Identity politics shouldn’t overshadow real issues

In this election, all parties must stay away from both shallow secularism, which seeks to treat minorities as a homogeneous votebank to be mobilised, and majoritarianism, which seeks to blur all the diversity within the Hindu fold

On Sunday, the Samajwadi Party(SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance in Uttar Pradesh (UP) held its first rally in Saharanpur’s Deoband. This was the first time that the three parties’ leaders — Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Ajit Singh — representing distinct political traditions and social groups, and with a long history of political rivalry, came together. The gathering was impressive in terms of both numerical strength and organisational synergy. More substantively though, in terms of messaging, the rally, as expected, was marked by a rather robust critique of the Narendra Modi government. But what was as striking was Ms Mayawati’s sharp attack against the Congress — she is understood to have been the most resistant to a wider alliance with the Congress. Apprehensive that Muslims will split between the two anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forces in the fray, the BSP leader explicitly appealed to the community to not waste their votes on the Congress but consolidate fully behind the Gathbandhan (alliance).

What was as striking was Ms Mayawati’s sharp attack against the Congress — she is understood to have been the most resistant to a wider alliance with the Congress.(AFP)

The quest for the Muslim vote has been a feature of a rather distorted secular politics in India for long, and Ms Mayawati’s appeal fits into that tradition. This is disturbing because mobilising votes on the basis of religion is playing with fire. If this call for Muslim votes constitutes one danger, the quest to construct a Hindu vote — by appealing to raw emotions, and stoking suspicion and hatred of the minorities — constitutes the other danger. The BJP and its ideological fellow travellers have been most guilty of this. The two tendencies feed into each other.

India’s history has enough instances to show that majority and minority communalism have perilous consequences. In this election, all parties must stay away from both shallow secularism, which seeks to treat minorities as a homogeneous votebank to be mobilised, and majoritarianism, which seeks to blur all the diversity within the Hindu fold. Identity matters in electoral politics. But parties often use identity to divert the electorate from the real issues of livelihood, economy, governance, and escape the responsibility of providing a vision for the future. Let voters vote as individuals, exercising their judgement on issues, rather than treat their religious identity as the primary driver of political choice.