In the dynamic of Maharashtra politics, a new element has been introduced by the MIM, which resorted to a direct, no-holds-barred attack on the so-called secular parties like the Congress and the NCP to drive its point home. A telltale example of the MIM approach was advocate Waris Pathan’s election leaflet, which made no promises per se but only emphasised the MIM identity and his own quiet espousal of the same. He emerged as one of two MIM winners in the election, the other being Imtiyaz Jalil, a former TV journalist. The three Owaisis — father Salahuddin and sons Asaduddin and Akbaruddin — have sought to pitch as much of their own montage as they have plumped for their radical party’s overt posturing. In Byculla, where the MIM won, Muslims constitute about 45 percent of the electorate. With Pathan being the only serious candidate drawn from the community, his victory was not surprising. But the shrill pitch of the campaign, on the one hand, and the absence of the Congress from the contest in the area, on the other, provide a subtext to the increasing alienation of the community from the grand old party. Much as it played up its own identity, the MIM did not forget to project Dalit candidates and emphatically assert how much the party respects Bhimrao Ambedkar. The fact that the Hyderabad-based party managed a reasonable share of the total vote and wrested two of 24 seats it contested must have exhilarated the MIM leadership’s spin doctors even as it reflected rather poorly on the Congress. The MIM’s success is being seen by observers as a direct outcome of Muslim distrust and anger towards the Congress-NCP for their failure to fulfil long-pending demands. The Owaisi brothers’ distinctive brand of oratory, which emphasises the community’s victimhood, was also very much in evidence. The fact that the Owaisis assert the socio-economic backwardness of the community through telltale statistics went in their favour even when few objective commentators would assert that they had done “ great work” for the community. Still, Maharashtra’s Muslims have for long nursed a grievance against the ‘secular’ parties to have disregarded the findings of the Mehmood-ur-Rehman committee, which had been appointed by the Congress-NCP government in 2008 to study the status of Muslims in the state. The report, which focusses on the community’s socio-economic marginalisation, is most likely to be forgotten given the contemporary complexion of the state’s politics. In a manner of speaking, even after the huge reverses they suffered in the Lok Sabha election, the Congress and the NCP have remained intriguingly indifferent to the growing discontent among their once loyal vote bank. The Muslims have to countenance a situation where the Owaisis are the only ones who matter in a party like the MIM — everything else, like who the candidates are, is purely secondary. It seems the anger was directed that much more against the Congress rather than being in the MIM’s favour per se, such has been the kind of disjunct between the grand old party and its one-time established bastions. However, it should be kept in mind that the halting strides of the MIM do not completely reflect the overall mood, which even now is wary of the polarisation and isolation that such avowedly single-aim parties as the MIM in a state now governed by hidden agendas are bound to bring in their wake. In a way, the intriguing touch that characterised the run-up to the election remains even after the results are out as the saffron horses haggle and other players barge in to complete the picture. The BJP, rather than mollycoddle the Sena and subserve its eccentricities, would for a change behave and function like a ‘national’ party much as the Congress used to do in its halcyon days. While Uddhav Thackeray cannot hide his great peeve, the Modi-Shah duo is already cock-a-hoop for having scripted what they howsoever grandiosely term as a Modi ‘tsunami’ or second wave. While the Sena mouthpiece is distinctly wary of shooting from the hip in wake of the rather tepid electoral fare for the stormtroopers, it is only to be seen whether the BJP can actually afford to completely rein in its own zealots and the assertive Nagpur bosses, who can change only a little from their own hard Hindutva ways. Further, observers can only lament about the absence of any cogent or coherent opposition to the saffron surge and with the Congress preferring to submissively revert to nothingness, saffron will only gain further traction. The point of interest in the short term remains simple: Will ascendant saffron take the risk of overlooking sleaze in one wannabe supporter even as it seeks to maintain its distance from the assertive claims by its regular ally until recently? tehelka/maharashtra-assembly-polls-2014-bjp-mim-communal-polarisation/
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 06:28:28 +0000
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