SC ban on using religion for votes is secular, liberal – those opposing it aren't

By using religion and caste in elections, political parties have divided Indians for years. That must stop.

Minhaz Merchant

It is both amusing and telling that the sharpest criticism of the Supreme Court order barring invocation of religion, caste, creed and language during electioneering has come from card-carrying secular-liberals. The order is in fact both secular and liberal. Those who oppose it — and as many on the Right as on the Left do — are neither.

One of the arguments advanced against the Supreme Court order is that it is impractical to enforce. How on earth, this earnest argument goes, can the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) possibly monitor all the inflammatory speeches politicians often make during election campaigns.

Argument

This argument was given legs within 24 hours by Mayawati asking Muslims not to “waste” their votes on the Samajwadi Party followed by the BJP's Sakshi Maharaj decrying Muslim women's propensity to have multiple children. Both denied they had invoked caste or religion. The CEC, Nasim Zaidi, busy with the Opposition's demand to delay the Union Budget, meanwhile, said nothing. The Supreme Court kept its counsel — for the moment.

And yet, the argument on enforceability is utterly flawed. Laws are made because they serve public interest not because they are easily enforceable. The Supreme Court order barring politicians from using religion, caste, creed and language to influence votes is right in principle and, with effort, can be made to work in practice. The larger, subterranean, argument against the Supreme Court's “secular” verdict is that it isn't actually secular at all.

After all, Muslims must retain their right to be swayed by religion-based sops during electioneering. The same argument is advanced for Dalits. Why bar the BSP from invoking Dalit pride by pointing to the grand statues built for Mayawati even while Dalits pine for social justice and economic mobility?

By using religion and caste in elections, parties like the Congress, Samajwadi Party, BSP, RJD, BJP, Shiv Sena, NC, PDP, NC and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen have divided Indians for years. That must stop. The Supreme Court's order is only the first step. Strict enforcement by the Election Commission's large machinery is necessary.

The court order backs the EC which can now disqualify a candidate for using religion, caste, creed or language to influence voters. The EC has been given legal teeth by the Supreme Court. It must use them. Campaigning for the five state Assembly elections will be its first severe test.

The most unworthy argument against the Supreme Court's order is sub-textual: that the order somehow violates the freedom of politicians to campaign using all the tools at their disposal — including religion and caste. This argument transports the issue from the sublime to the ridiculous. It cites the example of parties with a religion named within it (the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, for example) being potentially disqualified on account of the Supreme Court order.

Nonsense

This, of course, is nonsense. The apex court order targets — and rightly bars — the invocation of religion in electioneering. Parties with a religious or caste affiliation within their name, as long as they campaign without inflaming religious or caste passions, do not violate the Supreme Court order in letter or spirit.

The BJP should welcome the order as well. It has a long and dodgy record of using religion to win votes. LK Advani's rath yatra in 1990 was designed to garner Hindu votes after the party (founded in December 1980) had been reduced to two Lok Sabha seats in the 1984 general election. By using religion at every subsequent opportunity, the BJP by 1998 had clambered up to 182 Lok Sabha seats. The Ram temple in Ayodhya is still a centrepiece of its manifesto, though the party says it will do nothing till the Supreme Court delivers its final verdict in the case.

The Supreme Court judgment seeks to sever the umbilical cord between politics and religion in India. No amount of intellectual sophistry can discredit that objective or the legal means the count has chosen to achieve it. There are good reasons though why the Congress, SP, Trinamool Congress and other parties that dress themselves up in fabricated secular clothes are more worried about the Supreme Court's order than parties like the BJP which have traditionally been regarded as communal.

Reason

The most important reason is that the BJP has moved on (or at least parts of its have) from its rath yatra days. It still attempts to polarise Hindu votes but most of its polarising work these days is done gratis by “secular” parties like the Congress, SP, NCP, Trinamool Congress and AAP. They are perceived as being so anti-Hindu that the BJP now wins resentful Hindu votes by default. That explains its sanguine reaction to the Supreme Court verdict.

The BJP has changed gears from religion to development while the Congress and its fellow travellers are still bogged down in the old politics of minority appeasement that the minorities themselves, seeking empowerment instead, have grown tired of.

The Supreme Court order gives the BJP an opportunity to move even further away from the politics of religion. Polarisation has reached its sell-by date. The BJP must shed its old clothes and put its best development foot forward.

Sakshi Maharaj and others will harm the party if they think invoking religion will help win Uttar Pradesh. Development is India's new religion. And no Supreme Court order bars its invocation.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)