[The AIMIM helps the BJP in *two*, not one, ways. I. It, of course, splits up the anti-BJP votes. That helps in the FPTP system.
II. It, also, *helps boost BJP's Hindu votes*. Despite repeating it ad infinitum, it doesn't appear to register. In fact, *the second way - even if less obvious, could be more pernicious*. *It just not communalises the Muslims, but, Hindus as well*. Why and how? Here's the no. 2 of the AIMIM, operating on its home turf: < https://youtu.be/krdym7gFVvA>. Of course, all the while it won't be all that strident. May not be even half as much. But, the very essence of its politics is very graphically captured here. That's the long and short of it. The "radical secularists" better take note of who are the authors of the three comments following. <<An interesting cartoon viral on social media has All India Ittihadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi in his trademark topi but uncharacteristically also wearing khaki shorts of the RSS. Two men carry him by holding hands. The faces of men are not shown but, from their dresses, they appear to be BJP’s top two leaders. Most of the comments the cartoon has received since it went viral suggest Owaisi is now headed to West Bengal which will go to the polls next year. ... I don’t buy the accusations that Owaisi has a tacit understanding with the BJP since I don’t have a credible proof. I am not privy to his “dealings” with the saffron side that he is often accused of. His detractors talk about the “soft” corner some senior BJP leaders have in their hearts for Owaisi. To back their arguments, these detractors argue that several Muslim critics of the BJP government have faced the strong arm of the law—raids by ED, CBI and arrests—on allegedly fake charges but Owaisi manages to remain out of those “dragnets”. “Why is it so?,” I once asked Owaisi at a press conference. “You are my friend, do you want me to go to jail?,” he replied. All my fellow journalists there had good laugh at his reply. He has never explained why senior leaders in the BJP mostly ignore his trenchant comments but come down heavily on others if they make similar comments. Retuning to Bihar, what will his five MLAs manage to get for the poor region of Seemanchal that other Muslim leaders from the area never managed to do in the last many decades? One could understand they could have made much difference were they part of the government. Since it is unlikely he will ever support the BJP—his whole politics will collapse he if does so—his five MLAs will sit out in the opposition. After five years, they will go to the masses again, saying they couldn’t do much as they were not part of the government. ... Now that Owaisi gears up to enter West Bengal, the BJP will be more than happy to spread out a red carpet, if surreptitiously so, for him there. After all Bihar is known as dar-e-Bengal (Gateway to Bengal). And BJP will do everything to get it in its kitty. Will Owaisi prove an enabler to the BJP there too?>> (Excerpted from the Sl. No. I. below.) <<The spectacular feat of Asaduddin Owaisi and his All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the Bihar election has recently created a ripple effect in Indian politics. Owaisi is all set to emerge as a pan-Indian face of Muslim politics. Owaisi desperately opposes the majoritarian communalism on behalf of the minorities in the present-day India. But his party, which was initially called the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, was an exponent of the same predatory communalism in the Nizam’s Hyderabad that was a paradise of feudalism and patrimonialism. The present party has never denounced its pre-annexation avatar. The official website of the AIMIM calls Bahadur Yar Jang, the leader who spearheaded the MIM in the Nizam era, as the party’s tallest leader. ... These historical examples show that the MIM practiced predatory communalism under the Nizam’s regime, the same menace that Asaduddin Owaisi and his party claim to be desperately trying to quell in today’s India. If he is sincere, he has to disown his party’s past. Else, history would haunt his party and cripple its quest for a secular and inclusive India and pan-Indian expansion.>> (Excerpted from the Sl. No. II. below.) <<The sphere of politics shares an intimate connection with culture. And it is precisely the cultural hegemony of the RSS, achieved through consistent mass work and integration of subjugated castes through creative revisionism of the Hindutva discourse, which anchors the flourishing of the BJP. Furthermore, the charisma and strategic depth of the Modi-Shah duo in combination with an impressive corporate-backed propaganda-electoral machinery, has produced a ‘Hindu ecosystem’ that has shifted the grounds of political engagement. The Hindu Right has triggered a legitimacy crisis for non-BJP political parties by critiquing their apparent translation of secularism as pandering to the Muslims, social justice as merely electoral calculus and domination of numerically significant castes, political opportunism and corruption, and so on. The putative secular and social justice forces simply seem to be at a loss in offering a convincing counter-narrative to the dominant Hindutva critique. ... Among other local factors, the gains of the Asaduddin Owaisi led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Bihar is also a testimony to this alienation. Owaisi clearly senses a political opportunity in this moment and is going all out to incarnate himself as the pan-Indian voice of Muslims. However, as the Pasmanda critique underscores, the intended expansion of AIMIM footprints in other regions also entails democratic perils which social justice forces need to be wary of. ... The Pasmanda activists have consistently emphasized the high-caste, symbiotic and co-constitutive nature of Hindu and Muslim communalisms and the need to contest them simultaneously. The communal discourse benefits the pan-religion caste elite at the expense of the social justice concerns of the subjugated castes who are often the foot soldiers and victims in the violence. The AIMIM, with its historical proximity to Jinnah’s Muslim League and association with the violence orchestrated by its Muslim militia called the razakars against the Hindus and communists, definitely has a tinged communal past. Even at present the relative sophistication of Asaduddin Owaisi and the provocative performances of his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi is often seen as a mutually agreed upon political division of labour. In 2007 the roughing up of the Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen by AIMIM activists in Hyderabad exposed the unruly side of the party. The ‘Hindu’ ecosystem clearly needs the ‘Muslim’ as its constitutive other; both the contending communalisms reinforce each other. Ali Anwar, ex-MP and President All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, often makes disguised references to the Owaisis when he exhorts the Pasmanda Muslims to be cautious from Muslim communalists: “Someone plans from the old Hyderabad city [...] someone utters an irresponsible statement from Dilli 6 [...] someone uses the sermons from the religious pulpit (mimbar) irresponsibly. All this is counterproductive. There is a reaction”. Amit Shah’s comment before the Bihar assembly elections of 2015 that “Asaduddin Owaisi is a bigger opponent than RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav” is therefore very telling indeed. The BJP MP Tejaswi Surya’s recent comment in the context of the Hyderabad civic polls that “A vote for Owaisi […] is a vote against India and everything that India stands for” clearly indicates Owaisi’s utility for BJP’s politics. It almost seems that if there was no Asaduddin Owaisi the BJP simply had to invent one.>>] I/III. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/beyond-the-burqa/the-meaning-of-owaisis-victory-in-bihar/ The meaning of Owaisi’s victory in Bihar November 13, 2020, 8:30 AM IST Mohammed Wajihuddin in Beyond the Burqa | India, politics | TOI An interesting cartoon viral on social media has All India Ittihadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi in his trademark topi but uncharacteristically also wearing khaki shorts of the RSS. Two men carry him by holding hands. The faces of men are not shown but, from their dresses, they appear to be BJP’s top two leaders. Most of the comments the cartoon has received since it went viral suggest Owaisi is now headed to West Bengal which will go to the polls next year. That explains a lot about what Owaisi and his party MIM did to the secular votes in the Bihar elections and what he can do to secular parties in the West Bengal elections due next year. Out of 20 seats where Owaisi fielded his candidates in Bihar, his party won five, the Mahagathbandhan (RJD-Congress-Left) candidates won 9 while NDA got six. So, if MIM was not there, Mahagathbandhan would have got 11 seats in the Seemanchal region, enough to ensure Mahagathbandhan’s edge over NDA. Tejashwai Yadav who electrified a drab, doddering campaign turned once foregone conclusion about the victors into a cliffhanger counting of votes could have become Bihar’s next CM. The 31-year-old Tejashwi, largely out his father Lalu Prasad Yadav’s shadows, would have got a chance to realize the promises he made to the crowds during election campaigns. The lakhs of unemployed youths who flocked to his election rallies are shocked as the slender margin of majority brings largely discredited Nitish Kumar back into Bihar’s saddle. Though it will be unfair to put all the blames for defeat of the Mahagathbandhan on Owaisi, his entry in Bihar and aggressive campaigns targeted mostly at the Congress undoubtedly helped the NDA win an election it had almost lost. Owaisi has explained he has rights to fight elections from wherever he chooses to. Of course, he has a right to do so. So, why he has not chosen to fight in Gujarat which went for by elections on eight seats recently? And why only on seats with overwhelming Muslim votes in UP, Maharashtra and now Bihar, the three states he has participated in assembly elections outside Andhra Pradesh/Telengana, so far? This shows his desperation to eat into the votes of secular parties, whatever little secularism may be left with them. By doing so, Owaisi ends up helping the saffron side. When the electoral, political history of post-2000 India is written, Owaisi will go down as the self-appointed champion of the Muslim cause who harmed the people he claimed to empower politically. He says he wants to empower the Muslims who have been used as hostages or bandhuwa mazdoor (bonded labourers) by some parties over the decades. Owaisi will never accept it, but those who support him and his explanation are either oblivious to or willfully ignoring the damage Owaisi is doing to India’s social fabric. Now don’t tell me what is Yogi Adityanath is doing. But Yogi’s agenda is no secret. We know what he is in politics for. Playing on the fears of the minorities and the injustices Owaisi only fuels the victimhood mentality of the Muslim youths. His protests are grievance-centric not solution seeking. Since he is a pariah for almost all the mainstream political parties—don’t count Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party which prevarication on secular values is as clear as the morning sun—he digs the lonely furrows. His Ekla Chalo initiative further alienates the community which needs to build bridges with other communities for economic prosperity. His voices, including tweets, speeches inside the Parliament and outside it, warm up the hearts of a section of Muslims who feel cheated by politicians of all hues. He compulsive replies to provocative posts, utterances of the Hindutva hotheads. Little does he know or care to realize how much damage his “reactions” do to Muslims. Though he doesn’t represent all Muslims in the country, the media, especially the sold out or godi media, present his reactions as if they have been issued on behalf of the entire Muslim community. Muslims don’t live in the ghettos of old Hyderabad alone. They are scattered and at many places are in miniscule minority surrounded by hostile non-Muslim neighbours. His comments aggravate the hostility against Muslims, making the community further insecure. It is this sense of insecurity that Owaisi feeds on. I don’t buy the accusations that Owaisi has a tacit understanding with the BJP since I don’t have a credible proof. I am not privy to his “dealings” with the saffron side that he is often accused of. His detractors talk about the “soft” corner some senior BJP leaders have in their hearts for Owaisi. To back their arguments, these detractors argue that several Muslim critics of the BJP government have faced the strong arm of the law—raids by ED, CBI and arrests—on allegedly fake charges but Owaisi manages to remain out of those “dragnets”. “Why is it so?,” I once asked Owaisi at a press conference. “You are my friend, do you want me to go to jail?,” he replied. All my fellow journalists there had good laugh at his reply. He has never explained why senior leaders in the BJP mostly ignore his trenchant comments but come down heavily on others if they make similar comments. Retuning to Bihar, what will his five MLAs manage to get for the poor region of Seemanchal that other Muslim leaders from the area never managed to do in the last many decades? One could understand they could have made much difference were they part of the government. Since it is unlikely he will ever support the BJP—his whole politics will collapse he if does so—his five MLAs will sit out in the opposition. After five years, they will go to the masses again, saying they couldn’t do much as they were not part of the government. Political activist and a former student of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Tanweer Alam foresees another danger after Owaisi’s entry in Bihar’s politics. “Now all parties will dump Muslim seekers of tickets to Seemanchal because Owaisi has shown them the way. Since tickets are distributed on “winability” of the candidates, they will be sent there to try luck, depriving them the chance to fight from elsewhere,” said Alam. “Now Seemanchal has become the political ghetto of Muslims.” This writer has observed the “rise” of MIM in Maharashtra for over a decade. In 2014 Owaisi decided to spread his “footprint” outside Hyderabad. He fielded nearly two dozen candidates in the Maharashtra assembly poll, winning two seats (Byculla and Aurangabad) but eating into a good number of votes on several seats of Congress-NCP candidates. In 2019, for the first time in MIM’s history, it won an MP seat outside the old Hyderabad when Imtiaz Jalil wrested the Aurangabad seat from Sena. Political observers and poll watchers credited a BJP rebel candidate, for “facilitating” ”Jalil’s victory as he took away a huge chunk of saffron votes. In the Maharashtra assembly elections of 2019, MIM won two seats again (Malegaon and Nandurbar) and lost both the seats (Byculla and Aurangabad) it had won in 2014. Meanwhile, it also damaged secular candidates on almost a dozen seats. Let me cite such one example. Arif Naseem Khan, the four-time Congress MLA from Chandivali, a Mumbai suburb, lost by around 400 votes. MIM candidate on this seat got more than double the number that Khan needed to win. Now that Owaisi gears up to enter West Bengal, the BJP will be more than happy to spread out a red carpet, if surreptitiously so, for him there. After all Bihar is known as dar-e-Bengal (Gateway to Bengal). And BJP will do everything to get it in its kitty. Will Owaisi prove an enabler to the BJP there too? II/III. https://thewire.in/politics/asadudding-owaisi-nizam-history-mim-disown The Albatross Around Asaduddin Owaisi’s Neck and Why He Should Disown It The early MIM was a great defender of the Nizam’s communalism and feudalism. The Albatross Around Asaduddin Owaisi’s Neck and Why He Should Disown It AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. Photo: asadowaisi/Twitter Faisal C.K. 17/NOV/2020 The spectacular feat of Asaduddin Owaisi and his All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the Bihar election has recently created a ripple effect in Indian politics. Owaisi is all set to emerge as a pan-Indian face of Muslim politics. Owaisi desperately opposes the majoritarian communalism on behalf of the minorities in the present-day India. But his party, which was initially called the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, was an exponent of the same predatory communalism in the Nizam’s Hyderabad that was a paradise of feudalism and patrimonialism. The present party has never denounced its pre-annexation avatar. The official website of the AIMIM calls Bahadur Yar Jang, the leader who spearheaded the MIM in the Nizam era, as the party’s tallest leader. Nawab Bahadur Yar Jang, a powerful religious preacher, played a pivotal role in the formation of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. In 1938, he was elected the president of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a position in which he served till his death in 1944. He openly declared, “Asaf Jahi flag is not a personal flag of [the] Asaf Jahi dynasty; but an Islamic flag and a symbol of a great Islamic state. If it was considered as a personal flag, a Muslim would not lay down his life for it.” Margrit Pernau says in her The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad 1911-1948 (2000) that “at the turn of the year 1940-41, Bahadur Yar Jang began to have a short statement of faith (Kalima) recited at all the meetings of the Ittehad”. It went: “We are the king of the Dekkan. H.E.H’s throne and crown are the symbols of our political and cultural domination. H.E.H. is the soul of our kingship, and we are the body of his kingship. If he were no more, we would cease to exist, and if we were no more, he would cease to be.” Thus, Bahadur Yar Jang identified the Nizam’s autocracy with Muslim supremacism in Hyderabad. Formed in 1926, the MIM had a four-fold objective: maintain Hyderabad as an independent Islamic monarchy under the Asaf Jahi dynasty, perpetuate Muslim dominance in the bureaucracy, keep Urdu as the official language and prevent the formation of a popular, responsible government. In the Nizam’s dominion, 50% of the population spoke Telugu, 25% Marathi, 11% Kannada and merely 1.2% spoke Urdu. Muslims constituted less than 15% of the population but held 75% of positions in the bureaucracy. Bahadur Yar Jung founded the Majlis Tabligh-e-Islam in 1927 to increase the Muslim population in Hyderabad through religious conversion. Razakar units being trained. Photo: Unknown author, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons The MIM opposed secular and progressive movements like the Andhra Mahasabha and the Nizam’s Subjects League and the Hyderabad State Congress. The Andhra Mahasabha spearheaded people’s movements among the Telugu-speaking populace of the state. The Nizam’s Subjects League was formed in 1933 due to the continued domination of “non-Mulkis” in the government (Mulki is a term used to refer to local-born Hindus or Muslims). The league came to be known as the Mulki League and was among the first to promote the idea of a responsible government in Hyderabad. The appointment of Moin Nawaz Jang, the conscience-keeper of the MIM, as the secretary to the Nizam’s Executive Council in 1937 demonstrated the grip of the MIM over the Nizam’s government. Also Read: Bihar: What Worked in AIMIM’s Favour in Five Assembly Seats of Seemanchal? Clearly stood for Muslim supremacy The MIM amended its constitution in 1938. As K.M. Munshi notes in his book End of An Era: Hyderabad Memoirs, the amended constitution said, “The position of the Muslims of the Asafia state is that the person and the throne of the king of the country are emanations of the political sovereignty and social supremacy of the community [Muslims] and shall be maintained for ever.” Thus the MIM clearly stood for Muslim supremacy and communal hegemony. The Constitutional Reforms Commission headed by Arvamudu Aiyengar recommended the formation of an elected legislature in Hyderabad in 1938. The Commission recommended equal representation to the Muslims and Hindus in the legislature. The MIM opposed the proposal and demanded that Hyderabad should be declared as an Islamic state. Supporting Bahadur Yar Jang, Mohammad Ali Jinnah proposed that the Hindu community in Hyderabad that constituted 86% of the population should be notified as ‘statutory minority’! The MIM had strong ties with the All India Muslim League. When the All India States Muslim League was formed in 1939, Bahadur Yar Jung was made its president. The ‘Vande Mataram’ movement was the most significant movement in the history of Hyderabad’s freedom struggle. The Nizam’s government forbade the singing of ‘Vande Matram’ all over the state, including in educational institutions and hostels. It became a symbol of nationalist agitation. The MIM supported the Nizam’s adamant action against this movement. Mir Laiq Ali, the last prime minister of the Hyderabad state, was a strong supporter of the MIM and its financial source. When the Nizam was urged to integrate with the Indian Union after the independence, as the Ali boasted that if “the Indian government takes any action against Hyderabad, 100,000 men are ready to fight. We also have a hundred bombers in Saudi Arabia ready to bomb Bombay!” Syed Qasim Razvi. Photo: Unknow author, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Meanwhile, the militant Razakars led by Syed Qasim Razvi, who became the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s president in December 1946, stepped up their campaign of terrorising Hindus and whipping up religious sentiments among the Muslims. The MIM supported all these nefarious activities. Razvi remained the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s president until Hyderabad’s annexation in 1948. The Razakars, raised by Razvi, were Muslim separatists who advocated the continuation of Nizam’s rule and tried to convince the Nizam to accede to Pakistan. After accession to Pakistan proved impossible owing to the distance of Hyderabad from Pakistan, Razvi encouraged the Nizam to take a hardline stance and ordered the Razakars to resist the accession of Hyderabad to the newly formed Government of India. He is quoted to have said, “Death with the sword in hand, is always preferable to extinction by a mere stroke of the pen.” After Operation Polo, the MIM was banned in 1948. Qasim Razvi was jailed from 1948 to 1957, and was released on the condition that he would go to Pakistan where he was granted asylum. Before leaving, Razvi handed over the responsibility of the Ittehadul Muslimeen, to Abdul Wahid Owaisi, Asaduddin’s grandfather. Abdul Wahid Owaisi organised it into the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. These historical examples show that the MIM practiced predatory communalism under the Nizam’s regime, the same menace that Asaduddin Owaisi and his party claim to be desperately trying to quell in today’s India. If he is sincere, he has to disown his party’s past. Else, history would haunt his party and cripple its quest for a secular and inclusive India and pan-Indian expansion. Faisal C.K. is an independent researcher. III. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/opinion-if-muslims-join-owaisi-the-bjp-wins/365216 Owaisi Represents Only The Elitist Muslims, And Not The Entire Community If Muslim frustrations lead them to join the AIMIM bandwagon then it will be advantage BJP out and out. Khalid Anis Ansari Owaisi Represents Only The Elitist Muslims, And Not The Entire Community The sphere of politics shares an intimate connection with culture. And it is precisely the cultural hegemony of the RSS, achieved through consistent mass work and integration of subjugated castes through creative revisionism of the Hindutva discourse, which anchors the flourishing of the BJP. Furthermore, the charisma and strategic depth of the Modi-Shah duo in combination with an impressive corporate-backed propaganda-electoral machinery, has produced a ‘Hindu ecosystem’ that has shifted the grounds of political engagement. The Hindu Right has triggered a legitimacy crisis for non-BJP political parties by critiquing their apparent translation of secularism as pandering to the Muslims, social justice as merely electoral calculus and domination of numerically significant castes, political opportunism and corruption, and so on. The putative secular and social justice forces simply seem to be at a loss in offering a convincing counter-narrative to the dominant Hindutva critique. The recent result of the Bihar assembly election once again demonstrates the ability of the BJP to accomplish a political majority sans Muslims. The widespread negative valuation attributed to ‘Muslimness’—a code for fundamentalism, terrorism, backwardness, love-jihad, conversions, cow slaughtering, patriarchy, hyper-fertility, etc. in the Hindutva imagination—has put the secular forces in a quandary. If they invoke Muslim symbolisms they are accused of Muslim appeasement and confront the possibility of offending Hindu sensibilities, and if they don’t the Muslims get disenchanted with their invisibilization and taken-for-granted status. The silence or endorsement of secular parties on critical issues like cow vigilantism, CAA-NRC, Article 370, UAPA amendments, allegedly politically motivated detentions and so on, has frustrated significant sections of Muslims. Among other local factors, the gains of the Asaduddin Owaisi led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Bihar is also a testimony to this alienation. Owaisi clearly senses a political opportunity in this moment and is going all out to incarnate himself as the pan-Indian voice of Muslims. However, as the Pasmanda critique underscores, the intended expansion of AIMIM footprints in other regions also entails democratic perils which social justice forces need to be wary of. Though seldom discussed in popular spaces, the Indian Muslim society is hierarchical and internally divided into about 700 ranked caste (biradari) groups. The Syeds among Muslims are the most revered caste and hold a status akin to that of Brahmins in the Hindu community. The activists of the Pasmanda Movement, a movement of the backward/dalit/adivasi Muslims that challenge high caste Ashraf hegemony over Muslim politics and institutions, have consistently criticized Owaisi for practicing typical ashrafia brand of politics. In other words, AIMIM is critiqued for combining a combative stance towards the external Hindu other with the simultaneous repression of the concerns of internal Muslim caste other. While AIMIM has often raised the issue of declining political representation of Muslims, it has failed to stress its caste composition. In the absence of specific data on caste-wise breakup of Muslim population, it is only possible to reveal the caste content of Muslim political representation in an indicative sense. Various figures like P. S. Krishnan, Syed Shahabuddin and Pasmanda ideologues like Ali Anwar broadly agree on the population ratio of 15 (Ashraf): 85 (Pasmanda). The Muslim representation from the first (1952) to fourteenth (2004) Lok Sabha was 5.3 per cent which is clearly very low vis-à-vis their population proportion of 10-14 per cent during this period. However, if we apply the 15:85 population ratio to an analysis by the late parliamentarian Ashfaq Hussain Ansari, then it is revealed that Ashrafs with a 2.1 per cent share in the national population had a representation of 4.5 per cent from the first to the fourteenth Lok Sabha. On the other hand, the Pasmanda Muslims with a population share of 11.4 per cent merely had a 0.8 per cent representation. The data suggests that the Ashrafs sections were doubly represented. The broad trend of Pasmanda political exclusion continued in the 17th Lok Sabha—out of 25 Muslim MPs, 18 were Ashrafs while 7 were Pasmanda. Again the Ashraf Muslims were adequately represented with just over 3 per cent representation while the representation of the Pasmanda Muslims was around 1 per cent. The recent Bihar assembly elections has returned 19 Muslim MLAs: 16 Ashraf and 3 Pasmanda. That translates to 7.8 per cent Muslim representation in the Bihar assembly which is very low vis-à-vis their population share of 17 per cent. However, on breaking it further in caste terms it turns out that Ashrafs with a 2.5 per cent population share have 6.6 per cent representation and Pasmanda with a population share of 14.5 per cent have 1.2 per cent representation. One could infer that the Ashraf Muslims, an erstwhile ruling class, are politically overrepresented at the expense of Pasmanda Muslims. Pasmanda ideologues have long argued that if the Muslim category is complicated by introducing caste in other spheres like education, employment, health, victims of communal violence and lynchings etc., then one is likely to arrive at a more contextualized understanding of their marginalization. There is a sense that while the subjugated Muslim castes are often the most marginalized and key victims of communal violence, it is the Ashraf politicians and theologians that are the main profiteers of the social entrepreneurship around Muslim victimhood. Asaduddin Owaisi once used to mock caste-based reservations for Muslims as against “Islam and Shariat”. However, despite his recent and reluctant acknowledgement of Muslim caste, his comfort zone is still to speak on behalf of an undifferentiated and subaltern Muslim community. He often reiterates the rhetoric that the condition of Muslims is worse than Dalits which is clearly based on a factually incorrect reading of the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission reports. Owaisi’s portrayal of Muslim caste as a North Indian issue is again problematic in the face of some excellent Telugu poetry by Pasmanda Muslim poets like Yakub Kavi, Shaikh Peeran Boraywala, Shahjahana and so on, that sharply raise the issue of caste-based discrimination within the Telangana/Andhra Muslim community. Owaisi is also a member of the regressive All India Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) which is nothing but a pan-maslaq (sect) upper caste men’s club. In this context his endorsement of communitarian positions on issues like the practice of instant triple divorce had raised a few eyebrows earlier. Critics have also cast aspersions to AIMIM’s claims to work for the development of the Muslim community at the national level, when the old city of Hyderabad, represented by Owaisi family for decades, itself faces utter neglect. The Pasmanda activists have consistently emphasized the high-caste, symbiotic and co-constitutive nature of Hindu and Muslim communalisms and the need to contest them simultaneously. The communal discourse benefits the pan-religion caste elite at the expense of the social justice concerns of the subjugated castes who are often the foot soldiers and victims in the violence. The AIMIM, with its historical proximity to Jinnah’s Muslim League and association with the violence orchestrated by its Muslim militia called the razakars against the Hindus and communists, definitely has a tinged communal past. Even at present the relative sophistication of Asaduddin Owaisi and the provocative performances of his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi is often seen as a mutually agreed upon political division of labour. In 2007 the roughing up of the Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen by AIMIM activists in Hyderabad exposed the unruly side of the party. The ‘Hindu’ ecosystem clearly needs the ‘Muslim’ as its constitutive other; both the contending communalisms reinforce each other. Ali Anwar, ex-MP and President All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, often makes disguised references to the Owaisis when he exhorts the Pasmanda Muslims to be cautious from Muslim communalists: “Someone plans from the old Hyderabad city [...] someone utters an irresponsible statement from Dilli 6 [...] someone uses the sermons from the religious pulpit (mimbar) irresponsibly. All this is counterproductive. There is a reaction”. Amit Shah’s comment before the Bihar assembly elections of 2015 that “Asaduddin Owaisi is a bigger opponent than RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav” is therefore very telling indeed. The BJP MP Tejaswi Surya’s recent comment in the context of the Hyderabad civic polls that “A vote for Owaisi […] is a vote against India and everything that India stands for” clearly indicates Owaisi’s utility for BJP’s politics. It almost seems that if there was no Asaduddin Owaisi the BJP simply had to invent one. The late Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, Asaduddin’s father and former AIMIM chief, used to say with pride that “siyasat humarey ghar ki laundi hai” (politics is our domestic slave-girl). Asaduddin Owaisi has played smart and in his political alliances with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) in Maharashtra earlier and with RLSP and BSP in the recent Bihar elections, AIMIM has been the disproportionate beneficiary. AIMIM’s allies need to think why this is so. The idea of Dalit-Muslim unity, endorsed by the AIMIM, was contested by Ali Anwar in in a speech in Lucknow in 2012: “Unity is possible between likes. How can Dalits and Muslims unite? Those (Ashraf) Muslims who claim that they ruled this country for centuries…why would they accept your (Dalit) leadership? Our Syeds are more treacherous, more cunning than your Brahmins! Those who subjugated a community like Brahmins for centuries will they accept your leadership?” The ‘Muslim’ in the Dalit-Muslim equation is by default the hegemonic Ashraf Muslim, the prime mover and beneficiary of Muslim Right politics. That is why Pasmanda activists have contested the Jai Bhim, Jai Meem slogan and instead emphasized on the pan-religion solidarity of subjugated castes as encapsulated in the slogan “Dalit-Pichda ek saman, Hindu ho ya Musalman” (Dalits-Backwards are all alike, whether they be Hindu or Muslim). The Dalit-Muslim formula was attempted by BSP in UP during 2017 elections when it gave 100 tickets to Muslims, mostly Ashrafs. It failed miserably. Dr. Ambedkar too toyed with Muslim League politics for some time only to realize in 1947 that “The Muslims wanted the support of the Scheduled Castes but they never gave their support to the Scheduled Castes. Mr Jinnah was all the time playing a double game”. The recent repositioning of Asaduddin Owaisi as a constitutionalist and champion of oppressed groups like the OBCs and Dalits must therefore be taken with a pinch of salt. Asaduddin Owaisi seldom acknowledges his Ashraf social location or demonstrates reflexivity about inherited caste-based privilege. In 2017 the RSS spokesperson Rakesh Sinha embarrassed him when he stated that Owaisi’s “great grandfather was a Brahmin of Hyderabad”. During the EWS quota controversy, Owaisi asked boldly “Have the savaranas and janyadharus (sic) ever suffered due to untouchability, police encounters and atrocities, school drop outs, lower number of graduates […]?” Ironically, Asaduddin Owaisi seems to be curiously blind to the fact that the same questions could have been plausibly posed to the Muslim Ashraf classes as well. In a recent interview, Owaisi blasted at the secular parties, “You don’t have a Muslim voice, you don’t want to nurture a Muslim voice […] you assume that we are only voting machines”. The future of Indian politics depends on how Muslims address the seductions of this sentiment. If their recent frustrations with secular forces lead them to join the AIMIM bandwagon then it will be advantage BJP out and out. Historically, while the Hindu Right has levelled the charges of Muslim appeasement at secular parties, the Pasmanda activists have deconstructed the so-called Muslim appeasement as Ashraf appeasement. In terms of Pasmanda discourse, the un-hyphenated “Muslim” voice that Owaisi talks about is a euphemism for Ashraf interests. Owaisi-led AIMIM’s communitarian politics will continue to be challenged by Pasmanda activists, just like Abdul Qaiyum Ansari led Momin Conference challenged Jinnah’s separatist Muslim League politics earlier. Yet Owaisi’s recent political successes in Muslim concentrated regions is a wake-up call for the non-BJP political parties as the BJP-AIMIM jugalbandi will potentially erode their political base further. In case the secular and social justice forces ever decide to weave a robust cultural-political alternative to dominant Hindutva, they will have to creatively rework their extant imagination of secularism and social justice. In this pursuit, the Pasmanda emphasis on the need to counter Hindu and Muslim Right simultaneously and to address the justice concerns of extremely marginalized Bahujan communities like the EBCs, Mahadalit, Pasmanda and so on will be useful. [The author is director Dr Ambedkar Centre for Exclusion Studies & Transformative Action (ACESTA), Glocal University and tweets @KhalidAAnsari4. The views are personal.] -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZiuhEO3JxkYkgFLfkgJv2YAvpJL%2Bag2ggYPV%2BtfiC41oQ%40mail.gmail.com.
