Days after Delhi voted in the sixth phase of Lok Sabha elections, chief minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal said the Muslim vote “shifted” to the Congress at the last minute. “Until 48 hours before polling, it seemed like all seven seats will come to AAP. But at the last moment, the complete Muslim vote got shifted to Congress. We are trying to figure out what happened,” he told The Indian Express.
ThePrint asks: Is AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal also guilty of treating Muslims as an unthinking votebank?
Most backward areas in Delhi happen to be inhabited by Muslims, AAP worked hard on their education & healthcare
MLA, Aam Aadmi Party
Arvind Kejriwal’s comments were a result of an emotional outburst. All AAP politicians have worked incredibly hard, we have made a lot of sacrifices and we have put everything at stake. A survey was conducted and its findings made Arvind Kejriwal arrive at this conclusion. He is not one to hide his emotions, he spoke how he felt.
Just like the BJP misuses Hindus as a votebank, the Congress too has held Muslims to ransom. The Congress will say, “if you don’t vote for us, the BJP will win”. Both the Congress and the BJP have played communal politics. But the AAP moved away from politics of this kind.
We are the first government in Delhi, which has worked for all the citizens in areas that really matter – health, education, infrastructure. Our government has catered to the poorest. It so happens that the most backward areas in Delhi are inhabited by Muslims, and we have worked exceedingly hard to bring good education and healthcare to these areas. These are areas that both the BJP and the Congress neglected for years. The AAP came and told them that your real enemy is poor healthcare and poor education. So, it is only expected that the party leaders will feel hurt when they hear that the people they worked for may not have voted for them.
Also read: Owaisi has merely let the open secret out: ‘secular’ parties had ditched Muslims long ago
Arvind Kejriwal’s remarks expose self-appointed ‘liberal’ ambassadors who see him as their messiah
National spokesperson, Congress
Every time Arvind Kejriwal opens his mouth, he exposes the lack of depth in our self-appointed ‘liberal’ ambassadors. These ‘liberal’ ambassadors celebrate him as their new messiah who can put up a fight against Narendra Modi and the Sangh.
They are willing to forget that his movement against corruption was openly sponsored and supported by organisations driven by the Sangh ideology.
They have no problem with the knowledge that his political debut was devoid of any ideology and that anti-Congressism formed the bedrock of his political rants.
Parties are often accused of treating communities and caste groups as votebanks. Regional parties face this charge more as identity is the raison d’être of their politics. In a country as diverse as India, national parties cannot stay national if they reduce their representative character to a few linguistic groups, communities or castes.
Delhi’s metropolitan character necessitates that the character of the political parties representing it is also metropolitan.
Arvind Kejriwal’s remarks that Muslims moved away from the AAP to the Congress only reinforce the fact that he is the most unlikely representative of Delhi’s cosmopolitan character. And, that he is where he is by default.
This comment exposes his mentality – he treats Muslims as a non-thinking votebank, which can be coerced into voting for or against a party. It is the same mindset that convinced him of total support from the trading community because he gave two of the three Rajya Sabha seats in Delhi to people belonging to that community. Delhi rejects such mentality.
Also read: Atishi, will AAP also treat Muslims as just a pliant, fearful votebank, asks Umar Khalid
2015 success made AAP leadership believe it can treat Muslims of Delhi as fixed and reliable ‘votebank’
Associate professor, CSDS
Arvind Kejriwal’s statement about Muslim voting is not at all surprising. Actually, it stems from the Aam Aadmi Party’s imagination of Muslims as a homogeneous political community.
This imagination has evolved over the years, especially after the AAP’s remarkable victory in the 2015 Delhi assembly election. The AAP received an overwhelming support of the Muslim community and was able to carve out a space for itself in Delhi’s Muslim-dominated constituencies.
This electoral success created an impression that the party’s strong anti-Congress/anti-BJP politics is sufficient to attract Muslim voters. The AAP leadership began to believe that they can treat Muslims of Delhi as fixed and reliable ‘votebank’.
Delhi’s Muslims, on the other hand, are highly diversified. The crucial divide between native Muslims (Dilli wale) and migrant Muslims (bahar wale) always plays a major role in electoral politics. Similarly, caste/biradari is another important sociological aspect of Muslim electoral behaviour in Delhi.
Yet, the Muslim voting is not always identity-centric. Corruption, unemployment, education and lack of civic amenities are important electoral issues for Muslims as well. However, the AAP focused entirely on anti-Modi agenda this time. There was an expectation that Muslims should behave as a ‘votebank’.
While realising that such expectations are entirely unpredictable, Arvind Kejriwal, like a professional politician, blamed the Muslims for his possible defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Kejriwal, it seems, wants Muslims to protect secularism and his version of identity-politics.
Also read: Muslim MPs, MLAs don’t always work for Muslims. See Akhilesh govt response to Muzaffarnagar
Arvind Kejriwal is proving to be another cynical politician
Political analyst
Sensing a poor showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the chief minister of Delhi has tried to pre-empt potential embarrassment by blaming the Muslims. The big question is: was he under some duress to dub Muslims as Congress’ votebank two days before the country was going to vote in the last phase of the elections?
Kejriwal had received a surprise support from Muslims during the 2015 Delhi assembly elections when the Muslim votes, en masse, had shifted from the Congress to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). There were no words of gratitude then. Why should he be blaming the Muslims now?
It is an open fact that Arvind Kejriwal’s political ambitions are responsible for the AAP’s downfall. His Machiavellian dealing with the Congress prevented a joint front against the BJP in the national capital. In 2017, Arvind Kejriwal’s determination to project himself deprived the AAP a significant role in Punjab assembly elections and pushed a leader like Navjot Singh Sidhu towards the Congress. With his latest statement, Arvind Kejriwal is proving to be another cynical politician.
It needs to be reiterated that Muslim voters do not belong to any political group or formation. The community takes a conscious call in polls in keeping with the prevailing political situation. All parties, including the AAP and the BJP are free to engage Muslim voters, provided a sense of mutual trust and participation is promised. They will not be disappointed.
Somehow, the onus of upholding ‘secularism’ always falls on the shoulders of Muslims
Journalist, ThePrint
That Muslims have often been reduced to a votebank –sometimes, a votebank not even worth catering to – is a reality of Indian politics. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is the latest to practice this votebank politics.
This should also tell us that what we are up against isn’t merely a tendency to grossly misunderstand and oversimplify politics, but a mentality that sees Muslims as ‘the other’ – the poor, marginalised, unimportant other.
So, as per the understanding of these political parties, if a community has been pushed to the ghettos and has feared for its safety and security for the longest time now, a half-baked promise of defeating the BJP’s communal politics should be enough to please them.
Arvind Kejriwal’s statement should therefore not come as a surprise, given how the AAP used customised posters for Muslim-dominated areas where the only promise worth mentioning was the defeat of the BJP. In all other areas, one could find posters of the AAP’s achievements in healthcare and education.
Not to mention, the onus of upholding ‘secularism’ somehow always falls on the shoulders of Muslims, a minority group that has been the greatest victim of communal politics in this country.
Marginalised communities cannot continue outsourcing their fight to those who may seem like temporary messiahs, and this incident serves as a timely reminder.
By Fatima Khan, journalist at ThePrint.