Communal dog whistles spike ahead of state polls in November

A mini-general election will take place in November, with 9.63 crore voters in Maharashtra and 2.6 crore voters in Jharkhand eligible to cast their votes in the two state assembly elections. Byelections will also be held in 48 more assembly constituencies across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Kerala, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Punjab, involving a wide spectrum of political parties gearing up for a series of tough contests.

Elections for two Lok Sabha seats of Wayanad in Kerala and Nanded in Maharashtra have also been scheduled for 13 November.

While the stakes are high for both BJP and Congress, the BJP remains the most focused on Uttar Pradesh, where its seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 plummeted from 61 in 2019 to 33 this year, and its overall vote share in the state fell by eight per cent.

Unlike in the Lok Sabha elections, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath has this time been given a free hand, with nine assembly segments of Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), Karhal (Mainpuri), Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar), Ghaziabad, Majhawan (Mirzapur), Sishamau (Kanpur city), Khair (Aligarh), Phulpur (Prayagraj) and Kundarki (Moradabad) going to the polls.

Adityanath has fashioned for himself the image of a muscular and divisive Hindutva leader who relies heavily on bureaucrats and police officials to implement highly questionable police encounters and wholesale demolition of properties mainly owned by Muslims. With little to show in terms of governance, Adityanath has fallen back on the politics of polarisation by whipping up communal tensions. 

Recent acts of vandalism, arson and torching of Muslim shops, houses, vehicles and shockingly even hospitals witnessed in Bahraich between 13 and 15 October must be seen in this context.

Violence erupted in this town when local Muslims objected to the playing of vulgar and loud music by DJs who were part of a Durga idol immersion procession passing in front of a mosque in Muslim-majority Maharajganj. This led a member of the mob to climb atop a Muslim house on which an Islamic flag was flying, bringing it down and planting in its place a saffron flag. He was shot at and died of pellet injuries.

The police arrested five Muslim boys and shot two of them in their legs. Following this incident, Adityanath issued a statement saying processions would continue as usual and personally met the family members of the deceased, giving them a cheque for Rs 10 lakh, a house under the PM Awas Yojana, and an Antodaya card.

Prior to the Bahraich incident, Yogi was using his trademark Hindutva rhetoric in raking up the issue of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh and exhorting 'batenge to katenge, ek rahenge to nek rahenge’. At home, this sympathy and support for the Hindu community in Bangladesh is targeted at the Samajwadi Party, which is gaining popularity in the state and is seen by Hindutva followers as a pro-Muslim party. SP is Yogi's main rival, with the Congress insisting it is not likely to contest a single assembly seat in UP.

In neighbouring Uttarakhand, chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has also been instrumental in whipping up communal passion. He insists the demography of the state has changed because of concerted 'love, land and mazaar jihads' allegedly conducted by Muslims. Determined to convert the state into 'devbhoomi (land of the gods)', he has been tacitly promoting the removal of Muslims from the Garhwal region before carrying the experiment to the Kumaon region.

In the last six weeks, there has been a steady rise in communal incidents in Uttarakhand. The latest conflagration was when local traders in conjunction with Hindutva organisations took out a 'Hindu chetna (awareness) rally' in the town of Khansar in Chamoli district on 16 October. Following the rally, two resolutions were passed unanimously by the local vyapar mandal (business association).

The first resolution stated that Muslims in the area should vacate the area by 31 December, failing which legal action and a penalty of Rs 10,000 would be imposed on them and also on their landlords if they were staying in rented accommodation. The second resolution emphasised that no "outsider" will be allowed to sell goods in this area, and if anyone was caught doing so, another Rs 10,000 would be imposed as a fine.

Muslim petty traders travel from the plains and move from village to village selling clothes, bangles, utensils and other goods in the state. They have been doing so for more than a century. This is what the traders, facing economic distress, believe must be stopped. Public boards were put up banning entry of "non-Hindus" in Chamoli district. Following a media outcry, the Uttarakhand police persuaded the villagers to remove the word “non-Hindus” and substitute it with “outsiders”.

Himachal Pradesh, which has only a two per cent Muslim population, was a state where communal tension was rare. In September, however, several cities in Himachal Pradesh saw rallies against businesses owned by Muslims as also against mosques which they believed had been built without authorisation. Here, too, the local traders were at the forefront in demanding that Muslim businessmen be made to leave the state.

Even though only the assembly segment of Kedarnath is going to the polls in Uttarakhand, the BJP, shaken at the loss of the Badrinath seat in the July assembly elections, is going all out to ensure it does not lose another segment housing a major pilgrimage site.

Bihar has been witnessing a similar increase in toxic Hindutva. Senior state BJP leader and Union textile minister Giriraj Singh has concluded the first phase of his 'Hindu swabhiman yatra' from Bhagalpur starting 18 October, passing through the area of Seemanchal with a large Muslim population. The march by the two-time MP from Begusarai has stoked controversy, with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar making no effort to rein him in.

The BJP seems to have overcome its differences with the RSS, whose karyakartas were at the forefront in planning an extremely successful campaign in the recent Haryana assembly elections. Being headquartered in Nagpur, sources in the RSS expect their workers to organise a minimum of 70,000 small meetings across Maharashtra before the election.

While it is too early to say whether anti-Muslim polarisation will pay electoral dividends, there is little doubt that it is a card the BJP has played successfully since Modi’s tenure as chief minister of Gujarat, and its leaders are convinced it is not a spent bullet yet.