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Publication: Livemint.com
Date: November 10, 2014
URL: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Nn3z9upwFXrJrljyFVd0mN/The-divisive-quest-for-political-diversity.html?utm_source=copy

Representation of Muslims is a hot topic. Facts and history say something else

Now that the Union council of ministers has undergone its first expansion and reshuffle, questions about its religious composition, the distribution of castes in the ministry and the regional balance between different states have begun flying thick and fast. Each of these concerns is regressive and reflects a mindset that is at odds with the aspirations of modern India. Of these so-called concerns nothing is more controversial as the representation of one religious minority: the Muslims.

 First, some facts. In the Narendra Modi ministry there are only two Muslim members—one cabinet minister (Najma Heptullah) and one minister of state (Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi). Muslims thus make up just 3% of the council of ministers. The representation in state ministries is no better. One recent report in The Hindu pointed out that in the nine states where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power independently or in an alliance, there are just 22 Muslim members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) out of a total of 1,359 MLAs. In these states—Maharashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab—Muslims make up 8% of the population but have just 2% of the MLAs.

On the face of it, these numbers arouse disquiet that Muslims are being left behind. The corollary that the BJP is doing this on purpose is quick to follow. There may be more prosaic reasons for under-representation. One reason is that the BJP has very few Muslim candidates. The other is that it rarely contests Muslim-dominated constituencies where the probability of a candidate backed by it winning is low. The brutal fact of political life in India is that parties put up candidates to win and not in the quest of political plurality. Even in the age of Jawaharlal Nehru, such calculations dominated the distribution of election tickets. Factually, too, the under-representation thesis is not accurate as shown by a piece published in June by Mint. By international standards, India does much better in the political representation of minorities.

One could argue the obverse—why can’t a Muslim represent a Parsi-, Hindu- or a Sikh-dominated constituency? This is a valiant and honourable sentiment. But then this question is posed best to the political class in toto and not a particular party in isolation. After all, the political system is run (and belongs to) all parties and not the BJP alone.

Which brings us to a far more serious charge against this sort of thinking: It defies the very idea of Indian nationhood that representation and belonging to a particular community have no link. This begs the reverse of the above question: Why can’t a Hindu represent a Muslim constituency? Nominally secular in its intent, this reasoning is ugly in provenance and outlook. In the events leading to Independence and Partition in 1947, the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, argued along these lines. Jinnah said that one person, one vote—universal adult franchise in a first-past-the-post system—would lead to Hindu tyranny over Muslims.

These are tough questions to ask and their answers are even harder to come by. India’s citizenship—as imagined by its founders—is flat and horizontal: It does not matter what religion one belongs to, citizenship is equal and does not segregate persons on any ground. In recent years it has become fashionable to seek diversity in political representation to the point of arguing for proportional representation for all communities, castes and religions. This quest for diversity is now dangerously at odds with the original idea of all Indians being equal. There is little doubt that Muslims as a community have fared poorly in education and opportunities in life in an avowedly secular republic. How about trying to change that instead of making specious claims about representation in legislatures and ministries?

At a more mundane level of governance, it implies that interests of Muslims can only be looked after by Muslims; those of Sikhs by Sikhs and Hindus by Hindus. One only has to open the pages of most secular histories describing the 1920s and 1930s (the late Bipan Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence is a good example) to find that this kind of thinking was the first step that converted many a fine secular politician into one with communal thinking. Jinnah was one victim. The consequences for India were far more serious. The India of today can avoid repeating those mistakes even if they are being advocated with the best of intentions.