ELECTORAL PREFERENCES OF MUSLIMS IN WEST BENGAL: AN ANALYSIS OF LOK SABHA ELECTIONS.

Abstract

The Muslim Electoral politics has always been a subject of discussion among the scholars. For strange reasons Muslims of India are perceived to be voting as a monolith.  The dominant notion about the Muslim voting behavior remains that they are strategic in their voting behavior and are not influenced by their gender, class, or regional location. Their only consideration regardless of the opposition, it is believed while they cast their votes, is to defeat Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Amidst this gross generalization, the role of the nature of party competition in determining the voting behavior of Muslims is often down played. The paper attempts to probe whether the availability of political choice has any role to play in determining their voting behavior or not. Therefore, the effort is to figure out how the dynamics of Muslim vote plays out in a context characterized by multi-party competition. It does so by looking in to the Electoral Preferences of Muslims of West Bengal in different Lok Sabha Elections. The paper further attempts to enquire whether the Muslims of the State, as is generally believed, constitute a traditional vote bank of a particular party or have changed their political preferences with the changing time when they have got the opportunity to do so.