Political metamorphosis of Muslims in Karnataka after Assembly polls

In March 2023, two months ahead of the Karnataka assembly election, senior BJP leader KS Eshwarappa paused a speech in Mangalore after hearing azaan and said the Muslim call for prayer gave him a headache. The habitual minority-basher went on to make several controversial comments, but failed to provoke any reaction from the Muslims in Karnataka.

In the same month, the Basavaraj Bommai government scrapped reservations for the Muslims. Only the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a marginal Muslim party with 0.23% of votes, hit the streets in protest. All major community organisations kept away, choosing to petition the Supreme Court rather than blocking the roads. Compare this with the response of Lambanis, a prominent Dalit caste, whose quota was slashed in another reservation decision by the BJP government.

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The Lambanis exploded in anger and pelted stones at BJP leader BS Yediyurappa’s house at Shikaripura. They led violent protests for days, shutting down several towns. April, the month before the election, saw the murder of a Muslim man by cow vigilantes. A small group took out a protest in Mandya, his hometown, which a right wing news agency described as ‘massive.’ But Muslims elsewhere ignored the incident and moved on.

It felt like Muslims — 13% of the population and the third largest community in the state after Dalits and Lingayats — had retreated into a shell. In the face of relentless harassment by the Hindutva organisations and brazen partisanship of the Bommai government, the community opted to keep its head down and offer no response.

Making a comeback

In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Muslims seem to have sprung back to life after the May election. They have become more visible and are quietly asserting a new-found political clout. Many politicians and bureaucrats, who call the shots now, including the new Assembly Speaker UT Khader, are from the community.

The Congress’s budget paid attention to the minorities, especially Muslims, prompting a BJP leader to say that it had pampered Akbar and Anthony while ignoring Amar. A Kannada newspaper carried a front page report, subtly pointing out that three of the six serving bureaucrats who had prepared the budget were Muslims.

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Many Congress ministers have found the spine to caution those spreading hate. MB Patil warned to send a factually challenged Hindutva ideologue to prison. Priyank Kharge asked police to act on any ‘sena’ or ‘dal’ that broke the law.

Consolidation without polarisation

The political fortunes of Muslims lifted dramatically after they managed to consolidate their votes but without giving a chance to the Sangh parivar to polarise the society. A large section of the community carefully watched its steps to negotiate the political minefield set up by the BJP.

Muslim votes have traditionally followed local cues and gone to different parties, even to candidates such as BJP leader CT Ravi, another well-known Muslim baiter. Professsor Muzaffar Assadi of Mysore University says he has observed Muslims voting even for the BJP in north Karnataka where many central schemes, like building toilets, have been popular with them.

But, in this election, which came in the wake of an unprecedented Hindutva mobilisation, Muslims realised that consolidating their votes was key to their political survival. According to estimates, an unprecedented 85% of Muslims voted for the Congress largely in support of Siddaramaiah, the only leader to consistently challenge the Sangh parivar in the state.

It would take a large-scale booth level study to quantify the exact shift in the Muslim votes. But there are enough signs to suggest which way the finger moved. JD(S), which has been getting a good slice of Muslim votes, imploded as the community deserted it. Its vote share plummeted to 13.3 per cent from 18.3 percent in the last election.

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SDPI, which claims to aggressively champion Muslim interests, lost deposits in 15 of the 16 constituencies it contested from. It polled a total of 90,482 votes or 0.23% of the votes.

Eddelu Karnataka, a political coalition of several organisations, including those led by the Muslims, persuaded as many as 56 candidates to withdraw to prevent the splitting of votes. Many candidates who dropped out reportedly came from the minority communities, and had to yield to intense social pressure.

Silent, not silenced

There is nothing unusual about communities mobilising all their members on different occasions. In 2008, Lingayats rallied behind Yediyurappa after the JD(S) refused to honour a deal to share power with him. But observers say that the consolidation of Muslims is deeper, far-reaching and has implications beyond the elections.

Writer Rahamat Tarikere says the Muslims had to consolidate as it was a question of survival for them. “It became difficult to eat what we wanted, wear what we wanted and pray the way we wanted,” he says. Prof Assadi says the election came in a climate of fear. “Muslims voted not on issues like corruption or inflation, but for sheer physical security,” he says.

The Hindutva glare raised the political awareness of the community and made it scramble for ways to counter the hate campaign. Muslim leaders say they understood the Sangh parivar’s game plan to provoke them to stage angry protests and then use the agitation to polarise Hindu votes.

To preempt that, Muslims decided to show restraint and wait for the elections to vote the BJP government out. Muhammad Yusuf Kanni, vice-president of Jamaat-e-Islami Karnataka, says, “Muslims learnt not to get provoked by hate speech. They have become aware and value harmony in the society.“ Prof Assadi says, “Muslims became a silent but not a silenced minority.”

The resolve for restraint

Many observers point out that the last time the Muslims agitated on a large scale was when the Narendra Modi government tried to implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Led by women, the community occupied public places but took care to keep the protests peaceful and constitutional.

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Though the Sangh parivar raked up a series of emotional issues such as azaan, hijab, lynching, reservation and trade boycott during the Bommai period, the community resolved to be restrained in its response.

The state government data shows that between 2020 and 2022, communal clashes shot up from 16 to 96 in different districts. There were indeed angry protests by Muslims in many places in response to immediate triggers. But the community leadership took care to ensure that these remained local affairs and did not spread.

A senior Muslim bureaucrat says the VHP and the Bajrang Dal campaign against a local mosque in Srirangapatna tested Muslim resolve to show restraint at any cost. During a procession in December 2022, a Hindutva worker allegedly removed a green religious flag from a house and installed a saffron flag.

After the police registered a case against him, hundreds of VHP and Bajrang Dal workers went on protest and forced the administration to book seven police personnel for allegedly threatening the worker and outraging his religious feelings.

“This was a North Indian playbook of intimidating the police. The Muslims looked away as if the incident had happened in some faraway land,” he says. “As the newly empowered Hindutva troops began to muscle into the streets, Muslims vacated them without a murmur and chose to show their strength through the ballot,” he adds.

Playing down the faith

Long seen as a community that put their faith first, Muslims came around to playing down their religion. “They realised that excessive religiosity was helping their ideological opponents to polarise. Their focus shifted from religious matters to social and political priorities. Muslims went through a political metamorphosis,” says Tarikere.

The conversation in mosques and tea shops shifted to politics. “Traditionally the religious narrative has been dominant among Muslims. A constitutional narrative has begun to claim more space now,” says Prof Assadi.

Muslim Chintakara Chavadi, a forum of Muslim intellectuals, presented a memorandum to Siddaramiah with 41 demands. All of them deal with either education, livelihood and security issues and there is not one demand pertaining to religion.

Forming social alliances

According to Tarikere, Muslims realised that they had to join hands with other organisations and individuals, who were also opposed to Hindutva and a few incidents drove home the point. In Dharwad, Sriram Sene workers attacked a poor Muslim street vendor and destroyed his watermelons. In Mysore, a Kannada library built by a Muslim man was burnt down by alleged Hindutva workers. In both these cases, people from all communities came out to help the victims.

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As elections approached, Muslims noticed that there were large groups which were poised to vote against the BJP and sensed a chance to make a common cause with them. Kurubas were consolidating to make Siddaramiah, who comes from the caste, chief minister again. A large section of Dalits were mobilising to take on the BJP ideologically and electorally. Even small sections of many other communities such as Lingayats were campaigning against the BJP.

About 112 left-leaning organisations came together to form an alliance, Eddelu Karnataka, to take on the BJP in the elections. The en masse entry of Muslims turned a civil society initiative into a potent political force that swung votes in several constituencies.

A few months prior to the election, an RSS leader said that the Sangh parivar did not want Muslim votes and targeted only 85 percent of the Hindus. “If we mobilise even a good part of the Hindu vote we can win,” he says. The results showed that the strategy works only if intense polarisation consolidates Hindu votes. By preempting that and by joining hands with the BJP’s opponents Muslims have undermined a pet thesis of the Sangh parivar.

The officer drew a contrast between the way Muslims agitated against the Shah Bano judgement of the Supreme Court in the 1980s and the way they mobilised for this election. A shrill conservative leadership led the community to fight for their religious rights in the Shah Bano case. In contrast, the community now offered a more mature and calibrated response to assert their democratic rights under the Constitution, he says.

No central push

Many Muslim organisations seem to have played a key role in bringing about the political metamorphosis of the community. As Muslims are a socially and geographically diverse community, there are several organisations working with different segments of the community. They have different objectives, ideology and many have had hostile relations in the past.

For instance, the Tablighi Jamaat are the most influential group but they are limited to religious affairs. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), in contrast, works on a progressive social agenda, including gender equality, and has established links with non-Muslim organisations. The Barelvis are open to Sufi mysticism, while Deobandis reject it and stick to strict Islamic rituals.Then, there are organisations working for specific causes in select pockets.

The Hindutva heat seems to have melted the differences between the organisations and brought them around a common strategy. Given its secular outlook and reach, JI seems to have emerged as a key player stitching together the different Muslim organisations and also building alliances with other social groups opposed to the BJP.

JI takes the lead

Though a much smaller organisation, JI has, over the last few decades, worked to reach out to other communities, open masjids to non-Muslims, popularise Quran and hold interfaith dialogues. Kanni says JI has been working in various ways to remove misconceptions about Muslims. “We are promoting Kannada in mosques. Many mosques in north Karnataka and coastal districts are using Kannada,” he adds.

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Muslims have become aware and there is more emphasis on education, he adds. “It has not been difficult to work with other communities as Karnataka has a pluralistic tradition, which was described as Sarva Janangada Shantiya thota (a garden of peace for all people), by Kuvempu.” “I have read Geeta and Vachanas. Was there anything communal in Basavanna? Why can’t everyone follow him,” he asks.

Kanni denies that JI played any outsize role in the election and stresses that everyone did their bit. But many Eddelu Karnataka campaigners say it was the presence of JI volunteers that vastly enhanced their influence, especially in the minority areas. In an Eddelu Karnataka felicitation function Kanni was featured as one of the prominent speakers.

Spontaneous response

While organisations may have worked as a catalyst, almost everyone in the community insists that the metamorphosis happened without anyone centrally planning it. They point out that in the past Muslims have made common cause with secular organisations such as Komu Souharda Vedike and intellectuals such as Girish Karnad and UR Ananthamurthy.

Growing up in a secular democracy, Indian Muslims have understood the value of moderation and constitution, says the officer. “Not giving the Sangh parivar any opportunity to polarise was on everyone’s mind. During the hijab controversy, many Muslims blamed the Popular Front of India (PFI) and Campus Front for turning a college-level controversy, which could have been sorted out through talks, into a national issue that drew international coverage,” he adds.

He says everyone has seen how radical organisations like SIMI, which came in response to the rise of Hindutva, had failed. “JI boycotted the first two elections after Independence as it thought they were unislamic. But nobody listened to it and to find acceptance among Indian Muslims, it was forced to change drastically,” he argues.

Middle-class sneaks in

The Muslim shift to moderation was further strengthened by the rise of a middle class. Though a backward community, the reservation and the spread of English education has increased the Muslim presence in software, medicine, engineering, academia and other white collar professions. The new middle class, comfortable working with other communities to achieve more worldly goals, is beginning to shape the narrative. Thanks to its growing leadership, education is becoming a top concern in the community.

Prof Assadi estimates that the middle class constitutes 20 to 25 percent of the Muslim population. “The clergy have more clout and legitimacy, but the middle class is sneaking in,” he says.

Future tense

Muslims think that they have a formidable opponent and are anxious about what the Sangh parivar will do next. There is also hope that the Congress win gives them a chance to improve representation and access to resources. “Muslims have 9 MLAs. Lingayats with a comparable population have 70-plus MLAs. That’s the comparison,” says the officer.

Kanni says an electoral win is not enough as fascism has sunk deep roots from ‘Bidar to Chamarajanagar,’ referring to the two ends of the state. “Countering that democratically is the larger battle,” he says.

“Ironically, seeing Muslim religiosity, Hindus turned inward, emphasising on their faith. Responding to that, Muslims are beginning to turn to education and moderation,” says the officer.