Muslim Minorities in Electoral Politics of Tripura (original) (raw)

Electoral Prefernces of Muslims in West Bengal: An Analysis of Lok Sabha Elections

2021

The Muslim Electoral politics has always been a subject of discussion among the scholars. For strange reasons Muslims of India are perceived to be voting as a monolith. The dominant notion about the Muslim voting behavior remains that they are strategic in their voting behaviorand are not influenced by their gender, class, or regional location. Their only considerationregardless of the opposition, it is believed while they casttheir votes,is to defeat Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Amidst this gross generalization, the role of the nature of party competition in determining the voting behavior of Muslims is often down played. The paper attempts to probe whether the availability of political choice has any role to play in determining their voting behaviour or not. Therefore, the effort is to figure out how the dynamics of Muslim vote plays out in a contextcharacterized by multi-party competition. It does so by looking in to the Electoral Preferences of Muslims of West Bengal in different...

Does Muslim Vote Matter? Presence, Representation, Participation

Indian Politics and Policy , 2020

The dominant descriptions of Muslim political engagements in contemporary India suffer from three conceptual problems. First, there is an assumption that Muslims constitute a single homogeneous community, whose political/electoral behavior is self-evident. Second, the 'Muslim voting' is envisaged as an independent self-governing exercise as if Muslim politics is all about Muslim voting. Third, Muslim voting behavior is always understood in relation to Muslim political representation in legislative bodies. It is assumed, in fact rather uncritically, that there is an organic and instrumental relationship between Muslim voters and Muslim MPs and MLAs. Reliability on these assumptions does not allow us to pay attention to various sociological, cultural, and economic factors that determine Muslim political imaginations in different contexts. In the backdrop of 2019 election, this paper argues that Mus-lim politics is not simply about the number of Muslim MPs and MLAs. Nor is it entirely reducible to the voting behavior of Muslim voters. The political engagements of Muslims in contemporary In-dia, therefore, need to be explored as an ever-evolving independent discourse, which does not always respond to the challenges posed by Hindutva politics.

India: Conflict with Minorities in the Conventional Political System. The Status of Muslims

Conflict Studies Quarterly

Hindu-Muslim conflict and riots in India are enduring intergroup conflicts in south Asia, destabilizing the region for a long time. Despite having federal democracy and secular nationalism in the political system of India, the state and its various technology of power take sides with religious groups abetting the persecution of minority Muslims as religious or ethnic groups. Among the various ethnic groups and communities living in India, Muslims are among the most deprived communities in contemporary times. In the issue of minority conflict, a permanent solution in the federal system of government has become a dream. This paper analyses India’s divergent political systems and state ideology and its failure and success in respective cases to counter communal and ethnic violence. We argue that, rather than focusing on the weakness of the existing political systems of India, the common failure to adequate power sharing can better explain these conflicts and successive persecution of m...

Impact pf the Demolition of the Babri Mosque and Godhra Pogrom on Muslim Voting Behaviour: A Comparative study of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala

Regional Studies , 2018

Being around fifteen per cent of the total population of India, Indian Muslims constitute a significant minority that cannot be ignored by the political parties in India. Since partition, the Muslims were considered traditional Indian National Congress (INC) constituency, but the failure of the INC to stop the demolition of Babri mosque and Gujarat massacre pushed Muslims to look for other options. In this study, the impact of communal violence on the voting behaviour of Indian Muslims is studied with the help of a comparative study of Muslim voting patterns in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Kerala. This paper argues that the electoral performance of Muslims and their supported party or coalition has a direct bearing on the communal violence against them. By conducting the comparative study of the electoral behaviour of Muslim voters in these three states, it is observed that the most important factor in this performance is the choices they get in a particular state. The political clout and bargaining position of Muslim voters is much better in a coalition system than in a two-party contest and they can play their cards more successfully if they have their own political party as they have in Kerala. This paper also looks at the role of police in communal violence and its relationship with electoral politics.

Indian Muslims and Congress: Electoral Dilemmas

While Sonia Gandhi in a party meeting lamented that Congress is being presented as a Muslim party (1), an anti-Hindu party (2), her own party's major Muslim Leader Salman Khursheed confessed that Congress has the blood of Muslims on its hands. (3) This raises a lot of questions about the nature of Congress as a political party and as to how the Muslims of India respond to the appeal for support from Congress in particular. In the wake of UP election results (2017) when number of Muslims MLAs has fallen to 5.9%, not a single Muslim candidate was put up by BJP, while the population of Muslims in UP being about 19.26%. BJP won with thumping majority. Mohammad Adeeb, one of the foremost Muslim leaders stated that Muslim should withdraw from electoral arena as due to their presence parties are able to polarize the elections on communal lines, with Muslims getting marginalized. (4) As such also while on one side we see the worsening plight of Muslim community at social and economic level, in the matters of electoral representation there is a drastic decline.

Muslims in Uttar Pradesh Caste , Class and Electoral Politics

2019

The election campaign for mobilising Muslim voters in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is substantially different from other parts of the country in two ways. Unlike other states, secularism as a political agenda has made a significant comeback in UP elections. The Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013, and subsequent debates on the efficacy of administration in dealing with the rehabilitation of riot-victims, which had already become serious political issues even before the elections, are re-conceptualised as a threat to secularism. The Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Congress and even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seem to evoke the communal/secular binary to approach Muslims of the states as voters.

Ethnic Impact in Electoral Politics: A Case Study of District Bahawalnagar

2019

The work emphasized on impact of ethnic issues in electoral politics District Bahawal Nagar. The inattentive violence existed in the country on the basis of tribal, linguistic, sectarian, region and religion.Itposes a threat to the revitalization of parliamentary institutions in Pakistan. The ethnic problem becomes intense due to domestic political situation of Pakistan which has wide-ranging implications in Pakistan. Not the least of these, the damage by chronic social unrest and political turmoil and theethnic reflection in the international Scenario for the prestige of Pakistan. Pakistan is facing the complex ethnic conflicts in political system which has deep impact on electoral politics. The ethnic conflict is going to deepen in remotes area of Pakistan. The advocates of the government tend to accredit blame for ethnic turmoil which is going to disturb with the support of conspiratorial forces whose aimed is to weaken the state. The concept ofbiradarism is perceived from the concept of caste system in the Hindu culture and society. Different aspects of biradarism which determine the voting behavior and pattern in the subject area are carefully empirically analyzed.