Khurpi
  • Home
  • Politics
  • Culture
  • Gender
  • Personal Features
Politics 0

Why Muslim support for the Aam Aadmi Party will only grow with time

By Adil Hossain @adilhossain · On February 25, 2014

Share on Facebook

Facebook

0Tweet about this on Twitter

Twitter

Share on LinkedIn

Linkedin

Pin on Pinterest

Pinterest

0

In political circles, it is generally understood that Muslims in India have largely been supporting the Congress party since independence. Even though after Babri Mosque demolition in the early 90s, their faith in the Congress leadership was shattered to some extent, their support for the party continued as it was seen as the only viable force to stop communalism in the country. (It is futile here to go into the history of communal riots in India and the dubious role the Congress played in many of them.)

In the last Delhi Assembly elections, this trend could be seen even after emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the third party in the fray along with the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is said that owing to the Narendra Modi factor, Muslims remained committed to the Congress and gave them a face-saver of five seats in the Muslim-dominated areas in that election. But has the situation changed now after Kejriwal decided to bring down his own government over the Jan Lokpal Bill and expand the national presence of his party? Will the ongoing Reliance Gas pricing controversy have any bearing on the Muslim support to the AAP?

The answer is ‘yes’ and it can be fairly assumed that Muslims will indeed support Arvind Kejriwal and his party, the AAP, in greater numbers in the coming times. First of all, the Congress is no longer the only secular alternative present to them. Kejriwal is targeting established political parties on four major issues and communalism is one of them. Though he interestingly avoided mentioning secularism explicitly as the AAP’s objective till date (possibly because the Hindu right is very active with the pseudo-secularism and sickularism discourse), but he has never stopped short of condemning communalism as an election issue in the next Lok Sabha polls.

Just yesterday (24th February), at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, in a gathering of Muslim academics and intelligentsia, he went on to term communalism as a bigger threat than graft in India. This political strategy of branding the AAP as an anti-communal force will go down well with the Muslim voters and they would be more committed towards the party in stopping the Modi wave.

Till now, Modi smartly handled any attack on him on account of his alleged complicity in the Gujarat riots in 2002, and moreover, the recent court verdicts and SIT reports blunted such attacks from his critics to a great extent. Any debate on communalism today also leads to an inevitable reference to the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, where the Congress party played the same alleged role as the Gujarat BJP did in 2002.

On the other hand, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had until recently established himself as  a vanguard against communal forces, has  become the non-saffron Modi for many Muslims given his party’s total failure in containing the Muzaffarnagar riots and rehabilitating the victims. Therefore, Muslims are increasingly finding it difficult to hold the hands of opportunistically secular and opportunistically communal parties like the Congress or the  Samajvadi Party and fight Modi on account of communalism.

Arvind Kejriwal, during his 49-day government, not only condemned communalism but also showed his strong commitment to tackle it by forming an SIT to probe the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984. His argument that even though the BJP ruled both the state  and centre but never took any action on the anti-Sikh riots shows that they only shed crocodile tears over riots, holds water. Muslims would join the AAP with great enthusiasm now as with all these steps, the AAP is emerging as credible voice against communalism and is attacking both the Congress and the BJP at the same time.

The ongoing Kejriwal-Ambani tussle over the KG basin gas pricing issue is also going to impress a lot of Muslim voters. The simple reason is that it embarrasses Narendra Modi, and the BJP is conspicuously silent over the issue. If today, the Congress showcases its secularism card and the BJP its governance card, then the AAP represents itself as a party committed to fight corruption. And here, Muslim voters are attempting to make a broad alliance with other citizens who may not care about secularism given the Congress’s involvement in scam after scam, but are serious about fighting corruption by joining forces with the AAP, and it’s not like Muslims don’t feel strongly about corruption either.

Moreover, the political currency of corruption as an issue is bigger than religious rightism among the contemporary social media-friendly urban youths today. The 2011 Jan Lokpal movement led by Anna and his then aide Kejriwal which worked as a serious catalyst to make corruption as prime issue for the next general elections, partly helped the BJP to corner the Congress. Therefore, today, Narendra Modi and his party feel more perplexed when they receive brickbats on corruption rather than communalism. And Arvind Kejriwal, as a master political strategist, made corruption his main weapon by attacking Modi due to his silence on the gas pricing issue or on convicted members of his Cabinet.

Neither Rahul Gandhi nor Mulayam Singh Yadav can use this currency of corruption as they have many skeletons in their closet. The same goes for other regional leaders as well. Muslims can’t expect that Rahul Gandhi or any other leader would corner Modi on the gas pricing issue or ask questions about his dubious relationship with the Ambani or Adani group, as such corporates often receive more patronage from the Congress. But Kejriwal is standing tall on this issue and is bound to get huge support from the Muslim community.

However, to sustain this faith among the Muslim voters, a few more visible actions will be required from the AAP. There has been some criticism of their first list of Lok Sabha candidates as they mostly target the senior leaders of Congress and not of the BJP. In the battle of perception, the question of a probable AAP candidate against Modi (wherever he is fielded by the BJP) is also going to impact the choice of many Muslim voters. Will he or she be someone as strong as senior AAP leader and poet Kumar Viswas?

But one thing is clear, and that is that even as a new party, the AAP has made inroads into the traditional Muslim voters who seriously consider them as an alternative today. Nany of my Muslim friends on Facebook, who were, until now, just anti-Modi in their attitude and otherwise apolitical, are now openly expressing support for the AAP, while some are even actively joining the party. However, it will be interesting to see how the party is going to engage with the community on critical socioeconomic and cultural issues that affect them. Ultimately, this will decide the future course of the relationship the AAP will share with Muslim voters.

Share on Facebook

Facebook

0Tweet about this on Twitter

Twitter

Share on LinkedIn

Linkedin

Pin on Pinterest

Pinterest

0

Aam Aadmi PartyArvind KejriwalIndian MuslimsMukesh AmbaniReliance KG-D6 Gas deal
Adil Hossain

Adil Hossain

Adil Hossain is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Khurpi. He is presently enrolled as fully funded D.Phil International Development student at University of Oxford. Earlier he finished his MA Development and Rights at Goldsmiths, University of London on a Commonwealth Scholarship and MA Mass Communication from Aligarh Muslim University.Outlook magazine in 2010 profiled him among the top five youth Right to Information(RTI) Activists in India. He has earlier published in The Guardian, Scroll, Catch, DailyO, Sunday Guardian among others. Email adil.hossain@merton.ox.ac.uk

You Might Also Like

  • Politics

    More Embarrasment for Donald Trump

  • Politics

    A Critical Appraisal of the Samajwadi Party Government in UP

  • Culture

    Sarbjit: An Evocative Representation of a Truly Tragic Story

Subscribe to Khurpi

Get Articles in your inbox, it's FREE

Recent Articles

  • Notes on lonliness and living through a pandemic
  • Notes on undoing academic elitism
  • Why is Secret Superstar problematic and yet commendable?
  • The Sexual Politics of Dupatta
  • More Embarrasment for Donald Trump
  • Home
  • About
  • Our Team
  • Write for us
  • Comments Policy

About Khurpi

At Khurpi, we say we dig deep into everything. We don’t believe in reading the surface but in deep analysis of what’s happening around us. We question at every step and focus on the solutions. Why politics is mired with cynicism today? Why ethnocultural identities prosper even in the age of globalisation? Why we continue to live in a gendered world where patriarchy is still very much the norm? Read more

Search the Site

Archives

  • November 2020
  • June 2019
  • December 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014

Contributors

Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury
Surangama Guha

More

© 2014 Khurpi.com, Inc. All rights reserved.