Why Modi's huge victory is a blow to India's liberal Muslims

The BJP-led NDA’s exceptional performance in the Lok Sabha elections will strengthen the orthodox brigade in the Muslim community, push its secular-liberals on the backfoot, alter the terms of drawing room debates, and deliver a blow to their psyche. All this will stoke anxiety and fear in the community about the future, which, at least this week, will appear gloomy to its members. [caption id=“attachment_1529045” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Are Muslim voters effectively disenfranchised now? PTI[/caption] The community will predictably stereotype Hindus, a tendency which had weakened over the last decade. Perhaps the paramount stereotype will be to perceive the Hindus as anti-Muslim, unable to overcome their primordial passion in voting for a party and its leader, Narendra Modi, whose agenda they suspect is to reduce them to second-class citizens. Forgotten will be the overlapping layers an electoral verdict always comprises. The Muslims will not make allowance for the pull Modi’s media-manufactured development agenda had on the people, nor will they factor in the erosion of UPA’s credibility, nor the portrayal of the PM-in-waiting as a decisive leader. In the enveloping gloom following the elections results, they will brush aside such fine print as the fact that the NDA’s victory is based on a majority of less than 50 percent of votes cast. Their sentiment is understandable. Though this election result the NDA has underscored the possibility of reducing the salience of Muslim voters to irrelevance. If you were to look at the results from just the narrow perspective of victory and defeat, Muslims have been effectively disenfranchised: for the first time in India’s electoral history, the Lok Sabha election has been won without their contribution. The BJP’s Tsunami-like sweep of UP and Bihar, where Muslims are in large numbers, testify to the inefficacy of their votes. Perhaps Muslims are being alarmist. But you won’t think they are if you were to decipher the logical consequences of the BJP winning a majority on its own. For over 20 years, the BJP countered the pressure from its cadre to build the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). It claimed they had to eject these two contentious issues from its agenda because of the demands of coalition politics. The Lok Sabha election has buried this argument. The BJP hardliners will demand their leaders execute both these two political projects forthwith. In fact, this logic was harped upon in the many phone calls I received within hours of the BJP notching an incredible victory. From my conversations with them, I could sense they realise that their bargaining power has been lost, that to come out to protest in the streets at a future date on, say, the Ram Temple issue will only enhance the Hindu consolidation. Yet, even under duress they won’t willingly concede to the BJP’s demands on the Ram Temple and UCC issues. No wonder the future seems troubled to them. Perhaps the BJP leaders, particularly Narendra Modi, will tread cautiously, aware that, apart from UP, the vote for them is for development. But the BJP’s footsoldiers are likely to interpret the results as a licence to flex their muscles and flaunt their lathis. A friend’s driver was told recently he should prepare to leave for Pakistan now that Modi will be the Prime Minister. The Wall Street Journal quoted one Dawood Khan from Varanasi saying hardline Hindus were “bossing around” and taunting him that “your time is up.” And just as I wrote these lines, I received a web link which I opened to read: “MG Vaidya kicks up a new storm; says Muslims should willingly relinquish claim to land where Babri Masjid stood.” For those who don’t know, Vaidya is a senior leader. In their anxiety, Muslims will see a future which others will brush aside as a chimera. No one will be surprised, least of all Muslims, to see the minority government of Nitish Kumar in Bihar collapse, and a fresh assembly poll called before its due date. At the grassroots, the BJP will resort to religious polarisation, not development, to paper over caste contradictions. At best, the BJP’s rhetoric will combine the two. Indeed, it was this strategy which yielded the BJP rich dividends in Uttar Pradesh. Only TV Talking Heads aligned with the saffron brigade did not ascribe, even partially, the factor of communal divide in the BJP’s victory; a communal divide through which fell just about every party, perhaps none as ignominiously as the BSP. Muslims fear the communal divide will not be bridged, for it poses a danger to formations other than the NDA. You don’t need a riot to drive a stake into the society. The rhetoric on the Ram Temple will suffice. Three years hence, the state will have its assembly elections, that is, two years before the next Lok Sabha polls. [caption id=“attachment_1529041” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Modi at his Ahmedabad rally: PTI[/caption] The fruits of development take inordinately long to ripen. Till then, Muslims fear religious polarisation will bring the numbers for the BJP. In their imagining of the future, Muslims, as of now, know the Congress lack the vigour for protests and agitations. Its leaders are accustomed to controlling the levers of power, not riding the passion of streets. The heady smell of power drives them, not ideology. And so, Muslims will wonder who will stand for them. The local satraps who must be nervous at their abject diminishing? No doubt, the Muslim’s nervousness will strengthen the orthodox political elements in its community. They will have a decisive edge in the drawing room debates, and will mock the liberals for bestowing faith in the idea that India is inherently secular, that an overwhelmingly large segment of its population is religiously eclectic and abhors intolerance. Through a fanning of insecurities they will seek to strengthen their stranglehold over the community, frighten the young and educated about the bleak future ahead, hoping they would relinquish their search for alternative politics, even lifestyles. All this will likely give a fillip to ghettoisation, of the mind and living space. This is precisely why it is important to analyse the impact of the defeat of AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal on Muslims. This is because it was a leap of faith for them in Varanasi to support, and admire, a man who spoke about religious harmony in broad terms, did not harp on the 2002 Gujarat riots, as Rahul Gandhi did, and largely kept away from fashioning a sectarian appeal. Indeed, very rarely has the community supported a leader who did not promise the moon to them. Varanasi’s support to Kejriwal was both emotional and rational. But these two features defined the community’s admiration for him pan-India as well, even in those parts where the AAP wasn’t a factor and did not muster votes. In this sense, Varanasi was a case-study of the circumstances in which the community could break free from the shackles of the politics of identity, and that old idea which demanded they vote in favour of those who could assure them security and safety. This is the reason, as is well known, the community tended to vote tactically in favour of a party best placed to defeat the BJP. It was obvious to me on my three trips to Varanasi that Muslims had cast aside traditional calculations and assumptions. Yes, they admired Kejriwal for displaying the audacity in confronting Modi head-on, not through statements drafted in Delhi, but slipping into Modi’s lair called Gujarat. But what excited them was AAP’s political rhetoric of ushering clean governance, rooting out corruption, strengthening the delivery system – water, power, education, healthcare – at the local level, where India lives. Regardless of umpteen media narratives, Muslims were not waiting to decide on their vote on the basis of calculating who was best placed to defeat Modi. They began to line behind Kejriwal on 25 March, the day he held his first rally in the city. Their support to him was based on the assumption that all other social groups, particularly the oppressed, could not but support the AAP’s idea of politics, that he was bound to pose a tough challenge to Modi. When I was in college, my history professor was extremely found of telling, without fail, every batch of students: “1857 was a turning point for India, but India failed to turn.” The Varanasi experience might have the Muslims lament, “We were willing to change, but not others, the Hindus.” Who is to tell them that shifts in social plates are never permanent? Who is to explain that old style Congress politics has led to the assertion of the Hindu right? Nevertheless, it is hard to tell where they will go from here, but I won’t be surprised to find several readers suggest, ‘Pakistan’, which is where so many readers of my past pieces on Firstpost had wanted me banished. (The author is a Delhi-based journalist and can be reached at ashrafajaz3@gmail.com)