Where the Muslims count

First Published : 13 May 2009 01:57:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 13 May 2009 02:18:30 AM IST

Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the minority Muslim community plays a decisive role in successive electoral outcomes, are witnessing an interesting social churning. There is a scramble for the Muslim vote by all key actors in the two states — Mayawati and Mulayam Singh in UP; Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad in Bihar. The Mandal movement had resulted in the emergence of a formidable combination of Muslims and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) under the leadership of Mulayam in UP and Lalu in Bihar. But times have changed.

In UP, as the 2007 Assembly elections showed, a minimal shift in the minority community resulted in Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) capturing power on its own. In Bihar, it was the consolidation of most backward castes and non-Yadav OBCs that resulted in Nitish’s Janata Dal(U) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) thwarting the three-term rule of Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). In this Lok Sabha election, while Mulayam is working overtime to win over the minority to counter Mayawati’s social engineering effort of 2007 to bring together the Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins, Nitish is fast emerging as a champion of the backward Muslims in Bihar, posing a serious threat to Lalu’s formidable Muslim-Yadav combination.

Coming to UP, Mayawati’s think-tank may attribute her victory in the 2007 Assembly polls to social engineering, but the reality is different. People cutting across caste, community and religious affiliations voted decisively in favour of Mayawati to end the perceived misrule and lawlessness of the Mulayam tenure in office. Neither the Congress nor the BJP was seen as a party that could bring in a strong government in the state. A look at the composition of Mayawati’s MLAs proves the point. Her MLAs come from all communities — the majority from non-Yadav OBCs (of 51, she has only four Yadavs). In Mulayam’s 27 OBC MLAs, there were 17 Yadavs. But when it comes to Muslim votes, despite the surge against Mulayam, 21 of his Muslim candidates could win, as against 24 candidates of Mayawati.

It is natural for Mulayam to try hard to win over the minority community as well as other non-Yadav communities to make a major dent. Contrary to popular perception that the minority votes en-bloc, the community vote in UP does get split. There is no doubt that the community perceives the BJP as its enemy, but a sizeable section of Muslims, particularly Dalits, have been supporting the BSP which had hobnobbed with the BJP for power on several occasions.

Mulayam, who used to be dubbed as ‘Maulana Mulayam’ for his strong posture on the Babri Masjid-Ram Temple dispute has been facing a serious threat to his base.

Political expediency made Mulayam welcome former CM Kalyan Singh, the leader who had undergone imprisonment after owning responsibility for the demolition of Babri Masjid, twice to his fold. Mulayam wants the support of Kalyan’s backward Lodh community that has a decisive say over 10 Lok Sabha seats. No matter what Mulayam’s critics within the party like Azam Khan say, the fact is that Khan and Kalyan’s son were part of Mulayam’s Cabinet until 2007. Kalyan, who has left the BJP for the second time, now says that he has ‘dug the grave’ for the BJP and now it’s for people (read the minority community) to bury the party there.

Coming to the Muslims of UP, a distinction is sought to be made between mainstream Barelvi Sunnis who constituted nearly 70 per cent of population and Wahabis who are in a minority. Aware that vocal Wahhabis are beneficiaries of political patronage, be it of the BSP or SP, both sides have now started wooing non-Wahhabi Sunnis.

In Mayawati’s scheme of things, Wahhabis enjoy a prominent role. Mulayam, on the other hand, has given more Lok Sabha tickets to non-Wahhabis and has been making promises to safeguard their interests.

The tussle among Wahhabis saw a section of the leadership asserting itself in the Azamgarh region where the Ulema Council, had fielded its own candidates to cash in on the anger of the community against victimisation of innocent youths, post-26/11.

The Muslims of UP are going through a kind of OBC movement, the most backward castes resenting the dominance of the politically and economically advanced backward castes.

The Congress, which has, over a period, lost the minority vote to SP, the Dalit vote to the BSP and the Brahmin vote to the BJP, has been trying to win over the minority community. The community is favourably disposed towards the Congress but the problem with the party is that it does not have a coherent political structure beyond pockets of influence like Amethi and Rae Bareli.

In Bihar, two obvious factors helped the JD(U)-BJP alliance come to power. The JD(U) had managed to create a base of non- Yadav OBCs over the years and provided a credible option to the Lalu-Rabri’s misrule.

Lalu, like Mulayam, had emerged as the darling of the minority community for halting L K Advani’s Ayodhya rath in Bihar and taking him into custody.

After Nitish came to power, he has made major overtures towards the minority, particularly among the pasamda (backward) Muslims. A series of steps like providing pension to victims of the Bhagalpur riots (which had marked the decline of the Congress), loan waivers, helping handloom workers (mainly Muslims), sanctioning funds for fencing of graveyards (a source of conflict among locals), giving scholarships to minority students, free bicycles for girls studying in the equivalent of 10th standard in madrassas and various other measures that benefit lower sections of Muslims have put him in good stead among the community.

Nitish’s popularity among the minority community could be gauged from the fact of the RJD’s minority cell leader and Paswan’s former state unit president joining Nitish’s party. The JD(U)’s Rajya Sabha member Ejaj Ali, a backward Muslim leader, has become his party’s mascot.

Now that Lalu and Mulayam are jointly campaigning, Nitish is aware of the fact that there could be a consolidation of the Muslim vote in their favour. During the campaign, an assertive Nitish has kept at bay its ally BJP, which could prove heavy baggage when it comes to minority votes.

Unlike the Shiv Sena and the BJP, he has condemned Varun Gandhi’s hate speeches.

Had it been any other state, the BJP, which is now taking a piggy ride on Nitish’s popularity, would have drubbed him for ‘minority appeasement’.

Being the target of vote bank politics is not new for the Muslim community in UP and Bihar. This time, the difference may be in the multiplicity of parties vying for their support. As to the question of how much difference this will actually make to the situation of the community itself, post elections — well, that’s another story.

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http://indiantripper.blogspot.com/2009/05/atankgarh-also-known-as-azamgarh.html

wednesday, may 13, 2009

Atankgarh, also known as Azamgarh

Nameless politicians & the siege within

Kajari Bhattacharya

AZAMGARH, March 24, 2009: Locals in Uttar Pradesh know Azamgarh as Atankgarh (place of terror). For this is the district that has had its name dragged into almost each and every arrest made of a terror suspect by anti-terrorism agencies in UP and other states. With their names tarnished, youths from Azamgarh are hostile towards strangers and refuse to reveal their names or have their pictures taken. “The ATS might pick us up next”, is the fear they voice. Now, a "Muslim political party, “born out of injustice”, has decided to take on other parties that have “used Muslims as a convenient vote bank”. The Ulema Council, a party consisting of maulanas of Azamgarh madrasas, doctors and others from this eastern UP district, is a newly formed party that has fielded candidates for five Lok Sabha seats ~ Azamgarh, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Machlishahr and Lucknow.

On the Gorakhpur-Lucknow road, the office has a telephone, packets of biscuits for any journalists who might drop by, and notices stuck to the walls with mobile numbers of the office bearers. The one thing missing is names. “We don’t want to reveal our names. And no pictures please,” said another young man, who suggested that his fictitious name could be "Salim" or "Rehman".

“Had it not been for the Batla House encounter and the way the Anti-Terrorism Squad hounded youths here, there would never have been the necessity of forming the Ulema Council,” said a young man in the Ulema Council’s brand new office in Sanjarpur. The president of the Ulema Council, Maulana Amir Rashadi, rector of the Jamaetur Rashad madrasa in Azamgarh town, attends to guests every morning at his office. “We want the harassment of the ATS to stop. They have to stop kidnapping innocent youths from our community,” said the Maulana, when asked what the agenda of the party is.

The Maulana’s disenchantment with the one party they have supported since Independence is evident when he says: “We have fielded candidates from both Rae Bareli and Amethi, as a mark of our hatred towards Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi. It’s a symbolic fight against these two Congress leaders, who have refused to open an inquiry into the Batla House encounter despite our entreaties.” But even families like that of Arif, a 22-year-old youth from Sanjarpur, who was picked up from Lucknow by the UP ATS for his alleged involvement in anti-national activities, display apathy towards political outfits; even the Ulema Council. "Politics has become a business. We can only gauge if political parties are sincere after the polls; we will see if they keep their promises,” said Mohammad Nasim, Arif’s father.

He added: “We are not with any party. We simply want justice to be served. We will support any party that gets us justice.” According to the family that consists of Arif’s mother, Farzana Begum and his brother Amir Hamza (24), their son is an “innocent” boy in his early twenties who was picked up by the UP ATS while he was in Lucknow studying to take the CPMT. Mohammad Nasim says he has spent the best years of his life in the Gulf, working hard to make his family step out of the shackles of poverty. His eyes glistening with unshed tears, he told The Statesman: “I worked so hard for my family. I never once said no when my sons asked for a mobile phone or some other extravagance. There was no reason for a son of mine to take the wrong path for the sake of a few extra bucks.”

As Uttar Pradesh goes into election mode, only time will tell whether the “harassed” youths of Azamgarh find their way into the mainstream or not. With or without disclosing their names.

Muslim India

Thursday, May 14, 2009