Does the BJP's defeat in its strongholds Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan signal the reversal of a recent trend of marked Muslim electoral irrelevance? If the BJP's tally falls in 2019, this is a likely outcome, say observers.
The recent Madhya Pradesh election saw many “Hindus” swing towards the Congress not on religious grounds but because of rural discontent. The losses being faced by farmers resulted in a slender Congress victory. While the BJP won almost 23 of the 37 urban seats (or close to two-thirds of seats with more than 50% urban population), the Congress won 52% of the remaining 197 rural and semi-rural seats, thus beating the BJP that won just 44% of these seats.
Such shifts on grounds of material concerns are likely to affect the dominant language of cultural politics too, feel observers, making Muslim sensibilities a political factor once again after the coming Lok Sabha polls.
“Hindutva's success can ride only on general material well-being. Once material concerns rise, cultural politics begins to fade away and material politics becomes important, as these Assembly elections have shown,” says political analyst and author Sajjan Kumar.
While the BJP may cover some lost ground in its slipping strongholds in the Lok Sabha polls when it fights for Prime Minister Narendra Modi returning to power, the 2014 sweep is unlikely, political analysts feel.
In 2014, the party won all seats in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand and most seats in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. These Atates together account for over 250 seats and steered the party past the majority mark.
Even moderate losses in any of these States and a grand opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh can make the BJP fall well short of a majority.
Political scientist Manindra Nath Thakur, who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, says losses for the BJP in 2019 would automatically translate into Muslims becoming more relevant to alliance decisions for regional parties.
“After 2014, Mr. Modi's BJP had been able to garner enough support from various social segments of Hindus to be able to win elections irrespective of how Muslims vote. This had made the biggest minority electorally irrelevant and regional parties with a local Muslim constituency could easily flock to the BJP. Once the BJP's tally falls, regional players will have to factor in Muslim sensibilities in their post-poll political decisions. Else, they will risk losing Muslim support in their state to the Congress,” Mr. Thakur told The Hindu . “Such calculations would also impact their alliance decisions as also who becomes the acceptable Prime Ministerial face of the NDA once results are out,” he added.
The number game
Data on the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh crunched by Ashoka University's Trivedi Centre for Political Data offer a peek into how the BJP offered enough representation to different Hindu caste groups to sail through with no appeal to Muslims.
There was a two-fold jump in upper caste representation in the State assembly, with 44% upper caste MLAs. While the OBC representation remained unchanged, Yadav presence fell to 17% of OBC MLAs and Kurmi presence rose from 11% to 38%. The representation of lower OBCs also went up.
Muslim representation at a mere 6.2% of MLAs was the lowest since 1991. Muslims, numbering 19% in the State, had a 17% share of MLAs in 2012.
The 2017 trend suggests a major lower OBC outreach of the BJP and growing Muslim irrelevance. This is likely to change in 2019, as the BJP stares at a fall in its individual tally in 2019.
