Muslim representation and political parties in India | Number Theory

What about the relation between politics and Muslim representation though?

The first part of this series looked at the overall share and regional distribution of India’s Muslim MLAs and MPs. It showed that Muslim representation is disproportionately skewed in pockets with higher population share of Muslims. What about the relation between politics and Muslim representation though?

Muslim representation is disproportionately skewed in pockets with higher population share of Muslims. (Representative photo)

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  Congress has the highest share of Muslim MLAs and MPs; BJP has the lowest

  46% of India’s all Muslim Lok Sabha MPs and 39% of Muslim MLAs have been elected from the Congress. Less than one percent of them have been elected from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its predecessor, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. The fact that the BJP has had only 19 Muslims MLAs and four MPs despite having 15% of all MLAs and 20% of all MPs in India means that every other political group has a higher relative share among Muslim MLAs and MPs in India.
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  More interesting is the temporal churn in Muslim representation across parties

  The fact that overall representation of Muslim MLAs and MPs is broadly stable across time in India does not mean that the relation between Muslims and politics has been stagnant. This is best seen in the party-wise composition of India’s Muslim MLAs and MPs across different phases of politics in India. The most commonly used classification of political epochs in post-independence India is the party-system categorization which is inspired by the concept of the Congress system of political scientist Rajni Kothari. Indian politics, as of now, can be divided into four party systems. The first (1952-66) captures the era of absolute dominance of the Congress. The second (1967-88) captures Congress still being strong in the Centre but getting weakened in the states. The third (1989-2013) captures the era of coalition politics even at the Centre. The fourth (2014 onwards) is the era where the BJP has emerged as the dominant national party. The Congress’s share in India’s Muslim MLAs and MPs was the highest in the First Party System and has been falling steadily since . The socialists and communists saw their shares peak under the Third Party System. The Fourth Party System has seen a majority of Muslim MLA/MPs come from other parties, which apart from the BJP also exclude the Congress, socialists and communists. The top three parties in this category are the Trinamool Congress, Indian Union Muslim League and the National Conference.
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  What is unambiguous is the falling share of Muslims in the Rajya Sabha…

  Rajya Sabha is the house of the states in India whose members are elected by MLAs in India’s legislative assemblies. Because the results are mostly pre-ordained on the basis of the existing strength of different political parties in respective legislative assemblies, the share of Muslims is more a reflection of parties nominating Muslims as candidates to these elections. Here, the share of Muslims shows a consistent and large fall across decades, from 11.8% in 1950s to just 6.7% in 2020s. To be sure, Muslims have a higher share in Rajya Sabha than Lok Sabha.
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  Which is driving the lower representation?

  The BJP has not offered representation to Muslims in the Rajya Sabha. And the Congress, socialists and communists have not seen much change in their share of Muslim MPs in Rajya Sabha. But these parties have seen a decline in their overall representation in the Rajya Sabha in the more recent past. Herein lies the reason for the falling share of Muslims in Rajya Sabha.

This is the second of a two-part series based on an HT database of all-Muslim MPs and MLAs in India. The first part looked at the representation of Muslims across states and over time.