“Religion should be kept away from politics. The combination of both can be dreadful.”

Just go down the street and ask people; any layman would say the same. Did people of eminence share this view? Perhaps even some of the most familiar names in human history did. Before I share what struck my mind to think of this, let's explore what they have said about religion in politics.

“Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither,” opined Albert Einstein

“Those who believe religion and politics aren’t connected don’t understand either,” felt Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Although both statements look almost identical in sense and essence, it appears to me that while the first statement suggests an automatic mix of the two, the second one essentially emphasises their inevitable connections.  However, both say politics and religion have always been entangled.

And trust me, no one would ever understand their mutually beneficial relationship better than Gandhi, who effectively experimented with this dreadful combination throughout his lifetime, and fortunately or unfortunately, achieved great success in doing so.

I believe this is a good point for me to share a perspective or two on how religion has emerged from the subtleties that once concealed it, taking centre stage in India's politics over the last decade.

It may be the peculiarity of the time we live in that it compels us to muse over the role of religion in politics, perhaps, more than anything else these days. Even more so when every aspect of our political and economic existence is immersed in varying depths of religious undercurrents, no individual is left with an option not to wade through the waves of it in his or her everyday existence.

And if you are tempted to believe that this is driven by people of any specific faith or political ideology in our country, you get it entirely wrong.  Here, the intertwining of religion and politics is a deeply entrenched phenomenon that has been used for decades by leaders to shape the country's political landscape. Unfortunately, we, in our national politics, do not have many names other than Jawaharlal Nehru or Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar who wanted our country to be steered by a value system that seeks to establish itself in an ever-evolving constitutional morality than finding itself being organised and shaped by archaic absurdities.  

That is, religion often plays a significant role in India in influencing political decisions, electoral strategies and the mobilisation of voters. This utilisation of religion in politics is evident across various political parties and regions, highlighting the complex nexus between faith and power.

Thus, my intention is not to suggest that there are exceptions or that there is still room for hope. Instead, I aim to highlight the inevitability of every ideological setup having to succumb to this cosy cocktail in India's expansive political landscape that encompasses the so-called Left, Right, and Centre ideologies.

No mainstream or local political party in India can confidently claim that they significantly differ in their approach to the social ambit of the country that Ambedkar described in his final speech in the Constituent Assembly: “For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

Thus, but for their peripheral and ostentatious outcries, they are mostly the same in their pursuit of benefits through vote-bank politics. Ambedkar’s coinage of the phrase ‘Brahmin Boys’ to indicate the most progressive among them candidly tells that the politics of an unreformed society bears only outward changes. They, essentially, embody the social decay that they emanate from. 

The parties that have ruled the country for decades, as well as those currently in power, cannot shy away from the reality that despite their grand claims of being champions of development ideals, even their selection of electoral candidates is primarily based on their ability to cater to caste or community interests. Let alone their approaches once they are in power.

This point may not need further substantiation with so many examples in Indian politics. To point out what is not one such act should be a tougher task for anyone given the number of such incidents and decisions that could be counted on fingers.

Our political structures and actors find inane pleasure in deceiving themselves by hiding this and are keener to pretend that they incarnate the virtues enshrined in the Constitution. But, in reality, whether anyone in power or opposition ever has done anything to bolster those virtues over decades is better posed as a simple rhetorical question. Imparting the right kind of schooling to the masses that would instil critical thinking would have gone a long way in evolving this.

However, a tradition deeply embedded in reserving the fruits of education for the benefit of a minuscule minority for hundreds of years could not, in a realistic sense, have been understood to evolve and endorse a flawless education system for the masses without realising how it would undermine its own selfish existence. Yes, of course, that minority realized it, and the fact of the day is that any such thing is yet to happen in independent India.

In short, political parties in our country often exploit religious sentiments to consolidate their voter base and gain electoral support. They often capitalise on religious affiliations, symbols, and narratives to appeal to specific religious communities, aiming to secure their allegiance during elections. This has been the case in regions with diverse religious demographics, where parties strategically align themselves with particular religious groups to enhance their prospects.

How the opposition was waylaid on the CAA?

In early March 2024, the Indian news media was loud with the headline which stated that ‘CAA will be repealed if I.N.D.I.A bloc assumes power.’ Consequently, the senior Congress leader, Shashi Tharoor, was quoted as stating that if the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A) – an alliance, in its own parlance, formed by the opposition parties to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2024 General Election – were to come to power, it would abolish the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Tharoor or his party was not alone in opposing the law. Several opposition parties and the chief ministers of West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Delhi too joined the fray alleging that the ruling BJP has resurrected the ‘divisive’ act ahead of Lok Sabha polls to exploit religious sentiments for political gains.  The primary sentiment among the opposition leaders was to question the timing of the law’s enactment just before the elections, rather than critiquing CAA itself.

The law is controversial because it allows individuals from neighbouring countries, except Muslims, who suffer from religious persecution to seek citizenship in India. It was subsequently revealed that the definition of “neighbouring countries” is confined to a few countries and omits those in the Southern regions. As a result, refugees from Sri Lanka, for instance, will not gain the benefit of this law. In the words of the incumbent External Affairs Minister (EAM), S Jaishankar, the CAA is intrinsically linked to the partition.

Certainly, the legitimacy of any such law, which determines citizenship on the basis of religion, should be questioned and opposed in a democratic country like ours, especially if it is seen to be used as a tool to exploit religious discrimination for gains in vote-bank politics.

However, my thoughts here are not meant to examine the legality or morality of the issue along the established ethos of the constitution of the country. Rather, I intend to flag how religion has become the core issue in an election in the world's largest democracy – for those parties which brazenly promote politics of religion and for those political parties who hypocritically are nonreligious. 

For me, fighting an election like this is a fight devoid of a target, which is simply fighting an imagination and nothing short of a hallucination. Further, any fight that is unsought for by the actual conscience of the affected does not yield the purpose either.

A couple of psychological things are bound to happen in such a fight. First, the fighter loses credibility among those for whom the war is fought. Second, the fighter becomes a butt of laughter in the eyes of the affected themselves for the simple reason that the sapiens inherently detest emotional ‘overdoing’ of anything.

The evidence for this comes from the responses to promulgation.

Delhi Haj Committee Chairman Kausar Jahan, for instance, welcomed the CAA implementation. While one is left to wonder, considering the workings of the news industry today, why the national media did not lead with Jahan's statement as the headline, what he said should be seen as a clear attempt to distance his community from any overreaction that could lead to unnecessary trouble.

“This is an act to grant citizenship, not take it away. The condition of non-Muslims in our neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh is not good. If the government wants to provide them with a respectable life, what's the issue? The Muslim community will not have any problem with this; there's no need to panic,” remarked Jahan.

Perhaps Jahan is correct in recognising that insincere ingratiation such as this lacks genuine concern for the community and parties like that of Tharoor's could potentially push his people into precarious positions for their own electoral benefits. For people like him, this might be a reason that has led to a humongous religious consolidation on the opposite side, which had ample reasons to remain separate rather than integrated due to internal strife arising from a peculiar social structure capable of enduring for many more centuries. Eventually, this situation makes communities like his bear the brunt.

Jahan was not alone in supporting the Act. Several Muslim organisations and leaders echoed similarly. Like Jahan, they felt it did not affect Indian Muslims or would take away their citizenship and that every Muslim in India should welcome this. That these men could have spoken at the behest of the current dispensation is beside my point here. When that is alleged, there arises a possibility of those community organisations and leaders who speak against the law to be labelled as people speaking at the behest of opposition parties too.

In a way, it should be easier for one to say that both sides do not represent the actual sentiments of the community. Immediately after reading reports on this, I reached out to my informed friends in the community to know how they looked at the issue.

There were not many different opinions.

Despite everyone feeling the law could be termed unconstitutional, they did not anticipate it would adversely impact the community because its exclusion in the statute only gave rise to hypothetical situations. Unlike exceptional cases like Taslima Nasrin, none knew Muslims in large numbers from these countries ever applying for Indian citizenship under the situations entailed in the amended Act. They were not able to foresee any such situation in the immediate future either.

As one of them would quickly quip, the number of Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh who have sought or been granted Indian citizenship so far should give us a sense of the reality of an impending situation. A search on the internet would immediately reveal that you do not immediately or easily come across such pieces of information.  Further, the government has not yet closed its doors to any Muslim seeking citizenship under regular routes too.

Like the poll strategist Prashant Kishore would say in a TV interview, several of them even felt that the community should stop looking for support from other political parties as all of them so far have only cared to cater to their own electoral benefits and seeking their support has only put the community in the dock. That is, being a sizeable population, Muslims should realise the exploitative tactics deployed by them and carve their own political space themselves.

In essence, the current regime which is much open about its religious Hindutva ideology as its chief means of seeking votes effectively waylaid the supposedly secular opposition parties so that it could tactfully pull out its best-selling narrative of ‘appeasement-of-one-side’ to the legions of social media warriors thriving in India’s mind space for over a decade now.

Some of the friends with whom I spoke even felt that these parties are unnecessarily misleading and dragging the Muslim community for their own unfounded and unstudied vote-bank expectations, rendering the community a villain in the eyes of the majority.

It seems that the opposition parties here overlook a common-sense principle: the constitutionality of legislation should be assessed based on its practical effectiveness in addressing real-world situations, rather than its hypothetical unconstitutionality.

Thus, to appear relevant and reasonable in the current typical election battleground of India, a party like the INC should remove such an item from its otherwise unprecedentedly magnificent manifesto considering the vote polarization strategies of the opponent.

Otherwise, when the opposition parties say that they will abrogate the law ‘if’ they come back to power, the eerie smiles on the faces of those on the other side indicate that they have succeeded in their strategy to effectively add a mischievous ‘if’ to the chances of the former returning to power.