The growing marginalisation of the Muslim voter

“What do you think will happen? Who will form the next government?” That’s how most conversations over politics start these days. The questions are debated much more animatedly among the Muslims, who despite having numbers to influence election outcome in around 100 seats across the country, are silent about their choices.

In 2019 elections, ironically, the biggest dilemma among the Muslim community is in fact about lack of choice. The ruling BJP may not want their vote, and the saffron party’s main challengers like the Congress, SP-BSP or Trinamool know the minority community has no place but to come to them.

In 2014, only 23 Muslim MPs were elected to Lok Sabha, one of the lowest numbers since 1952. In fact, in many states, despite sizeable Muslim population, none from the community has reached Lok Sabha—no Muslim MP in Madhya Pradesh since 1991, merely two Muslim MPs in Rajasthan since 1952, none in Gujarat since 1984, none since 2004 in Karnataka. This signals the growing invisiblisation of the elected Muslim representatives. Mainstream political parties are not giving enough tickets, and the Muslim identity is shown at variance with the current nationalistic discourse.

“The failing of the Muslims is that they centre their politics around defeating the BJP. The Muslim voter is silent this time. But silence can result in devastating consequences as it did in the 1975 elections when the Congress was thrown out,” said Mohd Shoaib, activist and chairperson, Rihai Manch, a forum fighting for rights of innocent Muslims jailed on terror charges.

The BJP strategy of strengthening the Hindutva vote had paid off in 2014. As the Muslim votes were divided among many parties, the saffron party got an unprecedented mandate. Realising the Hindu consolidation, many Opposition parties like the Congress fine-tuned their campaign, adopting a softer version of Hindutva to get a larger pie of the Hindu vote bank. The Muslim community's issues were relegated to the background in the subsequent assembly elections.

Parties are playing on the fear factor among the minorities, citing ultra-nationalistic statements made by the ruling party leaders, or number of vigilante incidents by the cow protectors in last five years.

This polarisation has meant that that the community is looking at the non-BJP parties as an alternative in states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh for solace. But, there is no single beneficiary for their electoral affection, thus making it difficult to predict elections.

The situation is particularly acute in Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims can influence the outcome in nearly two dozen seats where their population is over 20 per cent.

The BJP, however, denies the polarisation. “There is no fear factor among them,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh told THE WEEK. Also a candidate from Lucknow, Singh added even Muslims will vote for the BJP.

However, making the contest difficult for the BJP which won 71 seats last time is the strategic caste-based alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party with an aim to combine Muslim, dalit and Yadav vote. They started their campaign with a joint rally from Deoband, the headquarters of Islamic seminary Darul Uloom. Jamiat-e-Islami Hind, a Muslim organisation, had given a call to support the BSP-SP-RLD combine, but also support the Congress where the latter is stronger. As there is a triangular contest in various seats, if the minority community vote gets divided it will indeed help the BJP.

Important candidates to watch out for in the first phase polling in UP were one-time Mayawati confidante Naseemudin Siddiqui fielded from Bijnor by the Congress, alliance candidate Tabassum Hasan from Kairana, who defeated the BJP candidate in a by-poll last year, and alliance candidate Haji Mohammed Yakoob from Meerut. Phase two had no Muslim candidates mounting a credible fight.

Caste arithmetic alone would not fetch votes for the alliance. It is the chemistry on the ground, say BJP strategists. “Many Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress or the alliance have a hardcore image. This has led to fear among the dalits and Jat voters as it happened during the 2014 campaign. This will affect the opposition’s caste and religion arithmetic as non-Muslims are voting for us,” a Union minister claimed.

The BJP was a beneficiary of Muslim vote during the 2017 assembly polls, but this time, the situation appears different. Shaista Ambar, the founder of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) says, “The triple talaq could have been an issue appreciated by Muslim women, but its impact seems negligible given the surge of nationalism.”

Interestingly, even Rahul Gandhi's decision to contest from Wayanad in Kerala is interpreted as a message to the Muslims in rest of the country that Congress has not deserted the community despite its recent soft-Hindutva pitch.

Despite accounting for 19 per cent population, no Muslim could be elected to Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in 2014. But it was West Bengal (which has 27 per cent Muslims) that sent the maximum 8 Muslims to the lower house, out of 23 across the country. The Muslims in the state support non-BJP parties as the campaign in the state had run along the religious lines in the last few years.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, despite her cultivated pro-Muslim image, has never won any of the six Lok Sabha seats dominated by Muslims. There are five Lok Sabha seats which are Muslim majority—Raigunj, Malda (South), Jangipur, Murshidabad and Behrampore. The sixth seat, Malda North, has almost half of voters as Muslims. There are ten Lok Sabha seats where Muslims are more than 30 per cent of the total population. The rest 26 seats are Hindu-dominated.

Interestingly, the BJP has fielded two Muslim candidates from the state, but the sentiment among the community continues to be with the TMC, Left or the Congress. In Jangipur, former president Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijeet has been fielded by the Congress. BJP fielded Mahfuza Khatun, one of its two Muslim candidates in Bengal, a former CPM legislator from South Dinajpur district. Mukherjee, a Hindu Brahmin, has been pitted against three Muslim candidates from left, BJP and TMC in the Muslim-dominated seats of Bengal formerly nurtured by his father. Interestingly, the work of Pranab Mukherjee has strengthened his position and not his community identity in one of the country's most Muslim-dominated but backward district.

In neighbouring Assam, the picture is slightly different though the state has more than one crore Muslim populace. They are dominant in three constituencies—Dhubri, Barpeta and Karimgunj. They also live in big proportion in six other Lok Sabha seats including Silchar, Tezpur and Naogaon, where they are around 40 per cent of the total population. In tribal areas like Konkrajhar and Bodoland as well, Muslims have large presence.

However, unlike Bengal, despite having 35 per cent of the total population in Assam, Muslims constitute less number this time because of the ongoing NRC process. Moreover, the distribution of voters identity cards has not been done completely due to the ongoing NRC process.

However, AIUDF, the major Muslim party, says that they would retain the three seats they won last time. AIUDF won Dhubri, Barpeta and Karimgunj in 2014. The party has been, however, unable to stitch any alliance with Congress this time. But Badruddin Ajmal, Dhubri MP, says, "Despite that, we will win our three seats if not more. But, after the election, we will support Congress to form government at the Centre. We would like to remove Modi from power."

Aminul Islam, General Secretary of the AIUDF, said, "Congress let us down. Earlier, we had come to an understanding that we would have a friendly fight and they would not give tough candidates in our strongholds. But, they broke the truce and fielded prominent candidates in all of our strongholds. We are very much disturbed seeing Congress's attitude."

In another Hindi heartland state, Madhya Pradesh, no Muslim MP has been elected to Lok Sabha for past two decades, though it had produced a host of Muslim leaders in the past. The state which has a population of nearly 50 lakh Muslims out of 7.25 crore witnessed a sharp decline in Muslim representation. Even the current 230-member Assembly has just two Muslim MLAs—Arif Aqueel and Arif Masood, who represent Bhopal (North) and Bhopal (Central) seats in the state capital.

Both the major parties haven't fielded even a single Muslim candidate so far this year. Even in the past two decades, only a few candidates have been fielded by the Congress, and they lost. The intense fight for Bhopal seat between Digvijaya Singh and Sadhvi Pragya is expected to have a polarising effect across various states.

Mohammad Mahir of MP Muslim Vikas Parishad said that Muslims will always be a factor in Indian elections, but in Hindi heartland states like MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, they are ignored due to strong Hindutva factor. “Muslims are silent before elections because community leaders have been able to convince them that it is a secret ballot and they need to wear their supporters’ badge on their arms.”

They did a mistake of not coming out to vote five years ago, but this time they will come out and silently cast their ballot for a good government. They voted heavily in 2018 Assembly polls in MP and the result is there to see. Muslim-dominated seats have been won by the Congress,” he added. In Bihar, even BJP concedes that grand alliance between RJD-Congress-RLSP-HAM will be the sole beneficiary of the Muslim votes.

In Karnataka, Muslims account for nearly 13 per cent of the state's population of 6.5 crore. There have been only 11 Muslim individuals from the state in the past 16 Lok Sabhas. This time, the Congress-JDS alliance has fielded just one Muslim candidate—Congress MLC Rizwan, to contest from Bengaluru Central.

If delimitation has scattered Muslim votes between adjacent constituencies, polarisation of voters with the rise of the BJP has further reduced the chances for a Muslim candidate getting fielded even in Muslim-dominated constituencies. Qazi Arshad Ali, former MLC and author of Karnataka Muslims and Electoral Politics, said, “Delimitation has narrowed the chances of Muslim candidates contesting from seats once considered a safe bet…We are treated as the Congress vote bank. But, the JD(S) or other regional parties too gain due to Muslims’ tactical voting (vote to defeat the BJP). Empowerment of the community is necessary. But, more importantly, reservation for Muslims will help in improving political participation.”

Muzaffar Assadi, a political analyst, said, “The Muslims have remained a loyal votebank of the Congress Party, despite their quiet resentment over poor political representation and socio-economic status. BJP has been made into a monster or the primary enemy of the Muslims. Fear psychosis has led the community to back a single party that can defeat the BJP.”

With the “Hindu-Muslim” divide widening across the country with each elections, a shift in loyalty of Muslims in the state seems far-fetched, despite the presence of Janata Dal Secular, entry of pro-Muslim parties like Social Democratic Party of India, and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen(AIMIM). None except the Congress is perceived as “strong enough” to take on the BJP.

In the past, the Muslim community had moved away from the Congress fold post Babri Masjid demolition and joined the regional parties like SP, BSP and Dravidian parties. But, in Karnataka, the Janata Parivar failed to capitalise on it. Its splinter party JD(S) lost its Muslim faces and lost the trust of Muslims by forming a coalition government with the BJP in 2006.

In Telangana, predicting elections was tough even during 2018 assembly elections because of the inability to study the minds of Muslim voters in the erstwhile Nizam territory. Here, Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM alliance with ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) helped them score over Congress-led alliance. “Muslim do not vote against mainstream trends,” said AIMIM senior leader and MLC Syed Amin-Ul-Hasan Jafri. “But, they will not vote for BJP.” He feels that, going by the election trends in the last few decades, Muslims supported political parties which were likely to come to power. “In the Assembly elections, the Muslims supported the TRS because the Congress could not convince them to vote for them,” he said.

In Telangana, the population of Muslims is around 12 per cent and there are around 30 assembly constituencies where Muslims votes matter as they constitute more than 15 per cent of the voter population. In the Parliament elections too, it is expected that Muslims may back Owaisi. Owaisi is a major factor in Telangana and a headache for Opposition alliance in states like Maharashtra and Bihar.

This perceived marginalisation of the Muslims voters and growing invisbalisation of their elected representatives has the new emerging leaders do some introspection. Hamza Sufiyan, Vice President of the Aligarh Muslim University Student Union says that Muslims have a raw deal but they themselves are responsible for it. “How is it that people are not compelled to talk of our larger interests like education and employment? Why do we allow ourselves to be used only as numbers?”