Wooing The Muslim Voter

LAHOL Wa-la Quwwat is a prayer from the Quran aimed at warding off major disasters or devils. With the demolitionof the Babri Masjid still fresh in their memory, this July Muslim residents of Bareilly Sharief in Uttar Pradesh recited the Lahol and locked the famous Ala Hazrat Dargah as Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao waited in vain in the circuit house, 7 km fromthe shrine, for permission to pay homage. On October 30, Home Minister S.B. Chavan finally managed to offer a chadar there on behalf of the " wazir-e-azam, Hind " amidst tight security. But minutes later local residents gathered once again to "purify" the shrine by washing it "three times".

Given the fact that Muslims account for 12 per cent of the country's population and can be a crucial factor in any electoral battle, for Rao this humiliation was but a smallprice to pay in an election year. So, undeterred by this, both Rao and his party are engaged in hectic efforts to woo back the community, once considered the Congress' most significant vote bank. With elections looming large on the horizon, all the major political players, from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, are doing much the same. The only difference lies in the approaches adopted by the various suitors.

BJP chief L.K. Advani recently gave the Muslims some advice: concentrate on education, trust Hindus and do not become a vote-bank for any party. For its part, the BJP government in Delhi has extended the mid-day meal scheme to the madarsas and has already started paying salaries to the imams.

Moreover, by projecting the liberal Atal Behari Vajpayee as the next prime minister, the BJP has empha-sised that it does not believe that religion is a justified dividing line. Last month Sikander Bakht, the party's leader in the Rajya Sabha, submitted a project plan to the Prime Minister for a mazar for Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad at Jama Masjid—a befitting reply to Jinnah's in Pakistan.

LALOO Prasad Yadav's Janata Dal government in Bihar, like Mulayam Singh Yadav's inUttar Pradesh earlier, is banking on its efforts to imbue in the community a sense of participation, having made the state almost riot free over the past few years. He has also appointed a large number of Urdu teachers in madarsas and translators in schools to teach Urdu (thesecond official language in the state), regu-larised the voters' list despite the BJP charge that a large number of Bangladeshis have been included and recruited a substantial number of Muslims in the state police.

Localised efforts like these will not help Rao secure a second term. Approaching Muslims without apologising for the demolition of the Babri Masjid is quite an uphill task. But there can be no evading it. After all, in about 176 out of the 543 Parliament constituencies, Muslim voters can be influ-encing factors—in fact, they can be decisive in half of these. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar together, Muslim voters are scattered in about 100 of the 139 constituencies, in Maharashtra and Assam in about one-third, and in West Bengal in one-fifth.

Token measures—like the formation of the Rs 500-crore Minority Finance Commission, legislation to release waqf property from the Government and private encroachment and promising a "dignified salary" to about three lakh imams in the country—do not seem to be working. Demands from within the party and the Government, earlier by Arjun Singh and then by Sharad Pawar and C.K. Jaffer Sharief, might have helped the leaders assert their individual secular credentials, but it has always been at Rao's cost. Sharief's resignation "for the cause of the minority" has only strengthened this trend.

Despite such irritants, Rao has found abridge with the hostile community in N.K. Sharma, now a known name in Delhi's power circle ( see box ). Sharma has charted out a multi-pronged strategy which includes:

Sharma may not have organised Rao's visit to Bareilly as well as the trip to Kalyar Sharief near Hardwar, but he has not yet given up. He points to the success with which he organ-ised the prime ministerial visit to Ajmer Sharief in July 1993. Moreover, a section of the Muslim community in Bareilly has come forward in support of Rao and Sharma. On their side is Tausheef Raza Khan, leader of the Bareilly ulemas. Khan is a descendent of the 20th century Sufi saint, Ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Raza Khan, founder of the Bareilly ulemas and held in high esteem by about 80 per cent of the Muslims in the country. That this is a purely political move is obvious as the Prime Minister and his emissary have left out the Deoband school of ulemas—which came out openly against Partition and in support of the Congress as well as the freedom move-ment—as its following is much smaller than the Bareilly ulemas'.

But even this may not translate into votes in the elections. Tausheef's uncle, Maulana Mannan Raza Khan, who wields considerable influence, still bears a grudge. "Let those who have been bought over support whoever they feel like supporting," he says. "But we will talk to Rao and the Congress only after he apologises for the demolition in Ajmer Sharief. Maybe the Shiv Sena and the BJP have come to power in Bombay. Butwe are happy with the damage we have inflicted upon the Congress."

To make matters worse, the Muslims are receiving conflicting messages. While Welfare Minister Sitaram Kesri has asked for 8 per cent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions for the Muslims, the Naib Imam has demanded seat reservation in Parliament and state legislatures. Clearly both demands are impossible for the Government to fulfill.

And the Congress is still grappling with the erosion of votes after the demolition. "Yes, the demolition was a turning point. The community has gone to the extent oftaking a suicidal stand like voting for the BJP and Shiv Sena in following elections," admits Tariq Anwar, chief of the AICC minority cell.

But Muslim leaders realise that they will have to make a difficult choice between the BJP and the Congress at the national level if a third force with people like Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav does not emerge. They may not be guided any more by 'fatwas'—in November 1993, the Muslims supported Mulayam Singh despite the fatwa issued to support V. P. Singh's Janata Dal—but security and revenge seem to be the deciding factors in their political inclination. Given the acute sense of betrayal they harbour, winning them over will be no cakewalk.