Numbers favour Dalit-Muslim unity in UP : The Tribune India

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Numbers favour Dalit-Muslim unity in UP

There is a strong realisation among Muslims in the state that their transition from the Congress to the SP did not bring any constructive results for their development and progress. That is an opportunity for the BSP.

Numbers favour Dalit-Muslim unity in UP

ADDING UP: Muslims (offering prayers in Allahabad) constitute 19.3 per cent of UP’s population while the SC/ST community constitutes 21.3 per cent. PTI



Afroz Alam

Is there any possibility of a Dalit-Muslim alignment in the 2017 elections in Uttar Pradesh? Without locating the issue in either ideology or theology, the alignment of a substantial number of Muslims with an equally good number of Dalits is likely in the making. It can be seen in the visibly disproportionate de-alignment of Muslim voters with the Samajwadi Party.

It is not to deny that using the generic word ‘Muslims’ is just to exclude the heterogeneity of the community and proving it as monolith that is not divided along caste, class, regional and other lines. Of course, religious identity is not decisive for every Muslim. They have also not voted with a singular degree of religious solidarity. The case of Dalit voters is also not very different. They too are now divided at a much nuanced sub-caste level. Moreover, on account of the mushrooming of local political parties based on finer divisions, the heterogeneity of the electorate has been laid bare with more than 70 political parties to mobilise Dalit voters and more than 20 political parties in the fray to champion Muslim interests.

These are intensely politicised times with a lot of politics going beyond the limited sphere of elite politics. There is subterranean politics at the margins that has caught the imagination of particularly Dalits and Muslims. The possible alignment of the Bahujans against the right-wing Hindutva model is turning exotic. Muslims and Dalits have emerged a powerful political constituency, whose alignment either way could be a game changer. Also, parties like the Congress, BJP, BSP and the SP are for various reasons no longer confident of their core voters. Interestingly, these political parties are surreptitiously at work to eat into each other’s traditional voting block, highlighting the sub-caste/community fault-lines and through the deployment of fragmentary symbols.

Numerical significance

While perusing the 2011 Census Report, we note that Muslims constitute 19.3 per cent of UP’s population while the SC/ST community constitutes 21.3 per cent. In terms of district-wise distribution, in a total of 71 districts, Muslims constitute 50-25 per cent in 14 districts and in 11 districts their concentration ranges from 25 per cent to 19 per cent. Thus, in about 20 districts of UP, Muslims number significantly higher than their state average. Interestingly, if the SC/ST population is added, they will form an unbeatable social coalition.

Besides, there is a sizeable presence of Muslim voters in more than 150 Assembly constituencies out of the total of 403 in Uttar Pradesh, where the numerical strength of the SC/ST community is equally valuable. Equally, there are a similar number of Dalit-dominated constituencies where a durable alignment of Muslims could change the electoral outcome. It is obvious that in any of these constituencies the Muslim or Dalit vote in itself cannot win elections, but it can neither be denied that their realignment could tip the scales for or against any party. In the political realm, 300 is a big enough number for any political party to contend with.

Competitive system

Given the single-party dominance and the vacuum of choice in UP for decades, Muslims and Dalits remained stable till the mid-1960s in their voting choice for the dominant party, the Congress. But the absence of real competition had downbeat implications for them. Their electoral clout, if any, was only marginal. The 1970s saw dramatic changes in hitherto unprecedented challenges to the Congress hegemony. The backward castes were defragmenting behind socialist parties. Propelled by the need to survive politically against the Congress, non-Congress parties realised that Muslim voters could provide them a margin for victory, and by default the Muslim vote became pivotal.

The inchoate multi-party competition brought about by the Muslims moving away from the Congress came in to its own through the 1980s and 1990s. With the Muslim voter’s choice no longer limited to the Congress, they became strategically important in the electoral politics of the state. The waning loyalty of Muslim voters culminated in a final desertion of the Congress in the 1990s.

In this changed electoral scenario, the SP strategised keeping the threat of the BJP alive to court the Muslim vote, which worked for the party till the mid-1990s. But the strategy thereafter no longer worked. The BSP had begun making attempts to lure Muslims away from the SP. However, by the late 2000s, Muslims’ electoral endorsement of any single party had reached saturation levels. Though, unlike the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Muslims voted in sizeable numbers for the SP in 2012, but got divided in 2014 elections, making their huge number insignificant. Now, Muslim voters are no longer susceptible to fall for the mere projection of the BJP as a threat. Second, there is a growing realisation among Muslims that political parties to earn their support will have to show real incentive in terms of delivering the policy pledges exclusively made to them at the time of election.

Contextualising patterns

A poor track record in maintaining law and order is haunting the fate of the SP in UP. Its failure in controlling the religious divide and communal incidents could be seen in the spiralling number of communal riots, more than 500, since the inception of the SP government. Everyone is disenchanted, more particularly Dalits and Muslims as they are the worst victims. There is a strong realisation among Muslims that their transition from the Congress to the SP did not bring any constructive results for their development and progress as a community.

Against this backdrop, Muslim voters may be weighing following options in the 2017 Assembly elections: First, they may not like to ‘waste’ their vote. Given the variety of secular options in UP, they would vote for a party that has its own sizeable vote bank. Second, they may vote for a party that brings about maximum dividends to them, thus shifting from tactical to practical voting. Third, while refraining from voting for any single party, they may choose to support specific candidates belonging to secular parties at constituency levels, depending on the prospects of the candidate.

The rise in similar incidents against Dalits and Muslims has the potential to mobilise their subjugated political psyche into a common dominant, inevitable and irresistible political force. In this backdrop, BSP appears to have an edge due to its focus on bonding Dalits with Muslims, as the party employed Muslims youth, more particularly belonging to the Pasmanda community, massively to campaign at the grassroots level. The advantage to the BSP, apart from its social engineering, is its better record in the maintenance of law and order, which is gaining wider acceptability across the caste and community framings. 

The writer is head of the Political Science Department at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.

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