There is a pressing need for a political framework that embodies true secular democratic values ensuring fairly equitable participation of the socio-economically deprived classes in electoral process
Dr Tasleem Ahmad Rahmani
SINCE independence, the country’s politics have gone through many stages. In the initial political landscape, the Indian National Congress was the only significant political force, while groups like the communists and Jan Sangh merely posed challenges to Congress but failed to garner substantial popular vote. As such, the votes of Muslims, Dalits, and upper-caste Hindus were predominantly received by the Congress, leaving no room for the emergence of other political parties.
In 1975, the Congress encountered significant opposition from Jayaprakash Narayan (popularly known as JP), a prominent leader from Bihar. He initiated a public movement addressing issues such as corruption, unemployment, and the economic policies implemented by the Congress government. Jayaprakash Narayan announced a march to Delhi with the slogan, “Singhasan khali karo, Janta aati hai,” aiming to gather approximately ten million participants to demand the removal of Indira Gandhi’s administration, drawing parallels to various contemporary social movements.
On June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed the first internal emergency in the country, imprisoning all political and social leaders overnight to stifle the JP movement. Despite the challenges, the movement found new life and strength, not in the bustling streets, but behind the bars of various prisons across the country. As the elections approached, a powerful wave of change began to ripple through these hidden corridors, igniting hope and resilience among those who felt silenced. After the emergency was lifted in 1977, an alliance of all opposition parties contested as the Janata Party while maintaining their separate political identities. For the first time in independent India’s history, the Congress faced a major defeat.
Current dynamics, characterised by dynastic, regional, religious, and caste-based politics, have exacerbated religious polarisation and bolstered the RSS’s divisive ideology.
It marked a significant turning point, reshaping the political landscape of the nation. Concurrently, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, representing the ideological face of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), seized an unprecedented opportunity to share power, a milestone considering its establishment in 1925. The Janata Party played a pivotal role in catapulting the RSS into a prominent position within the political arena, effectively igniting a new chapter in the nation’s governance. This period marked the end of the first era in India’s political history and the beginning of a new phase. This second phase was characterised by changing alliances and the emergence of new political dynamics.
Janata Party’s was a minority government made up of members with differing political ideologies, which led to significant instability. Ultimately, the government was toppled within 28 months, primarily due to the Bharatiya Jan Sangh withdrawal from the Janata Party over the controversial issue of dual membership. Within a year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged, succeeding the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and playing a significant role in the country’s political landscape.
The BJP, however, did not succeed in the subsequent general elections in 1984, allowing Congress to recapture power. Nevertheless, this paved the way for multiple political powers to emerge on the national horizon, challenging Congress’s long-standing dominance. During this time, Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha gradually increased from 11 MPs in 1952 to 49 in the 1984 elections, most of whom were elected on Congress tickets.
Prominent Muslim political leaders began to reach the Lok Sabha, and the only Muslim party at the time, the Indian Union Muslim League, maintained two or three MPs. However, this number never quite reflected the Muslim population, which was consistently over 10 per cent, as the Congress ruled without allocating a sufficient number of tickets to Muslim candidates. Notably, throughout this era, the political wings of the RSS had not yet gained significant public support, and the Congress continued to enjoy power for most of this time without any serious challenge.
The decade from 1979 to 1989 represents a significant phase in the country’s political history. During this period, the Indian National Congress maintained a firm grip on power; however, the country experienced numerous challenges, including the peak of Sikh militancy in Punjab, the subsequent Operation Blue Star targeting Sikh militants, and the tragic anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi along with large-scale anti-Muslim riots, growing discontent in northeastern states such as Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur, and the rise of insurgency in Kashmir, further complicated the political landscape. Additionally, the escalation of the Naxalite issue and other regional conflicts contributed to widespread unrest across various states.
It is noteworthy that the Congress Party would likely not have achieved victory in the 1984 general elections had it not been for the assassination of Indra Gandhi. This climate of restlessness and economic instability prompted a realignment of political forces, leading to the formation of the Janata Dal under the leadership of VP Singh, which successfully displaced the Congress government at the centre in 1989. The BJP participated separately in the elections, securing 85 seats for the first time. Although the Janata Dal was unable to gain a majority, it sought the BJP’s support to form a government. The fragmentation of the former Janata Party and the substantial rise of the BJP played critical roles in this political upheaval, resulting in a fractured mandate and subsequent political instability.
VP Singh of the Janata Dal served as prime minister for merely 11 months before BJP withdrew its support, primarily due to disagreements surrounding the implementation of the Mandal Commission report and the arrest of its leader LK Advani, who was spearheading the Ayodhya temple movement. This withdrawal exacerbated political instability within the country. During this time, the BJP, which held significant portfolios in the Union Cabinet, capitalised on the Babri Masjid issue, formalising its position through the Palanpur resolution in 1989 and launching a public movement centred around Advani’s Rath Yatra. This initiative significantly intensified communal tensions within the nation.
Moving forward, there is a pressing need for a political framework that embodies true secular democratic values ensuring fairly equitable participation of the socio-economically deprived classes in electoral process.
From 1990 to 1996, India witnessed a period characterised by intense political drama at the national level, marked by successive changes in government. Throughout this tumultuous time, the BJP demonstrated steady growth. Following the leadership of JP Narayan and VP Singh, the BJP emerged as a resurgent force within the country’s politics, largely propelled by the highly mobilised Babri Masjid/Ram Mandir movement. Advani later acknowledged during his testimony before the Liberhan Commission, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, that the BJP lacked a permanent electoral base and thus needed to consolidate Hindu votes through a vigorous Hindutva political campaign.
Since then, from 1989 onwards, on one hand, the representation of Muslims in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies started declining rapidly, on the other, the BJP continued to strengthen its hold on power from the national to the state level. Incidentally, this was the same period when most of the secular leaders also used this growing BJP stronghold to grab power at the provincial level. In 1990, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s first government in Bihar was formed with the external support of the BJP. Afterwards, prominent politicians like Mamata Banerjee, J Jayalalithaa, Mayawati, Chandrababu Naidu, M Karuna Nidhi, Biju Patnaik, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar became Cabinet ministers to CMs in their respective states with direct or indirect support of the BJP. Some are still with them, although initially the BJP itself did not try to form a government anywhere, but by supporting these leaders, it increased its strength in every state. In Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav too supported the BJP on various occasions. Almost the same situation later occurred in the North-Eastern states.
It must be remembered that during this period, apart from IUML, only the Muslim Majlis-e Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen could win a single seat in Hyderabad in 1984 and remained confined to a small pocket of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and now Telangana. As such, there were no alleged “vote-katwa”; Muslim political parties present in Indian politics, and Muslims kept adhering solely to so-called secular outfits. While the BJP was moving forward with a politics based on religious hatred, secular political parties were divided for the sole purpose of personal power-grabbing. They were denying tickets to Muslim candidates on the pretext of “Hindu backlash”. As a result, the representation of Muslims in the country’s power corridors was also declining, and they were gradually being pushed to the wall socially on educational and economic fronts.
In 1991, after a two-year hiatus, the Congress party formed a minority government for the first time since its inception. Following the demolition of the Babri Masjid during the Narasimha Rao government in 1992, the BJP made significant gains in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, leading to the appointment of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the country’s first BJP prime minister. His government, while initially only lasting 13 days, eventually secured a longer tenure and marked the beginning of a strong National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. Although Vajpayee’s cabinet adopted a moderate approach keeping aside its age-old political agenda of abrogating Article370, implementation of uniform civil code and construction of Ram Mandir, it effectively shifted public perception, establishing the BJP as a prominent national alternative to the Congress party.
From 2004 to 2014, Congress governments failed to counter this growing perception, but significant challenges persisted. Notably, in a 2015 report, senior Congress leader AK Antony recommended that the party must distance itself from Muslim voters, underscoring a growing trend among various political parties to minimise their association with Muslim constituents. Consequently, politics in India increasingly became influenced by religious sentiments.
A pivotal shift in Indian politics occurred in 2014 when the RSS ideology achieved an absolute majority, marking a significant milestone in the country’s governance. Ashok Singhal, then president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, announced that Hindu governance had returned after an 800-year interval. This statement went largely unchallenged by secular and religious parties, and for the past decade, the RSS has actively pursued its agenda.
During this period, Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies has further diminished, and there has been a marked decline in the participation of Muslim political leaders. Political parties have rather opted for locally influential Muslims like local henchmen, sportsperson, dynasts, actors etc. deliberately neglecting genuine political minds to represent the community. This has resulted in a political landscape where many elected representatives have a limited understanding of broader community issues.
Ironically, secular parties and their Muslim representatives including apolitical Muslim organisations keep encouraging the community to unite against the BJP, expecting them to prioritise electoral success over their own development. Despite dedicated efforts by Muslims to reduce BJP’s influence over the past 45 years, these representatives seldom question their own parties’ roles in enabling the BJP’s growth. It can thus be concluded that the camouflaged Congress ideology and rise in power hungry manoeuvre by local parties and a failed broader societal mechanism have facilitated the rise of religious politics in the country.
For the fifth phase of Indian politics to emerge, a new political alignment is necessary. Current dynamics, characterised by dynastic, regional, religious, and caste-based politics, have exacerbated religious polarisation and bolstered the RSS’s divisive ideology. Moving forward, there is a pressing need for a political framework that embodies true secular democratic values ensuring fairly equitable participation of the socio-economically deprived classes in electoral process.
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Dr Tasleem Ahmad Rehmani is president of Muslim Political Council of India and a prominent political analyst. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them.
