Why The Minority (Muslim) PM Argument Is Naive And Bogus

Can a Muslim become the Prime Minister of India? 

Yes, if they can stitch together a coalition of at least 272 seats in the Lok Sabha. 

That is it. That is the answer to the otherwise forced equivalence being drawn between Rishi Sunak in the United Kingdom and a potential Prime Minister from the minority community in India.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Election Commission of India, or even the voters have no business in dictating who runs for the top office in the country, given that right comes from the Constitution.

However, since Diwali evening, the question of a Muslim PM is not of an electoral fight or the constitutionality around it. 

From Congress leaders (starting with Shashi Tharoor) to several journalists, many are today citing the plurality of the United Kingdom to question the secular credentials of India.

Perhaps, many of them expect or rather wish for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to vacate his post and hand it over to someone else, preferably from one minority community, and reaffirm the diversity and unity of the country.

Nothing wrong with the thought process except that this is not the world of Goldilocks or Snow White. 

Further, these politicians and journalists are not making a case for an electoral fight, but begging for a grant or charity, thus reducing the post of the Prime Minister to what it was between 2004 and 2014, merely symbolic and remote controlled.

That also explains why the Congress was not keen on citing the Prime Minister from the minority community they themselves had nominated to hold the fort for ten years. Another plausible explanation is that only one community fits the minority definition for these parties and journalists. 

The naivety of the argument can be gauged by the fact that the ones making them are not willing to see the internal party politics that Rishi Sunak has been subjected to.

Coming back to India, there is also the question of domestic politics. Given that Sunak has been nominated and not elected, what stops the Congress, making the minority PM argument, from having a party president who is a Muslim to arrest the declining fortunes of the organisation?

Why there was not a single Muslim name in contention for the post of president?

Why couldn’t the Congress, ahead of Punjab polls earlier this year, back a Hindu leader who enjoyed the support of many legislators? 

Beyond the Congress, can the Muftis, Abdullahs, Banerjees, Yadavs, and everyone else asking this question make a case for a Hindu Chief Minister in Kashmir, or ever made one?

With the changing demographics, can Mamata Banerjee, willingly, vacate the top post in the TMC for the clerics she routinely engages with? 

The answer to the above questions is as obvious as the Gujarat election outcome, where, for years, the Congress relied on a Muslim face to organise the party unit but never once trusted him to be the face for the Chief Minister’s post. 

The Congress and its affiliates are hoping to guilt-trip the BJP into vacating the post of Prime Minister, all in the hope of garnering a grant for a community they are implying are not competent enough to have a leader to win 272 seats.

Beyond being naive and bogus, the argument for a minority PM in the spirit of secularism is borderline laughable. 

Thankfully, this is 2022, and not 2006, when the Prime Minister advocates for one community to have the first right to resources. 

If there is a Muslim leader, or a minority leader, capable of winning at least 272 seats, they have all the right to jump into the electoral fight and all the right to be endorsed by the likes of Congress. Everything else is merely begging for charity.