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12 / The Decline of Communal Violence and the Transformation of Electoral Competition For adecade after the destruction ofthe.Babri Masjid in December1992 and the negative reaction to it in the country and around the world, there was a decline in communal violence in India as a whole and in the state of U.P. and Aligarh as well. This decline was in no small measure owing to the deliberate decision ofthe RSS and BJP leadership to move toward an accommodating stance in its drive to gain, maintain, and consolidate its power in particular states and in the country and the necessity for it to make allianceswith noncommunal parties to do so. That strategyhas, however, produced mixed results. Although the BJP was in power in 2000 at the Center and in several Indian states, it suffered a major defeat in the U.P. Lok Sabha elections of1999. In Aligarh City, the BIP has been displaced in both the Legislative Assemblyconstituencyand in the Aligarh segmentofthe parliamentary constituency. In this chapter, I will demonstrate its decline in the Legislative Assembly constituency and the reasons for it. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY ELECTION OF 1996 In the past decade, a major demographic shift has been occurring in Aligarh City, the nightmare ofall Hindu communalists, namely, a rise in the Muslim population ofthe city. Demographic shifts in the population ofAligarh City have combined with alterations in the delimitation of the boundaries of the constituency to affect significantly the communal composition ofthe voting population and the results of the last elections. These changes have involved the exclusion from the constituency ofHindu-majority areas and the alleged illegalvoting ofMuslims from another constituencyin Muslim-majority areas. Altogether, 16 mohallas from the old ward ofAchal Talab, with a population of10,792 in 1951, which can be estimated to have reached 36,584 by 1991,1 Decline ofViolence and Transformation ofCompetition /297 were transferred out of Aligarh constituency after 1969 (after 1980 in the case of Madar Darwaza). These numbers constitute70.43 percent ofthe total population of this predominantly Hindu ward, the ward with the highest proportion of Hindus (80.81 percent) in 1951. The proportion of Hindus in the 16 transferred mohallas was 88.02 percent (estimated total population of 27,782). In the meantime, as noted earlier, there has been a very considerable increase in the Muslim population in outlying areas ofthe city, including many former villages and new mohallas that have grown in part as a consequence ofmigration from the rural hinterland. Table 6.3, discussed earlier, shows the voting population of those areas for which I have data from the latest voters' lists, categorized as Muslim or non-Muslim (Hindus, others, and Scheduled Castes), and as to whether or not they are included in the 198911991 delimination of the Legislative Assembly constituency, the latest delimination in my possession. Although some of the newly incorporated areas are predominantly Hindu, they are not included in the Legislative Assembly constituency , whereas many of the large predominantly Muslim mohallas are included. The proportion ofMuslims in these included mohallas ranges from 63-41 to 100 percent. The total number of Muslim voters listed on the 1984 and 1995 voters' lists combined for those areas is 27,290, aU added to the new Aligarh City Legislative Assembly boundaries. It is, therefore, the case that the population balance in the Aligarh constituency has shifted in favor of the Muslims in consequence of successive deliminations of constituency boundaries and a substantial increase in the Muslim population in the outlying areas. It is evident also from the polling station-wise voting in the transferred mohallas discussed in the preceding chapters that the BJP has suffered in consequence of these shifts. Further evidence ofthe loss to the BIP comes from the results ofthe corporator elections . Seven ofthe eleven transferred Hindu-majority mohallas fall in wards 15 and 17 in the 1995 delimination.z The BIP won the 1995 elections in both these wards, polling 47.29 percent of the vote in ward 15 and 39.83 percent in ward 17. This and other differences between the boundaries ofthe assembly constituencyand the municipalityalso explain whythe BIP remains dominant in municipal politics, but has lost its dominance in the legislative constituency. Navrnan had noted these trends with some concern in an interview in 1993, when he remarked to me that "one difficulty he faced in the 1991 election was that Muslims had been migrating to the city from the rural areas from time to time and that, as a consequence...

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