Vote bank politics in India is associated with “minority appeasement” and makes political parties “disregard the principles of equality of all citizens”, according to the National Council of Educational Research and Training’s updated Class 11 political science textbook for the academic year 2024-’25, reported The Indian Express.
An earlier version of the textbook’s section on vote bank politics, for the 2023-’24 academic year, did not include the words “minority appeasement”, reported the newspaper. The revised text is part of a section on “criticism of Indian secularism”.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training said that the revisions were made as the older version “only intends to justify vote bank politics”, and that the newer version makes the section a “relevant criticism of Indian secularism”, reported The Indian Express.
Both versions of the textbook contain the paragraph: “If secular politicians who sought the votes of minorities also manage to give them what they want, then this is a success of the secular project which aims, after all, to also protect the interests of the minorities.”
It also says: “But what if the welfare of the group in question is sought at the cost of the welfare and rights of other groups? What if the interests of the majority are undermined by these secular politicians? Then a new injustice is born.”
The revised version of the textbook says that while there may not be anything wrong with vote bank politics in theory, its practice distorts electoral politics by leading to the mobilisation of a social group to vote en masse for a particular political party or candidate, according to The Indian Express.
It says that despite diversity within a minority group, the party or leader pursuing vote bank politics tries to “artificially construct a belief that the interest of the group is one” and prioritises short-term electoral gains over the long-term development and governance needs of society.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is leading the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, has often accused the Congress and other Opposition parties of treating Muslims and other minority groups as vote banks.
However, the BJP has a higher success rate in mobilising Hindu upper caste voters than the Congress does with Muslims, post-poll surveys done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Lokniti have consistently shown.
The 2024 post-poll survey found that 38% percent of all Muslim respondents voted for the Congress, while 53% of all Hindu upper caste respondents voted for the BJP, indicating the Hindutva party had a stronger vote bank. The survey showed that Hindu upper caste support for the BJP remained at the same level as compared to 2019, while declining among the Other Backward Class and Dalit communities.
Paragraph on ‘multi-cornered political competition’ deleted
The National Council of Educational Research and Training has also removed a paragraph on “multi-cornered political competition” and “divergence of political ideologies” from a section on the 2004 Lok Sabha election in its Class 12 political science textbook, reported The Indian Express.
The paragraph mentioned that after the 1990s, India saw the emergence of broadly four groups of political parties – those in coalition with the Congress, those in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Left Front parties and those outside of these three groups.
“The situation suggests that political competition will be multi-cornered,” the paragraph had said. “By implication the situation also assumes a divergence of political ideologies.”
The National Council of Educational Research and Training said that the paragraph was not “relevant in present context”, reported The Indian Express.
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