Examine the role of religion in Indian Electoral Politics in the contemporary times. (2020, 15 Marks)
Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 makes an appeal for votes on the ground of religion a corrupt practice, yet religion is now among the strongest predictors of the Indian vote. The gap between legal prohibition and electoral practice runs through mobilisation, candidate selection and voting, and shows both how far religion reaches and where it stops.
Mobilisation: consolidating a majority
- The Hindutva idiom — temple, cow protection, “infiltrators”, minority “appeasement” — seeks to fold caste-divided Hindus into one bloc. Shreyas Sardesai’s reading of Lokniti-CSDS data found the BJP won about 44% of Hindu votes in 2019, up from 36% in 2014.
- Rivals answer with soft Hindutva — temple visits and public displays of faith — confirming religious signalling as a common campaign currency.
- Steven I. Wilkinson (Votes and Violence, 2004) shows that polarisation pays where minority votes are not pivotal to the ruling party, hence its uneven use across states.
Candidate selection and representation
Kanchan Chandra’s “head-count” logic — voters read a party’s intent from its candidates’ identity — applies to religion too. The BJP fielded one Muslim candidate in 2024; the House has 24 Muslim MPs (4.4%) against a population share near 14%, and none in the NDA. Secular parties also avoid Muslim nominees in winnable seats.
Voting patterns in 2024
- Minority consolidation: about 65% of Muslims backed the INDIA bloc — defensive and tactical, not confessional. In Dhubri, AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal lost to the Congress by over ten lakh votes.
- Cross-pressures: NDA support among Christians rose from 16% to 28%, while among Sikhs it fell from 31% to 10% after the farmers’ protest.
- Faizabad: months after the Ram temple’s consecration, the Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit leader on a general seat, won the constituency containing Ayodhya — livelihoods and caste arithmetic outweighed the symbol.
Law and the Model Code
- Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo (1995) held that invoking Hindutva, “a way of life”, was not by itself a religious appeal — so the dominant idiom escaped Section 123(3).
- Abhiram Singh v. C. D. Commachen (2 January 2017, 4:3) extended the bar to the voter’s religion; D. Y. Chandrachud’s dissent warned it could silence legitimate group grievances.
- Enforcement is weak: election petitions take years, and on 25 April 2024 the Election Commission answered complaints against both principal leaders with notices to their party presidents — a reputational, not electoral, cost.
Evaluation
Where religion pervades everyday life and predates national identity, religious mobilisation is partly voter-driven, not only elite-manufactured. Yet Neera Chandhoke insists that secularism cannot be separated from equality and rights, and majority consolidation under first-past-the-post turns numbers into lasting exclusion. And 2024 shows the limit: religion consolidates the base, while caste, livelihoods and regional issues decide the margins.
Conclusion
Religion shapes Indian elections more than the law permits and less than its strategists hope — strongest in mobilisation and nomination, weakest in final outcomes. The task is not to purge religious identity from elections but to stop it deciding who is represented.