By Abusaleh Shariff
India has been experiencing unprecedented levels of centralization of power in the union government on the one hand and unitary consolidation of major political, economic, and legal policy spheres in the Prime Minister’s persona of Mr. Narendara Modi on the other. His strategy has openly denounced pluralism, secularism and political participation and empowerment of the Muslims all over India both at the level of nation and state level elections. The ruling BJP has not even one Muslim member of Parliament and state level MLA where it is ruling party.
Given such polarization, BJP garnered just about 38 per cent of the popular votes in 2019 and due to multi-party system, the winner prevails even with less than one third of the votes in its favour. Thus, BJP demonstrated that it does not need votes from the Minorities especially Muslims and Christians to cling on to power by polarizing Hindu votes religious grounds.
Note that the turnout of Hindus and Muslims was 58 percent and 59 per cent respectively in 2009 general elections – almost even. But by 2014 the Hindu turnout increased 10 percentage points to 68 percent while the Muslim voting share remained at 59 percent. These respective shares were 70 per cent and 60 per cent in 2019 elections a large difference of 10 percentage points between the Hindus and Muslim voters. Thus, one can clearly see the effect of polarization of Hindu votes while the Muslims voting behavior remain unchanged over last three general elections. As a consequence the Muslims have been dis-empowered and also marginalized; the only mechanism to regain their status in the Social, economic and political sphere is ensure high levels of participation in casting their popular vote.
However, a surprising fact is that for the 18th general elections in 2023, Mr. Modi personally is wooing certain type of Muslims through creating a wedge in their solidarity. During the current political dispensation, the PM personally has created a pan Indian ‘Pasmanda (marginalized)’ Muslim identity and asking women to vote him as he legally championed elimination of triple talaaq a practice supposedly prevailed amongst them.
In September 2022, the union government announced the setting up of a national commission to study the possibility of providing reservations for ‘SCs (dalits)’ who have converted to Islam and Christianity. This was both surprising and amusing. Tactically surprising because the ruling BJP is known for its anti-minority (especially anti-Muslim) stance and amusing since the existence of dalit Muslims (and to an extent, dalit Christians) has not gained official recognition since the Independence.
Note that, once a responding household identifies itself as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’, the census and national sample surveys do not allow for its reporting as members of a ‘dalit’ caste. Nor has there been evidence of recording ‘dalit’ status in such instances in any government department or institution. The officials who are authorized to endorse and issue caste certificates do not issue such certificates if applicants declare themselves as Muslim or Christian in the first place.
Yet one finds several overt and covert ways through which the Muslims are ‘politically disempowered today’. While it is given to understand that the devils of CAA and UCC are given rest during this election season, the ‘bloody demons’ are (a) preparation of National Population Register (NPR) and (b) the National Register of Citizens (NRC), both are dormant momentarily but would create havoc including physical violence all over India if the BJP wins this election.
The author/s of this opinion suggests that the only way the Muslims will get and can sustain ‘political empowerment’, is by ensuring high proportions of franchise during all levels of elections namely the National (electing Members of Parliament), the States (electing Members of Legislative Assembly) and the Panchayats and urban corporations. As discussed above Muslim vote share is 60 per cent compared to 70 percent of Hindus which is a huge gap. Note also that the Muslim community must not search their political leaders from amongst their own community or religion. Constitutionally, religion, castes and other social identities must take a back seat during elections; what matters is protection of national interest, nationalism, secularism, peace, and development of India.
Given the dominance of divisive political strategy, centralization of power and several autocratic policy decisions, the current political dispensation in India under the Prime Minister Modi has little to contribute to the world political order which can even weaking India’s growing economic performance.
India’s first general election based on multi-party and adult franchise was held in 1951-2 when 172 million voted. This year (2024) the electorate is just shy of one billion strong. This electorate is highly diverse in many segmentations based on region (there are 30 states and union territories), language, cultural identities, place of living, religion, and castes. During the last 3-4 general elections the Bharatiya Janata Patty (BJP) tactically sought votes from the Hindus by demonizing the Muslims as the outsiders who ruled India for close to a millennium until the onset of British Raj. Raising politically motivated religious passion yielded polarization of votes by unfairly calling the Muslims as a threat to Indian state, popularly named them all as terrorists and unworthy of politically participation. The majority (79 percent of the total population) were hypnotized on the pretext that the Hindus are in danger by the presence of just about 15 per cent Muslims and another 4-5 percent other minorities. This strategy helped the current Prime Minister to continue to hold on to power since 2014, almost to the extent that Indian governance ‘appear an electoral autocracy or even a dictatorship.
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US-India Policy Institute, Washington D. C and Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy, New Delhi and Bengaluru.