Election result of 2023 Karnataka legislative assembly (Credit: WikiCommons)
Shauqeen Mizaj
The results of the recently concluded assembly elections in the Indian state of Karnataka came as a relief to many, particularly Muslims in the state.
The Indian National Congress (INC) secured a thumping victory against the hard-line Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the polls held on May 10, bagging 136 out of 224 seats.
The victory, which is a significant boost for the Congress, comes despite all the communal and divisive strategies used by Narendra Modi’s nationalist BJP to retain power in the state. The run-up to the assembly polls saw a malicious and aggressive hate campaign by the BJP against minorities in rallies, road shows, and on social media.
The Hindu-Muslim card has always been an important part of the BJP’s electoral strategy. The hate campaigns against Muslims in Karnataka are nothing new.
Hate politics has permeated everywhere. However, this time, the right-wing strategies of the Hindutva brigade failed to work. Karnataka is often called a Hindutva laboratory or the Uttar Pradesh of South India. The comparison with the northern state governed by hard-line Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath is due to the anti-Muslim laws and policies and the countless incidents of attacks and rights violations reported in the state.
The BJP has ruled Karnataka since 2018. Retaining Karnataka, its only foothold in the south, was crucial for the party, which now dominates much of the north and western states of India, as it would help the BJP make further inroads into the south. However, with the defeat, the party, which banked on Modi’s popularity, has lost the only southern state it has ever controlled.
“The markets of hate have been shut down, and the shops of love have opened,” Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters at the party headquarters in New Delhi after the big victory.
If voted to power, the BJP promised to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state, along with assurances of jobs and free cooking gas.
The UCC seeks to replace personal laws based on religious texts and customs of the different communities with a common set of rules governing every citizen of the country. It has been a long-pending demand of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP, and has been part of the BJP’s election manifesto for decades. On the other hand, the NRC is a list of legal Indian citizens. The purpose was to document all the legal citizens of India so that illegal immigrants could be identified and deported.
Mohammed Yusuf Kanni, Vice President of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Karnataka, said that the BJP’s campaign is laced with “provocative statements and religious animosity”.
During a rally last month, Union Home Minister and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest aide, Amit Shah, said that Karnataka will see riots if their main opponent, the Congress, comes to power. The Congress was quick to respond, saying that Shah made the “hate speech with a clear objective of trying to create an atmosphere of communal disharmony”. The party also filed complaints against Shah with the police and the election commission.
The Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government that ruled Karnataka had introduced a slew of measures earlier that were seen as targeting the Muslim community.
In 2022, the government banned the hijab in pre-university colleges across Karnataka, leading to massive protests not only in the state but also across the country. BJP spokesman Anand Gurumurthy defended the hijab ban, saying it was meant to unify students irrespective of their caste and religion. “We don’t want anyone to be visibly religious in educational institutions”, he had said.
Karnataka Education Minister and BJP Leader, BC Nagesh, who had enforced the hijab ban and had urged an economic boycott of Muslims, lost the Tiptur assembly constituency in Tumkur district. On the other hand, Kaneez Fathima, a hijab-clad Muslim woman and sitting MLA from Gulbarga North, retained her seat, defeating the BJP’s Chandrakant B. Patil.
In the last two years, apart from the hijab ban, other laws and policies pushed by the right-wing government have included the recent scrapping of a four percent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions granted to the other backward classes (OBCs) within the Muslim community in March.
The BJP government had also passed the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Act, 2022 (also known as the anti-conversion law); the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2021; and the Karnataka Religious Structures (Protection) Act, 2021. These laws and policies were passed even as there were countless attacks on Muslim men and boys in the name of Love Jihad, another unproven conspiracy theory according to which Muslim men lure Hindu women and forcibly convert them to Islam.
There have been several instances where Muslim men were assaulted or lynched to death over allegations that they consumed beef. “We brought an anti-conversion law to stop forceful conversions. Since the cow is considered holy by many, our party made the killing of cows illegal and punishable,” said Gurumurthy.
There were also calls by right-wing groups in Karnataka to ban halal meat, with Hindu outfits urging the BJP to include the “Halal Certificate Prohibition Act” in its election manifesto this year. There were demands for a ban on the use of loudspeakers in mosques, citing ‘high volume’.
Karnataka BJP leader and former Minister K S Eshwarappa stoked controversy with his comments on the use of loudspeakers to issue adhan. “Will Allah listen (to prayers) only if the call is blared through loudspeakers? This is a headache wherever you go”, he had remarked during a rally in Mangaluru.
There were calls to stop Muslim traders from setting up stalls on temple premises during religious festivals or fairs. The Karnataka government defended the decision by some temples to ban Muslim traders, citing that no one other than Hindus could be allowed inside temple premises during fairs and holy occasions.
Congress’s brilliant victory in Karnataka has given hope to the Muslims, especially the hijab-wearing students of the state, who want the party to lift the ban. With the BJP’s communal and divisive politics and anti-Muslim propaganda clearly failing to work, all eyes are now on the Congress.
If the Congress gets its act together, it can very well take on the BJP in many states, just like Karnataka. As Congress leader and soon-to-be Chief Minister of State Siddaramaiah said, it was a victory for democracy over the politics of hatred.
