The UPA and regional Indian political parties, including the SP, BSP, Trinamul Congress, the CPM, RJD and the LJP cannot hope to succeed in elections without the Islamic bloc vote. This is a fact, not a communal sentiment though uttering it likely to be made illegal if the Communal Violence Bill is enacted. It is the UPA that is the big fish that competes with these regional political parties for the Islamic bloc vote and then collaborates with them opportunistically in Parliament after elections to keep Muslim voters in good humour.
None of these parties can afford to offend the Muslim bloc vote constituency on matters that will mobilise their votes against them. And all of them increasingly stoop to preposterous lengths to serenade this increasingly truculent and unreasonable bloc vote. Of such emaciated dental floss are the pathetic recommendations of Rajinder Sachar and his self-serving ilk.
On the vital issue of terrorism, none of these political groupings can afford to unleash the imperative intrusive search for Muslims engaged in acts of terror while remaining concealed within their communities. And with the possible active collusion of some within their own communities albeit the likely ignorance of most. Anybody with passing acquaintance of search operations for terrorists will know that seriously disconcerting a lot of innocent people would be unavoidable in order to apprehend the few terrorists hiding their midst. Parties utterly dependent on Muslim votes, who sanctioned such actions and they would need to be frequent, will be erased from India’s electoral map. Intrusive searches for terror suspects may prompt even more terrorist actions by new recruits to their ranks. It is this corporeal threat that could account for the insouciance of India’s nominally nationalist politicians when it comes to dealing with terrorists firmly. It would also explain the acquiescence of government agencies in allowing terrorists to roam free and plant bombs that kill innocent people. The instant resort to sketches of suspects and arbitrary arrest, followed by release, are all a part of the absurd theatrics designed to confound though it actually mocks the dead.
The worst aspect of rivalry for the Muslim bloc vote is that it prompts competitive upping of the ante for their favours. In fact, much of the supposed articulated demands of the ordinary Muslim are created because of competition between secular (sic!) parties for their favours. And the fashioning of newly-minted Muslim demands by secular political parties acquires salience over time, fuelling a sense of Muslim victimhood and vengefulness while they remain unredeemed. This is how the Babri demolition, the alleged crimes of Gujarat CM, Narendra Modi and the implied venality of Hindu Gujarat acquired singular prominence. And they have become powerful motivation for the radicalisation of Muslim youth and their willingness to engage in acts of terror. The attempted coup de grace of Indian secular politics is the shrill chorus alleging Saffron terror, emanating from India’s first family and its shameless minions. In reality, it has been instigated by US church organisations, seeking to take advantage of Hindu-Muslim tensions to curb Hindu resistance to their evangelical activities. And UPA leaders have given a fresh twisted lease of life to the infamous Emergency slogan that India is Indira and Indira is India, though without a vestige of plausibility, by insinuating that Sonia Gandhi’s person is sacral. But the Congress party and the national media cannot surrender India and its national interests by harrowing obeisance to their white Christian goddess.
Yet, in the final analysis, the competition for the Islamic bloc vote is actually not addressed to the ordinary Muslim voters, but the leadership able to mobilise them. This leadership can apparently deliver the bloc vote through a myriad of sectarian organisations active within the community and the ubiquitous injunctions of the mosque to the faithful. The faithful usually respond regardless of their immediate mundane secular aspirations because religious fealty to Islam remains primordial. And the leadership enjoys the fruits of their cynical labour even as the practical aspirations for their constituents for jobs, homes, health care, etc. are ignored although they may also be misused to provoke animus and, most of all, mobilise their votes; and with remarkable discipline. The Muslim leadership itself is doing so much better than any comparable class in India in an echo of the privileges of the imperial Mughal nobility presiding in luxurious excess over the grimly impoverished masses of India. They are in determined collusion with India’s Islamised secular political parties that are becoming variants of the historic Muslim League, ever ready to mobilise, assert and precipitate militant action to enforce demands. They also enjoy the patronage of the Wahhabis, the fountainhead of mischief globally and the Pakistani establishment that guides the specifics of their miscreant activity in India.
The numerical preponderance of the Hindu voter is a pathetic fiction that lulls them into a false sense of security though it is a meaningless slogan. Despite every atrocity Hindu voters have not shunned political parties and leaders that shield terrorists and demand action against their very own security forces with outrageous accusations, of which the Batla House encounter and the ensuing shenanigans of the disgraceful, loyalist Digvijay Singh’s is one instance. Hindu voters did not revolt at the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, expelled en masse from their historic homeland, unlike the countless Muslims who sacrifice their lives in the cause of Palestine. Nor are they exercised by the ethnic cleansing occurring in the Indo-Bangladesh border regions of West Bengal and Assam at this very moment. The bombs that have killed so many in the past decade and ravaged Hindu religious sites have proven insufficient provocation too. But it is a moot question why no Hindu leadership has emerged, with solitary exceptions, to inspire Hindu and rally them to action. This is no longer the land of the inexpressibly brave Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Guru Gobind Singh, willing to embrace death for their faith. Hindus voters can now be bought with subsidised electricity and cheap laptop computers while the body parts of Hindus litter bombed cities with predictable regularity.
