Asaduddin Owaisi lectures us on secularism
The cheek of it! Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi, says that his party will prevent Mr Narendra Modi from becoming the country's Prime Minister because he does not want the nation to fall into the hands of “communal forces”. Mr Owaisi must first look within and see the hate propaganda that he, his brother and other members of the MIM have been promoting in the name of religion. His entire politics has been based on the theory of divisiveness, and it represents largely the so-called interests of the minority community in Andhra Pradesh — and particularly the city of Hyderabad which his party has converted into a communal hotspot with their rabble-rousing. The fact that he had an alliance in the recent past with mainstream parties such as the Congress, does not give him the tag of being secular. Nor does it accord him the licence to pass judgements on others. Mr Owaisi must remember that the people of the country, and not he and his party, will decide on the Prime Minister's choice. In any case, with only a handful of elected members in Parliament and the State legislature, Mr Owaisi is hardly in a position to do such grandstanding. The only way he can attempt (though not successfully) to achieve his goal is to arouse passions in the minds of people who can be misled by his dangerous propaganda. To do that, he has the able support of his family members, besides the MIM cadre which has been fully brainwashed into seeing merit in his bilious campaigns. His allegation that a section of the media has been presenting a larger-than-life image of the Gujarat Chief Minister is ridiculous. The fact is that the media has largely been less than supportive of Mr Modi, and yet the Chief Minister has managed one electoral victory after another. That has been possible only because he has had overwhelming support of the people of his State — and that includes the minorities. They are people who determine their stand not on the rubbish that people like Mr Owaisi dish out but on the basis of the politics of development which Mr Modi has brought into Gujarat. Therefore, instead of making futile bids to prevent Mr Modi from becoming Prime Minister, the MIM leader must concentrate on revamping his obnoxious brand of politics. Because, Mr Owaisi’s politics is not good for the country.
As for the MIM chief's boast that Andhra Pradesh Police's attempts to derail his political campaign in general by imprisoning party leaders will not work, the fact is that the State's police has been rather generous to him and his close associates. For instance, it took the police several days and sustained media pressure after his brother and MlA Akbaruddin Owaisi recently delivered a hate speech against the Hindu community, to act against him. Many times in the past, MIM leaders have escaped action because the Congress-led Governments in the State and the Centre have handled them with kid gloves.