Halal, hijab and Karnataka verdict

THE Congress was expected to emerge as the single largest party in the Karnataka Assembly elections. With a vote share of 43 per cent, it literally swept the polls. The party secured 135 seats, well beyond the 113 required for a majority. The BJP retained its vote share of 36 per cent, which brought it 66 seats this time, less than half the number won by its principal opponent.

The same electorate that rejected the BJP in the Assembly polls may vote for Modi in the 2024 General Election.

The party that lost big was the Janata Dal (Secular); it could win only 19 seats, with its vote share reduced to 13 per cent. The electorate transferred its allegiance in the Old Mysore region from the JD(S) to the Congress, possibly to ensure the defeat of the BJP. The shift of a chunk of the Vokkaliga votes to the Congress in the Mysore belt and of the Lingayat votes to the Congress from the BJP in the Kittur Karnataka region made a big difference to the outcome. A veritable exodus of Lingayat votes followed the sidelining of its old leaders by the BJP. Ten of ex-CM Yediyurappa’s acolytes were elected on the Congress ticket, as I have been told.

The Congress got a big shot in the arm with this victory in a crucial state that featured prominently in the BJP’s strategy of making its presence felt in the south of the country. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party, but the Congress had teamed up with the JD(S) to form the government. A year later, the BJP snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and came to power following the defection of some Congress and JD(S) legislators.

This time around, the BJP’s Plan B will not work since the numbers militate against any such strategy. After the Supreme Court’s five-Judge Constitution Bench’s ruling on the Shiv Sena split in Maharashtra, it will not be easy even if the BJP weans away one-third of the Congress MLAs.

Political pundits have pontificated on the reasons for this near-landslide victory. I am no pundit. I will not wade into this maze to offer my own two-penny opinion. But I do not think that the BJP’s hate campaign and Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra were the game changers, except marginally. Even the ‘40 per cent deductions’ allegedly made from payments to government contractors were not the real explanation for the BJP’s defeat. A more acceptable reason could be that the electorate wanted a change. It has a history of ousting the incumbent every five years. And this time, too, that story was repeated.

Our Prime Minister is very popular with the masses, except those people who are ideologically opposed to his party. That popularity may help his party win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But state elections are fought on local issues and not on Modi’s persona. The Hindutva propaganda made no impression in Karnataka except to raise the hate quotient in society.

Though the majority of the voters in Karnataka have rejected the BJP’s anti-minority agenda, 36 per cent of them support it. The BJP raised the majoritarian flag at various times. Love jihad, hijab and halal kept bobbing up on and off. It succeeded in emphasising the otherness of the minority community, but failed miserably to translate hate into a winning formula. In this ‘first past the post’ contest, it required a vote share of around 43 per cent, but hijab and halal could not help it achieve that.

Halal is one of the methods of sacrificing an animal. The creature’s neck artery is slit and it bleeds to death. In the jhatka method, its neck is separated from its body in one blow. Neither method is painless but which one induces less pain, I do not know. What I do know is that halal originated in Judaism. Jews call this method of sacrifice ‘kosher’. A practising Jew will not eat meat that is not ‘kosher’, like a practising Muslim will only eat halal meat.

Many other religious practices in Islam also originated in Judaism. Circumcision, the month-long Ramzan fast, the banishment of pork from the dinner table — these were all prescribed by the Rabbis, the Jewish priests, as essential requirements based, obviously, on health considerations. The flesh of the pig was banned after a pestilence struck Israel some 3,000 years ago and decimated its population.

The hijab is one piece of clothing that makes no sense to a liberal like me. Personally, I detest it. But I also know that the practice can only be discarded by the Muslims themselves. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who ruled Turkey from 1923 to 1938, had banned by law the veil from being worn by women in that Muslim country. The present ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has removed that ban. Women in Turkey can now decide for themselves. Many of them in the big cities use just a headscarf to denote their religious identity. On a visit to Istanbul some 30 years ago, I saw two young girls dressed in jeans and shirts enter the Hagia Sophia mosque. They removed their footwear before entering and slipped on a headscarf. They offered namaz and emerged after 10 minutes. On leaving, they put on their shoes and took off the headscarf. That was their way of practising their faith.

Non-Muslims cannot dictate to their Muslim brothers and sisters how they should live, eat or dress. Reforms can only emanate from within their own community. The state should concentrate on female education in particular and education per se. As the community becomes more literate and economically more prosperous, changes in religious thought and practices are bound to occur. A created controversy, like the banning of the hijab in Karnataka colleges, did not help, and, what is more relevant, cannot help.

The same electorate that rejected the BJP in the Assembly polls may vote for Modi in the 2024 General Election. The people seem to want a clear mandate. Horse-trading and ‘hostile takeovers’ that have become a feature of our polity of late are something that are abhorrent and distasteful not only to liberals, but now also to other citizens.