Polemical encounters: Ambedkar and Savarkar on Muslim performativity

Abstract

Abstract The concept of Muslim performativity and the perception of the image of an ordinary Muslim are the central themes of this article. It outlays V. D. Savarkar's and B. R. Ambedkar's views on Muslim performativity – performance of Muslimness or Islamic religiosity. It primarily engages with Savarkar's Essentials of Hindutva (1923) and Ambedkar's Pakistan or the Partition of India ([1945] 2013) and extracts their comments on Muslimness with reference to Muslim invasions and alleged divided loyalty. Apart from highlighting the convergences and divergences in their views on Muslim performativity, it describes their debate as performance. Further, this article argues that a hangover of Savarkarite and Ambedkarite comments on Muslim performativity permeates through the legal production of the Muslim community. By discussing the Muslim community's multifarious attempts to reform family law, this essay engages with the lived reality of Muslim performativity to stress the heterogeneity of Muslimness. By posing the lived reality of Muslim performativity against the dominant discourse in the aforementioned thinkers' works, it contributes a novel approach towards the conceptualization of performativity and departs from Judith Butler's concept of performativity.