Narendra Modi’s campaign to be the next prime minister of India is formidable. He has clearly energised the base of the Bharatiya Janata Party and indications are he is the most popular politician in the prime ministerial race.
His elevation will galvanise the BJP’s core voters, and give the party a sense of change and new direction. It may even win the party new voters. Yet, Modi faces a decisive gatekeeper — the Muslim voters.
There is one thing we know about Muslim voters: When they feel insecure, they punish the BJP in the elections.
A good instance of this is the 2004 parliamentary election, the first general election after the Gujarat riots that claimed over 1,000 — mainly Muslim — lives. The insecurities were are apparent in three noticeable trends in the 2004 elections.
THREE TRENDS
First, Muslims overwhelmingly voted against the BJP. This is evident at the voter and the constituencylevels. At the voter-level, the National Election Study (NES) -- that the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies conducted in 420 constituencies -- shows that nine out of 10 Indian Muslims surveyed voted against the BJP in 2004.
At the constituency-level, this produced a strong negative relation between the size of the Muslim population and the party’s electoral performance – a 10 per cent rise in Muslim population brought about a 5 per cent drop in the BJP’s vote share.
Second, the NES data reveal that the Muslims voted strategically to defeat the BJP.
That is, when Muslims voted against the BJP in 2004, they did not vote for a particular party, ideology or alliance. Instead, they voted for the party that was most likely to defeat the BJP in their constituencies.
This meant supporting the Congress Party in one constituency and the Communists or a regional party in another. Over 85 per cent of Muslims thus voted strategically and ensured the BJP’s defeat in three out of five constituencies.
What these means for Modi’s campaign is that his party, the BJP, will face an uphill battle to win seats in 2014 with Modi as its leader.
In over 60 per cent of the Parliamentary constituencies, the victory margins in the last two elections were smaller than the Muslim population in them. If the Muslims vote en bloc to defeat the BJP in next year’s election, the party -- even if it were to emerge as the largest party in the parliament as some polls suggest --- will have to depend more on allies to form the government.
What kills that prospect is the third trend in Muslim voting of 2004: Muslims also voted strategically to defeat BJP allies. Every major BJP ally lost seats in Parliament as a result. Muslims then were signalling that they would forsake any party that allied with the BJP. The defeat of Janata Dal-Secular in last month’s Karnataka by-elections (in Mandya and Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha seats), where the party allied with the BJP, confirms the continuation of this trend.
Unsurprisingly, the BJP’s Parliamentary coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, is now in ruins. Barring the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal (parties that do not rely on Muslim votes), the BJP has no major ally. Wary of alienating Muslim voters, potential allies -- such as the Janata Dal (United and Secular), the Telugu Desam Party or the Samajwadi Party -- are unlikely to ally with the BJP before or after the 2014 elections with Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.
What is striking about Muslim voting behaviour in 2004 is that Muslims from diverse backgrounds – literate and illiterate, rich and poor, urban and rural – strategically voted to defeat the BJP. However, they voted en bloc against the Hindu nationalist party to a greater extent in states such as Assam, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra where deadly anti-Muslim violence in the recent decades has made them feel insecure.
MEMORIES RANKLE
As Modi – the leader whom Muslim and human rights groups accuse of having allowed the Gujarat riots – steps up to lead the BJP, insecurity, if not ill-feeling towards the party, can be expected to prevail among the Muslim voters. After all, memories of older anti-Muslim riots such as the 1983 Nellie massacre and the 1989 Bhagalpur violence still seem to make Muslims in Assam and Bihar vote strategically to defeat the Hindu nationalist party.
The spin, therefore, that the Muslims have forgotten the Gujarat riots and moved on are unlikely to turn true.
(The author is Assistant Professor, Maxwell School of Public Affairs, Syracuse University).