Has the exploitation of religious sentiment for votes been normalised? | The Indian Express

Has the exploitation of religious sentiment for votes been normalised? | The Indian Express

Written by Tahir Mahmood |Updated: April 12, 2019 8:55:36 am

The writer is distinguished jurist chair and professor of eminence, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Amity University.

Has the exploitation of religious sentiment for votes been normalised?

Has communal electioneering become an inseparable characteristic of Indian politics? Are we, the citizens of secular India, to perpetually bear with it?

The nature of democracy is to envisage a change of guard, and, in the electoral battle of 2014, votaries of cultural nationalism captured power. And, in a span of five years, it has changed the face of India. (Express Photo by Shuaib Masoodi/Representational)

Deciding an election petition 45-years-ago, Supreme Court judge V R Krishna Iyer had lamented: “It is a matter for profound regret that political communalism far from being rooted out is foliating and flourishing, largely because parties and politicians have not the will, professions apart, to give up the chase for power through politicising communal awareness and religious cultural identity. The Ram-Rahim ideal and secular ideology are often politicians’ haberdashery, not soul-stuff. Micro and mini-communal fires are stoked by some leaders whose overpowering love for seats in the legislature is stronger than sincere loyalty to secular electoral process.” [Abdul Hussain, Mir vs Shamsul Huda & Anr, 1975]. Fifteen years later, eminent journalist Kuldip Nayar said: “Never before has the Indian electorate had to face such intense communal and casteist slogans” (India Today, May 1991). The two observations were made during two different Congress regimes. The learned judge breathed his last in December 2014, and Nayar in August last year, both during the present political dispensation at the Centre. Watching the continuing legacy of communal politics and its escalation, they must have indeed been even more disgusted.