Vote banks didn’t sink BJP. Vote blanks did

What they did not realise is that in a diverse country like India you need a share of every caste and community to manufacture a majority in a local context. You can do without committed ‘‘vote banks’’, but the presence of ‘‘vote blanks’’, communities where you get virtually no support, is harder to deal with.

The final evidence shows that the BJP and its allies managed to secure about 11 per cent of the Muslim votes in the entire country. This evidence is quite credible, for it comes from the post-poll survey of the National Election Study (NES) 2004, the largest ever social-scientific survey of the Indian electorate conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) covering more than 27,000 respondents in all the 28 states of the Indian union after the polling day.

The NES series has shown that notwithstanding all the hype and mythology surrounding the Msulim vote, a very small proportion of Muslims has voted for the BJP in the past decade. The share of the BJP and its allies went up from three per cent in the 1996 elections to five per cent in the 1998 elections and then jumped to 14 per cent in 1999, as the BJP added new allies and gained respectability.

The trend has been reversed this time, as the NDA lost three percentage points among Muslims. Not a major loss, the cool strategists might think, considering what the BJP did to Muslims.

THE BJP’s real hope was not that it would add Muslim votes to its kitty but that it would succeed in keeping the Muslim votes from uniting against itself. A preliminary look at the national vote share of the Muslims may suggest the BJP succeeded.

The Congress got a little over one-third on its own and just above half with its ally, more than its average share of votes in the country but less than the share of Muslim votes it got in 1999.

The Samajwadi Party secured about 15 per cent of the Muslim votes, three times higher than its share of the national vote. The Left and the BSP got the same proportion of votes among the Muslims as they did in the rest of the population.

The BJP got eight per cent of the Muslim votes on its own, about one quarter of its national share of votes, and in fact a little improvement upon what it got in the previous elections. The BJP’s allies suffered most, since share of Muslim votes dropped from around nine per cent in 1999 to about three this time.

THE appearance of fragmentation of the Muslim votes at the national level gives way to a picture of political consolidation at the state level. The Congress was the principal beneficiary of this consolidation in states where it was a direct contest between the Congress and the BJP or between the NDA and the Congress-led alliance.

In these states the Congress and its allies secured upwards of 70 per cent of the Muslim votes, suggesting an en bloc voting against the BJP. This is true not just in states like Delhi and Rajasthan but also in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, where the BJP’s allies used to get a significant slice of the Muslim votes.

It is only in Andhra Pradesh that the BJP’s ally managed to secure as much as one-third of the Muslim votes, but even this figure represents a decline of nearly 10 percentage points compared to the TDP-BJP share in 1999.

Gujarat stands as the odd state out, with one-fifth of the Muslim voters reporting they voted for the BJP. But this could well reflect the atmosphere of fear that they live in.

Wherever the Muslims have a viable secular alternative to the Congress — it could be the JD(S) in Karnataka, the AGP in Assam, the SP in UP or the Left in Kerala and West Bengal — the Congress ceases to be the sole beneficiary of the Muslim votes. But the split did not benefit the BJP except perhaps in Karnataka.

Eventually, the Muslim vote was polarised for the SP in Uttar Pradesh. In West Bengal, the Left lost some of its Muslim votes, but the beneficiary was the Congress and not the Trinamool Congress. In Kerala the Left gained nearly 40 per cent votes among the Muslims for the first time.

We do not yet have sufficient evidence to examine the third level of political consolidation — the level of the constituency. But whatever evidence we do have — the gap between the BJP’s vote share and the number of seats in UP for example — does suggest Muslims tried to the best of their knowledge and ability to vote for the candidate who would defeat the BJP.

IT is no one’s case that the BJP lost principally because of the loss of Muslim votes or because of the revulsion caused by Gujarat massacre. The fact is the BJP and its allies lost across the board among all sections of society.

If there was one reason for its defeat it was its inability to address the anxieties of ordinary people about their livelihood. If this is secular — and in a deeper sense it is so — then and then only can this verdict be seen as a triumph of secularism.

Yet the evidence presented here does suggest that some self-corrective mechanisms are in-built in our democracy.

The author is senior fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and co-director of its programme, Lokniti

Lowdown on India’s top Muslim seats

Of India’s top 28 Muslim constituencies — that is constituencies where the community makes up at least a quarter of the electorate — a notable nine returned Congress candidates in the recent Lok Sabha election. The nine Congress winners including three around the traditional stronghold of Malda in West Bengal. Among the others, the CPI(M) won five, three in West Bengal and two in Kerala.

Interestingly, the Samajwadi Party and the BJP each won three seats from constituencies with a respectable Muslim electorate. The remaining eight were one-off wins — but just one, Lakshadweep, went to the NDA. The winner with the least number of votes was P Pookunhikoya, who received just 15,597 votes in the ST seat of Lakshadweep, 95 per cent Muslim.

Overall, nine of the top 28 Muslim constituencies are in West Bengal and six in West Bengal. Of the BJP’s allies, the one severely tested in the ‘‘Muslim belt’’ was, therefore, the Trinamool Congress.

Ritu Sarin