MALAPPURAM, India– Prevent Muslim immigrants from obtaining citizenship. Revoke the semi-autonomy of the country’s only Muslim-majority region. Construction of a Hindu temple where a violent mob razed a mosque.
These were political triumphs for Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the past decade, burnishing his reputation as a leader who puts the interests of India’s Hindu majority first. For India’s 200 million Muslims, they highlight their waning political power in the world’s largest democracy.
Tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India are not new, but they have worsened under the Modi government, whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party promotes a Hindu nationalist ideology. And with Modi apparently on the cusp of a third five-year term, the outlook for Muslim politicians (and citizens) is bleak. This year’s vote will be decided in June.
It’s not just that Modi has ramped up anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign speeches. Since the BJP began its rise as a political force in the mid-1980s, the proportion of Muslim legislators in parliament and state legislatures has declined.
Muslim representation has fallen in the ruling BJP, and also in opposition parties.
When Modi came to power in 2014, the outgoing parliament had 30 Muslim lawmakers, and only one was a member of the BJP. Muslims now hold 25 of 543 seats and none belong to the BJP.
India has gone from a country where Muslims were largely marginalized to one where they are “actively excluded,” said Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a political scientist and historian at Ashoka University in New Delhi.
“Without representation, you cannot ask the State for resources and articulate the type of needs that the community has to progress, whether it is education, employment, health or basic infrastructure,” Mahmudabad said.
In the mid-1980s, Muslims made up 11% of India’s population and held 9% of the seats in parliament; Today they are 14% of the population and have less than 5% of the seats in parliament.
Nine out of 10 members of parliament are Hindus, making up 80 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population.
The political representation of Muslims at the state level is only slightly better. India has more than 4,000 legislators in the state legislatures of 28 states and Muslim legislators occupy about 6% of these seats.
A 2006 government report found that Muslims lagged behind Hindus, Christians and people from India’s lower castes in literacy, income and access to education. They have made some progress since then, but are still at a significant disadvantage, according to multiple independent studies.
During Modi’s decade in power, the BJP has enacted or proposed several laws that Muslim leaders consider discriminatory.
— Some BJP-ruled states have passed laws restricting interfaith marriage as a way to address what they say is the threat posed by Hindu women marrying Muslim men and then converting.
— A formerly BJP-ruled state banned girls from wearing hijabs to school. (The law was repealed after the BJP lost political control.)
— The BJP is advocating for a common legal code that would affect some religious practices, by changing some laws in India’s constitution that deal with issues ranging from marriage to divorce and inheritance.
Violence against Muslims is common and Modi has said little to deter it. Muslims have been lynched by Hindu mobs over accusations of eating beef or smuggling cows, an animal considered sacred to Hindus. Their homes and businesses have been demolished and their places of worship burned.
At recent campaign rallies, Modi has said that Muslims are “infiltrators” and “have too many children.” Without evidence, he accused the BJP’s main rival, the Congress Party, of plotting to redistribute wealth from Hindus to Muslims.
Many Muslims believe Modi is stoking divisions as a campaign strategy.
“They keep the Hindu-Muslim issue burning…so they remain enemies,” said Mehmood Bhai Khatri, a 64-year-old Muslim voter from Modi’s home state of Gujarat, a BJP stronghold.
“But who will speak? If they do, they may be detained (by the police) or a bulldozer sent to their houses,” Khatri said. “So, out of fear, no one speaks.”
None of India’s 28 states has a Muslim as prime minister; The BJP and its allies have chief ministers in 19 states.
In Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state and where approximately 16% of residents are Muslim, only 7% of state legislators are Muslim.
As the BJP becomes increasingly powerful, India’s opposition parties have become increasingly reluctant to nominate Muslim candidates for fear of alienating Hindu voters, experts say.
While Hindus overwhelmingly support the BJP, Muslims have struggled to form a cohesive political agenda, in part because of how diverse their community is in terms of sects, ethnicities, languages, customs and cultures.
“There is no way to unite this very heterogeneous group of people without making Islam the common denominator,” said Mahmudabad, the political scientist.
But when political parties don’t have enough Muslims, issues important to them – from minority rights to hate speech – rarely get debated in parliament, said Muhammad Saad, a New Delhi taxi driver who is Muslim.
“If there are no Muslims in parliament, who will raise their voice for us?” —Saad questioned.
Analysts say the BJP has made some outreach efforts to Muslims, such as seeking their help as volunteers and at the polls. But the party fielded only 13 Muslim candidates combined in the 2014 and 2019 elections, and none were elected.
The BJP denies discriminating against Muslims.
The party “allows all types of people to be welcomed, not just Hindus,” said Abdul Salam, the only Muslim among some 430 BJP candidates running for Parliament this year. If he wins, he will become the BJP’s first Muslim member since 2014 in the lower house of India’s parliament.
Salam, a native of the Muslim-majority southern city of Malappuram, said Muslim politicians from other parties could gain power if they joined the BJP alliance in parliament.
But Muslims from other parties are fighting simply to stay in office.
ST Hasan, a Muslim MP from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, was not chosen by the Samajwadi Party to seek re-election. He was replaced by a Hindu politician, a decision he believes was made to appeal to Hindu voters, who are the majority in the region he represents.
Hasan said political parties, especially those that consider themselves secular, need to leave more room for minority candidates.
“Fair representation of each community is good for a democracy,” he said. “But what we are seeing is that a community is gradually being pushed into a corner.”
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Pathi reported from New Delhi and Ahmedabad.
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