Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020

Does Muslim Vote Matter? Presence, Representation, Participation Hilal Ahmed Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 3, No. 1 • Spring 2020 Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi and a Fellow at IAS-Nantes, France ahmed.hilal@csds Abstract The dominant descriptions of Muslim political engagements in contemporary India suffer from three conceptual problems. First, there is an assumption that Muslims constitute a single homogeneous community, whose political/electoral behavior is self-evident. Second, the ‘Muslim voting’ is envisaged as an independent self-governing exercise as if Muslim politics is all about Muslim voting. Third, Muslim voting behavior is always understood in relation to Muslim political representation in legislative bodies. It is assumed, in fact rather uncritically, that there is an organic and instrumental relationship between Muslim voters and Muslim MPs and MLAs. Reliability on these assumptions does not allow us to pay attention to various sociological, cultural, and economic factors that determine Muslim political imaginations in different contexts. In the backdrop of 2019 election, this paper argues that Muslim politics is not simply about the number of Muslim MPs and MLAs. Nor is it entirely reducible to the voting behavior of Muslim voters. The political engagements of Muslims in contemporary India, therefore, need to be explored as an ever-evolving independent discourse, which does not always respond to the challenges posed by Hindutva politics. Keywords: Muslims, Islam, Hindutva, vote bank, representation, elections ¿Importa el voto musulmán? Presencia, representación, participación Resumen Las descripciones dominantes de los compromisos políticos musulmanes en la India contemporánea adolecen de tres problemas 109 doi: 10.18278/inpp.3.1.8

Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 113