The cabinet Thursday gave its approval for enactment of the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill. The bill purportedly aims at preventing sectarian strife and quicker justice to victims. The bill envisages this by attempting to preventocommunal violence and related offences, and ensure speedy investigation and dispensation of justice. It will also impose enhanced punishment on those guilty of communal violence, providing relief and rehabilitation facilities to the victims and empowering the states and central authorities to discharge their duties in assisting victims in the matter. PTI was more specific in what the bill means. It said the law was meant to givemore teeth to law enforcement agencies to protect religious minorities against rioters was today approved by the Union Cabinet.
With the battle for Uttar Pradesh hotting up the Congress is clearly eyeing the Muslim Vote Bank. Offstumped takes a hard look at what insights if any can be drawn about the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh and how that is likely to influence the outcome in 2007.
In the 2002 assembly elections there were about 46 muslim MLAs elected out of as total of 403 assembly seats. So it is reasonable to assume that in about 10% of the assembly seats there was some kind of muslim vote consolidation save the odd constituency where a muslim candidate may have won without any significant vote consolidation. Another interesting statistic from the 2002 assembly election was that in these 46 seats won by muslims the runner up was a muslim in only 7 seats while a whopping majority of the seats the runner-up was a non-muslim. The other interesting statistic is that in an equal number of seats the runner up was a Muslim where the winner was a non-muslim. So in effect in roughly about 86 seats muslims candidates were either winners or runners-up. A crude measure of the size of the battleground where Muslim vote consolidation has in the past made an impact and will likely make an impact in the current election. In 2002 the SP which had 143 MLAs to begin with had a shorfall of about 60 odd MLAs. The 40 additional seats in which Muslims were runners up could have swung the pendulum the SP way pretty darn close.
The Muslim Vote Consolidation is not without precedent in recent times. The Ajmal experiment in Assam paid off rich dividends with the AUDF contesting in 69 seats and winning 10, contrast this with the BJP contesting 125 seats and also winning only 10. What is astounding is the vote percentages with which the AUDF supported Muslim candidates won the elections in these 10 seats. For example in Bilasipara West in Assam the total turnout was 82%, which is very high for any election in India, however the winning Muslim candidate from AUDF polled only 24% of the votes. In Katigora which had nearly 70% voter turnout, the winning Muslim candidate from AUDF polled only 37%. Badruddin Ajmal himself in Jamunamukh which had a voter turnout close to 80% polled less than 50%. The story is pretty much the same in the rest of the seats save a couple. The lesson from Assam seems to be that despite a fragmented polity, there was sufficient consolidation of Muslim votes behind an upapologetically Muslim Political Outfit to ensure electoral victory despite very high overall voter turnouts.
Leading the charge in Uttar Pradesh is Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid Maulana Syed Ahmed Bhukhari who sometime back announced the formation of a political front Uttar Pradesh United Democratic Front (UPUDF) to replicate the Assam experiment. Lending support to Bukhari are Assam’s AUDF and C.M. Ibrahim of the AIPJD from Karnataka as well as the grand old dinosaur of Indian Politics V.P. Singh’s Jan Morcha. The electoral strategy of these outfits is to target 150 odd assembly seats which they claim to have more than 20% Muslim population. Of these as Offstumped has revealed atleast 86 have had very viable Muslim candidates. The effectiveness of this front in consolidating the Muslim Vote Bank remains to be seen.
Offstumped Bottomline: All of 2006 we saw an environment of increasing Muslim Mobilization on Islamic issues. Starting with the controversy in Uttar Pradesh over the Danish Cartoons which were followed by the rather shameful mobilization of Muslims in favor of Iranian Nukes and then against the visit by President George Bush by the so called secular parties. As the UP Polls near the Congress seems to be unapologetically moving ahead with wooing the Muslim Vote Bank with the Communal Violence bill timed to coincide with the five year Godhra, Gujarat Riots anniversary. The reasons are quite clear, the Muslim Vote Bank is real and the 86 odd assembly seats attest to it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
And so, the Congress brings out its trump card, not only timed to coincide with Godhra, but also hot on the heels of the scathing defeat in Punjab. If this is not vote-bank appeasement, what is?
although I am not an expert on the law, I am more than sure that the existing legal framework has enough provisions to protect innocent citizens in situations such as communal riots. but no, instead of treating the people as citizens, we are slowly being ghetto-ised across the nation with laws that specify only a particular group.
Would you agree, if i say that a muslim-lead party getting muslim votes is better than Congress getting them, which has only taken them for a ride all these years and has been the the primary reason for their discontentment.
Puneet – fully agree this is shameless on the part of UPA which got rid of POTA and despite terrorist attacks does not have an anti-terror legal framework.
Shehjar – I would say a Muslim Vote Bank by itself is not a bad thing, what is bad is the way the vote bank gets misused. For example I would be ok with a Muslim Lead party in alliance with the BJP on specific and credible everyday issues concerning muslims as part of a common minimum program. What I would not be ok is mobilizing the vote bank on Pan Islamic issues where it is more about Islamic interest than National Interest and then using that vote bank to drive consolidation “against” a party rather than “for” a issue. That is the basic problem with the way the vote bank has been misused starting from Gandhi and Khilafat movement. Have everyday issues that Muslims as a community have to deal with on the agenda, I am fine, but if you have Pan Islamic issues which deal with Islam as a global religion then I have a problem.
Shehjar- I honestly feel vote bank,name it any,Muslim,Sikh,Hindu ,Dalits etc. are groups represented by a leader or political party.These vote banks are political constituencies and such as not bad in a democratic set up.having said this,my objection is the way these vote banks are pampered at the cost of National Interest. As Yossarin writes Pan Islamism is a matter of concern.How does it affect the Indian Muslims about what happens in Iraq,Iran,or any other part of the word,amuses me.Do the Indian Muslims have no problems of their own like unemployment,economic progress etc. as so many other Indians have?
[...] Well Ansari maybe spared the mental arithmetic for Minority Politics in India and world over has not been about numbers but about the ubiquitous “paranoia”. Playing to the fear of the Majority has been an universal trait and psuedo-secular politicians in India have been no exception. While the court battle plays out, the question comes back to who stands to benefit from this decision. To answer the question one must examine the immideate psychological effect of the decision. If one were to go with the assumption that Muslim vote will consolidate behind viable Muslim or Pro-Muslim candidates, this decision goes further to catalyze that consolidation. On the larger question of who would benefit from that consolidation one should not be surprised if Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP stages a smart comeback. Offstumped’s analysis of the Muslim Vote Bank revealed that in about 86 odd seats such a Muslim vote consolidation can influence SP’s prospects. [...]
[...] Well Ansari maybe spared the mental arithmetic for Minority Politics in India and world over has not been about numbers but about the ubiquitous “paranoia”. Playing to the fear of the Majority has been an universal trait and psuedo-secular politicians in India have been no exception. While the court battle plays out, the question comes back to who stands to benefit from this decision. To answer the question one must examine the immideate psychological effect of the decision. If one were to go with the assumption that Muslim vote will consolidate behind viable Muslim or Pro-Muslim candidates, this decision goes further to catalyze that consolidation. On the larger question of who would benefit from that consolidation one should not be surprised if Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP stages a smart comeback. Offstumped’s analysis of the Muslim Vote Bank revealed that in about 86 odd seats such a Muslim vote consolidation can influence SP’s prospects. [...]
[...] justice called Social Justice. The results range from Communal Socialism, Minority appeasement, Vote bank politics and the incendiary politics of affirmative [...]
[...] Pradesh. While Mayawati’s message is steeped in entitlements for the economically backward, Mulayam Singh’s rhetoric is a mish-mash of Muslim appeasement and Yadav [...]
[...] of justice called Social Justice. The results range from Communal Socialism, Minority appeasement, Vote bank politics and the incendiary politics of affirmative [...]