As longest election process in the world, spanning 73 days and seven phases, draws to a close in India, a stark reality emerges concerning the status and treatment of the Muslim community within the nation by various political parties. The final phase of voting will take place on Saturday and the results are expected to be announced on 4 June.
It was clear from the outset that the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would use the Muslim community as a campaign issue as it seeks a third term in the 2024 elections.
The Hindu nationalists have long relied on three key arguments to win support: Cows, Pakistan and Muslims.
The first two were used effectively in the 2014 and 2019 elections. This year, an attempt was made to bring Pakistan back into the electoral discourse. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself tried to bring Pakistan into an electoral battle by comparing the Congress party’s electoral manifesto with that of the Muslim League and former Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry’s praise for Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
However, this strategy did not find much favour with the public and the campaign on this front was kept muted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party focused on creating fear among the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority.
At a campaign rally on April 21, 2024, he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators.”
He later doubled down on these remarks, suggesting that if India’s largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, came to power, the wealth of Hindus would be snatched and given to communities that “have too many children,” a seemingly lightly veiled reference to Indian Muslims.
This approach had an immediate and far-reaching impact as even the secular parties shied away from giving tickets to Muslim candidates. The Congress party avoided using the term “Muslim” in its election manifesto.
-India’s electoral map
A look at the Indian electoral map shows that out of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats, Muslims comprise 15% or more in 161 seats spread across the country. In the parliamentary elections under the first-past-the-post system, a vote share of 15% is crucial as the winning candidate often gets 25-30% of the votes in multi-contest elections.
There are 86 seats with a Muslim population share of 20% or more and 16 constituencies in which the share of Muslims is over 50 %.
Despite these figures, the secular parties have maintained a considerable distance from Muslim candidates and have asked them to vote in favour of their respective party’s candidates without fielding Muslim candidates.
The Congress party fielded 328 candidates, out of which only 19 were Muslims. This is a decrease from 31 and 34 Muslim candidates fielded in 2014 and 2019 respectively. The Samajwadi Party of Uttar Pradesh, a party that relies on Muslim votes, nominated 71 candidates, of whom only four were Muslims, compared to eight in 2019.
In Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) fielded only two Muslim candidates for the 24 seats it is contesting in an alliance with the Congress party.
The Left parties have given tickets to 10 of the total 82 Muslim candidates.
The ruling BJP, which is contesting for 440 seats, nominated only one Muslim candidate, M Abdul Salam from Malappuram in the southern state of Kerala. During Modi’s roadshow in Kerala, Salam was kept away to avoid pictures or videos with Modi that might have angered the party’s Hindu core constituency.
Since Modi’s rise to power in 2014, the Muslim vote has been systematically devalued. Secular parties, now wary of antagonising Hindu voters, are keeping a wide berth from Muslim candidates.
Modi and his strategist Amit Shah have perfected a formula to neutralise the Muslim vote. They encourage numerous independent Muslim candidates to contest in Muslim-majority constituencies to fragment the electorate. Moreover, secular parties also nominated Muslim candidates to further divide their votes.
On the other hand, the BJP goes to consolidate the Hindu vote by instilling a dose of Hindutva and fear of Muslims in them.
As a result, the BJP managed to win 38 of the 86 Muslim-majority seats in 2014 and 36 in 2019.
-Secular parties defend fielding fewer Muslims
Secular party leaders argue that this explains why they fielded fewer Muslim candidates this time. Their leaders point to the recent state elections in Bihar and West Bengal as a test case, where Muslims overwhelmingly supported secular Hindu candidates from the RJD and Trinamool Congress, respectively, and rejected Muslim candidates from the Congress and Left Alliance.
This election cycle also shows that whenever the Muslims prove their electoral strength, the Hindu vote tends to be polarised against them. This is a question that Muslim leaders need to ponder over. Why have they failed to reach out to the Hindu majority population, especially the lower castes, and allay their fears about their religion?
A survey by India Today magazine found that 61% of Muslims feel that their economic situation has worsened since 2014, compared to 35% of those belonging to other religions, indicating a trend of strategic voting by Muslims in this election.
For many years, the BJP leaders had been also trying to reach out to Muslims. They tried to woo Muslims with the slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” (development for all). However, the tactic of targeting Muslims in the 2024 elections has thwarted these efforts. Experts say, the party’s decision not to field candidates in the Muslim-majority constituencies in Kashmir further hurt this outreach.
According to a Muslim office-bearer in the BJP, they were told that they should not look at Muslims as a single group but see them through the lens of different sects and castes and devise separate strategies for the Deobandi, Barelvi and Shias.
They were also asked to focus on the Pasmanda Muslims (backward Muslims) as the caste system is as prevalent among the Muslims as it is among the Hindus. The only difference is that, unlike Hindus, Muslims do not practise untouchability.
They have been asked to pit backward Muslims against the elite.
Modi himself had swung to reach out to the Bohra Muslims. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was told to reach out to Shia Muslims. He succeeded in getting an aggressive Shia cleric from Lucknow, Saiyyid Kalbe Jawwad, to tie an imamzamin or amulet on his arm. Singh is also a candidate from Lucknow. This tying of amulet was to send a signal to the Shia voters.
No less than 57 per cent of India’s 200 million Muslims belong to the backward classes. An insider in the BJP told this author that the voting behaviour of backward Muslims in these elections will determine the BJP’s future strategy towards Muslims.
Although the BJP has been playing the backward versus elite game for many years, the Hindu nationalists’ general attitude towards Muslims has been summed up decades ago by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister and deputy prime minister, in a meeting with noted poet Josh Malih Abadi.
Josh writes in his autobiography that Patil told him that he did not despise the Muslims who came from outside, for example from Central Asia or the Arab countries, and settled and ruled India over the centuries.
Patil said he despised those lower caste Hindus who converted to Islam and thought they could now compete with others (upper caste Hindus). According to Josh, Patil even labelled these converted Muslims as rioters, evil and corrupt.
But Modi, unlike his political master Patel, has chosen a different strategy by taking on backward Muslims and turning them against the so-called elite Muslims. The Muslims themselves give their opponents such a handle by remaining entrenched in their caste identities.
However, tackling the backwardness of these 200 million Muslims is crucial for India if it is to achieve its economic goals of becoming a five trillion-dollar economy by 2027 and a seven trillion-dollar economy by 2030.
It is imperative that the new government develops programmes that enable Muslims to make a meaningful contribution to the country’s economy rather than making them an election issue. They must be placed on an equal footing with followers of other religions. Without the progress of such a large population and without an element of compassion for them, India’s economic goals will remain unfulfilled.
