The Contradictions Within Prashant Kishor's Muslim Outreach

His efforts raise questions, considering he was the “master strategist” behind the BJP’s colossal win in 2014.

Jan Suraaj chief Prashant Kishor during Muslim Cell’s meetings, in Patna, on September 1, 2024.

Photo Credit: PTI

Bihar’s political space has recently been dominated by the newly kindled Jan Suraaj Party founded by Prashant Kishor. As much as we see Kishor’s enthusiasm while rallying Muslims behind him, his efforts raise questions regarding his objectives, considering he was the “master strategist” behind the BJP’s colossal win in 2014.

While Kishor’s face-saving could be that the BJP’s 2014 win was not mustered by religious divisiveness but rather as a campaign against the “corruption-ridden” rule of the UPA, it would be naive to say that Muslims were also settled with the idea of Narendra Modi coming to power.

The point is that Kishor pressed on despite the common anxiety of Muslims at the time. He is at it again with all his might. But this time, it is for Muslims.

Not far from a preaching approach, he is inviting Bihari Muslims to take their “rightful place” in the functioning of the country, the rightful place being dependent on two core imaginaries: the idealisation of the pre-partition Indian National Congress and the Gandhian philosophy. But any attempt to understand the two is prone to futility.

The pre-partition Congress party was a web of thinking ranging from left to right, stretching across a vast period of time. In this range and period were people like Jawahar Lal Nehru, an atheist and a socialist, Maulana Azad, a Muslim Indian nationalist, and Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of the BJP’s predecessor, the Jan Sangh. Kishor's emphasis on this seems to be a signifier of the diverse conglomeration that the country needs in times of intolerance.

Even if we leave out the aporias coming out of such a conglomeration, we must recall that such an organisation was possible only because it was an independence movement against colonialism, not in spite of it. It was driven against a foreign entity and not because it wanted to govern the post-colonial state tolerantly.

Kishor can, of course, argue that his aim is similar to that of independence, and so a conglomeration like that is possible, but he will be missing a central point. The current fight is not against a foreign entity, and one of the parties— the right wing— which was an intimate part of the conglomeration back then, now rules the country with an assertive claim that it is the most authentic nationalist option for the people.

The conglomeration is already divided. Even if we imagine for a moment that it will not be so, and the conglomeration will defeat the intolerant party, then, unlike the colonial foreign party, the ruling party will not go anywhere. The rift will continue, and such conglomerations for the safety of Muslims will have to prop up again and again.

This does not help the situation of Indian Muslims, principally speaking.

The Gandhian philosophy, similarly, cannot do much better.

What Gandhian philosophy are we talking about anyway? Not the one that did not resist the Congress' post-1937 discrimination against Indian Muslims. Not the one that did not want Maulana Azad to be included in the Cabinet of independent India.

If we must, one should be talking about the fantastic Hindu-Muslim camaraderie that Gandhi initiated and promoted in the 1920s by launching the Non-Cooperation Movement which supported the Khilafat Movement launched by Indian Muslims to protect the Ottoman Caliphate.

It, however, seems outlandish that a case for Muslim betterment has been couched in Gandhian terms as if that is the authoritative Indian Muslim thinking or as if no Muslim thinker existed historically or exists to talk for the community.

Also, why do present-day Indian Muslims need someone to talk for them as if the community lacks the intellect to initiate ideas for its own betterment? Any cursory reading of Indian Muslim history should falsify this "gullible Muslim" thesis that Kishor is so fond of. This is different from standing up for the basic human rights of Muslims which are consistently violated by the state and its agents.

If any vision has to be good for Muslims, it cannot come from anyone but Muslims themselves, who suffer at the hands of the very system that has resisted decolonisation in many parts of its functioning and essence.

Only through systemic change will they have the security to go for higher pursuits in life without incessantly and imminently thinking about their existential fate, and this needs to be beyond the imagination of the pre-partition Congress' ideology and Gandhianism.

(Shahzar Khan is a second-year PhD student at Vanderbilt University. Views are personal.)