What Owaisi Really Hopes to Achieve is a Monolithic Vote Bank

Owaisi’s plunge into Bihar polls is driven by the intention of consolidating Muslim votes, writes Amar Bhushan.

The Bihar Assembly elections are just round the corner. Mudslinging, personal attacks, and empty twaddle mark the state’s present political atmosphere. Amidst all this, All India Majlis-e- Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi has quietly gone about laying the foundation of eating into India’s cohesive social fabric. Political parties are content with calling him names depending on whether they perceive the AIMIM as benefiting or spoiling their electoral prospects. The commentators attribute to him a grand design of churning the existing caste-driven electoral arrangement to produce a Muslim-Dalit cocktail. Some say he will polarise votes to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), that he is their agent, first love and their lovable enemy. But it is difficult to believe that the BJP would prop up a Frankenstein for petty gains in a state election.

Others see him as a catalyst that will consolidate Muslim votes in favour of the Janata Dal United (JDU), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party or even the Samajwadi Party. Everyone, however, seems to be missing the Owaisi plot in their frantic bid to woo or confuse the Muslim voters in the name of secularism, communalism and development.

Consolidating Muslim Votes

Owaisi is a practical man and, therefore, he pursues realistic choices. He is contesting the election not to emerge as a key player in the formation of next government in Bihar but to register a point: that Muslims have been betrayed by all secular parties and have been deliberately denied the benefits of the progress made by India in education and healthcare, while also being denied jobs and economic opportunities. This is despite the fact that they outnumber all other minorities who wield a disproportionately higher say in the government.

For the past sixty years, Muslims have voted for every political party in the country other than the BJP but still remain on the periphery of India’s economic development, prompting angry and disgruntled youths to embrace extremism. Owaisi wants the Muslim voters to understand that this is happening because their numbers in government formation is minimal and their capacity to decisively influence state policies is marginal.

Internal Migration

The Owaisi formula thus aims at increasing the Muslim presence in the Parliament and state legislatures, because in a democracy, numbers count. But this can only be possible if Muslim votes are not scattered.

Ideally, Owaisi would like to exhort Muslims to migrate internally in such a manner that they form a majority in some constituencies, but he may not want to burn his fingers so early by shocking the nation’s conscience with this strategy. Till this move becomes a reality, he has wisely decided to target the constituencies where Muslims can win on their own. His choice of constituencies is quite illustrative in this regard.

AIMIM in the Bihar Polls

• Some say Owaisi will polarise votes in favour of the BJP.

• Owaisi urges Muslims to migrate internally so that they form majorities in constituencies.
• AIMIM should win all 6 seats in the Seemanchal region.
• Security agencies to check any deliberate or subtle attempts at ghettoisation of Muslims – even in other states where AIMIM will move next

Owaisi’s Formula

Owaisi began his electoral foray from Hyderabad, then experimented with his formula in Maharashtra and now is practising it in Bihar. Although the Seemanchal region has 24 seats, the AIMIM will field candidates in six seats in the districts of Kishanganj, Purnea, Katihar and Araria where Muslims constitute 67%, 37%, 43% and 40% respectively.

Ordinarily, the party should win all seats as Muslims generally vote en-block, and other political parties can never put up a candidate jointly to oppose the Muslim nominee. However, this is unlikely to happen. Owaisi can at best hope to get 2 or 3 seats, because he is still unknown in Bihar, and is yet to groom effective, reliable and committed local leaers. Additionally, a majority of local Muslims may still prefer to rest their fate in the hands of the RJD, JDU and others rather than in an outsider. They know that once the elections are over, it is the musclemen of these parties who will provide them security and some economic relief and not someone from Hyderabad.

But Owaisi is not going back empty-handed. He has already set the agenda that Muslims must form a majority in constituencies to elect a pressure group in the government, both at the centre and in the states. He will carry this message further and will likely contest in the upcoming elections in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Assam in areas where Muslims hold winning numbers.

Real Objective

Owaisi has wisely distanced himself from all political parties. He highlights only the miseries of Muslims at the hands of communal and opportunistic secular parties. His talk of the economic backwardness of Dalits is just a ruse. His real objective is to carve a Muslim constituency at a much larger scale in the eastern part of India, comprising of the bordering districts of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Tripura.

This is an area where his messianic appeal of backwardness and alienation will galvanise Muslim voters to come together and fight for their rights as a separate political entity. It may not be on the lines of Kashmiris asking for separation and plebiscite on the basis of the strength of their numerical superiority, but who knows what will happen when electoral arithmetic gets drastically altered by Owaisi.

For security agencies the task is clearly etched out. They will have to continuously guard against any deliberate or subtle attempt at the internal migration of Muslims and their ghettoisation in constituencies. Although this may seem far-fetched at present, there are signs it is on the horizon. The idea is not to deny Muslims their due but to guard against polarising votes on the basis of religion.

To all other political parties, Owaisi’s ideology is a potent challenge. If they continue looking at Muslims as a vote bank and do not address their legitimate economic, social and political aspirations and grievances, Owaisi will surely come out as a winner. If India’s social fabric is to be retained and its diversity maintained, then the theme of development for all will have to be over-emphasised and practised at all levels, thus denying Owaisi the space to surreptitiously eat into India’s unique homogenous identity.

(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat)