Rajasthan election: The sway of religion in battleground Pokhran

With crucial Rajasthan polls less than 20 days away, on ground at Pokhran, the conversation is not around nationalism, but a communal cleavage among residents.

For close to five decades, the town of Pokhran, 112 km to the east of Jaisalmer, has been an Indian symbol of hard power. It is here, at a fallow range 45 kilometres from the town limits that India conducted two nuclear tests, part of the country’s coming of age as a global power. Yet, with crucial polls to the Rajasthan state legislature less than 20 days away, on ground at Pokhran, the conversation is not around nationalism, but a communal cleavage among its residents.

The Pokharan assembly constituency itself only came into existence in 2008 after a delimitation exercise. (PTI)

The narrative is clear from the primary contenders in the fray: the BJP candidate is Swami Pratap Puri, a Rajput leader who doubles up as a religious seer, the head of the “Taratara Math” in Barmer; and the sitting Congress MLA and minister in the Ashok Gehlot cabinet, Shale Mohammad, the son of Muslim religious leader Gazi Fakir, a member of the Peer Pagaro, a sect of Sindhi Muslims that has followers on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border.

Off a busy Pokhran marketplace, Lal Singh, a street vendor underlines the divide. Everyone, he says, is united in the sense of pride that their connection with the nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998 generate. In election time though, there is another narrative that takes over. “Here, the line is clear. Most Muslims vote for Saleh and the Hindus for Puri. The margins have very often been thin because the divisions are so clear, and there are very few swing voters.”

The Pokharan assembly constituency itself only came into existence in 2008 after a delimitation exercise. Its first MLA was Shale Mohammad, who beat BJP’s Shaitan Singh as the Congress won Rajasthan. In 2013, Singh repaid the favour and beat Mohammad in a year after the BJP formed the government under Vasundhara Raje Scindia. In 2018, mirroring the narrow Congress win, Saleh won again, this time against the BJP’s Puri, by a margin of 872 votes.

Local leaders said that the constituency has around 2.22 lakh voters with around 60,000 Muslims and 42,000 Rajputs, the two predominant communities.

Through Rajasthan, the Congress has been pushing a slew of social welfare schemes as its prime talking points, projecting Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as the principal architect of this outreach. At a construction site teeming with MGNREGA workers, a middle-aged woman who did not want to be identified, lauded Gehlot’s overtures, the distribution of ration kits, the implementation of the old pension scheme, and the distribution of mobile phones to women. Still, her last definitive sentence is ominous for the Congress. “Baba ne vote deva (we will vote for the Hindu leader),” she said.

In some Muslim neighbourhoods too, there were murmurs of anti-incumbency against the local MLA. “Yes, lots of development has taken place over the past five years, but there have been times when he hasn’t responded to our requests. The MLA focused on others, and not his core voters like us,” one resident said.

Shale Mohammad said that there was no “Hindu-Muslim” issue, and said that people would vote looking at political parties, as opposed to individual candidates. “There is no religious issue in Pokhran and people will vote for development. Parties contest the elections and not candidates. People want employment and a future. Even the BJP has a minority cell, so why rake this issue up?”, he said.

Mohammad said that it was the BJP that had made religion the centre of its campaign. “There is no anti-incumbency against the government. The BJP therefore has no issues, and only talks about religion, which people are now tired of,” the minister of minority affairs and the Waqf board said.

The BJP candidate Puri however said that the area has a host of issues, faces water scarcity, suffers from corruption and should have been announced as a new district.“I have worked for people for five years and people know how approachable and connected I am with them,” Puri said.

But he is unequivocal about the clearest division among the people, his trump card ahead of a tough battle between two religious leaders. “I am a Hindu and in front of me is a Muslim. It is the people themselves that call it a fight between two religious leaders.”