While the Congress will no doubt be dismayed by its internal reports that it will at best win 60 to 65 seats in the Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, the admission is good news for those who have been hoping that the party’s communal agenda of blatantly appeasing the Muslim voters in the State will fail for the sake of secular politics. The Congress has turned the election into a virtual referendum on its grand pro-Muslim promises to the virtual exclusion of any other — and more important — issues that should have featured in public discourse and influenced the poll outcome. The Congress has given the impression that the votes of this community matter more than even issues of development that touch the lives of every person in that State. This approach is not just an insult to the ‘majority’ of voters but also to the Muslims whom the Congress has reduced to a mere vote-bank that can be manipulated with a false promise here and a dubious assurance there. That the Muslims do constitute an important segment in Uttar Pradesh is undeniable — they are said to be a decisive factor in at least 120 Assembly seats across the State — but it is equally true that they are grappling with many problems that, if genuinely addressed, can dramatically improve their socio-economic status. Yet the Congress, or for that matter those parties which are tripping over each other to win the community over, barely talks about these issues. The downscaling by the Congress of its expectations in the coming Assembly election, although it is loath to accept that officially, does not, however, mean that communal politics has gone away from the State or that the party has given up on its divisive agenda. On the contrary, the party’s crass pandering of Muslim demands continues unabated, now out of sheer desperation. That has also encouraged a number of other smaller outfits like the Ulema Council and the Ittehad Front to target the Muslim votes to the exclusion of others.
The clamour to attract the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh has reached a level that, but for its dangerous consequences, would have sounded ridiculous. For instance, a senior Congress Minister in the UPA Government has promised nine per cent reservation for Muslims as a religious community, although the Constitution does not provide for communal quotas. The Samajwadi Party has gone one step ahead (or backward, if it is seen from another perspective) by promising the community 18 per cent reservation. Neither the Congress nor the SP has clarified as to how it plans to fulfil its promises. In the given situation, the only way out would be for these parties to dip into the Other Backward Classes quota of 27 per cent and set aside from it the huge numbers that they have been promising the Muslims. But, because the OBCs, who are the present beneficiaries of this quota, are unlikely to be amused and could drift away if their share is dented, the Congress and the SP (which survives on the support of the Yadavs) are hard-selling the spurious line of a stand alone minority quota. At the core of all these manipulations is a demographic reality which has given the Muslim community such political clout in Uttar Pradesh that it can dictate terms that are blatantly communal and fly in the face of national interest to those parties and candidates that seek its support. The point is: Should demographic aberrations that offers undue leverage to a particular section of the society in secular India be allowed to influence the results of elections?
