According to a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, many Muslims voted for Narendra Modi in the 2014 election , particularly in Gujarat, U.P. and Karnataka. They believed in the party’s slogan, ‘ Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas ’. However, it did not take long for them to realise that the party had no intention of following this slogan. Mr. Modi’s polarising campaign this time unmasked the carefully packaged aggressive majoritarianism that was sold as ‘ Sabka Vikas ’ in 2014. Lynching of people on the suspicion of storing beef and a ban on cow slaughter, among other things, generated outrage among Muslims against the BJP, an anger far greater than what we saw after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.
Split votes
Given this anger, it was quite clear who the community would vote against in the 2019 general election. However, Muslims did face a dilemma over which party to vote for, especially in constituencies where there were three-cornered contests. In Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, for instance, Muslims realised that merely voting against the BJP would not help as their votes would get split between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) combine (in U.P.) and the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (in Delhi). The anxiety the community faced was that their votes would get split and they would not be represented in Parliament, even as the BJP juggernaut rolled on.
The widespread perception is that Muslims vote en bloc. Till 2004, nearly all political parties believed that the most effective way to secure Muslim votes was to extract a fatwa from Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid in Delhi. Even non-Congress Prime Ministers such as V.P. Singh and Deve Gowda sent emissaries to the Imam to secure fatwas. Maulana Syed Abdullah Bukhari emerged as a Muslim mass leader owing to his fierce opposition to Sanjay Gandhi’s notorious sterilisation programme during the Emergency. Since then, the Shahi Imam’s fatwa was seen as the only way of securing the Muslim vote. Fortunately this backfired in 2004. Imam Sayed Ahmed Bukhari, who succeeded Syed Abdullah Bukhari after his death in 2000, urged Muslim voters not to see themselves as slaves of secularists, and passed a fatwa to vote for the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The Muslim community chose to ignore it and the NDA was defeated, but the practice of issuing fatwas continues, though it is noteworthy that there were no fatwas this time.
Since 1977, Muslims have been looking for various non-Congress secular alternatives. Some regional parties in U.P., West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh have been big beneficiaries of this shift of loyalty of Muslim voters from the Congress ever since. The Congress’s effort to woo them back has had mixed results. For instance, 2009 saw the return of Muslim votes for the Congress, but in 2014, the BJP increased its Muslim vote share. While Muslims have been looking for secular alternatives to the Congress for long, it was only after the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when split votes ensured that Muslim representation in the 16th Lok Sabha hit an all-time low, that Muslims really began to worry about their votes getting split among parties.
Some argue that the Modi regime’s response to the triple talaq issue has created a pro-Modi constituency among Muslim women. Perhaps Muslim women have some appreciation for the proactive response of the Modi regime. However, it would be an insult to the common sense of Muslim women to presume that they fail to see how little they would gain from the contentious Bill in the larger context of the Hindutva-inspired aggression over the community which is increasingly subjugating its men, women and children into statelessness.
Flawed idea of unity
In 2014, there were 54 Muslim candidates in U.P. and not one got elected. Seventeen of them came second in their constituencies. Only in the Kairana bypoll in 2018 did Tabassum Hasan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (as a joint Opposition candidate) enter Parliament. At present, there are 20 Muslim candidates, but owing to the SP-BSP alliance, there is a strong possibility of more Muslims getting elected to the 17th Lok Sabha from U.P. This time, the Opposition parties are more united than they were in 2014, but this is not enough to arrest the BJP’s rise. A fair chance for an overall increase of Muslim presence in Parliament exists compared to 2014 even though this election has been India’s most polarising election along religious lines so far. The BJP has not fielded any Muslim in U.P., as was the case in 2014.
The voting behaviour of Muslims, like the voting behaviour of Hindus and other communities, cannot be attributed to one cause. While appeals or threats might remain party strategies (BSP chief Mayawati appealed to Muslim voters to vote against the Congress, and Union Minister Maneka Gandhi warned Muslims that she would have second thoughts about helping them if she wins from the Sultanpur seat without the community’s help), for Muslims to maximise the utility of their votes they need to probe the veil of darkness that Opposition parties often cast over them owing to the flawed idea about the community’s sense of unity. Therefore, without the unity of all Opposition parties, the Muslim community’s struggle for fair representation will continue, and this in turn will help the BJP’s agenda.
Shaikh Mujibur Rehman teaches at Jamia Millia Central University. He recently edited a book titled ‘Rise of Saffron Power’
