All indications seem to suggest that the general elections for the next Lok Sabha are round the corner. It is also becoming clear that the coming election would be very crucial in many respects. It would definitely decide the future of India.
All major parties seem to be fully conscious of the importance of looming general elections and are making their preparations accordingly. As the stakes are very high, all the major parties have almost begun their campaigns.
Barring communal riots, election is another event that brings Muslims into focus as a community. All of a sudden they grow in “importance”. Congress and other “secular” parties begin to woo them whereas the BJP points its gun towards them. Suddenly the Babri Masjid also comes alive as the efforts to “solve” this problem or cash it politically get underway. For about two decades this sentimental issue has been made so important as the Muslim community has no other problems to attend to or focus on. Their dwindling economic conditions, educational backwardness and political marginalisation are perhaps as much important problems as the issue of Babri mosque. Being focussed on one issue at the cost of all other problems is not a wise strategy. The Muslims, therefore, have to keep in mind their all round marginalisation while going to cast their votes for one or another party.
The time is ripe to focus on economic and educational problems of the Muslims. The political parties which claim to champion the Muslim cause must come out with an economic and educational package. That they must prepare concrete schemes for economic and educational revival of the community. This is one thing that the Muslim intelligentsia should search for in the manifestos of the political parties and prepare the community to vote accordingly.
It is clear that the next government, too, will be a coalition government. The Congress decision or realization that they are no longer the great all India party of the past that can form a government on its own, has buried the era of one party rule. This has surely enhanced the importance of regional and smaller parties. Many of these smaller parties are secular-minded, and as a result have been getting the Muslim votes. Unfortunately such regional and smaller parties, too, have used the Muslims as a vote-bank only. However, this time round they also must come out with concrete schemes for educational and economic empowerment of the Muslims. And this can happen only when the Muslims demand them to do so.
In the last five years the HRD Minister, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi has rendered great service to the RSS. More than any other minister, he has implemented the Sangh’s agenda more vigorously. All his steps at saffronizing the education sector have been well scrutinized and resisted. But his latest decision to introduce one all India common admission test for professional courses is very dangerous. It not only impinges and encroaches upon the autonomy of the universities but also intends to hinder the educational upliftment of all the downtrodden sections of the society including Muslims. This decision would not affect only a few Muslim minority institutions but would also hamper the educational progress of the economically and educationally marginalised Hindus. The Muslim intelligentsia and the leadership must try to impress upon their sympathetic political parties that the CAT is a Sangh Parivar’s agenda to further marginalise the minorities on the one hand and benefit the upper middle class on the other.
For adversely affected people, election is the time to reassert themselves. Just replacing a government with another one would not work. Attempts should be made to force political parties to include in their manifestos a clearly defined programme and strategy for addressing and solving their problems. The intellectuals and the community leaders should sit together and devise strategies to meet all the important political parties and urge them to present a clear programme as well as a road map for the upliftment of the marginalised sections including the minorities. The enemy is active and has abundant resources. It would require all our energies, mental and physical, to counter his schemes and frustrate his designs.
[January, 2004]
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