By Kabir Khan
Muslim voters in UP are clear-headed about what they want despite a bewildering array of options. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly election is half way through. If one looks at the multiplicity of choices before Muslim voters across different regions of the state one is sure to get confused about where the Muslim vote is headed.
The confusion is confounded by the fact that the community, like any other large religious community, is not monolithic. It is as differentiated and stratified by caste, class and political leanings as any other. The community does not vote as a single bloc, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
So far, after 1989, a sizeable section of the Muslim vote has gone to the Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj Party, followed by Congress and other smaller parties, including the Muslim parties. A small, inconsequential percentage has voted for BJP as well despite BJP’s clear anti-Muslim political agenda. This year, too, some Muslims are going to vote for BJP for one reason or the other.
In UP, as elsewhere, a microscopic Muslim minority looks at Congress as the B-team of BJP, with some justification, of course. Their argument: Congress never tried to stop devastating anti-Muslim riots anywhere, nor did it show any interest in bringing the culprits to book.
They do admit that mostly those killings were not started and sustained by Congress but by RSS and its affiliates like BJP, Bajrang Dal and assorted bands of thugs. In a smaller number of cases, however, Congress workers and government leaders in states as well as government officials and police were involved. That means there still is some difference between BJP and Congress, but a section of Muslims does not recognise it. To this section there is no difference between voting for BJP and voting for Congress.
The Congress culpability in mass killing of minorities was more clearly visible in 1984 anti-Sikh killings where Congress leaders and workers were directly involved in the massacres as the police and administration either looked on passively or joined the killers.
Yet another instance of direct involvement was seen in post-Babri Masjid killings and rapes. Congressmen were participants in those rapes, murders and arson, particularly in Surat, Gujarat. These memories have not faded fully even though public memory is proverbially short.
In fact, a sizable part of the Muslim population, including those who vote for Congress, feels that the post-1989 phase of anti-Muslim hysteria in the country is largely the handiwork of Congress. This situation, which has hurt Muslims and Muslim interests deeply, is traced back to the placing of idols in Babri Masjid soon after independence, under Congress rule at Centre and in UP; ban on Muslim entry into the mosque but permission for idol worship; then opening of the Babri Masjid for general Hindu worshipers and ban on Muslim entry, all under Congress rule, the last under Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister and N.D. Tewari as UP CM.
All this has been a major factor in Congress being packed off to political wilderness in UP and Bihar for a long time. As new equations form, Congress has begun to re-emerge from oblivion. However, despite Rahul Gandhi’s public posturing, not enough Muslim vote is going to be mobilised in Congress Party’s favour to make it the absolute winner.
In the polling so far, substantial upper and middle caste-Hindu vote has gone to Mulayam Singh Yadav, followed by Congress Party and BSP. As the dominant mood at the moment is development and prosperity rather than internal conflict, BJP has been not the runner-up, but one of the also-rans. Some of the non-ideological vote of the BJP has also gone to the Congress.
In areas inhabited by marginalized and Dalit Muslims (areas where the Muslims of socially least advantaged castes live) there has been a clear propensity for BSP. That is quite natural.
All said, the current feeling among a sizable majority of Muslims in UP is that a Mulayam Singh-led government supported by Congress and other parties fits the bill. That also somehow fits in with the larger framework. To a majority of Muslims Congress is not a choice but a lesser evil compared to BJP and its allies. That sums it up.
(Khan is a social activist. He can be reached at [email protected])