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Why West Bengal may not Go the Bihar Way for Owaisi

Why West Bengal may not Go the Bihar Way for Owaisi

MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi at a election rally in Bihar

MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi at a election rally in Bihar

Wooing away Muslims from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is no easy job. The Muslims of West Bengal have learnt a lesson from Bihar experience

By Soroor Ahmed | Patna

OF the five states going to poll in April-May West Bengal, Assam and Kerala have substantial Muslim populations. In fact, in Assam where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power, almost one-third of the population is Muslim.

Yet the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen’s chief, Asaduddin Owaisi, has not disclosed any plan to fight election in Assam and Kerala, which along with Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are going to polls in the summer.

Till now he has focussed only on West Bengal. On January 3, Owaisi met a ‘spiritual’ personality of Furfura Shareef in Hooghly district of West Bengal, Abbas Siddiqui, with a view to contesting Assembly election in the state.

It can be argued that the presence of the All India United Democratic Front of Badruddin Ajmal in Assam and Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala may have compelled him from not throwing the hat in the ring in these two states. But in Bihar, AIMIM did not shy away from the contest even as the Popular Front of India, essentially a Muslim outfit, was in the fray.

While AIMIM joined hands in the recently held election in Bihar with Bahujan Samaj Party and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, the PFI formed an alliance with former MP Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav’s Jan Adhikar Party.

Except AIMIM and BSP, which won five and one seat respectively, the rest three failed to open their account. All the five who won on the AIMIM tickets, had their association with either the Congress or RJD in the past.

By Owaisi’s own logic the first priority should be to wage a big battle against the Indian Union Muslim League because it is in alliance with the same secular Congress, whom the Hyderabad MP blames for all the ills plaguing Muslims of India. It is other thing that AIMIM only broke the two decades long relationship with the Congress in Andhra Pradesh in 2012, that is after the resurgence of the BJP across India.

It remained a mystery as to why Asaduddin Owaisi is not exposing IUML when he is quick to blame former PM Rajiv Gandhi, former UP and Bihar CMs Akhilesh Yadav and Lalu Prasad respectively and the present West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Is it not a fact that AIMIM chief’s late father Salahuddin Owaisi, former MP from Hyderabad, once had good relationship with Rajiv Gandhi?

Should it be understood that AIMIM’s chief is not poking his nose in Kerala as the BJP would not be benefited there as it is too weak.

In the same way it would be perhaps a futile exercise to plunge into the complicated politics of Assam where the BJP is already in power.

The AIMIM has every right to contest from anywhere in India. At the same time citizens of the country have full right—if it is so possible—to ask him why is it that he is so selective in choosing the states and constituencies to fight elections? In his own state, Telangana, the AIMIM hardly goes out of Greater Hyderabad. If Akhilesh, Mamata, Lalu or his son Tejashwi are so bad for Muslims how good K Chandrashekar Rao is for the community in Telangana where his party is in alliance with the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samiti.

Perhaps Owaisi might have been a more respectable politician had he been honest in approach and quite open in support of the BJP. Secretly supporting the BJP is, in the long run, going to harm his own brand of politics. After all Owaisi should be aware of the fact that the Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is thinking in terms of dissociating himself from the AIMIM after the very good performance of the saffron party in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election last month. The BJP’s tally jumped from four to 48 while the TRS got reduced to 56 from 99 in the 150 wards civic body. The AIMIM managed to retain 44 seats as it contested only in 51.

Owaisi should look into his own future as the BJP has performed better than AIMIM in Hyderabad itself. If the trend continues and the TRS abandons Owaisi the AIMIM may be reduced to 1994 Assembly election like situation in which it could win only one seat as the Telugu Desam Party of N.T. Rama Rao swept the polls winning 216 seats.

If Owaisi is encouraged by the result of Bihar election he is somewhat overrating himself as there is a crucial factor which many political pundits had overlooked. That was the presence of a full-fledged politician in the state unit of AIMIM. Akhtar-ul-Iman, the Bihar unit president, had been two-time RJD MLA from Kishanganj district and is the tallest leader of the Surjapuri Muslims. Besides Akhtar, the other four MLAs who won are no novice politicians. One of them, Shahnawaz Alam, is the son of late RJD stalwart and former Union minister, Mohammad Taslimuddin. Shahnawaz himself was a RJD MLA but at the time of distribution of ticket Tejashwi Yadav preferred his elder brother and former MP Sarfaraz Alam. In the contest between the two brothers Shahnawaz won. Owaisi has taken all the credits for AIMIM’s performance when the ground reality was something else. Apart from this the first AIMIM’s victory came in October 2019 by-election four years after it set its foot in Bihar.

In contrast Abbas Siddiqi in Bengal has no political experience. Reports coming from Bengal say that he may float his own party as he nurses political ambition. Owaisi himself is not sure whether Siddiqi will join hands with him or not. Not only that, wooing away Muslims from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is no easy job. The Muslims of West Bengal have learnt a lesson from Bihar experience.

The BJP needs a visible Owaisi to make Muslims invisible

The BJP needs a visible Owaisi to make Muslims invisible

owaisi in parliamentBy Syed Zubair Ahmad

I am writing this piece in response to noted journalist  Shivam Vij’s article recently published in The Print.

Several points raised by Mr Shivam Vij deserved to viewed in true perspective albeit they may appear digestible to some. He could be right in stating that the “BJP aims to invisiblize Muslims”, but his assessment that the saffron party doesn’t want Assaduddin Owaisi simply too hard to digest, given the narrative and counter-narrative is being built and disseminated by the media. Precisely, one fundamental feeds the other.

The politics of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, or MIM, is certainly not the wise response to divisive politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has uncompromisingly been furthering the RSS agenda of marginalizing Muslims “to the point of making them invisible”. No doubt the ‘secular’ parties have hugely disappointed the Muslims, but Owaisi phenomenon is disastrous for secular democratic polity of the country. It has only bolstered the allegations levelled against the Hyderabadi politician that he is “in cahoots with BJP”. In fact, the BJP wants more and more dissemination of Owaisi’s image to strengthen its majoritarian vote banks. Precisely, a visible Owaisi makes it even more easier for the BJP to make Muslims invisible.

The rise of BJP is chiefly contributed to the Ram Mandir movement during which former diplomat Syed Shahabuddin, who became MP from Muslim-concentrated Kishanganj constituency in 1991, had become a rallying point for the saffron party to consolidate  Hindu votes. The formation of Babri Masjid Action Committee at district level across the country  fueled the fire, triggering counter polarization in late 1990s. The BJP flourished from becoming a viable opposition to undefeatable ruling party in 2014. Now it has found a rallying point in Asaduddin Owaisi to hold on  power and grow.

Remember the exaggerated coverage given to Owaisi during the 2014 parliamentary elections by television channels singing paeans to then BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. His younger brother Akbaruddin Owaisi’s provocative remarks  in 2013 when he stated that “if police is removed for 15 minutes, we (Muslims) will finish 100 crore Hindus”. This immensely helped the BJP/RSS workers who showed the clips of the divisive speech all across. The rightwing campaigners even  distributed its CDs in millions. Even today Owaisi gets undue media coverage as if he is the sole representative of the Muslim community. Modi picked opposition leader while he was chief minister in Gujarat; he picked Owaisi at the Centre to hold on to power. He has been a blue eyed boy for TV channels who is heard aggressively speaking for Muslims.

Forget about Muslim issues, Owaisi is needed whenever Modi govt faces trouble. When the entire nation stood in bank queues lamenting Modi for demonetization, Owaisi chose to communalize demonetization by stating that automated teller machines (ATMs) ran short of banknotes in Muslim-concentrated localities. This is how Owaisi turns a common issue into a communal one to the benefit of BJP.

It is wrong to believe that BJP is allergic to bearded mullahs. Rather it wants the image of bearded mullahs with skull caps on TV screens – the phenomenon has been visible ever since Modi came to power in 2014. Notably, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, an RSS affiliate, has mostly bearded mullahs.

Shivam Vij’s  argument that the BJP could have won state elections in Rajasthan, Delhi, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh by given some tickets to Muslims totally goes against the ideology of the saffron party as it runs the risk of losing majoritarian votes. It didn’t give any ticket to a Muslim in Bihar which has 17% Muslim population, but the outcome was in its favour. For the first time there is no Muslim in government in Bihar. There will be some Muslim representatives in Parliament and assemblies, mainly from Assam and Kashmir, but there presence will matter little.

In fact, BJP needs an Owaisi-like opposition to instill fear psychosis among Hindus. That’s  why RSS leaders always say that ‘ there will be no Hindutva  without Muslims’. Simply, they will be left irrelevant without having any polarizing figure.

In February a journalist friend of mine in Mumbai, a non-Muslim, confided to me that Owaisi’s speeches, gesture and posture had the “potential ingredients to polarize the people along communal lines”. She said that she was inadvertently added to a WhatsApp group, which dominantly had members from RSS and other right wing groups, where people mostly discussed Owaisi. She added that once a group member sought to know about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), another one replied that since Owaisi tore up the copy of the Bill, it would definitely be a pro-Hindu.

Owaisi’s credential stands exposed when he and his party members deliberately made divisive speeches with a sole purpose to communalize anti-CAA sit-ins. Notably, the government pitted all its machineries –media included – to defame and communalize the sit-in protests going on all across the country, MIM’s former legislator from Maharashtra Waris Pathan made stated that “15 crore Muslims can dominate over 100 crore Hindus” (15 crore hain lekin 100 crore pe bhari hain) in presence of Owaisi on February 16.

Interestingly, more than 200 sit-ins were held to protest citizenship matrix across the country but not a single in Owaisi’s own turf, Hyderabad.