Communalising Bihar polls: Talk of Muslim 'consolidation' is polarising

Come an election in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh and media analysts begin to tirelessly and tritely measure the degree of consolidation of Muslim voters behind one or the other party. This attempt at gauging this consolidation has an unsaid assumption – it is in the nature of Muslims to vote differently from their Hindu brethren, their preference confined to those political parties which appeal to their religious sentiments, however defined. Not only is this assumption of analysts flawed, their commentaries also reek of insidious intentions. Such narratives contribute immensely to the communal mobilisation and polarisation before every election in the Hindi heartland. To begin with, the tendency of Muslims to rally behind a party is neither unique nor a solitary example of community consolidation. Just about every numerous social group in the Hindi heartland, as also in most parts of India, identify a party of its preference – and vote it in substantial numbers. [caption id=“attachment_2345160” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “] Representative image. Reuters[/caption] But what Brahmins or Rajputs do is not deemed communal, even though, as has often happened in the past, their party of preference resorts to divisive politics. The label of communal is only invoked to describe the voting behaviour of Muslims. The tendency of social groups to have a marked preference for one party can be gleaned from the data of the National Election Study Series of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). (All data in this piece has been taken from there.) It might be instructive for analysts to note that 47 per cent of upper castes voted the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, as against a mere 13 per cent for the Congress. No doubt, last year’s election has been described as a “realigning” one, a term political scientists have coined to describe the phenomenon of social groups voting differently from how they did in the past. The term realigning ought to suggest to analysts that there exists a predictable voting pattern among every social group. However, the past pattern of voting changes at the introduction of extraordinary elements in the political landscape. Last year, the BJP’s decision to project Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate was the principal factor behind social groups rethinking their past preferences for political parties. However, this was truer of groups other than upper castes. They have been relatively quite consistent in voting the BJP post-Mandal. For instance, in the 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha elections, respectively, 31 per cent and 35 per cent of upper castes voted the BJP. Not only this, upper castes constitute the BJP’s mainstay. As a percentage of the total votes the BJP polled, they contributed as high as 49 per cent of the party’s vote-share in 1996, in fact, always remaining above the 40 per cent-mark till the turn of this century. As a share of the BJP’s votes, the upper castes’ declined to 36 per cent in 2009, largely because the party was voted out of power. The share of upper castes in the party’s vote-kitty came down last year as well, to 33 per cent, but this was a consequence of other social groups gravitating to it in larger numbers than before. By contrast, the support of Muslims for the Congress, which bags the highest percentage of the community’s votes at the all-India level, has touched the 40 per cent-mark, between 1996 and 2014, only once – in the 1999 Lok Sabha election. In both the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 38 per cent of Muslims voted the Congress. Very significantly, a substantial chunk of this share of 38 per cent came from states other than Uttar Pradesh, where only 11 per cent voted it last year, down from the 25 per cent it registered in 2009. In Uttar Pradesh, the largest chunk of Muslim votes went to the SP (58 per cent) and then the BSP (18 per cent). Again, in the State Assembly election of 2012, the SP bagged 39 per cent of Muslims votes, down from the 45 per cent it had in the 2007 state poll, which the BSP won. It belies the arguments of those who claim Muslim votes determine which of the non-BJP party wins any election. Analysts will quickly dub the SP as communal, on the basis of its popularity among the Muslims. Yet they wouldn’t label the surge in Jat votes for the BJP likewise – as against 31 per cent of them voting it in the 2009 Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh, a whopping 77 per cent of them did last year. This 46-percentage-point increase, for most analysts, was because of Modi’s development agenda. There can’t be a more fallacious and motivated argument than that, given the grisly Muzaffarnagar riots and the BJP’s pre-poll rhetoric to keep the communal cauldron simmering. Western Uttar Pradesh will have no respite from communal mobilisation until the 2017 UP Assembly elections. But you will never hear analysts talk about the Hindu consolidation behind the BJP. It will always, at best, be described as the Jat consolidation, despite the BJP’s concerted efforts to subsume their caste and occupational consciousness in the overarching Hindu identity. When more than 50 per cent of Brahmin, Rajput and Vaish of UP voted the BJP in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, which further increased by at least 20 percentage points in each group last year, it was deemed as a rational, non-communal choice. That was because of Modi’s development agenda, it was said. These analysts are back to pushing their theory of Muslim consolidation as the Bihar election inches closer. Judge the duplicitous nature of their theory from the following set of figures. Between the 1996 Lok Sabha election and last year’s, the upper castes there often voted overwhelmingly for the BJP and its allies (BJP plus), dipping below 50 per cent only once. In the Lok Sabha elections of 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2014, more than 70 per cent of upper castes voted the BJP plus. In comparison, over 70 per cent of Muslims voted for the RJD alliance only twice, in 1999 and 2004, going down to a low of 30 per cent in 2009. In the Assembly election of the following year, the RJD managed just 32 per cent of Muslim votes. It is the Yadav caste which has been consistently loyal to the RJD, having never voted less than 60 per cent for Lalu’s party, whether in Assembly or Lok Sabha elections, from 1996. The CSDS data clearly demonstrates that Muslims demonstrate a greater variety in their voting choices than upper castes do. Yet the latter’s voting pattern isn’t perceived to be communal or driven by the politics of identity. Obviously, Muslims are likely to demonstrate a greater uniformity of voting in the forthcoming Bihar election. This is because the community’s top three choices – the RJD, the JD (U) and the Congress – have cobbled an electoral alliance. But why should Muslims voting overwhelmingly for an alliance be termed as consolidation and, impliedly, communal? The answer: to project the Muslim consolidation as being directed against the Hindus. This facilitates the counter-mobilisation of Hindus by the BJP, the political project of which has always been to translate the religious majority of Hindus into a political majority. This entails subsuming caste identity into the pan-India Hindu religious personality. However, a problem arises because of the caste contradiction of our society. Several OBC and lower castes have their own parties of preference. This is based on the perception of which of these entities protects and promotes the interests of which social group(s). This is where talk of Muslim consolidation comes in handy. It allows the BJP to project it as geared against the Hindus, stoking their fears and prejudices. In according salience to the Hindu religious identity the BJP hopes to paper over the caste contradictions. Thus, in the battle of hegemony between the upper caste and lower castes the Muslim community becomes the casualty. Partly, this campaign against the Muslim consolidation is an outcome of upper castes losing their position of prominence in politics. Earlier, during the era of Congress dominance, it was the alliance of upper castes, Muslims and Dalits that provided the party a numerical majority. But Mandal cleaved this social alliance, not the least because the grand old party was confused in its responses to reservation. The OBCs were never, ever great supporters of the Congress. But Mandal consolidated them, besides ensuring a section of the Dalits rallied behind OBC or Dalit-dominated parties. The Muslims moved away from the Congress, to a large extent in the Hindi heartland, because of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. This breakdown of the Congress alliance saw the upper castes switch to the BJP, backing its (religious) identity-driven politics from the time LK Advani clambered on the rath in 1990 and blazed a trail of communal rioting. To this politics of religion has been added, over the years, the slogans of good and clean governance and development. In Bihar, the upper castes haven’t been in power for now nearly 25 years. Its control over the block, bank, thana – the tripod through which rural India is controlled – has weakened considerably. It thus hopes to re-capture power through the BJP piggybacking Modi and polarizing voters. The BJP doesn’t expect Muslims to vote for them. Nor will Muslims – they have to suffer from a sadomasochism variant to vote the party campaigning perennially against them, of which the latest examples are the ghar wapsi and love jihad. Indeed, the talk of Muslim consolidation is just another tactic of the BJP to execute its own project. Analysts in the media are party to it, consciously or otherwise. (Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail.com)