There is no dearth of female candidates who have added colour to an otherwise insipid Lok Sabha campaign. There is Smriti Irani who beat Rahul Gandhi in Amethi. There is Mahua Mitra, firebrand as always. There is Mehbooba Mufti who is fighting for political relevance. There is Rekha Patra from Basirhat in West Bengal who symbolises a revolt against goons. There is Sunetra Pawar who will contest her first election; and that too against her sister-in-law Supriya Sule. Who can forget Kangana Ranaut and her trigger-happy remarks?
Mercifully, Sadhvi Pragya has failed to get a ticket. From Hyderabad, Madhavi Latha joins this distinguished list. She is hoping to defeat the AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. An obscure personality till about a few months back, Madhavi Latha has shot into national prominence in just a couple of weeks.
Breathless fans of the BJP seem confident that she will do what is seemingly impossible: win the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat which has been an AIMIM and Owaisi fiefdom for about 40 years.
It’s early morning and the usual hustle and bustle seen at the historic Charminar is missing. Some workers are busy sweeping garbage off the street leading up to the monument. Normally, one would see a lot of folks sipping tea at this time here. As I saunter around, four young Muslims on a bike without helmets are racing up and down the road. When they stop for a break, I ask them about the Lok Sabha contest.
One of them asks me if I am a journalist from Delhi. When I respond with a yes, he says in a Hindustani baritone that is so typical of Hyderabad: “You guys sitting in Delhi have created this hawa around Madhavi Latha. She is a joker and a drama queen. We will ensure she loses her deposit.”
When I prod a bit more and ask him what he means by “we”, the young fellow says, "Ye hamari quam ki izzat ka sawal hai." Another youngster intervenes and says that Owaisi is very popular even among Hindus.
I ask a final question before walking towards my car, even as a couple of dogs nearby start suddenly barking. My question: who do you admire the most in Hyderabad? All four respond in unison and with pride: Akbaruddin Owaisi.
There is little doubt that religious polarisation has happened in Hyderabad. Madhavi Latha doesn’t lose an opportunity to remind all and sundry that the original name of Hyderabad was Bhagyanagar. Hindu symbolism and Hindutva are embedded in her rallies and roadshows. Even the Ram Temple is being invoked, along with insinuations such as Owaisi not being integrated emotionally with India. Not surprisingly, Madhavi Latha has been invoking Hindutva at every street corner in an effort to emerge as a giant killer.
Forget party workers, even top BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has publicly said that “Razakars” have been ruling Hyderabad for four decades and they must be thrown out in this election. In case you didn’t know, Razakars were a “private” militia loyal to the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad who refused to sign the Instrument of Accession to become a province of India.
While the upper-middle-class residents of Hyderabad dismiss Madhavi Latha as a sideshow, she has become tremendously popular among the lower-income Hindus in Hyderabad. The BJP always had a core vote base in this seat. To this will be added tens of thousands of Hindu votes because of the nature of the campaign.
Should Asaduddin Owaisi be worried? Can Madhavi Latha spring a surprise? Indeed, in politics, anything is possible. But her chances look about as high as the INDIA bloc dislodging Narendra Modi in 2024. In 1999, Owaisi’s father Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi contested his last election and won with a vote share of 41.36 percent. In 2004, Asaduddin Owaisi made his debut as a Lok Sabha MP with a vote share of about 38 percent. By 2014, the vote share had gone up to 53 percent. It was 64 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP candidate polled less than half of that with a vote share of 28 percent.
Rhetoric is interesting. But it is data that talks.
(Sutanu Guru is the Executive Director of the CVoter Foundation. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
(This is the 18th in a series of insightful reports from the ground, titled The Race From India to Bharat. The author travels all across India as 960 million voters get ready to celebrate the largest festival of democracy in the world: the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. What do ordinary Indians think and feel about the past, present, and future of India? Are they convinced that the old fault lines are healing?)
(Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here, part six here, part seven here, part eight here, part nine here, part 10 here, part 11 here, part 12 here, part 13 here, part 14 here, part 15 here, part 16 here, and part 17 here.)
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