Muslims are Being Dwarfed Politically

Arshad Shaikh studies the performance of the Muslim community in the recently concluded Assembly elections in five states of India. The results of the elections were contrary to the predictions of the poll pundits and exit polls. The political marginalization that Muslims suffer can be seen in the number of tickets allotted to them by mainstream political parties and their diminishing representation in the Parliament and legislative assemblies. The results of the recent elections confirm this unfortunate phenomenon. Muslims are being dwarfed politically in a deliberate, systemic, and diabolical manner. Surmounting this existential threat to the Muslim community in India, is an enormous task but one that must be sincerely undertaken immediately.

The following table sums up the political representation in three Hindi heartland states and Telangana that recently went to the polls.

Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan saw 519 MLAs reaching the assembly. However, only 8 of these MLAs are Muslims, and it is worth noting that the BJP didn’t field any Muslim candidates in these three Hindi heartland states. BJP gained significantly winning 332 seats of the 519. In Rajasthan, the Congress gave tickets to 14 Muslim candidates, with five of them winning, compared to 9 Muslim MLAs in the previous assembly. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress fielded Muslim candidates in only two out of 230 seats, and both were successful. In Chhattisgarh, the Congress gave a ticket to one Muslim candidate, Mohammad Akbar, who did not win the election.

In Telangana, Congress secured victory in several seats with the support of a significant Muslim population, unlike in 2018 when the community had backed BRS. One of the seats won by Congress is Warangal West, which they had not won in the previous four elections. The community comprises over 60,000 voters in this constituency. Similarly, Muslim votes helped Congress rout sitting BRS MLAs in Mahbubnagar, Huzurnagar, Warangal East, Khammam, Bodhan, Ibrahimpatnam, Shadnagar, Ramagundam, Nizamabad Rural, and Nalgonda.

However, the scenario was different in Greater Hyderabad and its surrounding areas, where the community supported BRS and its ally AIMIM. The Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM successfully retained all seven seats in Nampally, Charminar, Yakutpura, Chandrayangutta, Karwan, Bahadurpura, and Malakpet. Owaisi had urged the community to support BRS in all seats except the nine it was contesting. BRS emerged victorious in Muslim-dominated constituencies such as Sanathnagar and Secunderabad with a significant majority.

The community’s vote also contributed to BRS’s success in Khairatabad, Jubilee Hills, Sangareddy, Secunderabad Cantonment, and Musheerabad. Although the community traditionally supported Congress, they shifted their allegiance to BRS in 2014 and 2018. While they had no major grievances against BRS, Congress’s victory over BJP in Karnataka gave the community hope that a win in Telangana would strengthen the party’s position against BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. It is believed that a considerable section of the community still supported BRS due to the absence of communal riots during their two terms. Zameer Khan, the Minorities Minister of Karnataka, attributed the shift towards Congress to the party’s extensive outreach efforts in recent months.

In Mizoram, the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) won 27 seats in the 40-member assembly in becoming the youngest party in the northeastern state to form a government. The Mizo National Front (MNF) won 10 seats, while BJP bagged two and Congress finished with one seat.

One of the reasons the BJP cites and which is followed by the Congress (without being too vocal about it) for not giving tickets to Muslim candidates is the “winnability” factor. This reason helps these parties wash away allegations of bias in their selection of candidates and being above caste and religious considerations.

Speaking to the Quint, veteran journalist Shams ur Rehman Alavi says, “Since there is no other party or caste group to align with, you need a constituency with over 40% Muslims else there is no winnability factor. In MP, votes are cast all on religious lines. The public has also gotten used to a BJP-led government. They haven’t had a non-BJP government in a long time now.”

Another aspect influencing the dynamics of Muslim representation in the electoral politics of many states in our country is the existence of a bipolar political system, where individuals are confined to a binary choice between supporting either the Congress or the BJP. The absence of a third party or any form of competition has resulted in Muslims feeling trapped and marginalized between the two dominant political forces, namely the BJP and Congress. In states where a regional party is present, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Telangana – Muslim representation has historically been more favorable. This can be attributed to the fact that the community is provided with a viable alternative to the Congress, allowing for a broader range of political options and potentially better representation.

A long-standing legitimate grouse that the Muslim community has about the attempts to systemically reduce their political representation is the diabolical manner in which the delimitation of constituencies is carried out. Delimitation refers to the process of establishing boundaries or the geographic drawing-up of constituencies to represent the changes in population accurately. The Delimitation Commission is supposed to operate independently, without any influence from the executive.

The Commission’s decisions are final and cannot be challenged in court. The purpose of delimitation is to ensure equal representation for equal segments of the population, to prevent any political party from gaining an unfair advantage due to geographical divisions, and to uphold the principle of “One Vote One Value.” However, what is practiced and very apparent is the cutting up of constituencies in a manner that diminishes the Muslim concentration in any one constituency.

One reform in the electoral system that Muslims must study carefully is the switch from a First Past the Post (FPTP) to a Proportional Representation system. The distortion by FPTP becomes evident when we analyze the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won 89% of the seats and received 42.6% of the votes, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) secured only 5 seats with 22% of the votes.

In West Bengal, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) obtained 39.8% of the votes and won 34 seats, while the CPI(M) managed to secure only 2 seats with 22.96% of the votes. This trend is replicated in election after election. The progressive reduction of Muslims in Parliament and legislative assemblies does not bode well for the community. It is a blot on a democracy. Mainstream political parties must not ignore this challenge if they are truly patriotic.