslims in India: Anti-minority Violence as Governance

• In Event: Religion, Peace, and Conflict

Abstract

Rationale
The starting point for this study is the emerging observation about the 21st century decline in public violence between Hindus and Muslims in India, historically termed “communal” or ethno-religious violence (Ahuja, 2023; Varshney, 2022). Literature on “communal violence” in India has expanded in scope – from the study of riots and pogroms to the more recent inquiry into the “new forms” of anti-Muslim violence in the 21st century (Basu, 2021; Pai and Kumar, 2018). This thesis is situated within the body of literature that seeks to understand the majoritarian, ideologically motivated, state and nonstate violence against Muslims in India.
Research Hypothesis
Using Uttar Pradesh as a case study, my paper proposes that the shift in the forms of “communal” violence should be viewed as a shift in the understanding of violence as a “modality of politics” to a “modality of governance” under a majoritarian state. This thesis puts forth the framework of “securitisation” of Muslims, replacing “communal” violence as a framework to view identity-based state and nonstate violence against Muslims in India. My study builds on arguments in securitisation theory, and situates anti-Muslim violence within the discourse of security which essentially involves the creation of a threat from which the state can protect.
This conceptualisation is important because it understands anti-Muslim violence not solely as instrumental and/or epiphenomenal to Hindutva politics, but as a part of the processes and techniques involved in the social construction of security in a modern, neoliberal state. In this project of Hindutva governance, the spread of misinformation and disinformation creates biopolitical objectives and rationalities to govern Muslim bodies, properties, economies, and lives.
This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted during 2021–2022 with about 200 interviews across 20 districts in Uttar Pradesh. My analysis is based on three types of cases of anti-Muslim violence:
1. Hate-crime/vigilante lynchings by nonstate actors,
2. Police violence during Anti-CAA protests, and
3. Anti-conversion cases.
The paper will be divided into two conceptual parts:

I. The “Unmaking of the Victim”
Using case studies of vigilante lynchings and police violence during the anti-CAA protests in UP, I analyse the modi operandi of state and nonstate violence workers in India. These techniques of “violence management” involve, not only a co-ordinated effort to perpetrate anti-Muslim violence, but also everyday bureaucratic processes that cause the “unmaking” of victims of the said violence. This “unmaking” of the Muslim victims of the violence occurs through purposeful practices of derecognition, which include:
• erasures of the “hate” in official documentation,
• closure of cases,
• invocation of laws against, and subsequent criminalisation of, a deceased victim,
• deprivation of forms of social redressal, state rehabilitation, financial compensation, and fair access to justice.
In the age of misinformation and disinformation, anti-Muslim violence and the post-violence work are framed as justified parts of securing the nation. The victim of state or non-state violence is stripped off of victimhood and is presented as a threat, thereby legitimising the violence against them.
II. Securitisation Laws
The state under the BJP demonstrates the coexistence between the democratic governance – the “politics of life” – and securitisation – the “politics of death.” The entwinement of these two facets of governance is evidenced in the symbolisation of the state’s “maintenance of law and order” through harsh police action, extra-judicial remedies, and creation of illiberal laws.
The second section will analyse processes, narratives, and informational mechanisms of securitisation which legitimise the constitution and application of separate laws ostensibly aimed to target Muslims:
1. To protect bovine animals from beef-eaters – cow slaughter law,
2. To protect Hindu women from lustful Muslim men – anti-conversion law,
3. To protect Muslim women from Muslim men – triple talaq law,
4. To protect the nation from illegal migrants – citizenship amendment act.
From the lens of securitisation, the “management” of the incidents of lynching, the legitimisation of police violence, and the call for special laws, can be understood as new forms of anti-Muslim violence.
Bibliography
Ahuja, A., 2023. Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State. OUP.
Basu, A., 2021. Changing Modalities of Violence: Lessons from Hindu Nationalist India. OUP.
Pai, S., Kumar, S., 2018. Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh. OUP.
Varshney, A., 2022. How India’s Ruling Party Erodes Democracy. Journal of Democracy.

Author

• Nidah Kaiser, SOAS, University of London