NEW DELHI: Constitutionally, India is secular and caste discrimination illegal, but religious loyalties and the ancient social hierarchy continue to determine how Indians vote — as evident in the current polls in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

On Thursday, Uttar Pradesh, whose population size of 160 million people could have made it the world’s sixth largest country, entered the final phase of a staggered three-phase poll to elect a provincial assembly.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came under fire for suggesting publicly that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could dispense with the Muslim vote.

The BJP, which rules the state, may have alienated the Muslim vote by insisting on introducing in the state stiff anti-terrorist laws following the Sept 11 attacks in the United States and making anti-terrorism, especially in disputed northern Kashmir, its main plank.

Vajpayee, considered the moderate phase of his avowedly pro-Hindu BJP, may have been led to make the outburst after exit polls, conducted after the first two phases, indicated a complete alienation from his party of Muslims who make up 20 per cent of Uttar Pradesh’s population.

Prominent Muslim leader and former member of India’s elite diplomatic corps, Syed Shahabuddin, said he saw nothing new in Vajpayee’s attitude and accused the prime minister of always projecting himself as a leader of the Hindus and not of all Indians.

D Raja, national secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), commented that Vajpayee and the BJP had only themselves to blame for any alienation of religious minorities.

“Instead of understanding that the minorities feel threatened by the aggressive stance taken by the BJP and its allies on the Ayodhya issue, the prime minister is only worsening the communal divide,” Raja pointed out.

Thursday’s elections for 166 of Uttar Pradesh’s 404 assembly seats covers Ayodhya town. This is where the BJP and its fundamentalist allies, notably the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), demolished in 1992 the tri-domed Babri Masjid, a structure allegedly built over a Hindu temple by 17th century Muslim invaders.

With exit polls suggesting that the BJP was about to face an electoral drubbing in Uttar Pradesh, the VHP has declared that it was prepared to defy the Supreme Court order and begin construction at the heavily guarded and barricaded site at Ayodhya on March 15.

On Wednesday, VHP leader Acharya Giriraj Kishore denied that the party was reviving the temple construction issue in order to create problems for a new state government. “It is not a question of which government, it is a question of faith,” he told reporters.

Kishore also denied that the Hindus were divided along caste lines and said that the warrior deity Ram, who is believed to have been born at Ayodhya 10,000 years ago, was a unifying factor for all members of the faith.

In fact, the present elections in Uttar Pradesh have been a triangular affair among the three caste-based parties. The exit polls predict that government formation will depend on which of the two can put aside differences in hierarchy and get together—Dawn/The InterPress News Service