Do
The Owaisi Brothers Have A Pan India Potential?
Saeed Naqvi
“Maen na kehta tha ki mut dair o
haram
ki raah chul?
Ab yeh jhagra hashr tak Seikh o
Barahman
mein raha.”
(Did I not warn you, not to tread the
path of the mosque and the mandir?
Now this conflict between the Brahmin
and the Sheikh will continue till Judgement Day.)
Mir
Taqi Mir (1723-1810)
The two successes of Majlis-e-Ittehadul
Muslimeen of Hyderabad in recent elections in Maharashtra may not affect
government formation in Mumbai but reverberations will be felt in the nation’s politics
for a long time.
Victories in Aurangabad and Byculla were
awesome, ofcourse, for a first time entrant. Equally impressive was the fact
that the MIM felt emboldened to field twenty four candidates. Of these, three
came second and seven impressive thirds. In the last election, BJP and Shiv
Sena had won seven seats. The MIM entry in the contest demolished the Congress
totally and the BJP and Shiv Sena picked up 14 seats.
The Congress taunt is: look, you helped
the BJP-Shiv Sena. That this calculated risk was taken by muslims, shows how
irredeemably low the Congress has sunk in the community’s esteem. Time was when
the BJP, under Atal Behari Vajpayee’s leadership, would have been embraced by a
community desperate to discard the Congress habit. But the Narendra Modi
establishment has been indifferent to the muslims. It does not wish to come in
the way of party president Amit Shah’s tactic of polarizing votes by targeting
them. This method of building Hindu nationalism will remain in play so long as
voters are required to be polarized in elections from state to state. Even as
unlikely a state for communal politics as Tamil Nadu has not been spared the
effort. An obscure terrorist module has been located even in this state to fuel
the polarizing game.
The minorities are determined not to
vote for the Congress, the NCP and are increasingly averse to the Samajwadi
party and the Bahujan Samaj Party also. The BJP is equally resolute in building
Hindu nationalism by targeting them. So, which way must the muslims turn? There
is nothing on the horizon which can threaten the BJP by an infusion of the
muslim vote. But the muslim can be targeted for greater Hindu consolidation.
At their wit’s end, Muslims are unlikely
to dream up grand strategies for the future. In a daze, they will stand still
and acquiesce in the politics of the ghetto. In this mood, the bold rhetoric of
the Owaisi brothers will captivate them.
Over the past decade the national mood
has been determined by whatever choices the 24X7 channels make for highlighting
on their prime time shows. These choices differ vastly from the fare available
to the Urdu newspaper readership. Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddin Owaisi are
frontpage material for this audience, ofcourse. But even though the mainstream
media ignored them, their lethal speeches have been carried extensively on the
social media. Two parallel tectonic plates are moving. They may clash.
One of the factors behind the Samajwadi
Party’s rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were a barrage of deadly speeches
by Asaduddin Owaisi carried on the social media after he was stopped from
addressing a rally in Azamgarh on 1 February, 2014. The MIM had taken the Akhilesh
Yadav government to task for a spate of communal riots in UP during the build
up to the Parliamentary elections. He accused the SP as equal partners with the
BJP in profiting from communal politics. While the BJP sought Hindu
consolidation, said Owaisi, the SP tacitly encouraged an atmosphere of
insecurity so that the Muslim voters turn to SP for protection.
Returning from the Dhule riots, 150 kms
from Aurangabad in January 2013, I was surprised to hear Akbaruddin Owaisi’s
speeches being played by young men on their mobile phones at a wayside tea
stall. Owaisi brothers, it seemed, were like pop stars among muslim youth.
The substance of Akbaruddin Owaisi’s
speeches do cross red lines and are intemperate. Asaduddin is more composed. But
together the two brothers represent an explosive style of oratory which went
out of fashion since the days of the Parsee theatre.
In a mixed crowd their combative style
could lead to violence. But they maintain their infectious tempo from behind the
fortification of their Hyderabad ghetto. The social networks carry their oratory
far and wide.
And now, encouraged by the market, the Owaisis
are planning to open offices in UP, Bihar and West Bengal. Who knows, the potential
for a dangerous politics may be developing, with the MIM orators knitting
together hopeless muslim ghettos, rather like a series of Bantustans, ensuring muslim
exclusion and, for that reason, explosive.
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