The “Unity of Muslims” can never defeat the BJP but Owaisi’s sudden landing in Bihar with exclusionary rhetoric will communalise the electioneering rather than keeping the election discourses confined to the concrete economic issues.
Dr Mohammad Sajjad,
A new and somewhat unexpected development is taking place in Bihar as it gears up for the upcoming Assembly elections, expected to be held in October-November 2015. On August 16 the firebrand AIMIM leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi visited Kishanganj, an eastern Bihar district with about 67% of Muslims. One of the Assembly segments in the district, Kochadaman has more than 70% Muslim electorates. This sub-region of India thus perhaps has one of the highest percentage of Muslim electorates, outside Jammu and Kashmir.
This is an era, may be a short-lived one, in which Muslim electorate is almost abandoned as in the face of relatively greater Hindu consolidation no political party is vying as much for the Muslim votes as they earlier. Politicians like Owaisi are trying to fill that vacuum by jumping into such selected constituencies. This is what he did in the last Maharashtra Assembly elections, where his party won two Assembly seats and gave tough fights in few others.
A section of the ‘beleaguered’ Muslim youths appears to have become almost crazy about Owaisi. This is alarming for the liberal, moderate Muslims as also for the corresponding sections of the non-Muslims. This is pushing Bihar politics in the vortex of competitive communalisms, little realising that one communalism cannot be defeated with another communalism; rather, one communalism feeds another.
More recent reason, among many other reasons, of how such a situation emerged in Bihar, can be traced back to some of the developments which took place during the last Lok Sabha elections of April-May 2014. The then RJD MLA from Kochadaman (Kishanganj), Akhtarul Iman, suddenly switched over to the JDU and secured ticket for Kishanganj Loksabha. But soon after the last date of withdrawing the nomination, he withdrew his candidature in favour of the Congress candidate and incumbent Member of Parliament, Maulana Asrarul Haq Qasmi, a Deoband clergy.
Akhtarul Iman’s argument was that he was doing so in order to defeat the BJP. In a constituency with around 70% of Muslims, whipping up a fear psychosis, he argued that division of Muslim votes would benefit the BJP. On the one hand this dangerously spurious move towards “Muslim Unity” was bewildering for the JDU with more and multiple harmful effects for this incumbent ruling Party in the rest of Bihar, and on the other, its natural fall out was that it tremendously contributed to “Hindu solidarity”. Its other fallout was: elsewhere in Bihar, the Muslim candidates of JDU were pressurised to withdraw in favour of the Muslim candidates of the RJD. (See Author’s Rediff column How “Secularists” Defeated Nitish Kumar)
Immediately after the Lok Sabha results in May 2014, a gossip started circulating among Bihar Muslims that a trade-off had taken place between the Congress’ Maulana and Akhatrul Iman. Regardless of its truth, it is still believed by many to be too true, hence considerably discredited among his electorates.
It should also to be kept in mind that this part of Bihar—Seemanchal–is most backward in terms of education, economy and in almost every other index of development.
Today, Akhtarul Iman, having found the doors of the political parties closed for him to pursue his political career, is left with no other choice but to seek an alternative political platform. Owaisi’s MIM seems to have become his obvious choice. Because there are reports that Akhtarul Iman tried the Congress, then the BSP and all disappointed him.
Rise of the MIM and Owaisi’s entry in Bihar:
Formed in 1927 as a storm-trooper of the Muslim ruler, Nizam of the princely sate of Hyderabad, with the subjects being Hindu majority, Asaduddin Owaisi is the third generation leader. However, the MIM got a fresh lease of political life in Hyderabad in the 1980s by taking some significant steps towards educational and economic uplift of the Muslims of the city, and then consolidated its base through the municipal politics of Secundrabad and Hyderabad.
Slightly broad-basing itself by striking alliances with Dalits it grew strength by strength. In the post-Modi politics, where the electoral strength of the religious minorities is said to have been arguably made least relevant in the face of relatively greater Hindu consolidation, the rise of minority communalism, articulated by the likes of Owaisi has started striking little more chords particularly with the impatiently aspirational, agitated youth. This is a phenomenon!
True, the rise of the likes of Owaisi has also to do with cumulative historic failure of the secular political parties in these many decades of democratic journey of India. “He represents collective hypocrisy of our supposed secular parties. Receptiveness of his agenda amongst the Muslims is the sign of their abandonment by these mainstream parties. Why blame him, each one of us is responsible for the current predicament of India’s Muslims”, this is how a political scientist puts it. Just as some of the Hindu youths support Narendra Modi for being an aggressive leader, likewise some of the Muslim youths think Owaisi to be an aggressive leader.
Shifting the Political discourse from economic to emotive & socially divisive issues
However, a section of the Muslim intelligentsia is peeved at the Owaisi’s entry in Bihar. They are scared of the exclusionary rhetorical diatribes of Owaisi playing upon the fear psychosis of the “beleaguered” minority. They think, it will communalise the electioneering in an unprecedented manner and this would engender even higher degree of Hindu consolidation eventually benefiting the BJP. They argue that the rise of the BJP in 2014 is not solely because of majoritarian consolidation against the minority. It is more, they say, because of the failure of the Congress and its allies on many fronts but mainly on the fronts of price-control, unemployment, and scams after scams yet rather than contrition the ruling Congress remained utterly arrogant. Besides, it suffers from serious and miserable lack of able leadership, particularly the one who is supposed to emerge as prime ministerial candidate, Rahul Gandhi.
In this scenario of hopelessness, they do realise that “Unity of Muslims” can never defeat the BJP. It can rather be defeated by the disillusionment of the common electorates on the BJP’s failure in delivering on economic fronts. The disillusionment is setting in fast. But Owaisi’s sudden landing in Bihar on August 16 with exclusionary rhetoric will communalise the electioneering rather than keeping the election discourses confined to the concrete economic issues of price-control, black-money, corruption, employment generation, and investments. On all these fronts, the BJP’s promises remain awfully unkept even after more than 15 months of their office in New Delhi.
This section of the Muslim intelligentsia is also confronted with another problem. Another segment of the Muslim intelligentsia is coming forward with a question that how long can they remain shut up on the issues of: (a) their proportionate representation in the structures and processes of power, (b) on the issues of development, (c) what have the secular political formations done thus far for the Muslims; and with these three broad questions they assert — what is bad in trying the BJP at least once. Some of them are also tempted by a possibility of a Muslim, Shahnawaz Husain becoming the Chief Ministerial contender within the BJP.
The Bihar BJP despite its weakness in declaring a chief ministerial candidate and despite beset with personality clashes is optimistic about its victory also because it has stitched alliances with the Koeri leader Upendra Kushwaha, with the Dalit leader Ramvilas Paswan, and an (un)declared alliance with the Lalu’s rival, Pappu Yadav, a popular strongman of Seemanchal. Yadavas form around 12% of Bihar electorates. All these three leaders have got their own support among a section of the Muslim electorates.
A section of the Yadav youth are more inclined towards Pappu as much for he being “aggressive” as for the “neo rich” upwardly mobile young, impatient Yadavas who are no longer contented with the mere anti upper caste rhetoric of the non-deliverer Lalu who has been mocking at the middle class concerns of governance, development and basic amenities all through the 15 years of his power.
Besides, Lalu’s dynastic perpetuation is a bottleneck in the way of further political empowerment of politically more ambitious “lesser” Yadavas. Thus, Pappu Yadav is seen as cutting into both Muslim and Yadav votes of the Mahagathbandhan (or grand alliance, of the JDU-RJD-Congress-NCP). The emaciated Left Parties are surprisingly out of this demonstrably secular alliance. This looks little ironical for the fact that during the first four decades of independence, the socialists and Leftists were having huge support base in Bihar along with substantive seats in the provincial assembly. They started losing their base once Lalu came to power, despite the fact that most of the time they remained Lalu’s ally.
The popularity of the strongmen among a section of youth is quite a phenomenon in Bihar, as it is elsewhere. This cuts across castes and communities. The history-sheeter strongmen belonging to numerically-politically significant castes and communities have got their own fan following in their respective castes and communities.
In my essay, “Caste, Community, and Crime: explaining the Violence in Muzaffarpur” (Economic & Political Weekly, 31 January 2015), I have written about the fact that most of the Muslim villages in Bihar have their males migrated for earning livelihood elsewhere leaving behind only few male youths in the villages. Quite a lot of them are lumpens and they survive on brokering with local police, with the Panchayat functionaries, and with the Banks. In fact lumpenization of the rural youth accentuated much during the Lalu-Rabri era of lawlessness.
These young men are the contacts or political functionaries cum “booth-managers” of the politicians contesting elections. A large number of these people are on the pay-rolls of the BJP at least since 2013. On each booth of Muslim preponderance they will try to get at least 10% of the votes, if not more, for the BJP. Besides, Muslim attempts of communalising the atmosphere had started in Bihar at least since September-October 2014. It became more strident after the Azizpur (Saraiya, Muzaffarpur) violence of 18 January 2015. In this violence, essentially between Hindu Mallahs and Pasmanda Muslims, even after adequate steps from the state to control the violence, to initiate judicial process towards penalising the rioters with commendable support from the local Hindus, and economic compensation to the losses of the victims, etc., the visits of certain of kind of Muslim leaders continued to the village unabated and their speeches and conducts kept vitiating the atmosphere.
Interestingly, some of the Muslims (social activists and political workers) associated with pursuing this case in the court of law are also those who are sympathetic to Owaisi, as also proponents of the idea as to what is wrong if the BJP is given a chance in Bihar. Ever since the Azizpur violence, the then Chief Minister Jitan Manjhi and his associates like Shahid Ali Khan (MLA from Pupri, Sitamarhi; former Minister, Minority Development) have been active in mobilizing Muslims around Jitan Manjhi and away from Nitish Kumar. Some sources have revealed a fact that an aide of Manjhi, and former administrator, Bihar State Sunni Waqf Board, Syed Sharim Ali, has been in constant touch with Owaisi ever since Manjhi stepped down as chief minister. Ali will contest election against RJD’s strongman Surendra Yadav in an assembly segment of the Gaya district. Ali’s big claim to fame was that immediately after assuming the office of the Waqf Administrator he launched a crackdown against a prominent Muslim doctor of Patna for allegation of having sold off Waqf lands.
Sharim Ali’s and Akhtarul Iman’s “advisors”, based in Patna, who are also social-political activists, are in constant touch with the small-time Muslim political workers in Paroo-Saraiya in Muzaffarpur (where the violence took place in January 2015), as also elsewhere in Bihar.
Thus, the preparations to call Owaisi in Bihar have been underway at least since January 2015. This is advantage BJP in two ways: one, if MIM jumps into the electoral fray, it will cut into Muslim votes, and another, Owaisi phenomenon will consolidate more Hindus around the BJP, and this consolidation begins just with his visit, regardless of the fact whether MIM eventually contests the elections or not. Owing to these developments, it is quite a popular belief that the BJP-Jitan Manjhi-Owaisi axis of electoral politics is at work in Bihar towards defeating the Mahagathbandhan. In the midst of all these the silence of the BJP on Owaisi’s Biahr visit is also understood to be loaded with multiple meanings.
Whither the Mahagathbandhan ?
The moment Nitish broke his alliance with the BJP in June 2013, it became pretty clear that in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections if Nitish would fail to secure votes of the Ati Pichhrha, Mahadalit, and Muslims then he will become too weak, and it was already circulating among the Patna politicos that his government will fall down after the Lok Sabha election results. The prediction turned out to be almost as true but for a mechanism of letting Manjhi, a Mahadalit, succeed him.
Lalu’s RJD has got his own compulsions and an alliance, once again in the name of ‘Secularism’ (which has invariably been put to cynical use, hence this noble concept seems to have lost its currency quite substantially) took place. The non performance of Lalu-Rabri era has lost quite a lot of base even among its core base of Yadavas. The younger Yadavas have got aspirations of a middle class like the roads, electricity, education, health care, employment. They know, Rabri has been utter failure on all these. Simultaneously, they also don’t like Nitish as their chief minister.
The alliance between Nitish and Lalu is rather shaky and lacks adequate quantum of mutual trust. On the other hand, the Congress has hardly got its base. It has got 40 seats to contest, one in each parliamentary constituency. The chief of the Bihar Congress, Ashok Chaudhry, is not trusted to be distributing tickets with care of honest study of win-ability of the candidates. For instance about two seats in the Muzaffarpur district a gossip is in wide circulation that scamsters serving as Chaudhry’s money-bag would be fielded from there, and that he will be disregarding the promising candidates. It remains to be seen whether CP Joshi, looking after the Bihar Congress, will be really able to plug such loopholes.
Nitish is seen as performer on all these counts including governance, something which the Bihar BJP is not able to show such a face. The Mahagathbandhan is therefore banking upon the “performance charisma” of Nitish. They also thought that expose of scams of the BJP governments like those of Vyapam, Lalitgate, and its failures in: controlling prices, generating employment, bringing capital investments, bringing back black money stashed away in the Swiss Bank, besides inconsequential Jan Dhan Yojana, etc., have dissipated the NaMo charisma which they think would be of help to the Mahagathbandhan. Additionally– fierce personality clashes among the bigwigs of the Bihar BJP and their contests for chief ministership, as also a big disenchantment of the BJP workers against Sushil Modi– all these factors are supposed to be spoiling the BJP prospects. However, a close look at the developments of last one year reveals that the moment economic issues become greater concerns of the people, socially divisive issues come up to polarise and the concrete economic concerns get lost into these. The Owaisi’s visit in Bihar is going to do precisely that. This will have its impact on the political discourse and electoral outcome in Bihar.
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(The author Dr Mohammad Sajjad teaches modern and contemporary history at the Aligarh Muslim University and has published two books on Bihar’s political history: Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours (Routledge, 2014) and Contesting Colonialism & Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur since 1857 (Primus, 2014))