On November 8, 2024, a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court overruled the 1967 S. Azeez Basha vs Union of India case, which had held that Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) could not be considered a minority institution. The factual determination of the minority character of AMU has now been left to a smaller bench.

The AMU unit of the Fraternity Movement – the students’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s (JHI) political outfit Welfare Party of India (WFI), has released a curious statement entitled “AMU Will Remain a Muslim Institution”. It says:

"Aligarh Muslim University was/is a clear manifestation of Muslimness in India. It had an intrinsic history of being the holistic representation of the Muslim Community in the country. The establishment of this Institution was solely focused on enforcing Muslim Subjectivity and widening the scope of the Islamic Knowledge system for the people.

"Regardless of the colonial project to delimit the political horizons, Aligarh as a movement broke the frames that were instilled by orientalist time sense. The question of Muslimness in this particular juncture plays a very crucial role while the earlier legal challenges were orchestrated to curtail Muslimness in the historical formation of AMU."

What first catches the eye is the remark that “AMU Will Remain a Muslim Institution,” not a “minority” institution. The adjective “Muslim” is embedded in a chain of capitalized terms: “Muslimness,” “Muslim Community,” “Muslim Subjectivity,” and “Islamic Knowledge”.

The capitalization is meant to convey the resplendent importance that attaches to these words. This importance is characterized in a theological manner:

“We believe that the legal reasonings and argumentations on the minority status have a lacuna of articulating theological notions which should be taken forth by the futural fights bounding to this”.

In other words, the legal discourse of “minority” should be replaced by the capitalized, theological discourse of “Muslimness”.

The theological outlook of the Fraternity Movement isn’t surprising. Given its linkage with JIH, it is natural that it will borrow the religious vocabulary of the latter. According to JIH:

“Reducing religion to just a private matter is unwanted audacity. The position of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is that this concept is not only antithetical to Islam but also would be quite oppressive for people of India, the vast majority of who believe in spiritual and religious values, to prohibit them from following the guidance offered by religion and impose irreligiousness on them instead.”

Here, we once again encounter the grandiloquent voice of the religious practitioner, who regards any breach of their theological domain as an exercise of “unwanted audacity”.

Religion is naturalized as a desirable good, whose possession has to be maintained at all costs. In fact, when Muslims are in a dominant position, Syed Jalaluddin Umri, former president of JIH, advised them to establish an "Islamic state" and be governed by the laws of Sharia.

But is religion really that desirable?

This question is not explored by self-assured theologians. This same sentiment of self-assuredness is to be found in the AMU Fraternity Movement’s declaration that there exists a unified and capitalized “Muslimness” requiring prioritization.

Does the issue of minority status really concern the ability of students to protect their “Muslim Subjectivity,” or “Islamic Knowledge”?

Put in more mundane terms, this would mean that the entire debate over AMU’s status pertains to the Muslim youth’s right to recite Quranic verses in the university premises. This seems more like the theologian’s dream, rather than a socially and economically disadvantaged student’s wish.

The Supreme Court’s judgment is correct in noting that what is primary in the determination of the minority character of an institution is not the “existence of a religious place for prayer and worship” or “the existence of religious symbols” but the objective of providing “benefit” to “a religious or linguistic minority community”. This means that “educational institutions could be established for minorities to provide secular education without imparting any lessons on religion”.

What the above demonstrates is that religious instruction or symbolism, which the Fraternity Movement fancily labels as “Muslim Subjectivity,” isn’t the core of a minority institution. AMU can benefit Indian Muslims without teaching theology. It is incumbent upon theologically minded entities to show why religious knowledge is a necessary part of empowerment.

Instead of regarding Indian Muslims as a theological category, one should follow BR Ambedkar in analyzing “religious affiliation” solely in terms of the “intense degree of social separation and discrimination” that it effects upon the minority groups.

What matters is not the doctrinal distinction between different religious groups but the actual “social discrimination” that marks their relationships. Insofar as Muslims in India are characterized by “social separation,” they are entitled to demand special measures from the government that can alleviate their oppression.

According to senior advocate Mihir Desai, since the founding of the Indian Republic, the Supreme Court has adopted a religion-centric criteria for determining the minority status, or otherwise, of an institution. The determination of the minority status of an institution should be based on whether it is being run for the benefit of the minority, and not whether it is established and administered by a minority. This concern with an institute’s identitarian origins rather than substantive policy dynamics has attached the question of minority status to the political principle of protecting cultural identity, to the exclusion of the social principle of backwardness related to issues of justice and equity.

The obsession with cultural identity leads to a regressive politics. Once an individual has their mind trained on the sanctity of “Muslimness,” it becomes difficult for them to comprehend the social inequalities that accrue due to this fixation. The JIH, for instance, declares:

“Homosexuality strikes at the very root of family and society. It is an immoral and unnatural act of perversion, which not only prevents procreation and progress of human race, but also destroys the family system and social relations”.

While reading this confident, clear-cut declaration, one can’t help but remember the case of Ramchandra Siras, a poet and Professor of Marathi Literature at AMU, who faced murderous persecution due to his homosexuality. On February 8, 2010, two individuals broke into Siras’ home and filmed him in bed with another man. Following this incident, Siras was suspended from his position for “gross misconduct”. However, the courts ruled against the university. Tragically, on April 8 of the same year, Siras died under mysterious circumstances at his residence, just a day before he received the official letter cancelling his suspension.

When it comes to women, the JIH thinks that “co-education should be abolished and proper education facilities meant for only women only should be available at all level of education.” While they are segregated from men, they should wear clothes that are “sober and dignified”.

Faced with reactions that this amounted to moral policing, Umri clarified that the organization merely wanted women to wear dresses that “cover the body”. The inane logic governing this argument isn’t hard to spot: since female flesh incites male lust, women should be caged in segregated spaces where their entire body is draped in the holiness of modesty.

Faithfully following the patriarchal script, JIH never questions why men get aroused so easily that they start raping women. All the responsibility is placed on the female victim. Given the hierarchical attitudes that religious consciousness leads to, the AMU Fraternity Movement needs to consider if it really wants to pigeonhole the issue of minority status into the rusty confines of theology.