India wants to become a full member of the United Nations Security Council with veto power. India wants to send a manned spacecraft to the moon. At this moment, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is hurtling through space towards the red planet and is scheduled to land there on September 24, 2014 — a scientific feat that’s bound to trigger nationwide celebrations.
The world’s largest democracy and a nuclear power to boot wants to sit at the global high table. India wants to host the Olympics. All these are legitimate aspirations and doable too. But if there is one thing India evidently doesn’t want to do, or is somehow incapable of doing, is saving its Muslims from being massacred every now and then despite having on its payroll one of the world’s biggest police-cum-intelligence apparatus. Recurring failure to protect Muslims can be attributed to nothing else but glaring lack of will.
Recently, three times as many Muslims than Hindus were killed in sectarian riots in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh embarrassingly close to the national capital. The break-up of the official death toll is 47 Muslims and 16 Hindus. But Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, a civil servant who worked in the Prime Minister’s Office and now runs Zakat Foundation, insists that the real picture is much worse. His logic: “There are camps after camps full of people who fled their homes. Why are they only full of Muslims?”
In these camps, 50 Muslim children died of cold because of the government’s failure to provide blankets or medical assistance. Moreover, Muslim women gang-raped during the pogrom filed first information reports (FIRs) at police stations but nothing happened. Ultimately, seven victims gathered courage and petitioned the Supreme Court for justice; these married women have the full support of their families. But NGOs have information about the rape of many unmarried girls who have kept quiet for obvious reasons.
The government, undoubtedly, has blood on its hands. But I’m equally outraged by the failure of Muslims in positions of power to stand by their brethren during the crisis. Notably, secular Hindus (Indian Express journalist Pritha Chatterjee stands out) rallied around the survivors but Muslims in high places looked the other way.
In India’s pecking order, the Vice-President is above the Prime Minister. So what prevented the likes of Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, Minority Affairs Minister K. Rahman Khan, Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung, National Minorities Commission chairman Wajahat Habibullah and Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi from going to Muzaffarnagar, barely 127 km from the capital, to express solidarity? Even Jawed Usmani, Uttar Pradesh chief secretary, didn’t pay a visit.
Roughly 13 percent of India’s 814 million voters are Muslims. But there is no national leader, Muslim or non-Muslim, the community really looks up to. Neither is there a political party which they fully trust as all parties have let them down — there isn’t a single party they can vote for without any reservations. Muslims are vulnerable and confused as they brace for the most important election in independent India.
It’s a measure of Muslim helplessness that to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party from grabbing power they have no option but to vote for the Congress Party, (particularly in states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi where the contest is bipolar) although Congress-ruled states have witnessed some of the worst anti-Muslim violence in living memory — Kokrajhar 2012 (Assam), Gopalgarh 2011 (Rajasthan), Mumbai 1992-93 (Maharashtra), Bhagalpur 1989 (Bihar) and Hashimpura 1987 (Uttar Pradesh).
As a believer in separation of church and state, I don’t exactly approve of the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Ahmed Bukhari, telling Muslims to vote for the Congress. But if he has really extracted a promise from Sonia Gandhi that discrimination against Muslims will stop forthwith, then Muslims can strategically vote Congress. Bukhari also did some plain speaking on national television. He ticked off Samajwadi Party for its lapses in Muzaffarnagar and urged Muslims to steer clear of Bahujan Samaj Party as it might gang up with BJP.
Financial scandals are an albatross around the Congress neck much to the delight of the BJP; its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, constantly harps on the ill-begotten wealth of Congress leaders. But for Muslim voters communalism is a much bigger issue than corruption as it poses a direct threat to their lives. So a contrite and repentant Congress is a far more appealing proposition than BJP which is promising good governance but takes potshots at Muslims to please hardliners who want them disenfranchised and reduced to second class citizens.
Out of 543 Lok Sabha seats, according to pollster Yashwant Deshmukh, Muslims account for more than 30 percent of the population in 35 constituencies, 21-30 percent in 38, 11-20 percent in 145, and less than 10 percent in 325 constituencies. On paper, the Muslim vote is decisive in around 70 seats where more than 20 percent of the population is Muslim, but in these seats Hindus tend to vote en bloc in a communally surcharged atmosphere to the BJP’s advantage.
Interestingly, Muslims can quietly determine the result in about 150 seats where they are only around 10 percent of the population and not perceived as a threat; they don’t trigger counter-polarisation among Hindus who vote along political rather than communal lines.
Uttar Pradesh elects a whopping 80 members of parliament; not for nothing is it called the’ make-or-mar’ state. And it’s hardly a secret that tactical voting in 2009 by Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, where they comprise 18 percent of the electorate, left the BJP with only 10 seats. The rest were evenly divided among Congress, SP and BSP. BJP was routed as Muslims voted en masse for the strongest non-BJP contestant in constituency after constituency. A repeat performance will shatter Modi’s dream to rule India. (End)
— S. N. M. Abdi is a noted Indian journalist and commentator.
