Former Vice-President Hamid Ansari has wondered whether a political party can seriously say that it does not care for 15 per cent of its population after a BJP MLA in Bengal said he had won the seat without receiving "a single Muslim vote" and wouldn't do anything for "them" in the next five years.
BJP's new MLA from Kashipur-Belgachhia, Ritesh Tiwari, was seen in a video, saying he had not visited Muslim homes to ask for votes.
The MLA said those who voted for him have a certain right over him. He even declared that he knew his speech was being videotaped but did not care.
Tiwari asserted that he was the first candidate in the seat to win without receiving "a single Muslim vote" and would not do any work for "them" in the next five years.
Tiwari, 54, defeated Trinamool Congress heavyweight Atin Ghosh by 1,651 votes.
In an interview with Karan Thapar of The Wire, Ansari said: "You cannot operate democracy on that basis."
“If that is the prevailing ideology of the winning party, then it’s a very unfortunate comment on the system we pretend to operate… the first page of that Constitution, which is the Preamble, has certain basic principles spelt out there. Does this statement of his (Tiwari) conform to any of those principles?” he asked.
“If you swear by the Constitution which we swear by, if you swear by the Preamble which we swear by, then you cannot draw a distinction between one citizen and another citizen.” Ansari persisted.
“Can a political party seriously say that it does not care for 15 per cent of its population? It cannot do that… the Muslims are the biggest minority in the country and together with other minorities, Christians, Sikhs and others, they constitute 20 per cent of the population of India which means one-fifth of the population," he said.
"You cannot operate democracy on that basis (of ignoring them). You can operate any other form of governance but not a democracy," he added.
The 89-year-old former diplomat said: "We pretend to be a democracy, we pretend to swear by a Constitution."
Ansari, who chaired the Rajya Sabha for a decade from 2007, told Thapar that if the ruling party's ideology was based on exclusion, India could be heading in the same direction as European and other countries where democracy deviated, faltered, and transformed into other forms of rule and governance.
"I am afraid there are other examples on record — and you know them very well as I do — where democracies have deviated from being democracies into whatever other name you can use. There are examples in Europe, there are examples elsewhere. I hope we are not going on that (path). It would be a very sad day and a very sad commentary on the people of India," he added.
Although Ansari did not go that far, he seemed to be hinting at Adolf Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. The subtext was clear, even if the names were left to the history books: once a democracy begins to selectively exclude, it ceases to be one.