‘Secular’ parties laid ground for Owaisi outreach
For the so-called secular parties, the decision of Asaduddin Owaisi's party, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, to contest elections in States such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, is like the chickens coming home to roost. Through the decades since independence, these parties had assiduously cultivated minority vote banks, offering them the moon and delivering nothing.
Through their blatant parochial approach, they created the base for a kind of politics which gave no tangible gains — either social or economic — to members of the country's largest minority community, and yet managed to coalesce them into ‘one' political base. These parties extended the strategy to not just ludicrous but often dangerous levels, compromising even national interests in their pursuit of short-term political gains. Of course, much of those plans have been falling by the wayside in recent years as discontent among the minority community set in and they realised that they had been taken for a ride all these years.
However, the seeds that these parties sowed have sprouted and it will take time for the plants to wither completely. Meanwhile the ground these allegedly secular parties created has become fertile for the likes of Mr Owaisi to cultivate on. The AIMIM now wants to tap in on the disillusionment of the Muslims with the ‘secular' parties in various parts of the country. In principle, every political party has the right to fill a vacuum, but the AIMIM is seeking to replicate exactly the same dangerous model that the so-called secularists have over the years: Exploit real and most often than not imaginary fears and concerns of the minority community. In other words, Mr Owaisi wants to live up to the communal image that he does not fight shy of flaunting — although by his definition he is secular. The AIMIM has done enough of divisive politics in Hyderabad, and outside of it, through the speeches of its leaders From all available indications, the party is set to stay steadfast on its questionable politics across the country as well.
There is no guarantee that the AIMIM and its chief will be able to replicate in the rest of the country the success they have achieved in Hyderabad (also due to the patronage extended to them by parties such as the Congress and now the Telangana Rashtra Samithi), but they will try their best. They have a team of rabble-rousers, with Mr Owaisi and his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi in the forefront. The AIMIM had surprisingly picked up a clutch of seats in the recently-held Maharashtra Assembly election, and that has fed into the party a pan-India aspiration. In its bid to project a secular character, Mr Owaisi has lost no opportunity to dispel the impression that his is a ‘Muslim only' party. It is true that nearly 20 per cent of the candidates he put up in the Maharashtra Assembly poll were non-Muslims. But that was only symbolic; in tenor and spirit the MIM is a communal party with a very narrow agenda.