Author: Editorial
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: May 19, 2006
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/190506-editorial.html
This had to happen. Having been wooed by various
secularist outfits for the en bloc Muslim votes, the selfstyled leaders of
the community have now turned bold and independent. And, instead of negotiating
votes of their co-religionists with various political parties at the time
of elections, they have now floated their own political party. This was a
natural corollary of the politics of appeasement followed by the Congress
Party and others since Independence.
Over the years, various secularist parties
had routinely enlisted the support of the likes of Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid,
a rabid fire-eating fanatic, and others of his ilk to direct Muslims as to
who to vote for in local, State or parliamentary polls.
Admittedly, while their leaders profited from
such an arrangement, the lot of ordinary Muslims did not improve. However
it is quite unlikely that these intermediaries would have terminated the old
contractual system at election time, but for two major foreign policy developments.
One was the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Clearly, there was a strong resentment within
the Muslim community at the failure of the Indian Government to take a more
aggressive anti-US stance on the issue. Two, the Indian vote in favour of
the USled move against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency last
year had left Indian Muslims seething with anger.
If most Sunni Muslims felt sympathetic towards
Saddam Hussein, a vast majority of Shia Muslims in the country were solicitous
of the welfare of the Iranian leadership. It is notable that the lead for
the formation of a separate Muslim group was taken by an `Ittar' trader, Badruddin
Azmal, who had strong business ties with several West Asian countries.
In the recent election to the Assam Assembly,
the Assam United Democratic Front may have bagged only ten seats, but it succeeded
in ensuring defeat of Congress candidates in a large number of constituencies.
It is the Assam experience which has now emboldened the community to try and
replicate the model in UP.
On Monday a new Muslim party was announced
in Lucknow which has the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid as its patron and the prominent
Shia cleric, Maulana Kalbe Jawwad as its chairman.
In one word, the idea is Muslim consolidation
behind a single banner so that better concessions could be extracted from
various secularist parties. Indeed, Jawwad in his press conference said as
much when he asserted that the time had come `for us to seek participation
in power.' Complaining of discrimination against Muslims by successive governments,
including the incumbent Mulayam Singh Yadav regime, he declared that the newly-formed
group would contest about 150 seats in the Assembly elections due early next
year in UP. It was his contention that Yadavs could rule the State, even though
they numbered merely seven per cent in UP's total population.
And Mayawati too could become chief minister,
relying on the 12 per cent Dalit population. Therefore, he argued, there was
no way Muslims could be denied a share in power, since they constitute 22
per cent of the total population in UP. On sheer logic you could not fault
the founder-chairman of the People's Democratic Front, though it was understandable
as to why they refrained from incorporating Muslim in the name of the newly-minted
political grouping.
The common perception is that the new Muslim-centric
group would adversely affect the fortunes of various secularist parties, especially
the Samajwadi Party, BSP and Congress. Also it is contended that only the
BJP would stand to gain from the rise of a separate Muslim outfit. That reading
of the electoral mind in UP may not be entirely off-the-mark, but the real
fear lies in the revival of the dangerous pre-partition syndrome.
After acting as an adjunct of various secularist
parties for almost sixty years, the Muslim leadership feels emboldened enough
to go solo and seek a stake in power in its own right. But not as a multi-religious,
multi-cultural body of all Indians, but as a thinly disguised political extension
of various mosques, claiming to represent exclusively `Muslim Indians'.
Anyone remotely familiar with the history
of India's vivisection in 1947 would espy nascent signs of trouble for the
country should this exclusive group of Muslims strike roots in the country's
largest and politically most significant State.
Even honest power brokers can be one hundred
per cent nationalists. But given the pan-Islamic character of people behind
the new formation, the development would arouse grave suspicions and concerns.
