Majoritarian vote block

Rajesh Ramachandran

Last week, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav — party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s cousin — made a solemn promise in the Rajya Sabha. He said if voted to power, the Ram temple in Ayodhya would be built better and faster by his nephew Akhilesh Yadav. This strange pledge was drowned in the din of political clashes within and outside Parliament. The very fact that nobody cared to pause for Ram Gopal underscores the political reality of the times. That SP, like all other parties, is but a bunch of opportunists is not the political point that needs to be reiterated; but the fact that even SP has to accept — nay, celebrate — the Ram temple at Ayodhya to make itself appealing to the voters of Uttar Pradesh is something that deserves to be examined seriously.

A majoritarian vote block is emerging as a scary reality; one that can force our opportunistic representatives to endorse regressive, communal agendas.

The Ram temple at Ayodhya wouldn’t be just another place of worship — it would be a temple built after the demolition of the Babri Masjid as a political project to muster support for Hindutva, which sought to create a Hindu vote bank. SP had all along played identity politics to the hilt, banking on Muslim votes along with the leaders’ own community’s support, forging the Muslim-Yadav combination. Even now, in these Assembly elections, SP hopes to ride the Muslim insecurities and secure a large chunk of seats. Yet, the party feels compelled to recant its three decades of politics against the Ram temple! Why?

The Hindu vote bank seems to have coalesced, at least in the Hindi heartland for the time being. A vote bank does not necessarily mean only one party can harness the communally polarised mandate, for it essentially seeks to project a set of regressive interests in the name of a community or a group. Often these are only of symbolic value, like a Muslim man’s right to marry and divorce according to the Sharia law, violating the common law. Not every Muslim man was marrying four times or divorcing in a jiffy by uttering a word thrice. But the regressive clergy wanted these privileges of the community protected and would support only those who safeguarded these practices in the name of religion. And those parties who wanted to partake of votes of the community twisted the concept of secularism to cast a protective net over these patriarchal values.

Congress, SP, the Left parties and every other mainstream party are guilty of promoting the Mullahs in return for votes. But now some of these parties are being forced to play the Hindutva card too. It is not as if they can ever beat the BJP at its game, but the new context demands paying obeisance to Hindutva symbols, just as they promoted Islamist ones. It is this change of context that is being betrayed by Ram Gopal Yadav’s assurance in Parliament, which only implies that a level playing field between the BJP and the SP cannot be created without accepting the demolition of the Babri Masjid and hailing the construction of the Ram temple at that very site. And the SP is compelled to announce its intentions of building the temple faster and better and to clarify that it never opposed the temple at all.

Earlier, in January, Akhilesh Yadav began his campaign with a reference to Lord Krishna appearing in his dream. Such tactics are equivalent to the tricks perfected by these very politicians to seek minority votes. Majoritarian politics gets legitimised not when the BJP, gaining Hindu votes, comes to power, but when a party like the SP — which had all along vowed to protect the rights of Muslims — succumbs to the lures of Hindutva politics. Mathura and Lord Krishna too have a majoritarian context because of the temple-mosque controversy, and here too Akhilesh’s SP is making a promise that it would not go against the diktats of Hindutva politics.

It can be argued that the SP is only being smart and not getting overwhelmed by the BJP’s Hindutva rhetoric, and subtly nudging the voters away from the Hindu-Muslim discourse. But then it was smart even in 1992, during the Babri demolition, and in subsequent elections to have gained power successfully, empowering the Other Backward Classes with the help of the Muslim clergy. It is not that the SP is suddenly discovering its canny self during elections. It is simply responding to the demands of a vast populace that is emerging as a vote block, seeking parity in regression with other blocks of votes.

The BJP government in Karnataka attacking the hijab and the CPI(M)-led government supporting the hijab in neighbouring Kerala are both aiming to lure vote blocks. Since a large section of Hindu voters of Kerala is still not sectarian and votes for considerations other than those of religion, it is still profitable for political parties there to support the more sectarian vote blocks. Hence, all non-BJP political parties gain by supporting the hijab in Kerala, with the same logic the SP is using to root for the Ram temple at Ayodhya.

Earlier identity-signalling for communal endorsement was limited to wooing minority votes across the country, but this enterprise over several decades has triggered a reaction, resulting in the consolidation of a majoritarian vote block, at least in the Hindi belt. A glimpse of such a possibility even in a state like Kerala was visible when the Left was routed and the Congress-led alliance won 19 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections over the Sabarimala issue. A majoritarian vote block is emerging as a scary reality; one that can force our opportunistic representatives to endorse regressive, communal agendas. And those fighting these pre-modern forces of group anxieties ought to understand that minority vote blocks are not the answer to Hindutva politics. Modernity demands us to eschew identity markers as a whole — hijab, niqab, tilak, rosary, et al — with no exceptions.