Fighting for the Muslim
vote By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - With general elections just around
the corner, India's political parties are scrambling to
win the support of the country's Muslim population. Even
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist
party, is going all out to court the Muslim vote.
Last week, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
often regarded as the BJP's moderate face, called on
Muslims to extend support to his party. Vajpayee's
appeal came at a rally in New Delhi in which several
thousand Muslims from different parts of the country
participated. The meeting, held in the backdrop of some
Muslim leaders joining the BJP, was aimed at projecting
the party as a friend of India's minorities.
Muslims constitute 12.5 percent of India's
population and they have traditionally shied away from
supporting the BJP. The BJP is part of the Sangh
Parivar, an umbrella grouping of Hindu right-wing
organizations such as the extremist Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)
and the Bajrang Dal. Many BJP members are activists of
the RSS, the organization that was believed to have been
behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Another hot topic at hand is the support of
Sangh Parivar constituents for a temple to be
constructed on a site in the northern Indian city of
Ayodhya that both Hindus and Muslims regard as sacred.
In December 1992, Sangh Parivar activists tore down
Babri mosque, sparking Hindu-Muslim riots in which at
least 2,000 people were killed. About two years ago,
Sangh Parivar activists unleashed violence on Muslims in
Gujarat, while the BJP government in the state condoned
the violence, even justifying it.
Now with
elections approaching, the BJP is trying to win Muslim
hearts and minds and, more important, their votes. In
his speech at the rally, Vajpayee reassured those in
attendance that his party believes in peaceful
coexistence and asserted that India can never be a
theocratic nation. "Get out of the fear that is dividing
the nation and vote for a government that would not
allow any community to live in fear," he said. He drew
his audience's attention to his government's efforts to
build peace with Pakistan.
In a bid to strike a
chord with his Muslim audience, Vajpayee, while speaking
in Hindi, used several Urdu words as well. (Urdu is the
language that many Muslims in India speak.) Vajpayee
pointed out that if the BJP was a communal party it
would have been open only to the Hindus.
It is a
change in the image of the BJP as a Hindu communal party
that is behind the BJP's zealous effort to woo Muslim
politicians to join the party. It has succeeded in
finally winning over Arif Mohammed Khan, a former member
of the opposition Congress party. It is even trying to
get disgruntled Muslim Congress leaders like Najma
Hepatullah, deputy chairperson of the Upper House of
parliament, C K Jaffer Sharief and A R Antulay to cross
over too.
According to BJP politicians, the
strategy for the upcoming polls is to "soften" the
party's image. The Ayodhya mandir-masjid (temple-mosque)
issue will be put on the backburner during the campaign.
No more rhetoric equating Muslims, Pakistan and
terrorists - at least until the elections are over.
Economic development, not Hindutva, will be its mantra
during the campaign. So why this volte-face with
regarded to Muslims? It may be that it suddenly dawned
on the party that if India is to survive, its secularism
must not be destroyed; however, it is likely that it was
electoral calculations that have forced it to rethink
its strategy.
Although a blatantly anti-Muslim
campaign in the Gujarat assembly polls in December 2002
helped the BJP to return to power with a sweeping
majority there, the BJP has realized that raising the
mandir-masjid issue in the rest of the country will not
help it win the general elections. Some of its electoral
allies are uncomfortable with its Hindutva ideology. And
with Muslims likely to influence the outcome in at least
one-fourth of the constituencies, it makes little sense
to ignore or alienate Muslim voters. Hence, the adoption
of a new Muslim-friendly face.
The question is
whether the Muslim voter will be convinced that the "new
BJP" is indeed a party he can trust. Several Muslims who
voted for the BJP in the last general election told Asia
Times Online that they had done so because they felt
that there were fewer Hindu-Muslim riots when the BJP
was in power than when it was in the opposition. This,
they explained, was not because they thought the BJP
governed well, but that as part of the government, it
needed to behave in a more responsible manner.
Such arguments were completely disproved in 2002
during the riots in Gujarat, when the BJP government
stood by while Sangh Parivar-led mobs attacked Muslims.
While some Muslims, especially those from the
upper-class, might believe that their economic interests
are better served under the BJP, the average Muslim
firmly believes that his sense of security is under
threat with BJP at the helm.
Few Muslims are
impressed with members of their community joining the
BJP. They admit that Muslims who have been with the BJP
have held top posts. Shahnawaz Khan is a minister in the
Vajpayee cabinet, Mukhtar Naqvi is a BJP spokesperson
and Sikhander Bhakt, who died recently, was the governor
of Kerala. However, none of these individuals have a
following within the Muslim masses. Shahnawaz Khan's
influence is limited to Bihar, and Mukhtar Naqvi has no
mass base. Arif Mohammed Khan is said to be powerless
outside his constituency in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The
Muslim masses generally view these men as opportunists
and traitors. Their presence in the BJP is hardly likely
to convince Muslim voters that the BJP is not
anti-Muslim.
The Samajwadi Party, which has
attracted Muslim votes so far - its leader Mulayam Singh
Yadav is referred to as Maulana Mulayam, for being
overly pro-Muslim - is being seen increasingly as
tilting towards the BJP. In an abortive bid to correct
that perception, Yadav recently announced that Friday
would be a half-day in schools to enable Muslims to go
to the mosque for namaaz (prayers).
Not
to be outdone by its rivals, the Congress too is going
all out to attract eminent Muslims into its fold. While
Muslims feel that the party has always viewed them as a
vote-bank rather than as a community that needed help,
they feel that Congress is perhaps their best bet. The
BJP has traditionally criticized the Congress' strategy
of "appeasing Muslims" and has accused it of being
"pseudo-secular". Indeed, prior to the meteoric rise of
the BJP in the nineties, Congress was blatantly
communal, stirring communal passions to win votes.
While many support the Congress today as the
bulwark against the BJP's communalism, its adoption of
what is described as a "soft-Hindutva" or a
"soft-saffron" line has alienated secular sections of
the population and the minorities. Congress, while keen
to win the Muslim heart, is hesitant to alienate the
Hindu voter. In the process, it has ended up falling
between two stools. However, it has been successful in
attracting Muslim clerics, some of whom have influence
over the voters, into its fold.
Especially in
the state of Uttar Pradesh, which returns the largest
number of members to parliament, where the Muslim vote
is the most significant and where the mandir-masjid
issue is most explosive, the Muslim voter faces a huge
dilemma. Who should she/he vote for? The Samajwadi Party
has in recent months been flirting with the BJP. The
Bahujan Samaj Party was in coalition with the BJP in the
previous government in the state. Congress, despite its
mixed record, might protect the Muslims the best, but
are its candidates in a position to win? Would the
Muslim voter end up wasting his vote by backing a horse
that is likely to lose instead of backing another
candidate, even if he is less secular, but stands a
chance of defeating the BJP? And finally, is the BJP's
new moderate line just a pre-election mask?
What
worries the Muslim voter is that there are not many
Vajpayees in the BJP. He might be extending a hand of
friendship to the Muslims, but that does not mean that
other BJP leaders or the Sangh Parivar's storm-troopers
are doing so. If the BJP wins a clear majority in
parliament and is not dependent on its more secular
allies as it was in the last parliament, there is every
reason to believe that the BJP will press forward to
implement its Hindutva agenda. At the same time, there
is every reason to believe that if the BJP does not win
the election, it will go back to its pursuit of its
anti-Muslim agenda, if only to stir instability in the
country and make governance for its rivals difficult.
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