Communal political discourse in India is not an aberration. We have known all kinds. Coded speeches. Dog whistles. Old Jansanghi communalism was quieter, still feeling its way through back door manipulation and Hindu-first preferences. Coming out of the closet were the pre- and post-Babri speeches – the Sadhvi Rithambara variety, still fringe, circulated on sticky little cassette tapes and played at pan shops in the North. Then came the era of open abuse, the mainstreaming of communal political discourse post-Gujarat 2002 – India’s first televised pogrom.
But the sheer volume of anti-Muslim sentiment this time round, spewed day in, day out from high decibel microphones of the election has been staggering. It has also been far sharper and more stinging because there is less dog whistling, replaced by the direct naming of one community. No policy has been critiqued, no promise made, no opponent attacked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Himanta Biswa Sarma, Adityanath and others, without dragging the hapless bearded ghost of the Muslim into it. The Muslim has been the chief weapon and main victim. Will it win the election? I do not know. What I do know is this – a new set of lines have been drawn around Muslims, further circumscribing their rights in India.
Dumping all anti-Muslim messaging into one hate-speech box is unhelpful. We need to separate out the meaning of the mangalsutra from the mutton and from the mujra. Mutton and mujra are tropes of exotic Muslim plenitude, moral decay, and debauchery. Mangalsutra is different – it is about Hindu assets and resources.
Also read: Mangalsutra, Mutton, Mujra, Muslim Quota: Modi’s 2024 Campaign Marked by Communalism, Misinformation
Analysts critical of the BJP, have said that voters are concerned about livelihoods, inflation, unemployment, opportunities for the youth, public services, roads, water, electricity – the stuff that effects daily lives. The stuff that comes under the broad rubric of ‘development’ – vikas. They do not want polarisation. Some commentary on social media has therefore said that the PM seems to have “lost it” when phase one voter turnouts were lower than expected. He panicked, picked up the Muslim club, and started swinging it around wildly in the hope of hitting some home runs.
I disagree. There is method in this madness. There is a goal. The speeches have a pattern. The register within which they operate is ironically and precisely ‘development’ (vikas). They know that material conditions of life matter to people, so the speeches are working the communal message squarely within that discursive register. It is good psychological strategy. People’s needs are being acknowledged. Not as some would like, but acknowledged nonetheless. The speeches have regularly touched on a host of development issues – resources, reservations, assets, water, taxes, rations. The message is simple – you will get all this and more, when the Muslims are out of the reckoning.
The campaign has built upon soil made fertile in the decade between 2014 and 2024. The Terrorist Muslim, Love Jihadi Muslim, Corona-Spreading Muslim, Cow-Killer Muslim – this ground was already laid. It drew Lakshman Rekhas around a whole other set of democratic and civil rights and placed Muslims outside the lines. These Muslim could be lynched and denied justice, denied the right to protest, thrown in jail, denied bail. References to these older tropes pepper the 2024 speeches, as a refresher, a reminder, a base. But the focus this time is specific. A new line is being cemented.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a rally in Jharkhand’s Dumka on May 28, said, “’Love Jihad’ started from Jharkhand,” reported PTI. This was just clickbait. Love jihad is mentioned very briefly, nearly 34 minutes into a speech that is largely about development. Because actually the two themes about Muslims that repeated themselves in PM Modi’s speeches are “ghuspetiya (infiltrator)” and “tushtikaran (appeasement).” True to pattern, he quickly moved on to allege that tribal land was being grabbed by the ghuspetiya. In other words, he moved on to a development concern – tribal land. Immediately after that he moved to reservations – promising the Adivasi audience that Muslims would never be allowed to ‘steal’ their reservation i.e. no tushtikaran.
Infiltrator and appeasement are related concepts, that make perfect narrative sense together. The Muslim as ghuspetiya means outsider, illegitimate. And in this election, the appeasement of Muslim is a charge made not in the context of all ‘special things’ Muslims apparently get, including Muslim personal law. This time the focus of the appeasement narrative is in the context of development alone. How can an illegitimate outsider claim any right to a share in national goods and services i.e. the right to development?
Also read: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister from an ‘Infiltrator’
The mangalsutra speech is about assets and wealth. In Dumka the PM speaks about land.
Countless speeches are about reservations – meaning jobs and education. In speech after speech, we are told the PM stands with all “vanchit (marginalised)” people of this country – the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Economically Backward Classes – and Muslims will never be allowed to get reservations meant for them. And at a mega rally in Maharashtra’s Dindori and Kalyan on May 15, he said, “Modi will never allow budget allocation based on religion or reservation to be granted based on religion. Modi is the guardian of the rights of the deprived.”
This is the important new line that has been firmly drawn in this election: Who gets to jostle for the right to development in a democracy?
Whom will the state recognise as the legitimate vanchit/deprived? All citizens and groups in democracies lobby, do advocacy, and persuade their democratically elected governments for a fair share of the resources, assets, goods and services of a nation. They lobby for schemes, laws, policies, budgetary allocations. Dalits rights groups, women’s rights groups, disability rights groups – they all do this. Because democratic states do not give perfect material equality. What they are meant to give is the right to struggle for it. To persuade. And to be heard. To be legitimate constituents in that process of the democratic jostle.
This campaign has completely delegitimised Muslims as a minority deserving of any leg-up, of any state support to pull themselves out of the poverty, lack of opportunity, and lack of education in which they find themselves. Any state measure to help Muslims is entirely off the table. It would be ‘special treatment.’ It would be appeasement of the ghuspetiya, who has no rights. All other marginalised groups can still jostle for their share of budgetary allocation. Poor Muslims, squatting at the bottom of all national development indicators, and dipping lower than Dalits and Adivasis on education, cannot.
The process of abandoning Muslims on the development front; leaving one of India’s most marginalized and poor communities entirely to fend for themselves, had already begun. The Budget allocation for the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) was reduced by 38% for the financial year 2023-2024 from the previous year. The Maulana Azad Education Foundation started in 1989, and named after India’s first education minister, was gradually decimated, with grants-in-aid reduced from Rs 90 crores in 2021-2022 to just Rs. 1 lakh in 2022-2023.
Also read: Who Needs ‘Aatmamanthan’ When PM Modi Does Nothing But Think ‘Muslim’ All the Time
It used to support meritorious minority girls and boys, bright kids from marginalised backgrounds, including many Pasmanda Muslims who were unable to find enough money for higher education, by funding the gap. On February 7 came an order shutting the Maulana Azad Education foundation down. On May 22, the Calcutta high court struck down OBC reservations for several Muslim backward classes. On March 22, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court quashed the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madrasa Education Act, 2004 deeming it “unconstitutional” and violative of the principles of secularism. The order has now been stayed by the Supreme Court, and we wait to see what finally happens.
The point about vile political discourse is that it is not about the speaker alone. Speaker and listener are joined in that moment. They have a bond. Just as say, Adele has with her audience. She can sing her songs on loop, because you already know the words. The fact that many Indians can accept this gradual disenfranchisement of 200 million citizens, reflects the amount of spade work that has been done. A shared language has been created. This election campaign has cemented that ground, with high decibel loudspeakers and lakhs of listeners in rally after rally, amplified a million times by the broadcast media, with more and more consumable, digestible, clips circulating on social media, all giving one message- the Muslim ghuspetiya must never be allowed to enter through these gates.
Indian voters are not listening to this stuff and going home unaffected. No matter who forms the government, discourse of this kind does not just come and go, leaving an entire nation of listeners untouched. Things stick.
These are the new lines of separation Indian Muslims confront at the end of this campaign.
Farah Naqvi is a writer and activist who lives and works in Delhi.