Banning Religion-Based Parties Is Futile When Dog Whistles Work Just Fine; SC Is Wasting Its Time

The Supreme Court, which probably has few other weighty matters to discuss, has taken up a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Syed Waseem Rizvi (now Jitendra Narayan Singh Tyagi after conversion to Hinduism), seeking to bar parties with religious names from contesting elections.

Tyagi (or Rizvi) has claimed that parties with religious names — Indian Union Muslim League, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Hindu Mahasabha, Christian Democratic Front, etc — were violative of our 'secular' Constitution.

He could have mentioned Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, too, but he probably felt that some of the examples he provided were sufficient to get the point across.

The Election Commission, which was asked to respond, said that there was no constitutional bar on parties with religious names, and, in any case, after 2005, it had stopped registering parties with such names. And parties were not being allotted symbols with religious connotations.

The question really is two-fold:

First, it is a flawed assumption that questions related to religious identity cannot be election issues and must be suppressed or banned.

Economic issues like inflation, growth and jobs are high in terms of voter interest, but if that was truly the case, the Muslim League would not have even been formed, and the country divided in 1947.

India as a united country would have been a superpower by now.

So, what part of democracy says that only certain issues can be raised during an election, and not others, which may often matter more in the context of demographic change?

And why make only religion an issue, when appeals can be made on caste or linguistic lines?

Why is racism, of the Dravidian kind, not an important issue to flag, too?

If a party with Muslim or Hindu name can be banned, why not the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazagham), which claims to represent Dravidian aspirations (as opposed to north Indian 'Aryans')?

Second, even assuming religious names and symbols are banned, surely parties can get their messages across with dog whistles? For the BJP, raising issues like uniform civil code, article 370 or the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would have served as issues with a religious underpinning.

And even when it protested otherwise, the Muslim and 'secular' parties suggested that CAA was about taking away the citizenship rights of Indian Muslims.

As far as the Congress party is concerned, the word 'secularism' itself serves as a call for minority consolidation behind it.

Dog whistles will serve just as well when formal religious signalling is banned.

There are Muslim outfits called Peace Party of India, Welfare Party, or even the All-India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), which draw largely Muslim votes.

They may have a few token Hindus in their midst, just as the BJP has its own Muslim members. The AIUDF, started by Muslim businessman Badruddin Ajmal, was called Assam United Democratic Front in its earlier avatar.

The secular tint to its religious appeal is obviously a camouflage.

Ajmal expects to receive the bulk of the 34 per cent Muslim vote in Assam, and, at some point, if Hindu votes get divided, he could be the state’s chief minister, based largely on a Muslim consolidation.

The Supreme Court should not worry about what name a party sports, for there are other ways to seek votes based on religious identities and insecurities.

It is not a solvable problem, nor does it make sense to brush religious identity issues under the carpet when this matters to many people.

Democracy should be about addressing issues dear to the electorate, and it may not always be about jobs or freebies.