Marching across the plains of poll-bound Uttar Pradesh is a scholarly band of Muslim academics and preachers, students and laymen. They have waded into the state바카라s electoral battle from universities in Delhi and Allahabad, Kanpur and Lucknow, to try and achieve what has never been done before바카라to mobilise a concrete, unified Muslim votebank.
The group바카라s aim is to foster a Muslim-Dalit alliance and for this they have been visiting, secretly, each and every constituency for the last six months. 바카라Our aim is to bring all Muslims together on one platform,바카라 says Adeeb Hasan, a JNU scholar who has been spearheading the effort. 바카라We worked secretly through the last six months for we did not want to polarise the Hindu voters against the Bahujan Samaj Party.바카라
The group, which is now headed for the villages around Varanasi, as the last two phases of the polls approach, claims to be 4,000-strong. They are trying to convince rural Muslim voters to hold political parties accountable before casting their lot with any formation. This they do by splitting into smaller groups, who fan out into villages and visit individual mosques in pairs. Here, between the last namaz on the night before polling and the first namaz on voting day, they hold meetings at mosques, in which they persuade voters to select the elephant symbol of the BSP in polling booths.
Their refrain: for democracy to deepen among Muslim voters, parties seeking their votes need to fulfil, not just make, promises. They feel that the ruling Samajwadi Party, which has forged an electorally successful Muslim-Yadav alliance, created and fuelled communal disharmony, and that it did not keep promises made to the poor, like granting 18 per cent reservation to Muslims. 바카라Maulanas and imams know beforehand that we would be visiting. So, after prayers, we are introduced as well-intentioned independent persons who want the Muslims to vote for their betterment,바카라 says Hasan.
Significantly, the 바카라450 communal incidents바카라 in UP during SP rule belie its claim of making Muslims feel secure. 바카라That is why we have been convincing imams and maulanas of rural mosques to proclaim support for the BSP,바카라 says Hasan. 바카라Because we don바카라t want Muslims to vote just for a false sense of security.바카라
Akhilesh Yadav with Muslims at an Iftar party in Lucknow
In UP바카라s altogether perplexing electoral scenario, both the BSP and the SP have vociferously engaged in a tussle for votes from 18 per cent of the state바카라s population바카라the Muslims. Also, the social salience of a group of educated Muslims asking a switch of mandate from the SP to the BSP has never been tested before. Nor, importantly, have Muslims ever voted en bloc.
바카라Far more credence is being given to the notion of a Muslim votebank,바카라 says Khalid Anis Ansari, a professor at Glocal Law School in Saharanpur. 바카라The idea is nonsense.바카라 A unified Muslim voter, he feels, is absurd also considering the manner in which the UP polls are playing out this time. 바카라It바카라s every constituency for itself, every candidate for himself. There바카라s more confusion among voters than usual and there is no wave or pattern. How would Muslims be swayed either way?바카라
Indeed, on a balance, the on-the-road sense in UP is that Muslims have largely stood by the Samajwadi alliance, whether from confusion or ennui, a 바카라sense of security바카라 or the ruling party바카라s 바카라development바카라 works, or by calculation바카라by combining forces with the Congress the SP is in a stronger position to keep the BJP at bay. This last sense prevails more in eastern UP, where Muslims are less numerous than in the west.
The reason for the extensive attention paid to the Muslim voter this time, and the raison d바카라etre for Adeeb바카라s group, is the strong pitch from BSP supremo Mayawati for Muslim votes, including her 97 tickets to Muslims. During 2012 as well, around 20 per cent of Muslims, according to CSDS surveys, had gone with the BSP. By sheer arithmetic, Mayawati바카라s party requires less Muslim support than the SP, for she is said to have a Jatav vote bank and cadre voters who make up 20 per cent of the electorate. Conversely, for the SP, Muslims and Yadavs are a cornerstone of its M-Y alliance.
This is why, ever since the third and fourth phases, the BJP brought up kabristan and shamshan and its star campaigners, including PM Narendra Modi, have simultaneously tried to project the SP as a 바카라party of Yadavs바카라. Should the Muslim-Yadav alliance start to fray, only then would the BSP get a share of its Muslim pickings. This way, non-Yadavs would gravitate towards the BJP in significant numbers. However, so far, the low voting percentage, relatively speaking, indicates that upper castes are not voting as enthusiastically as the others. This might adversely affect the BJP.
When Mayawati pitched for the Muslim community바카라s vote, it was against the backdrop of the 바카라surgical바카라 strikes. A turning point was the Una incident, in which a group of Dalit men was beaten up by cow vigilantes. 바카라The Muslim voter seeks to align with a strong Hindu community, for they feel targeted by the BJP바카라s propaganda. After Una, cow vigilantism lost steam, Dalits showed that they can offer Muslims protection too,바카라 says Satish Prakash, a professor at Meerut College and a Dalit intellectual.
Furthermore, there are indications of a Dalit consolidation in UP, against the backdrop of reservation in promotions falling through. While communities like the Passis now see themselves as more Passi, or SC, than claiming a Hindu identity, it is the BSP that stands to gain. This is why, with Jatavs firmly by Mayawati in 2017, if not Muslims too, the BSP expects to have a stab at government formation. Accordingly, she has twice reassured Muslims that her party would not align with the BJP as she did thrice in the past.
바카라The Muslims are also made up of different castes. The poorer sections, known as the Pasmanda, are turning to us,바카라 says BSP MP Sudheendra Bhadoria. 바카라There is no buzz around this shift because the Pasmanda are also silent voters like the Jatavs. But we will not get even one per cent less Muslim votes than the SP.바카라 Bhadoria acknowledges that he is making a 바카라very big claim바카라, for what he means is that the poorer Muslims will vote for the BSP, thereby splitting Muslim voters in two equal parts바카라nine per cent each for the SP-Congress alliance and the BSP.
That this is considered a possibility even within the SP is apparent from how a recent party event unfolded. A top SP Muslim leader arrived on February 24 to address a rally in Faizabad. So upset was he by the sight of BSP banners placed prominently on nearby buildings that he threatened to leave immediately after his chopper landed. 바카라People cajoled him to stay on but he was so upset that he said that it would better if Muslims vote for the BJP rather than the BSP,바카라 says Nafees Khan, an Ayodhya resident who was present. The top SP leader was Azam Khan, and he ultimately did make a speech.
Yet, Nafees himself isn바카라t convinced that Mayawati will not align with the BJP should she fall short of a few dozen seats. 바카라She has bought a rakhi for the BJP and after elections that rakhi will be tied,바카라 he says. He is a typical Muslim voter from the area바카라voting BSP out of the conviction that bringing in a Muslim BSP legislator from their area will add to their negotiating strength. 바카라Muslims here voted for the BSP. Should he succeed it would send a signal that Muslims are an electoral force to reckon with. Muslims want to reverse the economic impact of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which has increased uncertainty and slowed traditional trades, like the leather footwear business,바카라 he says.
An impetus to this pro-BSP trend comes from the fact that top Muslim clerics, like Jama Masjid바카라s shahi imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari, have supported the BSP, a backing which earlier went to the SP. While this is influencing Muslim voters in central UP, in eastern UP the Mukhtar Ansari factor matters, primarily because Akhilesh Yadav has a weaker following there. What the Mukhtar factor has done is to help other Muslim leaders too. 바카라If Mukhtar is mafia and Atiq Ahmed is
mafia then what바카라s Raghuraj Pratap Singh and Vinay Singh; what are Yadavs,바카라 Muslim residents in Varanasi and around ask.
바카라There are many attempts to confuse Muslim voters, whose first choice otherwise is the SP,바카라 says Sudhir Panwar, a member of the UP planning commission, and the SP candidate from Thanabhawan. 바카라Muslims have given votes to the BSP only where they felt that the SP바카라s candidate was not in a position to defeat the BJP.바카라 Which is to say that where Muslims make up over 20 per cent of a constituency they have sought to defeat the BJP on their own. Elsewhere, they went for the SP-Congress alliance.
The trend of Muslim voting patterns in this election also has to do with Mayawati바카라s specific pitch aimed at them. She has said that if Muslims vote for SP it바카라s a waste, because in that party a split was imminent. 바카라But the split never took place and yet she repeatedly talked about wasted votes,바카라 says Panwar.
The other aspect of BSP바카라s strategy was to approach Muslims head-on, and repeatedly. 바카라This strategy, for what it바카라s worth, might even have alienated many Hindu Dalit and OBC voters, for it would have created an anti-Muslim candidate polarisation,바카라 says Satish Prakash.
Even Mayawati바카라s foot soldiers, the young men and women from the universities in and around Delhi and Lucknow, accompanied by religious preachers, would often have had this effect. 바카라There are such groups moving around but at the sight of sherwani-clad bearded preachers in villages, making loudspeaker announcements for the BSP, the Hinduised ati-pichda (most backward) voter would likely be put off, helping, ultimately, the BJP,바카라 says Ansari of Glocal Law College.
If this happens, it remains to be seen if the polarisation is against the Muslim candidates in particular constituencies, or one more directly in favour of the BJP. In such circumstances, at best, the BSP would get the vote of those Muslims who don바카라t want to be blackmailed into feeling 바카라safe바카라 and prefer an alternative to the SP. Where the BSP has more Muslim support, local conditions will determine outcomes. 바카라Muslims have voted for BSP here,바카라 says Abhishek Chaudhary of the Kurmi Mahasangh, Amethi. 바카라But the Kurmis decided to vote for the BJP in response.바카라 The reason was, the BSP candidate, Shahbaz Khan바카라s 바카라inflammatory바카라 speech at the end of campaigning.
That said, like Muslims, OBCs and EBCs do not a monolith make. The Kurmis, for example, vote highly tactically. Thus, in Bareilly, they are with the BJP due to Union minister Santosh Gangwar; in Shahjahanpur, they are with the SP and the BSP. In Sitapur they are with the BJP, but in Hardoi with the BSP. In Faizabad, they are with the BJP, in Basti the BSP. In Mirzapur, Apna Dal has scored with the community, while in Ambedkar Nagar BSP바카라s Lalji Verma has a hold over their votes. In Barabanki, due to Beni Prasad Verma, Kurmi voters are with the BSP.
There is no good reason now to suppose that the Muslims are any different.
