THE MUSLIM FACTOR

FRAGMENTED IN THE PAST, THE COMMUNITY’S VOTE SEEMS TO BE CONSOLIDATING IN THIS GENERAL

- KAUSHIK DEKA

SAMAJWADI PARTY LEADER Maria Alam, niece of veteran Congress leader and former Union law minister Salman Khurshid, addressing a gathering on April 29 in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh, urged Muslim voters in India to wage a “vote jihad” against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. In an election already riven by a Hindu-Muslim binary, this statement sparked another row, bringing the Muslim voter once again to the centre stage.

Modi was quick to connect “vote jihad” with the already extant “love jihad” and “land jihad” narratives and mount a multi-pronged attack. Quoting a 2006 statement by former prime minister Manmohan Singh in which the Congress leader had said that minorities, particularly the Muslims, had the first right to the country’s resources, he equated it with Rahul Gandhi’s idea of wealth redistribution to paint it as a ploy to take away the wealth of the Hindus, including the mangalsutras of married women, and give it to the Muslims. Simultaneously, the prime minister accused the Congress of offering reservations to Muslims at the cost of other backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in pursuance of its minority appeasement and vote bank politics.