Advocate Waris Pathan’s election leaflet got straight to the point. The leaflet promoting Pathan, one of two victors from the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen in Maharashtra’s assembly elections, made no promises, had no bio-data. Just his party’s name on top, followed by photographs of the three Owaisis with whom the party is identified: father Salahuddin, and sons Asaduddin and Akbaruddin; their slogan: Our Party, Our Unity, Our Victory; the party symbol, Pathan’s own picture, and the polling date and time.
When this reporter interviewed him, the candidate from the central Mumbai constituency of Byculla summed up his position succinctly. “Muslims have had enough of the so-called secular parties. Now it's time to try a Muslim party,” he said. The community forms 43% of the electorate in Byculla, and with Pathan being the only Muslim candidate, he was bound to win. (There were three other Muslim candidates in Byculla, but Pathan was right in not giving them any importance.)
Through the interview, Pathan kept getting calls asking him to to come to a mosque in his constituency as it was time for namaz. Campaigning in mosques during namaz was a key element of the young lawyer’s strategy. As soon as the interview began, one of his aides came in and stretched out on a sofa, totally relaxed, one leg of his pyjama pulled up. Another aide spoke of how the party had Dalit candidates and respected Dr “Baba” Ambedkar.
“Will you write about us everyday?” he asked. “We’ll give you a small gift.”
It’s necessary to describe this meeting in detail to show the kind of candidates put up by the MIM. The Hyderabad-based party managed .9 % of the vote and two winners from the 24 candidates it put up in the first assembly election it contested outside its home state. In three constituencies it came a close second, and in six constituencies it stood a respectable third. Many Muslims are jubilant.
But this jubilation is not confined to the primarily uneducated and unemployed young men who worked for the MIM and filled meetings addressed by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi and Telengana MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi (who stands charged with sedition and promoting communal enmity for speeches given in Andhra Pradesh last year). Even seasoned political observers were rejoicing as results came in showing the party’s candidates leading in four constituencies.
“You wait till the evening, MIM will have won eight seats,’’ crowed Faridbhai Batatawala, a political activist. In Batatawala’s own constituency, Versova, in western Mumbai, an unknown businessman/social-worker representing the MIM came third. The BJP candidate, whom no one had previously heard of, polled more than double the votes the sitting Congress MLA Baldev Khosa did. But many local Muslims say they funded the MIM candidate’s campaign because they wanted to damage Khosa’s chances.
Leaving the Congress
The MIM’s success is a direct outcome of Muslim anger against the failure of the Congress-NCP to fulfill long-pending demands. Coupled with this is the oratory of the Owaisi brothers, who start, end and intersperse their hour-long speeches with appeals to Allah and claims of Muslim victimhood, working their audiences up to fever pitch in much the same manner Bal Thackeray once did. The arguments the Owaisi brothers make against the established parties, whether “secular” or communal, are difficult to rebut, buttressed as they are by statistics.
What is easier to counter is their claim that they have done great work for the Muslims of Hyderabad and Nanded. Yet the Congress – who stood to lose the most from the MIM’s presence – failed to counter their narrative effectively. No one pointed out that the Muslims of Old Hyderabad remain in the same dire economic condition they were in in 1984, when it became an Owaisi fiefdom.
Easy riders
The Owaisis, therefore, had it easy. For years, Maharashtra’s Muslims have complained about the manner in which Muslim legislators ignore their problems, despite being elected on their votes. One important complaint regards the failure of the Congress-NCP government to table the report of the Mehmood ur Rahman Committee. The committee, appointed by the government in 2008 to study the status of Muslims in Maharashtra, filed a report that became public earlier this year, but the government did not table it in the assembly. The report confirmed the community’s worst fears of economic marginalisation.
Even after the United Progressive Alliance's massive Lok Sabha loss in May, the Congress-NCP government remained indifferent to the growing discontentment of its loyal vote bank. Voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party or Shiv Sena is out of the question for most Muslims, so the MIM seemed not just the only option, but the ideal one. The feeling this time around in sections of the community was that only a party that campaigned unabashedly as a Muslim party would have the guts to raise Muslim issues in the assembly.
Owaisis supreme
The candidates the MIM put forward in this election didn’t matter, only the Owaisis did. Even in Nanded, where the party has 11 corporators (of whom the average Nanded Muslim is openly contemptuous), the two MIM candidates did surprisingly well. Indeed, it was common gossip during the Lok Sabha elections that former chief minister Ashok Chavan “managed” to get the MIM to not put up a candidate against him. Even in the assembly election, the party did not put up anyone against Chavan’s wife, who stood from Bhokar.
In Solapur, the MIM candidate who made life difficult for Praniti, ex-union minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter, was Shinde’s former aide, known locally as “pahelwan” and “Don”. In Byculla, Muslims were furious that the government refused to step in when the BJP mounted a strident campaign against sacrificing cattle in their areas during Bakri Eid earlier this month. Though Waris Pathan made no mention of the episode in his campaign, he still won.
Apart from the Owaisi factor, the surprisingly good performance of these nondescript MIM candidates was also because what mattered to Muslim voters was the question: can these candidates damage the Congress’ chances? At least in Aurangabad, Bhiwandi West and Byculla, the MIM was the direct reason for the Congress’ defeat.
Two positives
There are two positives to be drawn from the MIM’s performance. First, the party’s second winner, Imtiaz Jalil, former Lokmat and NDTV journalist, who won handsomely from Aurangabad East, is a candidate who may well live up to his voters’ expectations.
The second is even more heartening. The MIM put up 24 candidates only in constituencies where Muslim presence is significant. Yet, in 13 of them, including Malegaon, Mumbra and Bhiwandi, its candidates failed to make any significant impact. It seems clear that the majority of Muslims have rejected the polarisation and isolation the MIM is bound to bring for them.
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When this reporter interviewed him, the candidate from the central Mumbai constituency of Byculla summed up his position succinctly. “Muslims have had enough of the so-called secular parties. Now it's time to try a Muslim party,” he said. The community forms 43% of the electorate in Byculla, and with Pathan being the only Muslim candidate, he was bound to win. (There were three other Muslim candidates in Byculla, but Pathan was right in not giving them any importance.)
Through the interview, Pathan kept getting calls asking him to to come to a mosque in his constituency as it was time for namaz. Campaigning in mosques during namaz was a key element of the young lawyer’s strategy. As soon as the interview began, one of his aides came in and stretched out on a sofa, totally relaxed, one leg of his pyjama pulled up. Another aide spoke of how the party had Dalit candidates and respected Dr “Baba” Ambedkar.
“Will you write about us everyday?” he asked. “We’ll give you a small gift.”
It’s necessary to describe this meeting in detail to show the kind of candidates put up by the MIM. The Hyderabad-based party managed .9 % of the vote and two winners from the 24 candidates it put up in the first assembly election it contested outside its home state. In three constituencies it came a close second, and in six constituencies it stood a respectable third. Many Muslims are jubilant.
But this jubilation is not confined to the primarily uneducated and unemployed young men who worked for the MIM and filled meetings addressed by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi and Telengana MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi (who stands charged with sedition and promoting communal enmity for speeches given in Andhra Pradesh last year). Even seasoned political observers were rejoicing as results came in showing the party’s candidates leading in four constituencies.
“You wait till the evening, MIM will have won eight seats,’’ crowed Faridbhai Batatawala, a political activist. In Batatawala’s own constituency, Versova, in western Mumbai, an unknown businessman/social-worker representing the MIM came third. The BJP candidate, whom no one had previously heard of, polled more than double the votes the sitting Congress MLA Baldev Khosa did. But many local Muslims say they funded the MIM candidate’s campaign because they wanted to damage Khosa’s chances.
Leaving the Congress
The MIM’s success is a direct outcome of Muslim anger against the failure of the Congress-NCP to fulfill long-pending demands. Coupled with this is the oratory of the Owaisi brothers, who start, end and intersperse their hour-long speeches with appeals to Allah and claims of Muslim victimhood, working their audiences up to fever pitch in much the same manner Bal Thackeray once did. The arguments the Owaisi brothers make against the established parties, whether “secular” or communal, are difficult to rebut, buttressed as they are by statistics.
What is easier to counter is their claim that they have done great work for the Muslims of Hyderabad and Nanded. Yet the Congress – who stood to lose the most from the MIM’s presence – failed to counter their narrative effectively. No one pointed out that the Muslims of Old Hyderabad remain in the same dire economic condition they were in in 1984, when it became an Owaisi fiefdom.
Easy riders
The Owaisis, therefore, had it easy. For years, Maharashtra’s Muslims have complained about the manner in which Muslim legislators ignore their problems, despite being elected on their votes. One important complaint regards the failure of the Congress-NCP government to table the report of the Mehmood ur Rahman Committee. The committee, appointed by the government in 2008 to study the status of Muslims in Maharashtra, filed a report that became public earlier this year, but the government did not table it in the assembly. The report confirmed the community’s worst fears of economic marginalisation.
Even after the United Progressive Alliance's massive Lok Sabha loss in May, the Congress-NCP government remained indifferent to the growing discontentment of its loyal vote bank. Voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party or Shiv Sena is out of the question for most Muslims, so the MIM seemed not just the only option, but the ideal one. The feeling this time around in sections of the community was that only a party that campaigned unabashedly as a Muslim party would have the guts to raise Muslim issues in the assembly.
Owaisis supreme
The candidates the MIM put forward in this election didn’t matter, only the Owaisis did. Even in Nanded, where the party has 11 corporators (of whom the average Nanded Muslim is openly contemptuous), the two MIM candidates did surprisingly well. Indeed, it was common gossip during the Lok Sabha elections that former chief minister Ashok Chavan “managed” to get the MIM to not put up a candidate against him. Even in the assembly election, the party did not put up anyone against Chavan’s wife, who stood from Bhokar.
In Solapur, the MIM candidate who made life difficult for Praniti, ex-union minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter, was Shinde’s former aide, known locally as “pahelwan” and “Don”. In Byculla, Muslims were furious that the government refused to step in when the BJP mounted a strident campaign against sacrificing cattle in their areas during Bakri Eid earlier this month. Though Waris Pathan made no mention of the episode in his campaign, he still won.
Apart from the Owaisi factor, the surprisingly good performance of these nondescript MIM candidates was also because what mattered to Muslim voters was the question: can these candidates damage the Congress’ chances? At least in Aurangabad, Bhiwandi West and Byculla, the MIM was the direct reason for the Congress’ defeat.
Two positives
There are two positives to be drawn from the MIM’s performance. First, the party’s second winner, Imtiaz Jalil, former Lokmat and NDTV journalist, who won handsomely from Aurangabad East, is a candidate who may well live up to his voters’ expectations.
The second is even more heartening. The MIM put up 24 candidates only in constituencies where Muslim presence is significant. Yet, in 13 of them, including Malegaon, Mumbra and Bhiwandi, its candidates failed to make any significant impact. It seems clear that the majority of Muslims have rejected the polarisation and isolation the MIM is bound to bring for them.