There was silence outside Darul Uloom in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoband town, as students walked into India’s biggest Muslim seminary dressed in spotless white kurta-pyjamas and wearing a ‘taqiyah’, the round skull cap, on April 17, two days before polling was to be held for the first phase.
A few paused gingerly when stopped for interviews but went ahead inside the tall historic gates of the most important and oldest Islamic seminary in India without revealing their electoral preference.
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For decades, the seminary has had a history of issuing advisories to the Muslim community on voting preferences before elections: This time no advisory has yet been issued.
Arshad Madani, principal of the seminary, refused to be interviewed. “We will talk after June 4,” was his polite refusal, summing up the mood of the Muslim community in western Uttar Pradesh.
Deoband in UP’s Muslim-dominated Saharanpur district is a small town where both Hindus and Muslims have lived for centuries. “Even in the worst of times, there has never been a major communal strife here,” said Deepak Singh, working at a chemist outside the Deoband bus station. His neighbour, a Muslim shop-owner agreed, and said his community has decided to keep away from the politics of “hate”.
In several areas in western Uttar Pradesh — where the community constitutes about 30% or more of the population, especially in districts such as Saharanpur, Moradabad and Bijnor — Muslims refused to be drawn into a conversation on politics. Except mentioning a common line against political parties, saying nobody has done anything for them.
Some, who only spoke on condition of anonymity, said that they have been pushed into silence. “You don’t know what may happen to us if we are seen on television opposing the local BJP leaders or the ruling party. Police will call my father to the station and humiliate him if I am seen on TV raising my voice against the government,” said a young man in Muzzafarnagar, in his mid-20s, a failed government job aspirant.
The deafening silence
The silence of the Muslim voter is not unique to Lok Sabha elections. During last year’s state elections in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and in Congress-ruled Rajasthan, Muslims largely avoided voicing their political views.
In Laxmangarh town in Rajasthan’s Sikar, a Muslim man in his early 50s sitting outside his concrete three-storey house appreciated the work of then Congress legislator Govind Singh Dotasara, but did not say a word against the BJP. “Everything is fine,” he replied when asked what he thinks about the BJP, which snatched the state from the Congress in Rajasthan. Dotasara won from Laxmangarh.
Similarly, in Muslim-dominated old Bhopal, Muslims spoke in hushed tones about their vote for the Congress and their preference for local MLA, Arif Masood, but did not speak against the BJP. “Let’s talk about food in old Bhopal,” said Ameen Ali, who runs a small shop, trying to avoid a question on BJP’s 15 years in Madhya Pradesh. The BJP won the state assembly polls winning 163 of 230 state assembly seats.
This reporter found that the Muslim community, once open about their political views, are now reluctant to speak about politics and their personal rights. Even on critical issues such as the Uniform Civil Code, which many Muslim scholars believe, is targeted against the community, the community has not really been vocal.
When the Uttarakhand assembly passed the UCC law in February 2024 in the state assembly, Muslims did not protest. “We did not want a repeat of what happened when Muslims protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019. Cases were registered against a large number of our community members. This time, we held meetings in mosques and told people not to protest. We will fight UCC legally,” said Mohammed Yusuf, a lawyer at Uttarakhand’s Haldwani lower court, and a member of Jamiat-Ulema-Hind, a national organisation of Muslims.
Prominent Muslim community leaders such as Yusuf said a decision has been taken not to protest but to vote silently, saying that they have learnt from their experiences in Uttar Pradesh, where Muslim leaders were jailed for organising protests. This message has been delivered to the community through mosques and community leaders.
“The attempt is not to help the BJP to polarise the polls,” said a prominent Muslim leader of western UP.
A community leader in western UP aware of the discussions and developments within the community said families have been advised to vote in batches so that long queues of Muslims are not visible at polling stations; People have been told to avoid wearing dresses which can identify them as Muslims at polling booths.
The idea is not to give an impression that Muslims are voting in large numbers, the leader said, as it could polarise voting. Overall, however, while voting in the first two phases in Uttar Pradesh has fallen compared to 2019, data from the UP election office is not available to analyse voting trends in Muslim-dominated areas.
It appears that the silence of Muslim voters is real and strategic aimed at targeting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Most leaders this reporter spoke to said the Muslims would vote for the party which would be in a position to defeat BJP, ignoring even community leaders contesting the polls.
Chetan Chauhan, national affairs editor, analyses the most important environment and political story in the country this week
