‘Muslim, Muslim, Muslim,’ chants a party without a single Muslim MP

Representational image | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint

It was the irony of ironies. During the recent debate in Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party suddenly and loudly claimed that its saffron heart was bleeding for poor Muslims. 

Oh really. 

The party does not have a single Muslim Lok Sabha MP, and has never promoted a Muslim woman in mainstream politics. 

The BJP refuses to give political representation to Muslims in terms of election tickets. Nor does it boast any high-profile Muslim leaders in its ranks. In the ‘Hindutva laboratory’ state of Gujarat, which is also Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Muslims have not been given Vidhan Sabha tickets for two decades. The last time the BJP gave a ticket to a Muslim in Gujarat assembly polls was in 1998. 

Yet the party has the gumption to claim that it is acting for the “welfare” of Muslims in bulldozing the Waqf Amendment Bill through Parliament.

Whether abolishing Article 370, making triple talaq punishable, or enacting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), issues that revolve around Muslims excite the BJP as no other issue does. In fact, the BJP’s obsessive, almost psychotic, Muslim-focused politics is the reason why the ruling party is unable to give nuts and bolts governance issues the urgent attention they deserve. 

Executive power over Muslims

The Waqf bill debate went on for over 12 hours, while the Manipur discussion was consigned to after 2 am—a glaring demonstration of the ruling party’s Muslim fixation and its neglect of real governance challenges. There have been 22 months of civil strife in a sensitive border state. And parliamentarians were forced to debate it when the country was asleep. 

The BJP’s claim that the Waqf Amendment Bill is designed for the welfare of Muslims is pure fiction, and nothing but cloying hypocrisy. The real purpose of the Bill is to galvanise the Hindutva vote bank and send out the subliminal message that Muslims have been taught a lesson, yet again. A “tough” government is “bravely” bringing minorities to heel, whereas previous dispensations only “appeased” them.

Flexing executive power over Muslims is guaranteed to transport the Hindutva flock into quivering euphoria. Thumbing the saffron nose at “weak” governments in the past who apparently used Muslims as “vote banks,” sends saffron footsoldiers into such a welter of ecstasy, that it ceases to matter whether the democratic duty to protect minorities is being upheld or not.

A self-deluding BJP has convinced itself that targeting Muslims and pushing sections of the community into insecurity and fear, is for their own good. But recently even the Supreme Court said the court’s  “conscience is shocked” at the way bulldozers razed the homes of Muslims in Prayagraj.  

The issue of Waqf properties is a complex one and attempts at reform are needed to bring all stakeholders on board and formulate actions based on dialogue and consensus. Subordinating Waqf boards to central government functionaries is an act of massive overreach of State power and a brazen violation of Article 26, which protects the citizen’s right to manage her own religious affairs. The Waqf Amendment Bill is wholly unconstitutional.

As noted lawyers have pointed out, Waqf boards were already tightly regulated, and the recent Bill has only increased government control over them. The BJP’s tone suggests that Muslim communities and clergy are out to grab and somehow encroach on public properties and turn them instantly into Waqf. This is far from the truth. The message now being sent out is that the Hindutva hammer has come down hard on Muslim bodies, thus giving Sangh Parivar cadres much to celebrate.

Islamophobia and Saugat-e-Modi

The Modi government simply does not respect the sovereignty of citizens. It wants to dictate who we pray to, who we love, what we eat, what we wear, and what we read and write. The Hindutva State is bent on destroying individual freedoms.  The Waqf Bill has destroyed the individual’s right to practice religion and the right to freedom of religion guaranteed by Articles 25-28. The government now has the power to meddle in Waqf boards, just as the government is meddling in food, marriage, and dress choices. 

The Modi-led BJP’s doublespeak on Muslims is shocking, vicious, and cruel. Empty slogans like ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’ are mouthed by the government’s high grandees, even as the BJP consistently plays politics that treats Muslims as a community to be “tamed” and lorded over, and made to feel the brunt of the Hindutva juggernaut. The cold-blooded downsizing of India’s only Muslim-majority state—Jammu & Kashmir—into a Union Territory is an example of this vicious targeting. 

The BJP donates sweet boxes, a gifting initiative on Eid with the rather phoney name ‘Saugat-e-Modi’, even as BJP governments close meat shops during Navratras, which coincided with Eid.  In UP, officials threatened to even stop namaz on private rooftops and street corners. Could any government have dared to place similar restrictions on Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in public places? The aim is to use State power to intrude into all aspects of the life of Muslims to establish the supremacy of Hindutva. The power of the State is being used as an instrument to serve a shamefully communal agenda. 

At the time of the debate on the Waqf Bill, US President Donald Trump announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs, slamming a 26 per cent tariff on Indian exports. Opposition parties like the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) kept demanding a discussion on duplicate EPIC cards because such duplication has terrifying implications for the veracity of electoral rolls and can mean that voter lists are filled with fraud or “ghost” voters. 

But no statement was made by the government in Parliament on the Trump tariffs and no discussions on electoral rolls were allowed. What did the BJP do instead? Hold an extended debate on Waqf in which speaker after speaker from the BJP chose to demonise Muslims. In fact, the BJP fielded speakers who are known to be experts in dog whistle politics. One particularly Muslim-obsessed BJP speaker rattled off well-worn narratives on the Muslim League, and Partition, wallowing in such frenzied hyperbolic shrieky Islamophobia that his speech sent frissons of visible excitement through his party colleagues. 

Casual parliamentarians 

BJP speakers during the Waqf debate reminded us of French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot’s telling description of the Hindu nationalist movement’s approach to Muslims—one of “stigmatisaton” but also “emulation.” In their breathless, relentless targeting of Muslims, the BJP seems intriguingly enamoured of Islam, its monotheism, its idea of holy war, and its single holy book. 

The BJP treats Parliament casually. Only 13 per cent of bills passed in the Rajya Sabha between 2014-2024 were sent to parliamentary committees while only 16 per cent were referred to standing committees in the Lok Sabha. PM Narendra Modi has not participated in the question hour in Parliament since he ascended to power. 

But only when an issue revolves around the Muslim community does the BJP galvanise its parliamentary bench strength and participate in high-decibel debates. 

Today, Parliament has not been taken into confidence on how the government intends to tackle the tariff war, the Manipur crisis, or the electoral rolls crisis. The annual National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, giving us vital data on crimes in India, has not been published after 2022. The decennial Census due in 2021 is still nowhere on the horizon. The federal structure is under strain with numerous Centre-state disagreements. Turning its back on all this, the BJP put all its energies into the Waqf Bill, chanting “Muslim Muslim Muslim”. The BJP’s Muslim obsession is taking a toll on governance.

Sagarika Ghose is a Rajya Sabha MP, All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.

(Edited by Ratan Priya)