“The riot took my home after everything else was taken. This time, the riot has finally taken my fear as well,” was how Shahid Badr Falahi, former President of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), described the indifference of the Muslims in Azamgarh to whether a split in their vote will help the BJP win elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Falahi’s explanation fits into anecdotal evidence gathered through travels in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh that disproves the stereotype of the Muslim voter and “tactical voting”. The largest minority in India neither voted as a monolith nor was it intelligently voting with the sole purpose of defeating the BJP, especially in the areas where the Muslims are dominant in numbers.
The single common factor in Muslim voting pattern was that they did not vote for the BJP. But that, in itself, is a prerogative reserved by many communities such as Jatavs who are almost certain not to vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in general unless the candidate belongs to their community. Or Yadavs who usually do not vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) unless the candidate is a Yadav. The probability of some Muslims voting for the BJP was zilch when the party did not put up a single candidate from the community in all of the 403 seats in the State.
The Muslims, thus, voted like most communities do with their preference for different parties in different constituencies. In Varanasi, for instance, the general preference was for the Congress which was allocated the Varanasi South, Varanasi Cantonment and Varanasi North seats from the alliance quota.
“Our choice is the Congress. We are being hit by demonetisation that has affected the Banarasi saree makers, the leather manufacturers, the bangle-makers in Firozabad. Our community here is behind the Congress,” said Akhtar Jamal, a shopkeeper in Madanpura area in Varanasi, who was part of a corner meeting addressed by Congress state president Raj Babbar and Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tiwari.
In neighbouring Azamgarh district, the heart of the ruling SP’s base which braved the Narendra Modi tsunami in 2014 to elect Mulayam Singh Yadav to the Lok Sabha, Akhilesh Yadav’s re-branding of his party’s main plank for social justice to development had decidedly shaken the Muslims.
Azamgarh, where the Yadavs and the Muslims, the two pillars of the SP’s social support base, has 10 Assembly constituencies, of which nine were won by the SP in 2012.
But this time, the local Muslims are upset with the SP, explained Masihuddin Ansari, a local resident and member of the Rihai Manch, an organisation that is engaged in political mobilisation against wrongful arrests of Muslim youth in terror cases.
Unhappy with Akhilesh“The word Muslim does not figure in Akhilesh Yadav’s manifesto. They have fulfilled no promise they made last time —18 per cent reservation in jobs, release of boys booked under fake charges. Nothing has happened. We will not elect these people,” said Ansari, while indicating his support for the BSP.
In the western town of Amroha, Naushad Engineer of the BSP was a strong contender for the Muslim vote that comprises almost 65 per cent of the total 3.10 lakh voters. The sitting MLA and Minister in Akhilesh Yadav’s Cabinet Mehboob Ali had become unpopular with a section of his voters with his muscleman image.
“The Muslim vote will get split this time. There is the RLD’s Salim Pathan and the BSP Naushad Engineer who are weaning away the SP’s vote. Naushad should have been replaced this time. I am originally a Congress member. But I am not supporting him even though we are allies,” a local member of the Congress told BusinessLine .
Similarly, in Naugaon constituency in Amroha district, the sitting MLA Ashfaq Khan of the SP was denied the party ticket in favour of the Chief Minister’s acolyte Javed Abidi. Akhlaq Khan had switched over to the RLD. While Akhlaq damaged the SP’s chances, the BJP had fielded former cricketer Chetan Chauhan who ran a blatantly communal campaign. The BSP, at the same time, fielded a Jat — Jaidev — who combined Mayawati’s traditional Jatav vote with the Jat strength and was wooing the Muslim. In a triangular contest, the Muslim vote was getting split.
Hence, the Muslims voting en masse to defeat the BJP was a bit of a myth in the most populous State in India.