Role of Muslim votes in Maharashtra poll 2014

-Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

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The Great Divide

In a nation like India where Hindutva majority parties are hailed as extra patriotic and nationalistic while similar Islamic parties are  viewed as ultra anti-national and communal the state cannot  be expected to be fair with the minority Muslims. That is the cruel fate of Indian Muslims but when Muslims themselves play into the dirty hands that operate against Islam and Muslims should be watched with utmost care and caution as Maharashtra, a fast emerging Hindu communal state, now going to poll to elect a new assembly. 

Muslims, the major minority in India, faces a real existential problem as they are being forced by political campaigners from public platforms to fear the Hindutva forces and to choose a particular political party, namely say Congress party or Samajwadi party. All these years Muslims have betrayed their conscience in selecting political outfits for casting their valuable votes.

Both the Congress party and BJP have strong bonds built through their RSS linkages and hence the Congress party considers RSS more important than Muslims and hence does not criticize RSS.

Interestingly, such has been the usual perception-gimmick of the Congress party that used the “threat” of saffron parties to coerce the Muslims to vote for Congress party. Congress would  offer some  money and privileges (including  a ministerial berth) to some Muslims who work as vote bank agents for Congress party but that only aggravated the general  plight of Muslims in India

Congress party which ruled India for maximum number of years with full support of Muslims, never took the Hindutva communal political issue to the Apex Court for a final ruling because it wants the Hindu-Muslim animosity to continue so that it could use the Muslim votes by presenting the Hindu communal forces as a serious threat to Muslims, so that the terrorized Muslims are forced to support the Congress party.

How can Muslims support a party like Congress that has historically deceived Muslim community and took their votes for free?

Demolition of historic Babri Mosque was a deep rooted conspiracy by the Hindu leaders in the Congress government that used the ultra Hindutva communal organizations to pull the monumental Mosque in UP down like wild beasts in 1992. 

How can Muslims trust the Congress party which deliberately delays the court judgment and allows all fake documents to be presented to the courts to save the Hindutva criminals for their crimes on December 06, 1992?  Even as December 06 remains the national shame of secular India, a Keralite and Islamic pundit Abdul Nassar Madani has been in various Indian jails from Kerala to Tamilmadu to Karnataka and clearly it is Congress party that punishes him by false criminal cases, even after the courts acquitted him of all criminal cases once, for opposing Hindutva forces long back. While the Supreme Court wants to save Madani from the Hindutva-Congress conspiracies it is again the Congress government in Karnataka that blocks him  from release by  producing fake testimonies.  This anti-Muslim cause Congress party has only helped the BJP and other Hindutva parties.  Why should Muslims continue to support the Congress party and compensate for the loss of its Hindu votes to BJP and allies?

Maharashtra

So much so, Indian Muslims are only interested in escaping the onslaught of Hindutva forces and have no time to care about their own plight in the country. Ironically, Muslims j oust blindly vote for  the so-called secular party,  the Congress party, even though it  is  this party which is primarily responsible for the present communal tensions in the country by being insensitive to the Hindutva communal threat to National fabric and by its refusal to deal the problem  through the judiciary. . 

The anti-Muslim problem is extremely serious in Maharashtra where the Hindutva forces, BJP and Siva Sena, very strong for the very reasons and sure of winning the assembly this time, are now fighting for the chief minister’s post even before the poll is conducted. The ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress coalition is not sure about anything.  

Maharashtra assembly elections are round the corner, 288 seats to go for polls on 15th October and as usual the anxiety of Muslims in the state have started to build up for two major reasons – to keep communal parties at bay and to increase Muslim representation in the assembly.

Muslims make up 11-12% of the population in Maharashtra state and hence have the possible strength in proving vital during elections if their votes are not divided. Generally, Muslims vote for the candidates suggested by their leaders.

The worries of Muslims always crop up only days before elections - parliamentary or assembly. Barely a section of the community in reality bothers about the actual strategy months before elections to achieve these two goals in the elections which basically rest at almost all Muslims’ heart. Even though these are main concerns of Muslims but the community never prepares a united strategy to accomplish the common objective. 

There are so called pro-Muslim parties in Maharashtra who are eyeing to fight assembly polls from Muslim majority areas. These are Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Awami Vikas Party, Welfare Party of India, Samajwadi Party (SP) and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslemeen (AIMIM). Although SP is not purely Muslim party but is the strongest Party mostly preferred by Mumbai Muslims who both oppose Congress and have not found any credible Muslim party. .

As of now these parties have not allied together plus there is no apparent possibility of alliance between SP and AIMIM. AIMIM has made a grand entry into Maharashtra with Akbaruddin Owaisi holding a huge rally in Mumbai this week where he announced of fielding candidates from Muslim majority areas in the upcoming elections with the motive of increasing Muslim representation in the assembly so as to raise community issues more rigorously. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which has a strong presence in Kerala has announced of fighting from all 20 Muslim majority seats in and around Mumbai. Former police commissioner Shamsher Khan Pathan led Awami Vikas Party has also announced of fielding candidates from all Mumbai seats. Three years before launched Welfare Party of India has also declared of fighting on 80 seats. The worries of Muslims always crop up only days before elections - parliamentary or assembly. Barely a section of the community in reality bothers about the actual strategy months before elections to achieve these two goals in the elections which basically rest at almost all Muslims’ heart. Even though these are main concerns of Muslims but the community never prepares a united strategy to accomplish the common objective.

Muslims in the communally sensitive state are known to least vote for SS and BJP rather they are identified to choose INC-NCP candidates due to their secular stand.

With an eye on the coming Assembly election, the Congress-NCP ruled state government in Maharashtra has announced 16 percent reservation in government jobs and education for the politically powerful Maratha community and 5 percent reservation for Muslims. With this, the total reservations for various communities in Maharashtra reach 73 percent.

However, Muslims should accept this reservation as bribe for their votes for the ruling Congress-NCP combines and should vote according to their conscience. They should vote to those who they are sure stand for Muslims.  

Poll

Pathetic looking Indian Muslims are getting ready to vote in Maharashtra that is going to polls shortly. As the explosive communal issue targeting Muslims and Islam in India has systematically denied the Muslims their due place in the country as Hindutva parties, aided by Indian national Congress party, entirely succeeded in employing anti-Muslims and anti-Pakistan rhetoric tailored for poll in public meetings to garner Hindu votes.

Muslims comprise more than 16 per cent of the Maharashtra state population and have sizable presence in at least 30 assembly constituencies but they haven’t got adequate representation in the state legislature and Parliament. Despite having more than 10 million Muslim populations, there is not a single Muslim representative in the Lok Sabha (parliament) from the state since 2009. State Muslims are deeply concern over their declining political representation in state and national legislatures.  They now want to showcase their real strength in the s assembly poll to start with. There are 16 Muslim-dominated constituencies in Mumbai city itself apart from minority pockets like Mumbra and Bhiwandi, Aurangabad, Malegaon, Nanded, Akola and Prabhani.  However, Samajwadi party led by Abu Asim Azmi that holds sway in Mumbai and its sub-urban areas is keen to garner maximum Muslim votes.

Maharashtra's over 8.28 crore voters will vote in a single-phase, one-day poll on October 15 to elect its 13th 288-member assembly and its 18th chief minister.  The results will be declared on October 19, and in case of a clear verdict, the new government may assume office around the time of Diwali, even though the existing assembly's term expires only on November 8.  Of the 288 seats, 29 and 25 each have been reserved for SC and ST candidates. The by-poll for the parliamentary seat of Beed, vacated following the death of BJP leader Gopinath Munde, will also be held on October 15. The last date of nomination for candidates is September 27. Voters will get to exercise the NOTA (none of the above) option like in the recent parliamentary elections. An experiment this time is the VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail), a system where voters at around 3,942 polling stations in 13 seats across the state will get to verify if their votes have been cast correctly. VVPAT is a method of providing feedback to voters using a slip (akin to one we get after ATM transactions) which tells you which candidate and party you have voted for. It helps verify that the vote has been cast and can thus detect possible election fraud or malfunction. It also helps in auditing the stored electronic results. 

The BJP showed better performance in Maharashtra than Sena in the Lok Sabha Elections 2014. The saffron alliance won 42 out of 48 seats and despite the traditional dominance of the Sena, the BJP bagged 23 seats while Sena could win 18 seats only. Keeping in mind the spectacular performance of the BJP in the last assembly elections and the 2014 general elections, the party now wants equal seat-share so that after the polls if the saffron alliance forms the government, BJP could claim the chief ministerial post in Maharashtra.BJP and Shiv Sena have been poll partners in Maharashtra since 1988 and have fought all polls together since then. But the rift between them is increasing. The Sena and BJP should resolve their conflict soon or else it will benefit the ruling Congress-NCP alliance that might be enjoying the current situation of its opponents.

The BJP won 23 seats in the LS polls in the state as against Shiv Sena's 18. With a government at centre, BJP is now fighting hard for more number of seats in the Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2014.  The seat-sharing crisis between Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra is getting worse day the day. Although Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) asserted that it wants to continue its alliance with the BJP, but also rejected the demand of equal seats made by the BJP in the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly Elections scheduled to be held on October 15. The BJP proposed that after allotting the respective share of seats to smaller alliance partners, the remaining seats be divided equally between Sena and BJP.  The BJP party is eager to contest the upcoming elections in Maharashtra from 135 of the total 288 seats. The two parties are at loggerheads not only over the seat-sharing issue but also over projecting the chief ministerial candidate for Maharashtra. While the Sena chief recently expressed his desire to become CM of Maharashtra, the BJP is saying that this issue should be discussed after the polls.

Consolidation

Consolidation of Muslim votes is absolutely necessary but not  for national parties like Congress or BJP or SP but for the cause of Muslims and Islam. Unlike others, Muslims live for Islam and hence they are expected to choose Islamic path of life. .

The Hyderabad- based All India   Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)’s decision of contesting Maharashtra state assembly elections for the first time in its political history is a welcome move. There have been pressures from within the MIM for long time to contest polls at national level to consolidate the Muslim vote banks. In fact, the MIM has been a Hyderabad based party till today as it never contested in other places in Andhra Pradesh. But Owaisi family members who control the party which is controlling the party did not extend its political base beyond Hyderabad-Secunderabad twin cities. The decision of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) to contest the Maharashtra poll has made the ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) nervous as both fear that MIM may split Muslim and “secular” votes that will pave the way for ‘fascist combine’ of BJP-Sivasena in the state. That some prominent Dalit and OBC-based parties also support the MIM as their policy in Hyderabad has clearly upset the calculations of Congress party. They now argue that MIM’ presence in Maharashtra would give a cake-walk to the Saffron alliance.  The party has decided to contest at least 10 seats from Mumbai and Thane and will be targeting Muslim and Dalit votes. 

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) came into being way back in 1928 with a view to keeping Hyderabad state independent. However, it was proscribed after India’s independence but got revived in 1958. So it has presence in Marathwada since a long time which was the part of erstwhile Hyderabad state. There is a beautiful Islamic monument resembling the world famous Taj Mahal (known as Bibi ki maghbara in Aurangabad built for Emperor Aurangzeb) in Marathwada region which is major tourist attraction today. This would be for the first time that the MIM will contest any assembly elections outside Andhra PradeshThe MIM was revived by Abdul Wahid Owaisi, who was a lawyer by profession. He restructured the Party and organised it into All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. After his death, his son Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi took control of the party in 1975 and was referred to as Salar E Millat (commander of the community).  During his lifetime, Salar E Millat has passed the baton of the party to his eldest son Asaduddin Owaisi that triggered revolt in the party.  Party MLA Amanullah Khan broke the rank with the party by forming Majlis Bacho Tehreek in protest but the MBT disappeared soon. Although, it has retained Hyderabad parliamentary seat since 1984 but its presence is limited in and around the Old City of Hyderabad.   In June 2014, Election Commission has recoganised AIMIM as state party in Telangana. It contested on 35  seats (20 in Telangana and 15 in Seemandhra) and six Parliamentary seats  in undivided Andhra Pradesh, but  failed to increase its tally seven Assembly seats and  lone Lok Sabha seat of Old Hyderabad city.

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Congress and NCP are trying to dissuade MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi MP to drop his plan as the move will help the BJP-Shiv Sena combine. But Owaisi seems to be adamant as Maharashtra has the fourth largest Muslim population after Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar in the country. While in successive elections to the state assembly, the number of legislators from the Community has come down steadily as state has become a communal hotbed due to Shiv Sena’s ‘hate politics’ and Congress-led state government’s mealy-mouthed” response to the communal forces.  Muslims feel politically aggravated as they get raw deal from the two major political formations namely Congress and the NCP as both ruled the state except brief period since the formation of state in 1960. It seems that the MIM wants to exploits these aggrieved sentiments of the Muslims in the state. Owaisi says Majlis has come here to ensure that Muslims get the respect they deserve. The Maharashtra’s coalition government led by the Congress did nothing to uplift the Muslim community as they lag behind in every sphere of public life and innocent Muslims are being framed in false terror cases to make Hindus happy. 

Muslims should consider that multiplicity of Muslim candidates will mar the chances of winning Muslim candidates as happened in UP and Rajasthan. There is no denying the fact that Muslims are unhappy with ruling coalition parties blaming them for not transferring Hindu votes to their Muslim candidates and not giving enough tickets. 

Whether or not the Muslim parties can really  help  Muslims advance their legitimate  concerns and genuine interests in India, now in Maharashtra, but one thing is sure: if they win their presence can be a healthy morale booster  for the terrorized Indian Muslims. 

Destiny

The emergence of all Hindu communal parties in India obviously got the endorsement of the Congress party which decides Indian polity. India employs the Hindutva forces to control the Muslims in the country.

As Muslims in India try to find their place in an increasingly saffronized India, they need to first give up their artificial fear  of BJP or Siva Sena  since they only try to  take away Hindu votes from the corrupt and discredited Congress party. Indian Muslims should try to understand the Congress party's communal politics in order to promote Hindutva forces as its historic policy.  

No political party can rule India or states permanently but Muslims leaders should ensure that Muslims get their legitimate shares in development, education, jobs, among other domains.

BJP which won landslide victory just months ago in Parliament is now losing by-elections in a few states now and they would like to get Muslim votes as well in Maharashtra to win more se to form government. Similarly Congress also needs the Muslim votes.  It would be better now for Muslims to Muslim candidates who have genuine interests in Islam and Muslims.

Generally parliament polls are different form assembly polls where issues are localized. The overt rhetoric by saffron bands against Muslims seems to have already dented the BJP vote banks in UP and Rajasthan. However, any gain by the Congress is also stationary. .

Instead of supporting political parties, Indian Muslims should be far away from party politics and decide their own fate by choosing the candidates who are committed to true Islamic path of life to protect their genuine interests. A poll understanding of Muslims with political parties should be in the open domain and in public. Secret pacts are not good for Indian Muslims. 

Congress party as taken the Muslim vote banks in India for granted as Muslims fear the Hindutva parties and vote for Congress party as a lesser evil. One Muslim leader pointed to how only two Muslims had been nominated by the Congress and NCP from Marathwada, despite its large Muslim population. Defending the decision, senior Owaisi MP said: “We decided not to fight Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra as we wanted to check BJP and Shiv Sena. But Congress and NCP failed miserably in doing so”. 

Indian Muslims who account for 16-20 percent of votes in the polls need to take their future seriously, if they want their children to live as dignified citizens of India. By continuing to support a discredited and most corrupt Congress party, Muslims are only projecting themselves as weak people for the Congress to kick once it comes to power, using the communal forces to terrorize them.  

The role of Muslim votes in Maharashtra assembly poll outcomes is important and Muslims are expected to be wise and not to get involved in party politics. As it stands there Is not a national or regional party  which stands for Muslims. . 

If Muslim votes get divided, that will affect future of Muslims themselves. If both the major candidates happen to be from the same community, a non-Muslim gets elected even in Muslim dominated constituencies. .

Unfortunately, Muslims in India, both nationally and regionally, have not yet produced sincere leaders who work selflessly for the community.  As a result, the leaders themselves betray the Muslims. The leaders thrive working as agents of Muslim vote banks.  The government employs them and also threatening them to be punished for being Muslims for no crimes.

Hopefully, Maharashtrian Muslims sill show a proper path to Indian Muslims.