Language and Vocabulary of Muslim Political Activism in the Post-Colonial India

Abstract

In the contemporary political discourse, legitimating vocabularies have come to occupy an important place in capturing the imagination of the political structures and institutions. The language with which any social group voices the demands determines the public opinion about these demands and therefore their legitimacy or illegitimacy. This paper specifically focuses on the language of the demands voiced by the Muslim minority community after the inauguration of the Constitutional republic and argues that Muslim leadership has primarily failed in providing their demands with a legitimating vocabulary in which the demands should have been voiced. The leadership primarily argued in terms of an entitlement in the form of a fair share in the enterprise of the state instead of claiming the fair share as a democratic right of the community and informing their claims with the notions and principles of democracy, development, citizenship, rights, welfare, and a citizen-oriented public philosophy.