Thread by @DearthOfSid

Identity politics and its fault lines: a thread.

1. Representation is paramount in democracy. An ally can never adequately represent the interests of an oppressed minority in a majoritarian society. Hence it's crucial that the oppressed are empowered to voice their own concerns.

2. This is why idpol is important in diverse yet majoritarian societies. Its role becomes even more crucial when the progressive mainstream movements that are supposed to speak for the marginalised fail to accurately analyse the impact of identities in politics.

3. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that there is leadership that represents women, Dalits, Muslims and other marginalised communities. Reservation is one of the redressal mechanisms to tackle the situation where natural justice is denied to these marginalised identity groups.

4. However, when people belonging to such oppressed identity groups are mobilised to form a political movement solely on the basis of those identities, two key issues surface which turn these movements against the interests of these same communities.

5. The first issue is the sanctification of the ideology that is associated with the oppressed identity making way for fundamentalism. SDPI/PFI is a key example of this. In the name of championing the Muslim cause in an Islamophobic society, they tend to fuel extremism.

6. There has been many instances of this but a glaring example was when few PFI goons chopped off the hand of a college professor for allegedly blasphemy back in 2010. This issue is more relevant in states like Kerala where Muslims are relatively better off than rest of India.

7. As the persecution intensifies as the Hindutva project gets stronger every passing day, we see that more and more Muslims are losing hope in their allies and increasingly feel that the only way out of their misery is to improve their representation in politics.

8. But instead of strengthening secular movements and improving the Muslim representation of those movements, if they empower parties like SDPI, it will only fuel the majoritarian threat and will end up being counter-productive to their own interests.

9. The second issue is the tendency of those who champion identity politics to fight people, instead of ideas. This is where the recent Twitter takes such as "Bahujan journalists always do quality journalism" and "Umar is a part of Brahmin government" come from.

10. For those who come from oppressed identity locations, the goal must be to reform the people in the society instead of treating it like a battle where the enemy needs to be killed. Of course, it's easier said than done, but it is what it is and needs to be called out.

11. The strategy to defeat patriarchy must be to transform men into feminist allies, the strategy to annihilate caste must be to transform UCs into anti-caste allies and the strategy to fight Hindutva must be to transform Hindus into secular people and not to attack any of them.

12. Attacking people for their internalised prejudices like sexism, casteism, or Islamophobia without an intent to reform them can only alienate them further and thereby worsen the situation. This will end up being counter-productive to the interests of the oppressed minorities.

13. To conclude, idpol has its place in majoritarian societies but its goal must be to strengthen the progressive platforms and not to mobilise based on identities. It's crucial that such platforms understand identity better for them to fight majoritarianism effectively.