BJP and the art of excluding Muslims

Since 1989, BJP has contested 1,300 Lok Sabha and Assembly seats in Gujarat, and nominated not one Muslim as a candidate

This December (when the Election Commission will hold Gujarat’s polls), it will be exactly 30 years since I became old enough to vote.

In these three decades, my hometown Surat was represented six times by a single Lok Sabha MP, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Kashiram Rana, a colourful man, whose opponents unsuccessfully smeared him with the ditty: “Surat na gaurav Kashiram Rana / ek haath ma baatli, ek haath ma dana (Surat’s pride Kashiram Rana is never without his bottle in one hand and peanuts in the other)”. This was meant to show him as a lush in a dry state, but I suspect for many Surtis, a city notorious among other Gujaratis for its debauched ways, this line made him more appealing. Incidentally, in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the undefeated Rana was without explanation denied a ticket by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he died a broken man in 2012.

In these three decades, the Congress in Gujarat has not won a majority in a single Assembly or Lok Sabha election. Not ever having been a Congress voter (I draw the line at parties that have blood on their hands), I will not be surprised and certainly not dejected if in December this losing streak enters its fourth decade. The interesting thing to me as a Gujarati is what the BJP has done to the state’s population in political terms.

In this period we are talking about, there have been eight Lok Sabha elections: 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014. Gujarat has 26 seats and so that’s 208 seats the BJP has fought. And there have been six Assembly elections: 1990, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007, and 2012. The Vidhan Sabha has 182 seats, and so that’s 1,092 seats, and adding the Lok Sabha ones we get 1,300 seats in all that the BJP has fought. We could add another 100 at least for by-elections but as a sample size 1,300 suffices.

In not a single one of these seats has the BJP ever nominated a Gujarati Muslim. This is the contribution of the BJP to a state it considers a political laboratory that I find quite remarkable. It is political apartheid, 100 per cent exclusion. And the unique thing is that the BJP makes no attempt at cover. Its dissembling, seemingly reasonable apologists have no protection against the numbers. Hindutva has shown Gujarati Muslims their place.

Illustration by Ajay Mohanty

The businessman Zafar Sareshwala, chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, is seen as someone from the Gujarati Muslim community who is trying to reach out to the BJP after the riots of 2002. (If you cannot place him, he is the long-bearded, maulana-type man often on television debates about Gujarat and Mr Modi). He is seen as an apologist for the prime minister – he says he sees Mr Modi differently from the way he does the BJP – but there is nuance in his position. He said on a recent television debate that he had no quarrel with the BJP because the party had made it absolutely clear how it views Gujarati Muslims. It is the Congress which made the bogus claim of inclusion that he objects to. It did not stand up enough for his community when they were being bullied.

Whether or not Mr Sareshwala is right about the Congress, we should all take a closer look at what he has concluded about the BJP: That he has accepted the dominant party in power for all these years will exclude Gujarati Muslims, and therefore the community will have to find a way around that to survive. That is Gujarati pragmatism talking. It should be unacceptable to all Indians that a community in our nation should feel this way or have to go through what they have.

We are talking about a people that have produced names like Premji and Khorakiwala. This is one of the most talented communities in South Asia, and its contribution to nation building (defined by any measure) has been disproportionate to its size. The exclusion of no community is justifiable but to what nationalist end is the BJP able to justify such damage to one of our most productive groups? It boggles the mind that those who are convinced that they are nationalists can do such deliberate damage to the nation (of course it is true that for most of the Hindu nationalists, the “nation” is not its people but lines on a map). It is the obligation of those who understand this and have the ear of the BJP that they force the party to do the right thing. Left to its own, the local BJP will continue the political apartheid. 

Mr Sareshwala makes a distinction between Mr Modi and the BJP — but, Mr Modi has total and absolute control over the party in Gujarat. His removal of once-powerful individuals like Kashiram Rana opened up the space to fill in with loyalists. It is his to do as he wills in Gujarat and we can attribute the exclusion strategy to him.

It was noticed by observers in Uttar Pradesh’s elections earlier this year that the BJP contested 384 seats and did not nominate a single Muslim, a community that is a fifth of the population. This was explained away by the party’s leaders as being accidental, but that is a lie. It is quite deliberate and meant to send a message out to the party’s voters and to Muslims. 

Should we allow their continued segregation and deliberate humiliation? The fact is that for 30 years we have allowed it to happen in Gujarat. The world should take notice.