Saba Naqvi
Senior journalist
Beyond the oscillating battle between the NDA and Mahagathbandhan (MGB or Grand Alliance), both with similar voting quotas, Bihar had other stories to tell. The most significant would be the good show of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), led by Asaduddin Owaisi, who won five seats (out of 20) and by the CPI (ML) who won 12 of the 19 contested as part of the alliance led by RJD. Both parties operate in the space that makes the conservative middle ground uncomfortable. In the age of quick-labeling and stereotyping, one is seen as a ‘Muslim first’ party and the other as the ‘far left’, to use the language of TV presenters.
The CPI (ML) has a history in Bihar as part of the struggles for land and workers, but electorally, the party was fading to insignificance before the alliance allowed them to rally their support for the RJD and publish the best strike rate of all parties in the Grand Alliance led by Tejashwi Yadav.
Yet it is the five seats won by AIMIM that have garnered even greater interest in an age when media narratives thrive in a Hindu-Muslim binary. First, AIMIM’s victories show that Muslim votes are divided into areas where the community has a large presence. Well, some of those votes in seats won by AIMIM have surely gone to MGB candidates, as we see in the data of the Electoral Commission. Whether in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, both states with regional parties, Muslim votes are fragmented in areas where the community has a large presence and multiple options, while that of Hindus living in such areas actually consolidates.
Second, AIMIM’s performance is also reflected in the failure of India’s secular project. As citizenship rights, the rights of the country’s largest minority community are reduced, and its representation in legislatures and Parliament and other elected bodies is reduced, it should come as no surprise that Owaisi, Hyderabad’s MP since 2004, can spread its wings in other parts of the country. The fundamental message in his speeches is to urge Muslims to hold their heads high in the face of a majority tide.
It is arguably the strongest and most significant Muslim voice in Indian public life today. However, the question that continues to follow him is whether he is a vote cutter, a BJP agent, or the last man to represent the Muslims of India. However, in the specific context of the recent Bihar elections, he was not a simple vote cutter like the LJP’s Chirag Paswan was, which means taking away enough votes from another party to ensure defeat, but failing to win one. same.
Owaisi was a winner and the allegation that he helped the BJP win 10 seats (AIMIM contested 20) can be challenged on the grounds that the NDA’s margin of victory in most of these seats was greater than the votes obtained by the AIMIM. But since the elections are also about chemistry, there is a counterargument that their presence in certain seats would have been a catalyst for pro-NDA trends.
The arguments around Owaisi become more interesting when you look at the congressional charge that he is a BJP agent. Since Congress is not the first choice of Muslims in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it amounts to staggering arrogance, akin to saying how dare you step into the arena we want to be in (even if we’re failing). Hawaii’s own clever response has been to say that Congress wants him to sit at home, serve biryani, and attend mushairas.
In other words, he is saying that Congress views Muslims as a stereotype, while failing miserably to represent the community. As the Bihar contest has had divided caste parties extracting their pounds of meat and cutting votes openly or covertly on behalf of the BJP, it is undeniable that Owaisi is in that special straitjacket within which he is tried.
Likewise, it also has higher ambitions than most caste-specific regional parties. Some of the experiments follow invitations from different states and he intends to run for some seats in West Bengal next year and Uttar Pradesh the following year. AIMIM’s success in Bihar has also been based on the failure of the 2015 elections when Owaisi ran candidates in six seats, won zero, and lost deposits in five.
But the structure of AIMIM began to take shape in these parts when they kept the groundwork: a Kishenganj candidate got three lakhs of votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, won an Assembly seat by election (although they lost that seat now), became involved in flood relief and assisting returning migrants and also engaged in protests against the CAA, where Congress and RJD were not seen. Therefore, there is a constant foundation behind what appears to be a new phenomenon.
The same applies to the CPI (ML), whose cadres have been on the ground for decades, tackling the most sensitive issues in Bihar: oppression, the fight for land rights, the right to access water and so on, often against organized upper-caste landowners in Bihar. alliance with the famous Bahubalis or Dons of Bihar. In 2020, the cadres were also active during the reverse migration months, helping the poorest on the ground. Many of those elected to the CPI (ML) are also under 40 years old and have a background in student politics. There is also a veteran, Mehboob Alam, a brave ground fighter who wins a mandate in the Assembly for the third time, in this round of Balrampur in Katihar. These are campaigns that happen without the fuss of the big rallies, but mostly by walking from house to house.
India is the most complex multicultural and multilingual society in the world run by modern democratic structures. Bihar’s great story is fundamentally about castes, coalition arithmetic, and one that had better strike rate and last-mile connectivity in a first-after-pole system. But the people of India’s third most populous state had many other stories to share.
Some trusted colleagues who came to their aid through the worst economic crisis in recent times. And in another part of the state, Muslim admiration for Asaduddin Owaisi has combined with his alienation from traditional politics to begin voting for AIMIM on the inherited Indian, regional and national parties, who claim to be the masters of secularism without be able to do it. to protect it.
