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Playing the communal card
The move to polarize the electorate is a cynical ploy which will not realize too many electoral gains, but risks seriously scarring the social fabric of this country
In the past few weeks, the quality of political discourse in India has sunk to a new low. Anyone hearing the exchanges between the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Congress, the fringe elements of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and sections of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will be forgiven for believing that the 2014 general election has been reduced to a Hindu-Muslim face-off. Not only does it risk a violent confrontation between these two communities, it also insults the intelligence of the electorate, serves a slap to the face of aspirational voters and seeks to reinforce religious stereotypes.
Beginning with the appeal of the Congress party to preserve the secular vote (a euphemism for consolidating the Muslim vote), the discourse has rapidly deteriorated.
Azam Khan, the strongman of the SP, went a step further a few days later, claiming that it was the Muslim soldiers of the Indian army that won the battle for Kargil against Pakistan-sponsored intruders.
About a fortnight later, there was a predictable response from the BJP’s fringe groups; its leader from Bihar, Giriraj Singh, bluntly told a rally that those opposed to the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi should be sent to Pakistan.
Then a leaked video showed AAP leader Shazia Ilmi exhorting a gathering of Muslims to stop being secular and vote communally. Of course, in the last week, the Congress made its none too subtle appeal by promising reservation for Muslims in the quota reserved for the Other Backwards Classes (OBCs).
The efforts are obvious: one wants to be perceived as the guarantors of the safety and well-being of Muslims even as the other is projected as their tormentor. How did things come to such a pass?
For someone who has been closely following political developments in the last one year, the deterioration in the discourse in this year’s general election should not come as a surprise. To put it bluntly, there has been a systemic effort to stoke communal polarization. What should be of surprise and equally a cause for concern should be the fact that the tenor of the conversation has become dangerously polarized in the past few weeks.
A report published in The Indian Express on Sunday reveals that communal riots rose by 25% in 2013. The data quoting home ministry statistics shows that these clashes were concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar and Rajasthan—no coincidence that these are the battleground states which will determine the outcome of Modi’s challenge to the incumbent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Most recently, there were the riots that happened in Muzaffarnagar, which led to the displacement of nearly 50,000 people.
The cynical argument underlying these actions is that such polarization, by stoking the insecurities of Muslims, consolidates the so-called Muslim vote bank. I am no scholar, but based on anecdotal evidence, always believed that Muslims are far more heterogeneous than what such reductionists would have us believe. Yes, they may be united in challenging the BJP, but not necessarily in their alternative political choice. If indeed this is true, then the move to polarize the electorate is nothing but a cynical ploy which would not realize too many electoral gains but, at the same, risk seriously scarring the social fabric of this country.
Especially since this election had served up a tremendous opportunity to canvass for votes other than just on the basis of the traditional divisions of social identity of caste and religion. The rising aspirations and the youthful demographic bulge had laid the basis, but clearly our politicians think otherwise.
A pre-poll survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti revealed that the top five issues influencing voters, including Muslims, in Uttar Pradesh were development (20%), price rise (17%), corruption (17%), unemployment (8%) and condition of roads (5%). It is consistent with other data put out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) on employment by religious groups, which show that Muslims are the worst-off and, hence, equally aspirational in their behaviour.
Yet the political campaign in the state (and elsewhere) by the so-called secular parties has focused on guaranteeing security and protection to Muslims. The rhetoric has been such that it is, as CSDS scholar Hilal Ahmed points out in a piece in the Economic and Political Weekly, almost forcing Muslims to react along conventional lines. In conclusion, Ahmed serves up a poser: “Is it a reflection of political manipulations for the sake of the Muslim vote? Or is it a problem of political frameworks by which Muslim political responses have been interpreted in post-colonial India?”
According to Ahmed, these two conclusions need to be explored further to evolve a new intellectual outlook to appreciate the Muslim identity and understand the political vocabulary in which Muslim communities articulate their anxieties, expectations and demands. He is right.
Politicians are forcibly hanging on to a discourse that has long outlived its time. In a country bounding with aspirations and driven by a younger generation that has considerably less baggage from the past, the option is not necessarily a binary social choice.
But are politicians listening?
Anil Padmanabhan is deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics. Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com
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First Published:27 Apr 2014, 09:27 PM IST
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