Image: Indian Express

If Assembly Polls were to be held in Karnataka today, the Congress (I) will retain power with a comfortable majority.

According to a pre-poll survey conducted by C fore, the Congress will bag 43% of the total votes polled compared to 32% projected for the BJP and 17% for the JDS. These are calculated as translating into 120-132 seats for the Congress, a distant 60-72 seats for the BJP and 24-30 seats for the JD(S).  

Using random sampling methodology and a structures questionnaire, the survey conducted between July 19 and August 10, 2017, interviewed 24,679 voters were from 165 Assembly seats covering all districts of the state.

Spread across both rural and urban constituencies, “care was taken to ensure that different castes and communities were represented in the sample as per their proportion [in the total electorate]”.

Regionwise, the pre-poll survey found Congress way ahead of the BJP in the Old Mysore, Hyderabad Karnataka, Bangalore and Central Karnataka while the BJP fared much better than the Congress in the Bombay Karnataka and Coastal Karnataka regions. The appeal of the JD(S) is limited to the Old Mysore region where it is projected to receive most of the votes and seats.  

In gender terms, the Congress was favoured by 46% of the females as compared to 42% male voters. The equation stood reversed in case of BJP with 29% of the females opting for BJP as compared to a relatively higher 33% of male voters.

Interestingly, Congress was found to be way ahead of the BJP among all age groups.

Asked to name the government scheme which was the best, 79% of the voters ranked the Anna Bhagya (highly subsidized rice and dal to people below the poverty line) Scheme at No 1 and the Mid-day meal Scheme at No 2.

Drinking water shortage, Bad Roads, Poor sanitation facilities and electricity shortage were identified by the voters as the major problem in their constituency.

Law and order, corruption, price rise and unemployment were not a major concern of the voters, according to the survey’s findings.

Asked how satisfied there were with the current Congress government, 18% were “very satisfied”, 53% “somewhat satisfied” as against 29% who were “not satisfied”.

Whom do you prefer as CM of Karnataka? The response: Siddaramaiah (Congress) 46%, BS Yeddyurappa (BJP) 27%, HD Kumarasway (JD-S) 17%, Don’t know 6%.

Asked to compare the present Congress government with the previous BJP and JD(S) governments respectively, 44% said functioning of present government is better as compared to 28% who preferred the previous BJP government and 18% who preferred the earlier JD(S) government.
 

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He's the only president in modern polling to have net negative rating

 

(Photo: Michael Vadon/flickr/cc)

 

President Donald Trump's job approval rating is a mere 44 percent, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll published Sunday finds, further documenting the skepticism with which the public views the former reality TV star's short time in the White House.

In fact, he has "the lowest approval ratings of any new chief executive in modern American history," CNBC writes.

Forty-eight percent say they disapprove of Trump's performance as president, and 32 percent said his performance thus far shows he's not up to being president.

And while 63 percent of Republicans say he's off to a great start, NBC notes that Trump "is the only president in the history of modern polling to begin his first term with a net negative approval rating."

His net negative rating is -4 percent. His predecessor, in contrast, started off with a net positive 34 percent, while George H.W. Bush had a net positive of 45 percent.

The results of the poll, conducted February 18-22, come two days before Trump makes his first address to Congress.

The speech, the Associated Press writes, gives Trump the chance "to reframe his presidency after a chaotic opening in which he's rattled world leaders, railed against leaked information, engaged in open warfare with the press, and seen his signature effort to halt some immigration thwarted by the courts."

In what Politico describes as an effort "to troll the new president in prime time," many Democrats will be bringing immigrants as their guests to the event.

Iranian graduate student Sara Yarjani, who was affected by Trump's now-halted travel ban, will be the guest of Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). "Mr. Trump needs to see the people he has hurt," Chu said.

(This article was first published on Common Dreams).

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Two worlds? Minaret in Brick Lane, East London. Andy Sedg/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Governments in Britain have tended to treat Muslim citizens much like colonial administrations treated their subjects. Intermediaries – tribal leaders or religious figures – are found to establish communication between the empire and its people.

One positive thing about a recent ICM poll of British muslims is that it offers an alternative. The survey, carried out for a Channel 4 documentary, was never going to be able to reflect the complexity of British Muslim life accurately, but it does signal a shift by engaging directly with Muslim citizens.

How poll data is used is one way to test how colonialism’s legacy might linger on. The Daily Mail chose for its headline the quote: “Muslims are not like us and we should just accept that they will not integrate …” while Sky News highlighted that: “Half of British Muslims want homosexuality banned.”

Few media outlets rushed to use the headline that “86% of Muslims feel strong affiliation with UK, higher than the national average", although this too is one of the findings from the survey. It is an “us and them” framework that fails to spark debate about who “we” might be and why “they”, with all their differences, might need greater integration with us, as the report has suggested.

We don’t have space here to discuss how the category Muslim may be broken up across class, regional or ethnic background. Nor will we get into comparisons with others: whether, for instance, British Catholics, or for that matter, members of the Conservative Party, might have similar sentiments towards homosexuality.

Same stop. Same destination? Kamyar Adl/Flickr, CC BY

I want to focus on a more pervasive but implicit idea that allows the obsessive focus on difference. It is what Trevor Philips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and presenter of the documentary, has called everyone else’s “centre of gravity”. A key aspect of that is the concept of secularism, which many take to mean the separation of church and state.

State of affairs

There is an underlying assumption that Islam as a religion is uncomfortable with secularism and that Muslims require “integration” to be able to live in secular states. This assumption finds forceful evidence in the desire expressed by 23% of the Muslims polled for some form of sharia law in UK. Critics who claim that Islamic thought and practice is uncomfortable with secularism may be right, but we need to pause and consider first what they mean by secularism. Is it the same thing that many Muslims might be uncomfortable with?

The most common assumption about secularism is that it is a separation of state and religion. This assumes a universal definition of religion as a specific set of ideas and practices that we can separate from other aspects of life. This definition is, of course, a product of a particular social historical context and not one that is universally true.

Part of life. The Koran. Mohammed J/Flickr, CC BY-ND

Colonialism was integral not just to exporting ideas about what constitutes a religion to other parts of the world, but on imposing that vision of religion on societies that did not demarcate the spiritual from the economic, the moral from the political.

Britain, a deeply Christian society right up to the early 1960s and where empire and Christianity were tied closely together in a “civilising mission”, imposed its definitions on its Asian and African colonies, actively reshaping religious practices. It is not widely discussed that the rigid codification of sharia, as well as Hindu practices, was a process started by colonial administration in India in the late 18th century.

In fact, the notion of religion as a compartmentalised aspect of human existence does not mean much for those who think of Islam, not as a set of specific practices or laws, but as a way of life, or “deen”, which has long been wrongly translated as “religion”.

More critically, the definition of secularism as a separation of church and state obscures a key reality. Historically, secularism has actually entailed the increasing control and management of religious thought and practice by the state. It is not a separation, but a relationship in which the state has increasing control.

In his nuanced analysis of secularism and its development within the European context, cultural theorist Talal Asad showed how this led not just to opening up of church property for market circulation, but also to a new closeness. Perhaps it is easiest if we think of secularism as an inversion of a previous relationship in the European context where the Roman Catholic church had extensive control over the state.

Saudi atheism

Within what we call the “Western” experience of secularism are many differences: the American constitution attempts to protect religious practice from heavy state intervention, leading to a highly religious citizenry. The French state has generally carried out very aggressive management of religious practice.

National Front posters in France highlight tension. EPA/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

Secularism as state management of religion is precisely the aspect that the vast majority of Muslims find alien. On the other hand, Islamists – by definition those who want to take over the state to transform society through their interpretation of Islam – find it an appealing prospect.

Unlike the Catholic church, which forms the bedrock of many European attitudes towards religion, Islamic practice has been fairly decentralised over the last 1,400 years. Sharia has been, for the most part, a set of guidelines rather than a set of laws, enforced not by the state but self-imposed through believers deciding to follow the scholarly opinions of particular muftis.

This self-imposition has allowed Islamic thought and practice much more entrenchment in social and political life. That Islam is not reliant on state imposition is precisely what makes it much more accessible to believers than the structured hierarchy of European churches.

Where states such as in Saudi Arabia have pursued state imposition, the level of disaffection with religious practice is very high. In recent decades, atheism has seen significant growth in the kingdom. So many have declared their atheism that the government last year passed a law against it.

Secularism, apparently a cornerstone of British values, is then something quite different from what mainstream understanding would suggest, as is the relationship of Muslims with it. Insisting on integration, without any questioning of dominant assumptions and beliefs, values and ideas, carries strong echoes of colonialism. How and why the UK’s “centre of gravity” came to be defined through its opposition to Muslims needs to be opened up if this report is to be an exercise in bringing us all together.

(This article was first published on The Conversation.)
 

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