Intersectional Barriers to Representation: Party Gatekeeping and Muslim Women's Political Exclusion in India

Muslims constitute roughly 14% of India's population, yet only 24 Muslims (4.4%) were elected to the 18th Lok Sabha in 2024. This continues a multi-decadal gap between demographic weight and parliamentary presence and marks a decline from the 27 Muslim MPs (5%) elected in 2019. Muslim women remain nearly absent. Notable 2024 victories such as Iqra Hasan (Samajwadi Party) and Sajda Ahmed (All India Trinamool Congress) illustrate their exceptional status rather than structural inclusion. This paper examines Muslim legislative underrepresentation at the national level, asking: what structural mechanisms produce this persistent marginalization, and how does gender intensify barriers for Muslim women? Existing scholarship on minority representation in India has documented numerical deficits but often treats Muslim marginalization and women's absence as separate phenomena. This paper makes two contributions. First, it provides a comprehensive intersectional analysis of Muslim women's legislative absence using 2024 election data. Second, it identifies specific party-level nomination mechanisms as the primary drivers of their parliamentary deficit, rather than voter prejudice or demographic decline alone. The paper advances two core arguments. First, Muslim underrepresentation results from structural electoral incentives, party nomination strategies, and party system transformation since the late 1980s. These include first-past-the-post rules, spatial dispersion of Muslim voters, Congress decline, rise of regional caste-based parties, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consolidation. These factors reduce electoral viability of dispersed minority candidates, concentrating successful Muslim representation in shrinking Muslim-majority constituencies and in parties willing to bear electoral costs of nominating them. Second, gender intensifies these constraints in three ways: collective community marginalization, gendered party gatekeeping in candidate selection, and shortage of winnable seats. The 18th Lok Sabha elected 74 women MPs (13.6%), representing persistent barriers to gender parity. Within this cohort, only 2 are Muslim women (2.7%). Methodologically, the paper combines descriptive analysis of 2024 constituency-level results using Election Commission data with process-tracing of party nomination patterns across India's six electorally dominant parties: BJP, Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and Aam Aadmi Party. The analysis draws on CSDS-Lokniti survey data on Muslim voting behaviour. Theoretically, it synthesizes institutional accounts with feminist institutionalist perspectives, particularly the 'politics of presence' debate. Key findings reveal three mechanisms. First, BJP electoral dominance shapes the competitive landscape. Second, strategic retreat among non-BJP parties occurs through limited ticketing of Muslim candidates and perceived electoral costs of courting Muslim votes. Third, fragmentation of opposition strategy reduces coordination. For Muslim women, additional hurdles include dynastic nomination patterns, scarcity of party gender quotas in winnable seats, and placement in symbolic contests. The paper demonstrates that Muslim women's near-invisibility results from intersecting systems of exclusion requiring targeted reforms: systematic tracking of party nomination decisions and institutional interventions such as inclusive candidate-selection norms combined with gender quotas tied to winnable seats. These findings contribute to comparative scholarship on minority-women's representation in majoritarian contexts and quota design in multi-ethnic democracies, advancing understanding of electoral inclusion limits for intersectionally marginalised groups.