Sharjeel Imam and the Convenient Outrage of a Pseudonymous Critic
Sharjeel Imam’s critic has called his proposals an Islamist manifesto, yet the questions Imam raises about minority safeguards, proportional representation and decentralisation were debated by the Constituent Assembly before the Republic came into existence. Reserved seats for religious minorities were accepted in August 1947 and abandoned in May 1949, so the idea can hardly be called alien to India’s constitutional discourse. Imam’s historical claims and political proposals deserve rigorous scrutiny, and his critics cannot evade the substance of the questions by concentrating on the ideological identity of the person raising them.