THE FRAYING FRAME OF MUSLIM POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Political expediencies over a century have led to a puzzling moment for Muslims in this election. For different reasons, no national side wants to raise the community's issues

- HILAL AHMED

THE debate on Muslim political representation has found a new overtone in this Lok Sabha election. The BJP relies heavily on Hindutva-led development as an electoral narrative to redefine its core ideology of cultural nationalism. The party evokes the 'Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas' slogan to argue that its development-oriented outlook is inclusive; hence there is no need to have any specific Muslim-centric policy. On the other hand, the non-BJP parties are hesitant to talk about Muslim political aspirations as well. They fear that it would affect their Hindu outreach. This reluctance of the political class to address Muslims as legitimate political stakeholders makes the idea of Muslim representation much more complicated. Precisely for this reason, there is a need to historicise this debate to make sense of the shades and trajectories of the politics of representation in the Indian context.

Muslim representation was one of the most contentious political issues in colonial India. The colonial Census, which practically divided Indian religious communities into permanent majority and minorities, played a significant role in this debate. Hindus as the majority and Muslims as a minority emerged as two antagonistic entities for the first time. The idea of representation was introduced to deal with this imaginary-yet-permanent Hindu-Muslim conflict. This led to a number of legal, administrative and institutional changes. Various comprehensive sets of laws such as the Government of India Acts of 1909, 1917 and 1935-were passed by the colonial state to deal with the question of adequate and effective Muslim representation in legislative bodies.