Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 67

Understanding Voting Patterns by Class in the 2019 Indian Election
regions did so, and more of the latter
three (25–27 percent compared to 16
percent for the South) fully disagreed.
However, counter-intuitively, 37
percent of the South fully agreed that
the “will of the majority community”
should prevail in a democracy, compared
to 16 percent (North), 21 percent
(East), and 26 percent (West). In
the South, 49 percent fully agreed that
the “country should be governed by
a strong leader who does not have to
bother about winning elections,” whereas
only 33–39 percent fully agreed with
this proposition in the other three regions,
and 18 percent of the South fully
agreed with the statement that minorities
should adopt the customs of the
majority community, while only 9–12
percent of the other regions did so.
On whether the government
should treat minorities in the same way
it treats the majority, 48 percent (South)
fully agreed, whereas 35–38 percent of
the other regions did so, with another
20–30 percent in all regions somewhat
agreeing and less than 7 percent in all
regions fully disagreeing. Only 14 percent
or less, in all regions, fully disagreed
with the government giving special
treatment for minorities. The South
is broadly in line with other regions in
considering Muslims only about half
as “highly nationalist” as Hindus. The
South also fully agreed (46 percent) that
the government must protect the interests
of minorities, even if the majority
does not agree (other regions 32–37
percent), with only 7 percent of less in
all regions fully disagreeing with the
statement.
How do we interpret the above
responses to questions on minorities?
Reading the responses to these questions
together, it seems that accommodative
attitudes to minorities enjoy
a large majority in 2019 with a majority—including
in the North and West—
fully agreeing or somewhat agreeing,
and only a relatively small minority fully
disagreeing, with(a) equal treatment
of minorities, (b) special rights for minorities,
(c) the government needing to
protect minority interests even if the
majority is against it, and (d) minorities
not needing to adopt the customs of the
majority community.
However, opinion is divided on
whether Muslims are “highly nationalist,”
being rated as much less than Hindus;
on whether Muslims have been
victimized under the Modi government;
and on the Babri Mosque demolition
and what should be built there.
While majority opinion can be interpreted
as still largely accommodative
in its attitudes to minorities, this is not
as large as it was in 2014, thus indicating
a spread of anti-minority sentiment
over the past five years. It should be
noted that except where I noted above,
inter-class differences in each category
of response to each of these questions
are small, with spreads of 5–8 percent
between the widest-apart opinions.
This indicates a remarkable lack of class
polarization in each of the “attitudinal
ecology” questions regarding minorities,
which have their implications for
party preference, specifically for BJP
preference. Also, one needs to add a
caveat that at a popular level, attitudes
do not reflect thought-out political or
63