The insidious return of separate electorates

Few communities would have a greater right to rue the ascendance of Hindutva politics on the national stage than the largest minority of the country. However, now it seems that all those who believe in a pluralistic polity too have grave cause for concern. It stems from the results of the Assam State Assembly elections. Of the 102 members in the ruling dispensation led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), none is a Muslim. While this is unsettling, it wasn’t entirely unpredictable considering that, for the past five years, the Narendra Modi government has had the dubious distinction of not having a single Muslim Minister, or even an MP at the Centre. What is distressing now is the stark communal segregation in the State Assembly of Assam. While the ruling party has no space for the Muslims of the State, who comprise 34% of the population, the Opposition is going in the opposite direction. The leading Opposition party, the Congress, has 19 MLAs in the Assembly, 18 of whom are Muslims. Throw in another Muslim MLA of its ally, the Raijor Dal, which has two members in the House, besides two legislators of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) and one from the Trinamool Congress, and you have a unique but disturbing spectacle of only Hindu MLAs on the treasury benches and the Opposition space being almost entirely occupied by Muslim legislators, all 22 of them. To even write about it seems ugly and distressing but that’s the reality of new India, from religion-specific residential colonies in urban India and ghettoes in other social spaces to now, watertight segregation on the lines of religion in a State Assembly.

Dangerous precedent

For years we have heard, and experienced, that it is no longer possible, in most cases, for a Muslim to win from a largely Hindu-dominated constituency. For instance, in the general elections of 2024, most of the Muslim winning candidates of the Samajwadi party did so from seats with a sizeable Muslim population. Add to that the BJP’s oft repeated emphasis on the ‘winnability factor’ for denying tickets to the largest minority. Now it seems we could be heading for the reverse. Hindus could be choosing only Hindu representatives. Worse, many are beginning to choose ones who are manifestly so. Hence, the victory of many BJP candidates riding to victory fuelled by hate speech, interspersed with visits to various temples. Hindus choosing Hindus. Muslim choosing Muslims. Parties giving tickets keeping the demographics in mind. These are the new roadblocks for a nation built on a common electorate transcending religion.

This takes one’s mind back to the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 which introduced the concept of the communal electorate. As the British sought to quell the rising tide of nationalism and the demand for Swaraj (freedom), seats were reserved on the lines of religion for elections. While thousands of Indians protested, provincial elections based on separate electorates continued till the formation of the Constituent Assembly.

In fact, the provincial elections in 1946 were crucial as there were talks of the forming of a Constituent Assembly to frame the Constitution of a nation which was soon to be independent. At the same time, there was an increasingly vociferous demand for a separate state of Pakistan by the Muslim League.

Unsurprisingly but still disturbingly, Muslims were asked to vote for the Muslim League because “a vote for the League and Pakistan was a vote for Islam”. The League’s fight with the Congress was portrayed as a fight between Islam and kufr (non-belief). The lines of communal othering were never more distinct. Likewise, M.S. Golwalkar attacked nationalist Indians for “hugging to our bosom our most inveterate enemies (Muslims) and thus endangering our very existence.” To be a nationalist, you had to be anti-Muslim, such was the belief among a section of right-wing Hindus. Much like many right-wing Muslims who equated a vote for the Congress with a vote against Islam. In the elections, the Muslim League swept the Muslim seats, winning 87% of them. The Congress, supposedly a representative of non-Muslims, won 90% of the general non-Muslim seats. The die was cast. The League emerged as the loudest Muslim voice. The Congress of the others. Never mind that Jinnah called Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan “an adversary”, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the “showboy of the Congress”. One knows what happened the next year.

Beyond one’s own voice

The Assam Assembly results with only Hindus in the ruling alliance and almost only Muslims in the Opposition fill all those sworn to the idea of India with trepidation. One cannot allow separate electorates to be sneaked in in disguise, delimitation or otherwise. True, the BJP has almost made it a policy decision to marginalise Muslims in representative politics but for the Congress to be whittled down to the position of being the sole spokesperson of Muslims is both unfair and incomprehensible. The repeat drubbing of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in Bengal and the extremely limited success of Badruddin Ajmal in Assam speaks of a community looking for voices beyond its own. Almost only Muslims in the Opposition amounts to the political ghettoisation of the community. Muslims need a voice, but the voice has to come from across the political spectrum, not confined to a single party.