Muslims are not a monolith is a familiar cliché in academic and popular discussions on Indian Muslims. Curiously though, research available on varied dimensions of socio-economic, cultural or political uniqueness of Muslim communities, factoring in regional affiliations, remains negligible. As Susan Bayly notes, “The difficulty comes when one seeks to understand Islam as a living system of worship rather than a textual ideal. The ideal says all Muslims are one: the reality is that over many centuries Muslim faith and practice have come to be shaped and modified by dynamic regional cultures and by the changing social and political context in which they have taken root.” Out of all regions of India, the Muslims in the South are considered unique in their political orientations. As Mohammad Mujeeb writes in his magnum opus, Indian Muslims, “The South does not, of course, form a homogenous unit, the Muslims in Mysore and Bangalore being much closer culturally to those of Haidarabad (Hyderabad) than to the Moplahs and Navayats of Kerala, who are geographically much nearer.”
The Ayodhya movement of the late 1980s3 did not find much traction in South India. However, the movement is the most prominent catalysing factor for the Hindu Right’s unprecedented electoral expansion in North India. Also, the impact of India’s Partition in the region was largely negligible. Writing on the limited presence of the Hindu Right or the BJP, Rajmohan Gandhi, in his book, Modern South India, cites three reasons: 1) Brahmin domination of the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS) which has opened branches in the South since the 1920s; 2) the image of the Jana Sangh (predecessor of the BJP) as “Hindi/North Indian”; and 3) BJP’s inability to connect with India’s independence struggle.
In recent years, however, enough empirical evidence points towards radical transformations of these trends signalling tectonic shifts towards a more polarised Southern society around religious identities. As a result, multiple religious Right organisations, both Muslim and Hindu, have become proactive in the region and are making considerable investments in shoring up their social bases and sharpening their political agendas. For instance, the RSS, the most prominent Hindu Right organisation, is holding regular marches in various parts of South India as part of its outreach. The Madras High Court recently permitted the RSS to have its march in Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court also has cleared it by dismissing the Tamil Nadu government’s plea against the RSS march.
According to AP Venkatchalapathy, “In Tamil Nadu itself, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) front organisations made inroads into Tamil civil society with the active acquiescence of the DMK.” On the other hand, the Popular Front of India (PFI), a conservative political organisation (some argue it intended to be a Muslim RSS) was very active in various states till it was banned in February 2023. BJP’s Sneha Yatra in Kerala to reach out to Christians and the Prime Minister’s Christmas gathering at his residence on 25 December 2023 are part of the BJP’s effort to establish its footprint in the South. It is also widely known that the RSS cadre and cadres of various secular organisations such as the Left or the Congress party have engaged in violence against each other rather frequently in parts of Kerala.
During the BJP’s national executive meeting in Hyderabad, Prime Minister Modi raised the issue of Pasmanda Muslims. Seen from the vantage point of politics of religious polarisation, where once India’s South appeared as a sharp contrast to its North, it now increasingly appears to be its mirror image.
When the BJP experienced a massive surge in its electoral base in the 1989 parliamentary elections resulting in the rise of its parliamentary strength from 2 in 1984 to 89 in 1989, it did not win a single seat from any of the Southern states. The scenario, however, significantly changed during the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections.
In both the national elections, the party secured seats in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. In Karnataka, it swept the 2019 elections with 25 out of 27 parliamentary seats, and in 2014 it won 17 seats. What we see is the expansion of BJP’s electoral base in a big way in Karnataka but in small strides in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In Kerala, it managed to win only one seat in the Assembly and is yet to open an account in Parliament.
The electoral rewards that led to the BJP’s significant rise in the 1989 elections in North were attributed to a well-organised Ayodhya campaign led by its leader LK Advani. This has inspired an influential body of scholarship claiming that though the BJP was able to profit electorally in the North owing to its Ayodhya strategy, it won’t work in Southern states because the South is immune to politics of polarisation around the Ayodhya campaign. And this reasoning continues to dominate as an explanatory variable even today. This is echoed in senior political scientist James Chiriyankandath’s analysis in his essay, “Yes, But Not in South”. According to Chiriyankandath
The Peninsular South with its Dravidian languages has long been distinguished by social and cultural differences from the north, west, and east of India despite sharing common Indian civilisation and heritage. Historically, the Hindu empires and kingdoms of the South maintained their independence until the relatively late Mughul period with the far South – the South of what is now Tamil Nadu as well as Kerala – never coming under the dominion of Mughals or their Muslim offshoots. Visible in the landscape of towns and cities in the South that contrasts with the Islamic architectural styles that predominate in many of their counterparts in the North, the background may be what has given its politics less of the fraught communal (i.e. Hindu-Muslim) edge evident in the Hindi-speaking states and in both Western and Eastern India. It has been an important factor in limiting the appeal of Hindu nationalism, shading into chauvinism, espoused by the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sangha Parivar (associational family) to which it belongs.
In the Telangana Assembly election held in 2023, the Congress Party was able to wrest back power from the regional party, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) winning 64 seats and a vote share of 39.40 per cent. The BJP, though the party had won five parliamentary seats in 2019 with a vote share of 19.65 per cent, is now reduced to 13.9 per cent votes in the 2023 Assembly elections indicating significant decline in its vote share. During this round of Assembly elections, the BJP won other major states: in Madya Pradesh, it won 163 Assembly seats out of 230 seats; in Rajasthan, it won 115 Assembly seats out of 199 seats; and in Chhattisgarh, it won 54 Assembly seats out of 90 seats. But the BJP’s failure to win Telangana suggests everyone is not swayed by the BJP.
The Muslim population in the South Indian states is considerable and among the active Muslim political organisations in the Muslim community are the All India Muslim Union League (AIMUL), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). Some analysis of their history and role could help us understand this complex story a little better.
Karnataka is among the first and only Southern states that gave an electoral majority to the BJP and the party formed a government in 2008. It remains the only state that could be considered the Hindu Right’s Southern bastion despite its massive electoral loss in the 2023 Assembly elections, particularly because it continues to retain its vote share at around 36 per cent – almost identical to its vote share in previous Assembly elections. Furthermore, the BJP has been proactively working in the other Southern states at different levels, at times in collaboration with other regional political parties. For instance, it was closely working with the All India Dravida Munetra Kazagham (AIDMK) in Tamil Nadu and there are speculations that the BJP would stitch alliances with Jana Sena(JS) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh as well as in Telangana. In Karnataka, the BJP has stitched an alliance with JD(S), which may help improve its electoral performance in future elections compared to its decision to contest alone.
Excerpted with permission from Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims, Mujibur Rehman, Simon and Schuster India.
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