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New Delhi: In May this year, Karnataka became the fifth state in a row where the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), led by firebrand Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, failed to open its account in the assembly election, losing both the seats it had contested.
As the counting of votes in Karnataka was completed, it became evident that the rise of the Congress — which clinched a decisive victory in the polls — had queered the pitch for the Muslim-centric AIMIM, as well as the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political arm of the banned Islamist organisation Popular Front of India, with Muslim voters appearing to repose faith in the Congress. The Congress’s victory in Karnataka also contrasted with the slide-in seat share of the Janata Dal (Secular).
For the AIMIM, its performance in the 2020 Bihar assembly elections — when it won five of the 20 seats it had contested — had been a breakthrough moment.
The party has long been striving to grow beyond its citadel of Hyderabad, and following the Bihar triumph, Owaisi had declared that he had his eyes set on Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. But the AIMIM performed miserably in both states, failing to win a single seat despite Owaisi’s aggressive campaigning.
In the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls, for which the AIMIM fielded seven candidates, the party drew a blank, with a vote share of 0.02 percent in the seats it contested. In Tamil Nadu, which also went to polls with West Bengal, all three candidates fielded by the party lost, as AIMIM managed a vote share of just 0.01 percent from the three seats.
A year later, as Uttar Pradesh voted for the 2022 assembly polls, the AIMIM fielded 97 candidates. None of them won, and the party’s vote share on the seats it contested was a measly 0.49 percent.
In Uttarakhand, where assembly polls were held along with UP, all four AIMIM candidates forfeited deposits.
The Karnataka assembly polls, held on 10 May this year, saw the AIMIM field two candidates in minority-dominated seats. However, in the Hubballi-Dharwad East seat, its candidate polled around 5,600 votes, while in Basavana Bagewadi, its candidate got around 1,400 votes, as the Muslim vote bank rallied firmly behind the Congress, which got 85426 and 68126 votes in Hubbali-Dharward East and Basavana Bagevadi, respectively.
Currently, apart from its traditional stronghold of Telangana, where it has seven MLAs, the AIMIM has two MLAs in Maharashtra and an MP — Imtiyaz Jaleel — from the state’s Aurangabad constituency. The AIMIM had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
Owaisi, however, has a different take on the AIMIM’s performance.
Speaking to ThePrint Friday, he admitted that winning elections is satisfying for any politician, but pointed out that fielding candidates is also necessary to expand a party’s footprint and strengthen its organisation.
“The states where we have lost are the ones where we contested for the first time, except for Uttar Pradesh. In Bihar, we lost badly in 2015 when we contested for the first time. In 2020, we met with success,” he said.
He added: “We also fielded a very limited number of candidates in the states where we lost. Also, one must not forget that we performed well in the Uttar Pradesh municipal polls. We have 11 corporators in Meerut. Our mayoral candidate in Meerut finished second. We did well in the Madhya Pradesh civil polls as well.”
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‘Yet to gain political legitimacy’
The string of electoral defeats has not dented Owaisi’s expansion hopes.
Last week, he engaged in a verbal duel with the Congress over the question of political representation and rights of Muslims in Rajasthan, where elections are due in five months.
While Owaisi reportedly accused the Congress, which is in power in Rajasthan, of remaining silent on “injustices” against the Muslim community, the Ashok Gehlot government shot back, calling AIMIM the “B-team” of the rival BJP, which is making a concerted push to return to power in the desert state ahead of the 2024 general elections.
To many, the script which played out in Jaipur will ring familiar, as in state after state, Owaisi’s outfit, which practices a brand of politics anchored in the Muslim identity, has invited similar accusations from not just the Congress, but many other non-BJP parties that are claimants of the secular political space.
Political analyst Afroz Alam believes the AIMIM’s string of electoral defeats is not surprising as the party is yet to gain political legitimacy in the eyes of Indian Muslims.
“If you look at the voting behaviour of Indian Muslims, they have hardly rallied behind so-called Muslim parties, apart from exceptions like the All India United Democratic Front in Assam and Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala, where regional factors are more prominent than religious issues,” Alam, head of the Department of Political Science at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University, told ThePrint.
However, like Owaisi himself, Alam also pointed out that the AIMIM has made its presence felt in local body elections in many states.
Another long-time observer of the AIMIM, who teaches at a reputed public university, shared a similar view. Speaking to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, the AIMIM observer added that the party’s outsized representation in the discursive sphere cannot be underplayed either.
“There is also a utilitarian value of the party. It can give political space to the rising aspirations of Muslim youth who may not be accommodated by the traditional parties that claim to represent secular, social justice politics. In Bihar, for example, the five candidates that won on AIMIM tickets did not have any long association with the party. That is why, the moment they felt that they did not stand to gain anything in the long run by their association with the AIMIM, they switched loyalties,” Alam said.
In June 2022, four MLAs who had won under the banner of AIMIM joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar. Only the AIMIM state president and Amour MLA Akhtarul Iman remains with the party.
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A question for Muslims
According to some political scholars, the spatial distribution of Muslims — who account for 14 percent of India’s total population according to the 2011 Census — also makes the presence of a pan-India Muslim party unviable, at least at the level of the Lok Sabha.
Adnan Farooqui, an associate professor of political science at Jamia Millia Islamia, stated in his paper, Political representation of a minority: Muslim representation in contemporary India, published in India Review in 2020, the “geographical spread of the community has been a principal factor detrimental to the formation of viable Muslim-led parties and its continuous preference of mainstream parties both at the national and regional level”.
Muslims voters are in majority in only 15 of India’s 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, including five in Jammu & Kashmir and one in Lakshadweep, according to the paper, which added that at that time Muslim MPs accounted for only five percent of the total Lok Sabha MPs, according to the paper.
“The First Past The Post system makes it difficult for a dispersed group to form a political platform exclusively representing their interests, as the exclusive pursuit of community interest might alienate others, and prevent their preferred party from reaching a plurality at the constituency level,” the paper added.
However, the AIMIM’s failure to leave a mark even in states like West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh which, with Bihar, have a large concentration of Muslims (UP 19.28 percent, Bengal 27.01 percent and Bihar 16.87 percent, according to 2011 Census comparative analysis) have sparked questions on the future of the party, which was established in 1927 as Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad.
Owaisi told ThePrint: “This question is for the Muslim community, not Owaisi. There must be shortcomings within us which we need to address. But more importantly, the Muslim community needs to come out of the trap that ‘all we should care about is our survival, that our existence is at stake’.”
He alleged: “Yes, Muslims and Dalits are at the receiving end of more atrocities compared to others, but issues of development, schools, hospitals, roads, should also matter to us and figure in our politics,” adding that the Muslim youth gives him hope as they have realised that “one-way traffic cannot continue anymore”.
‘Hindu right and Muslim right need each other’
The form of politics which the AIMIM currently practices, which is rooted in Constitutionalism, traces its genesis to Owaisi’s grandfather Abdul Wahed Owaisi, who later passed on the baton to his son Salahuddin Owaisi.
Asaduddin Owaisi took over the party reins in 2008, the same year he entered the Lok Sabha, winning the Hyderabad constituency, which the AIMIM has held since 1984.
While Owaisi is trying to carve out an independent political space now, till 2012, the AIMIM was part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
For now, despite a spate of electoral reverses, there are no signs of any rethink in political strategy on Owaisi’s part.
His take on the ongoing efforts to give shape to a joint opposition front to challenge the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls is a case in point.
“Look at the Patna meeting [of parties in opposition to the BJP at the Centre]. Who turned up there? (People’s Democratic Party chief) Mehbooba Mufti, who is personally responsible for allowing the BJP to gain a foothold in Jammu & Kashmir and its eventual bifurcation and abrogation of Article 370. Nitish Kumar quit as Bihar CM and then became the CM again with BJP’s support. (West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress chief) Mamata Banerjee publicly flaunts her gotra. So, what is their ideological fight with the BJP?” Owaisi asked.
Alam underlined that the AIMIM may not have winnability, but it will continue to have an overbearing presence in the political discourse as more and more parties hesitate to speak vocally on issues concerning the rights of Muslims
“The role of AIMIM is not about the percentage of votes. It is more about shaping the political attitude of people. While few may vote for it, many will consolidate in favour of other parties that will whip up sentiments or polarise using the former’s name. After all, the Hindu right wing and Muslim right wing are in existential need of each other. One cannot exist without the other,” he said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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