The coming islamic partition of India and what can be salvaged

[G.Subramaniam]

epw



Conclusions

What explains this upsurge in Muslim

representation at the grass roots of

political life in UP? While this requires

much greater study, it surely points to

a growing autonomy of the Muslim

communities vis-à-vis political parties.

But the question then arises as to why

this increased Muslim representation in

urban local governments does not get

replicated in assembly and parliamentary

elections? One part of an answer

may be that urban areas have dense

Muslim residential clusters while most

assembly and parliamentary constituencies

have a mix of rural and urban

areas, making it diffi cult for Muslim

candidates to get an edge on the basis of

community support.

However, in Muslim-dominant ULBs,

an unwelcome aspect is that there are

hardly any seats reserved for dalits. In

a very large number of cases, just one

seat is reserved for a dalit woman in the

nagar palikas and the urban panchayats.

It is still not clear as to what is the cause of

this lack of reserved seats, whether it is

because of the migration of dalits to non-

Muslim areas, or some other cause. This

makes these ULBs virtually non-representative

of dalits. Even among the Other

Backward Classes (OBCs) category, such

areas are electing only Muslim OBCs.

While adequate representation of Muslims

is welcome, their massive over-representation

in ULBs, that too at the cost

of dalits and non-Muslim OBCs, is a matter

of concern and can lead to a range of

diffi cult and dangerous political situations

in the future.