The News, January 18, 2009
by Aakar Patel
The Bharatiya Janata Party governs six of India's 28 states: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand. The BJP governs a population of 190 million, 17 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people.
In Gujarat, Narendra Modi's 18 ministers include no Muslim. The Gujarat BJP has zero Muslim legislators: it did not field a single Muslim candidate on 182 assembly seats. There are five million Muslim Gujaratis, nine per cent of the population.
In Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan's 22 ministers include no Muslim. There are 3.6 million Muslims in MP, six per cent of the population. In Karnataka, BS Yediyurappa's 32 ministers include one Muslim, Mumtaz Ali Khan. His job is to manage Haj, Wakf and minority affairs. There are 5.5 million Muslims in Karnataka, 11 per cent of the population.
In Himachal Pradesh (Muslim population two per cent), PK Dhumal's nine ministers include no Muslim. In Chattisgarh (Muslim population two per cent), Dr Raman Singh's 13 ministers include no Muslim. In Uttarakhand (Muslim population 10 per cent), BC Khanduri's 11 ministers include no Muslim.
Of the 38 national BJP office holders, one (Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi) is Muslim, and his job is that of spokesman. Of the 27 BJP general secretaries (organisation) for India's states, none is Muslim.
The BJP's central election committee has nine people of whom none is Muslim. The BJP is a national party, but its constituency is Hindu. The BJP's problem is that the majority of Hindus actually don't vote for the BJP. Only one in four Indian voters prefers it, and this has not changed in the last 20 years. In April, Indians will vote for a new government.
In 2004, the BJP got 22 per cent of the vote, and 138 seats. That is 134 seats short of a Lok Sabha majority. In 1999, the BJP got 23 per cent, its highest. In 1996, it got 20 per cent; in 1991 it got 20 per cent; in 1989, it got 11 per cent; in 1984 it got seven per cent.
The BJP has never crossed the Congress's vote share. The Congress, after years of decline, is at 26 Per cent.
Of 1.1 billion Indians, 13 per cent are Muslim. Effectively, the BJP is competing on 87 per cent of the vote instead of 100 per cent. But why does it not have the Muslim vote?
The BJP is one of two ideological parties in India (the other is the Communist Party through its various factions). The BJP's ideology is Hindutva. What does Hindutva mean? The BJP has three demands under its Hindutva agenda. The first: building a temple in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid existed, and which is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, an avtar (incarnation) of one of Hinduism's three primary gods: Vishnu.
The BJP's second demand is that India should have a secular civil code. Right now, India's civil laws governing marriage, divorce and inheritance are applied by religion. Hindus are governed by a Hindu law; Muslims are governed under sharia (with polygamy, triple talaq and Hanafi alimony law). L K Advani calls this pseudo-secularism.
The BJP's third demand is the deletion of Article 370 in the Indian constitution. This guarantees Jammu and Kashmir separate status in the Indian Union, and more autonomy. Though this status has been greatly eroded over the years, among other things, Indians cannot buy land there. The BJP says its Hindutva is nationalist, not anti-Muslim.
The BJP doubled its vote share between 1989 and 1991 because these three demands were major issues 20 years ago. The rise of the Indian economy, and of the backward castes, eclipsed these in the mid-90s and the BJP had to tone down its religious appeal as the political debate moved on.
This was difficult for it to do because its cadre comes from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The top leaders of the BJP have never been part of any other party -- what is called lota politics in Pakistan and horse-trading in India is rarely practised by the BJP. Advani and Vajpayee have been with the RSS for 60 years each, as has Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, India's former vice-president. Current BJP president Rajnath Singh joined the RSS at 13 and politics at 24. The RSS views India's culture as monolithic and blames foreign invaders -- Muslims in particular -- for India's fall from glory.
Because ideologically they come 'fully formed', BJP leaders find it difficult to be supple, which is needed in a third world democracy. No party was willing to share power with the BJP because of its Hindutva agenda, and the BJP seemed to be permanently in opposition.
Two men changed this. The first was Atal Behari Vajpayee, who made the pragmatic move of suspending the BJP's three Hindutva demands. He announced that these would remain in moratorium and only be taken up if the party won an absolute majority of its own. Till such time as this happened, it would govern on the basis of a 'common minimum programme' along with allies. Many parties signed up after this and Vajpayee became prime minister as leader of the NDA coalition. In governance, he was praised for his moderation, though his childlike fascination for atom bombs led to the weaponisation of Pakistan's nuclear programme. This destabilised South Asia, a consequence Vajpayee had not foreseen.
The second man is Advani, whose rallies in the early 90s led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the riots and Bombay bomb blasts that then followed. But Advani has been through an education in the last decade. As home minister he held peace talks with the Hurriyat Conference, which praised him, and he visited Pakistan in June 2005 and acknowledged Jinnah's secularism. This shocked Indians, who are trained by their textbooks to hate Jinnah as the divider of India, and are not educated about his constitutionalist side.
Advani's honesty angered the RSS, which pressured him to resign. But Advani ultimately prevailed, showing the BJP's independence, and is now the prime ministerial candidate for the NDA coalition. Gradually the BJP's Hindutva agenda has cooled.
But the BJP's problem with Muslims remains. And there is a good reason for it: Gujarat.
Gujarat erupted in March 2002. Modi won an election that December in an emotional Hindus-versus-Muslims campaign.
Modi's model is good governance, but with a strong dose of Hindu identity. This brought about a state that turned soft during a riot, so that violence took place with little interference, and then justice was made difficult for Muslims. In politics, as we have seen, he has made Gujarati Muslims irrelevant and forced them from the system.
Modi appeals to the Gujaratis' practical business side and emotional side. On the practical side, they admire Modi for his ability to govern, which India's corporates, including Tata, Mittal and Ambani, have acknowledged. On the emotional side they love him because he has shown Muslims their place. So steeped in bigotry is Modi's Gujarat that the Supreme Court lost faith in the Gujarat judiciary and sent riots cases to Bombay.
Advani says the BJP wants to replicate the Gujarat Model in the rest of India. Can the BJP replicate this anti-Muslim plus good governance formula outside of Gujarat? No.
The sentiment of middle-class Gujarati Hindus towards Muslims is not shared across India. That is because the identity marker of Indians is primarily caste, not religion. The electoral battle across India's largest states -- UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Maharashtra -- is secular and has always been between backward castes, even though these states have substantial Muslim populations.
To compete on 100 per cent of India's electorate, Advani needs to demonstrate he's leading an inclusive party. He can do that immediately by adding Muslims into the BJP's structure. The party already has backward castes, several of whom dot its organisation.
Advani also needs to explain clearly and unambiguously what he means by Gujarat Model. Right now the words are signalling 'corporate governance' to one group of people and 'we'll fix Muslims' to another group.
This year, with Vajpayee's exit, Advani is in total charge for the first time. He must show leadership, and courage. Despite his stature, Advani, who is from Karachi, doesn't have a natural constituency and contests from Gujarat. He is at Modi's mercy in Gandhinagar. Modi, who is 58, is actually the most powerful man in the BJP, and certain to succeed Advani, who turns 80.
Vajpayee wanted to fire Modi in 2002 over the riots but backed off after the party's majority bared its teeth. Modi is caught in the image of peerless butcher that he allowed to be built but now is looking to escape it in favour of Best Governor as a bigger role is in reach.
What kind of party will Advani leave Modi?
Advani points out India's pseudo-secularism but what else is the limiting of Muslim inclusion to hajj, wakf and read-outs, if not pseudo-secularism? And what the BJP is politically practising in Gujarat is pure division. That is unworthy of an organisation whose name means the Indian People's Party.
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