I am not particularly a fan of AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, evident from this piece I wrote for Firstpost in November. It is one thing to critique a political leader, quite another to endorse the denial of democratic rights to him or her.
There is no denying that the democratic right of Owaisi has been trampled upon. You only have to look at the manner in which the Uttar Pradesh government of Akhilesh Yadav has been refusing permission to him to address the AIMIM rallies in the state.
Owaisi was thwarted from holding a rally at Allahabad on April 26, as he had been by the city administration earlier, on March 15 to be precise. He was disallowed from addressing a public meeting in Agra on March 29. This had been the pattern last year as well, both before and after the general elections: Owaisi couldn’t hold public meetings on three occasions – February 1, April 25 and June 12, 2014 – in Azamgarh and, then again, on September 7, 2014 in Allahabad.
This is indeed an inexplicably harsh treatment of the man upon whom was bestowed the Sansad Ratna Award for his performance in the 15th Lok Sabha last year.
YouTube screengrab.
It’s instructive to peruse the reasons different district administrations cited to deny Owaisi the permission to address rallies. The Agra administration claimed permission to Owaisi, granted to him all the way back in January, was withdrawn on the basis of police report, “which hinted that it will create law and order problem and disturb communal harmony.” Other reasons, too, were trotted out, such as school examination and March 29 being the date for the state civil service examination for which the city was a centre.
Threat to communal harmony was the reason the Allahabad administration too invoked. It seems the AIMIM had given a choice of two locations for its meeting, both of which the administration claimed was a “mixed locality” of Hindus and Muslims. The district magistrate was quoted in the newspapers saying, “In the past, he (Owaisi) has given inflammatory speeches. Considering the possibility of breach of peace, we can’t give permission for the rally.” He also said a rally at either of the locations would have disrupted the traffic on the main thoroughfare leading to the railway station.
Whether or not a speech is inflammatory can be judged only after the speaker has delivered it to an audience. In most circumstances it would be patently unfair to prejudge the speaker on what he or she is likely to speak. Nor have we evolved benchmarks to determine what constitutes inflammatory speech. Are Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara banned on the basis of unpalatable speeches they delivered in the past?
That said, Owaisi is undoubtedly a practitioner of the politics of identity, anchoring his political activity to the idea of fighting for the rights of Muslim as members of a religious community and not just as citizens of the country. He has expanded this strategy of his to include the Dalits as well, riding high on the successes he has notched in Maharashtra. The politics of identity, by its very nature, tends or appears to cleave the line dividing the secular from the communal.
From this perspective, Owaisi’s speeches do at times acquire communal overtones. But does this justify the Akhilesh government’s denial of permission to Owaisi to address public gatherings? Has it been even handed in its treatment of those whose speeches are a more virulent echo of Owaisi’s?
To answer these questions, consider the political terrain of Uttar Pradesh. This is the land where BJP MP Mahant Adityanath hops from one place to another, venting venomous Hindutva rhetoric. This is the state where love jihad and ghar wapsi campaigns have been executed with tremendous fury, and where VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi had exhorted Hindu women to have four children.
When Prachi was stridently criticised for her remarks, the VHP organised a public function in Badaun to felicitate those Hindus who have more than four children, including one who has eleven. Prachi told the audience, “They are trapping our daughters through 'love jihad'. These people who give birth to 35-40.... are spreading love jihad..... They are trying to make Hindustan into Darul Islam.” Not repentant one bit, she said, “The media said you have sparked an uproar with your remarks on four children. I said I have only advocated four children for Hindus not 40....” Presumably the district administration of Badaun didn’t think Prachi would deliver a speech communal in nature.
also see
Occasionally though, the UP government has tried to restrain the Hindutva hotheads. For instance, the administration issued orders against Adityanath holding a public rally in Lucknow’s Munshi Pulia area last September. These order the intemperate mahant defied. An FIR was lodged against him. You might ask: shouldn’t the administration have ensured that the rally wasn’t held at all?
Considering the politics of Uttar Pradesh has the identity-communal frame, you’d think the Akhilesh government is more interested in preventing Owaisi from entering the political arena of the state than combating the shrill votaries of Hindutva politics. Is it that Akhilesh and his father Mulayam feel Owaisi poses a more serious threat to the social fabric of the state than the saffron brigade? Have the father and son revised their opinion of the saffron brigade, which they have often labeled as communal?
The assessment of the Yadavs about the nature of politics the Sangh pursues hasn’t perhaps changed. But what has decidedly is their estimate of the relative usefulness of Hindutva politics for the attempt of the Samajwadi Party (SP) to return to power in 2017, which is when the state will have its Assembly elections. This estimate is directly linked to his fear of the damage Owaisi could inflict on the SP’s prospects two years hence.
Owaisi has emerged as one of the most strident critics of the Yadavs post-Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. It is a criticism from within the community, amplified many times over because of his fiery articulation, among other places, on TV. Till last year, Owaisi had been dismissed as a person punching above his weight.
But what appears to have prompted the political class to revise its opinion about Owaisi is the eye-grabbing performance of his party in the Maharashtra Assembly polls. The AIMIM won two seats, came second on three, and, more importantly, bagged 0.9 percent of the votes polled even though it contested in only 24 assembly constituencies. That this might not be the proverbial flash in the pan was demonstrated in the recent Aurangabad municipal elections, in which the AIMIM emerged ahead of the Congress and the NCP.
It is possible Owaisi has persuaded a section of Muslims around the country that non-BJP formations, particularly Mulayam’s, have been exploited their insecurities to gather votes, but not undertaken measures to alleviate their plight. This doesn’t mean the AIMIM is close to becoming a force to reckon with in Uttar Pradesh. But he could in a quadrangle contest in the state wean away a percentage of Muslim votes and determine which party wins or loses in the constituencies in which the minority community has a substantial presence.
Owaisi is also trying to stitch a Muslim-Dalit combination, which he managed to an extent in some pockets of Maharashtra. It seems unlikely that the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh would abandon Mayawati for Owaisi, at least not in the 2017 Assembly elections. Depending on the steam Owaisi gathers in the state, he could try to work out an electoral arrangement, informal or otherwise, with the BSP to weaken Mulayam.
In the end, the Yadav dynasty isn’t so much combating communalism as it is trying to protect its fiefdom. It is a two-pronged strategy – allow the Hindutva leaders to run amok, render the Muslims insecure, and ensure they vote the SP for the protective shield it provides; at the same time, keep Owaisi at bay so that he doesn’t become yet another magnate for the votes of the community in the state.
The refusal to grant permission to Owaisi to address public gatherings is not only a testament to the cynical politics of the Yadav dynasty, but also inherently undemocratic. As we have often seen in the past, denial of rights turns the political system pathological.
(Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail.com)
0 comments:
Post a Comment