Ashutosh Varshney
For the first time since Independence, an entirely new electoral
prospect has been consolidating itself. This phenomenon can be
conceptualised as the political irrelevance of Muslims. It came to life
with the 2014 general elections, though some might drag it back further.
Its implications, serious in any case, have become even more so after
the Ayodhya judgment of the Supreme Court.
The Court has held Hindu mobs responsible for an egregious violation
of the law on December 6, 1992 — when they destroyed the Babri mosque —
but deploying the kind of legal reasoning that frustrates
non-specialists of law, it has handed over the site, where the erstwhile
mosque stood, to the Hindu community for the building of a Ram temple.
In a display of religious equidistance that marks Indian secularism, the
Court has also allowed a mosque to be built on a plot twice as large as
the original site. But those who destroyed the mosque, according to
India’s highest court, now have the right to construct a temple in its
place.
If the Court intends to draw a distinction between the law-breakers,
who ought to be punished, and the larger Hindu community, whose wishes
should not be denied, it can still argue it has not abandoned the idea
of justice. But given its lack of resolve to confront electorally
enabled power, one cannot be too sanguine about whether it would punish
those who violated the law but are currently in power. How the Court
actually pronounces on the culprits of December 6, 1992, will,
therefore, be carefully watched.
Admittedly, some Muslims will not mind the judgment, thinking it ends
a seemingly interminable period of painful contention and provides an
opportunity to move on. But many are likely to feel doubly marginalised.
They are being made electorally irrelevant, and even the judiciary has
not sufficiently protected them.
Two points should immediately be noted. First, in the 1940s, Jinnah’s
argument for partition was precisely that democracy in a Hindu-majority
India would serve the interests of Hindus, not of the Muslim minority.
The argument was wrong, as both Nehru and Ambedkar painstakingly
demonstrated. It is ironical that the argument, false then and for
decades later, is starting to acquire credibility now, for the system
after seven decades is threatening to generate Muslim helplessness. The
trend is still not irreversible, but it is dire.
Second, a lot of democratic theory, and much of modern democratic
practice, envisions the judiciary as a counter-majoritarian institution.
In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious democratic polity, the electoral
process can easily begin to reflect the wishes of the ethnic or
religious majority. But the judiciary’s functioning is fundamentally
based on constitutional principles, not the wishes of the majority. If
the judiciary only replicated what governments, legislatures or
political parties based on electoral victories did, we would not really
need it as a separate and autonomous institution. That is also why
minorities in a democracy have often looked up to the courts for
protection, when popular electoral currents go against them. A small
fraction of political/legal theory does say that courts could endorse
majoritarianism, if it was legislatively approved, and some courts have
historically done that. Legally, Blacks suffered a lot — and for decades
— in America’s South. But most theorists would prescribe to the
judiciary a majority-constraining role, should the majority or its
representatives cross legal lines. A Hindu temple on the contested site
after a mosque’s destruction departs from the principle of judicial
counter-majoritarianism.
The distinction between the electoral and the judicial, towards which
the SC judgment is pushing us, requires further elaboration. Let us
begin historically.
Should India treat its Muslims the same way as Pakistan was dealing
with its Hindus? This question repeatedly arose in the early years of
freedom when India’s Constitution was debated. Supported by Ambedkar,
Nehru argued: “Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the
indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have to deal
with (our) minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security
and the rights of citizens in a democratic state. If we fail to do so,
we shall have a festering sore which will eventually poison the whole
body politic.” Earlier, critiquing Jinnah, Ambedkar argued that
constitutional and institutional safeguards could easily be devised to
check majoritarianism and protect minority rights. That Hindus are a
majority, said Ambedkar, does not automatically lead to Hindu rule.
India’s Constitution thus developed a charter of minority rights —
educational, cultural, religious — and gave no special privileges to the
Hindu majority. Secularism came to be defined not only as equal rights
for all, regardless of religious affiliation, but also as comprising
special minority rights on the assumption that minority numbers alone
would not allow them to protect their interests in a democracy.
This constitutional settlement was further bolstered by the electoral
realities of India. Until 2008, 81 parliamentary constituencies of
India were more than 20 per cent Muslim (including 10 that were
Muslim-majority) and 126 seats were 10-20 per cent Muslim. Thus, in 38
per cent of parliamentary seats, Muslim voters could play an important
role. Even if mainstream politicians had anti-Muslim feelings, these
electoral realities would partly check them. The 2008 redrawing of
constituencies has most probably not significantly changed Muslim
proportions.
This long-lasting electoral logic was fundamentally altered in 2014 and 2019. The BJP
came to power with only 8 per cent of the Muslim vote each time, an
outcome inconceivable under the earlier electoral calculus. The key to
this transformation was the consolidation of the Hindu vote. The BJP
received 37.4 per cent vote in 2019; roughly 35 per cent was Hindu.
Compared to 2014, BJP’s vote went up in all caste categories, including
Dalits. Muslims can play an important electoral role only if the Hindu
vote is sufficiently caste-cleaved. Analytically, Hindu consolidation
and Muslim irrelevance are two sides of the same electoral coin.
If Hindu consolidation goes further, Muslims will become electorally
even more irrelevant. We can’t still be sure this would happen. But even
if Hindu electoral consolidation remains at the current level, India’s
Muslims would need the judiciary’s counter-majoritarianism to safeguard
their interests. If the judiciary bows to the executive and legislature,
supporting majoritarian logic, Jinnah’s fears will be affirmed,
Ambedkar’s constitutional optimism nullified, and Nehru’s prediction
about a “festering sore” might also come true. Production of Muslim
helplessness is most unlikely to strengthen India, or its polity.
This article first appeared in the print edition on
November 13, 2019 under the title ‘Majority, minority & temple’. The
writer is director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Sol Goldman
Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences, Professor of
Political Science, Watson Institute for International and Public
Affairs, Brown University.
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