NEW DELHI: Despite a glorious win by Narendra Modi all over the country, the Achilles heel of his miraculous mandate remains the dilemma of the Muslim minority. Two facts stand out: one, of the 337 MPs that constitute the NDA mandate, including 285 of the BJP, there is not a single Muslim. The five Muslim candidates fielded by BJP lost. This included Shahnawaz Hussain, the most prominent Muslim candidate from Bhagalpur, in Bihar, who lost by a narrow margin of 9,000 votes. The only saving grace is BJP’s ally, Ram Bilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party fielded a Muslim candidate who won from Khagaria, in Bihar.
Second, the 16th Lok Sabha will witness the lowest representation of Muslims in the history of Indian democracy with only 24 MPs, accounting for a paltry 4.4 per cent of the entire strength. This is 6 MPs less than the 15th Lok Sabha. For Akhliyat (community) whose population accounts for almost 14 per cent of the population, this is gross under-representation. In contrast, in 1980, Muslims occupied almost 9.3 per cent of the Lok Sabha with 49 MPs. As Indian democracy progresses, the dilemma of the Muslim majority seems to worsen in terms of under-representation.
The only states that have elected Muslim MPs are Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, which always elected Muslim MPs in the past, have none. One reason is the massive mandate for the BJP in these two states.
The Muslim dilemma will continue to haunt the Modi administration, especially since his image has had the tag of the Godhra massacre attached to it. To be honest to Modi, as well the BJP, the party did make several attempts to connect with the Muslim community during the pre-election campaign. Several rounds of talks were held between the Muslim community, particularly intellectuals, editors of the Urdu press and other community leaders and the BJP led by Durganand Jha, the convenor of the Nationalist Forum of India. The Forum held three rounds of public meetings in the Constitution Club in New Delhi and smaller meetings in other cities all over the country. The BJP was partly successful in attracting the Shia Muslims to vote for the party in several cities, including Varanasi and Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh. BJP president Rajnath Singh’s political secretary Sudhasnshu Trivedi took a special interest in such meetings and he did manage to attract quite a large section of the Muslim vote for Singh in Lucknow.
Given the questionable image of Modi in the minds of the Muslim community, the majority of the Muslims ended up, however, voting strategically in the almost 302 Lok Sabha constituencies where they have a substantial 10 per cent presence. Unless the future Modi administration makes sincere attempts and serious amends to rectify the situation, the Muslim question will remain Modi’s number one intractable problem. Despite the fact that prominent Muslim intellectuals, such as former editor M J Akbar joined the BJP on poll eve, the dilemma facing the Muslims regarding BJP and particularly Modi will remain the biggest headache for the Modi administration.