Do the Owaisi brothers have a pan India potential?

The two successes of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) of Hyderabad in assembly elections in Maharashtra may not affect government formation in the state, but reverberations will be felt in the nation’s politics for a long time. Victories in Aurangabad and Byculla were awesome, of course, for a first-time entrant. Equally impressive was the fact that the MIM felt emboldened to field 24 candidates. Of these, three came second and seven stood third. In the last election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena had won seven of these seats. The MIM entry in the contest demolished the Congress and the BJP and Shiv Sena picked up 14 seats.

The Congress taunt is: Look, you helped the BJP-Shiv Sena. That this calculated risk was taken by Muslims shows how irredeemably low the Congress has sunk in the community’s esteem. Time was when the BJP, under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s leadership, would have been embraced by a community desperate to discard the Congress habit. But the Narendra Modi establishment has been indifferent to the Muslims. It does not wish to come in the way of party president Amit Shah’s tactic of polarising votes by targeting them. This method of building Hindu nationalism will remain in play so long as voters are required to be polarised in elections from state to state. Even as unlikely a state for communal politics as Tamil Nadu has not been spared the effort. An obscure terrorist module has been located in that state to fuel the polarising game.

The minorities are determined not to vote for the Congress or Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and are increasingly averse to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also. The BJP is equally resolute in building Hindu nationalism by targeting them. So, which way must the Muslims turn? There is nothing on the horizon that can threaten the BJP by an infusion of the Muslim vote. But the Muslims can be targeted for greater Hindu consolidation.

At their wit’s end, Muslims are unlikely to dream up grand strategies for the future. In a daze, they will stand still and acquiesce in the politics of the ghetto. In this mood, the bold rhetoric of the Owaisi brothers will captivate them.

Over the past decade, the national mood has been determined by whatever choices the 24X7 channels make for highlighting on their prime time shows. These choices differ vastly from the fare available to the Urdu newspaper readership. Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddin Owaisi are frontpage material for this audience, of course. But even though the mainstream media ignored them, their lethal speeches have been carried extensively on the social media. Two parallel tectonic plates are moving. They may clash.

One of the factors behind the SP’s rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha election was a barrage of deadly speeches by Asaduddin that were carried on the social media after he was stopped from addressing a rally in Azamgarh on February 1, 2014. The MIM had taken the Akhilesh Yadav government to task for a spate of communal riots in Uttar Pradesh during the build-up to the general elections. Asaduddin accused the SP as equal partners with the BJP in profiting from communal politics. While the BJP sought Hindu consolidation, said Asaduddin, the SP tacitly encouraged an atmosphere of insecurity so that the Muslim voters turn to SP for protection.

Returning from the Dhule riots, 150km from Aurangabad in January 2013, I was surprised to hear Akbaruddin’s speeches being played by young men on their mobile phones at a wayside tea stall. The Owaisi brothers, it seemed, were like pop stars among Muslim youth. The substance of Akbaruddin’s speeches do cross the red lines and are intemperate. Asaduddin is more composed, but together the two brothers represent an explosive style of oratory that went out of fashion since the days of the Parsee theatre.

In a mixed crowd, their combative style can lead to violence, but they maintain their infectious tempo from behind the fortification of their Hyderabad ghetto, while social media networks carry their oratory far and wide.

And now, encouraged by the market, the Owaisis are planning to open offices in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Who knows, the potential for a dangerous politics may be developing, with the MIM orators knitting together hopeless Muslim ghettos, rather like a series of Bantustans, ensuring Muslim exclusion and, for that reason, explosive.

—IANS

Saeed Naqvi is a senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs.