The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 25 February 2014

MUSLIM FACTOR IN UP: BJP’S PERFORMANCE IN MAJOR MUSLIM CONSTITUENCIES

LOK SABHA POLLS 2014

BJP’s performance in the 2012 assembly polls of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India having the maximum number of Lok Sabha seats and thus being one of the decisive state in the number games in the Lok Sabha, clearly tells the its potential to polarise votes on religious lines – Hindu votes and Muslim votes.

There are over 70 seats in UP where Muslims constitute over 30 per cent of the population. In 2012 assembly polls, the BJP won 17 of such seats while it could won just 8 of the over 120 seats in assembly constituencies where Muslims constituted up to 10 per cent of the population.


It has been an observed trend that Muslims vote as a consolidated votebank when it comes to defeating a BJP candidate with possibility of winning the poll but BJP winning almost one-fourth of the seats where Muslims constitute over 30 per cent of the population also tells us that a larger Muslim population in the constituency makes work easier for the BJP by polarising the Hindu votes on religious lines.

There was no Modi factor or wave in 2012 assembly polls of UP, but it is certainly there this time. And an effort to polarise the votes has already begun, the VHP posers like its different planned and failed religious yatras tell us, the Yatras inviting confrontation with the state government.

Modi Factor can significantly alter the political landscape of BJP this time in UP if we go by the fact that Modi is the most polarising political personality in the country with an appeal to unite the scattered Hindu votes from different caste and social groups along the religious line.

Hindu vote is divided among different social groups and sub-groups and a caste-riddled politics of UP has only exacerbated the problem. The BJP that doesn't belong to a particular caste group, unlike the SP or the BSP or even the Congress, has failed to retain its base in UP. 

We need to keep this in mind the mobilization of votes in favour of the BJP that brought to it in power in UP was along the religious line only in the aftermath of the Babri Mosque demolition. 

Even if Ram Temple is no more an electoral issue, the Hindu-Muslim divide can always be polarised provided there is a factor. 

Better performance of the BJP in Muslim-constituencies in UP tells us the party still enjoys the pro-Hindutva image to an appealing extent. And a combination of Narendra Modi with it can drive home a better prospect for the party in other constituencies having significant Muslim vote share. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/ 

Data source: Election Commission of India, Census of India, Government of Uttar Pradesh, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Planning Commission, EPW, Seminar, Reports of Credible Media Organisations