The Hindu : Muslims have few choices in Maharashtra

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 03, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Muslims have few choices in Maharashtra

Despite its anger with the State Government, the community may end up voting for Congress-NCP alliance, says Kalpana Sharma

When you enter the throbbing bylanes of Mumbai's Bhendi Bazar, you are transported into another city, one where its Muslim residents provide the dominant motif. Mosques, musafirkhanas and a medley of street hawkers jostle for space and attention. But as elections approach, the inevitable question is whether this concentration of one community represents a distinctive vote, the fabled "Muslim vote"? In Maharashtra, Muslims are 8-9 per cent of the population, while in the city of Mumbai they are an estimated 15 per cent.

"The problem is that the way Muslims vote, [it] cannot make a difference except to divide the secular vote and ensure the victory of the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance," says noted Muslim scholar Asghar Ali Engineer. Only in a couple of cities in Maharashtra are Muslims found in large enough concentrations to matter. Apart from two constituencies in Mumbai — South and South-Central — a concentrated Muslim vote can make a difference in Aurangabad and in Solapur. In the latter, the Congress lost the parliamentary seat, held by Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, in the by-elections last year, because Muslims boycotted the poll to express their anger against the Congress, says Mr. Engineer. As a result, the Shiv Sena won.

Similarly, in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress candidate Murli Deora lost the Mumbai South seat to the BJP's Jaywantiben Mehta by almost the same amount of votes as were polled by a Muslim candidate from the Samajwadi Party (SP). "The peculiar factor in Maharashtra is that increasingly the SP is seen here as a Muslim party while it is that of the Yadavs in UP", says Asif Khan, a journalist who is also a founder of an organisation called Neo-Educational and Economic Development Society (NEEDS) that strives to train Muslim youth for the job market.

What are the issues that will decide the way the Muslims vote in this election? Aneesa Sarang of the Kokan Mahila Coop Credit Society, a unique Muslim women's bank, suggests that the events in Gujarat in 2002 will have a profound impact on their choices in this election. "People have seen what happened through films, read about those events in newspapers and they feel sad and have not forgotten".

Mr. Engineer concurs with this view. He holds that even though the communal passions of Gujarat did not spill over into Maharashtra, the carnage there was on such an enormous scale that it did affect Muslims in the State deeply. In his assessment, the majority of Muslims will vote for the Congress-NCP alliance because they would like to defeat the BJP.

Yet, many Muslims express deep disappointment with the present State government, especially its human rights record. Even a senior Congressman, who has been a corporator and MLA, Mohammad Amin Khandwani, acknowledges that the State Government's use of POTA and the working of the Home Ministry, particularly under the former Deputy Chief Minister, Chhagan Bhujbal, have led to the alienation of large sections of Muslims.

"The Muslims are angry with the Congress-NCP", says journalist Saleem Alware. "We have made no demands except one — good policing. We have begged them not to harass our youth. Yet that is precisely what has been happening."

More worrying for Muslims are the developments in rural Maharashtra. Mr. Khandwani, who is chairman of the State Minorities Commission, says that in the last two years there have been over 50 incidents of communal rioting in rural areas, most of them in villages with Muslim pockets. He claims people here have been scared up to the point that they might even vote for the BJP-Shiv Sena because, as one man said to him, "Hum ko to jeena hai" (We have to survive). Yet, even though the Minorities Commission has documented these incidents, no action has been taken against the instigators of the riots.

Both Mr. Khandwani and Mr. Engineer worry that the saffronisation of the countryside in Maharashtra is escaping the attention of the media and political parties but that in the long-term this has a far greater significance for the Muslims than the outcome of these elections.

The organisers of NEEDS also point out that unemployment is now the greatest concern of an increasing number of urban Muslims. They say that despite its professions of being secular, the Congress-NCP state government released advertisements for recent placements in the police force only in "Saamna", the Shiv Sena's Marathi newspaper, thereby excluding Muslim applicants.

Despite their anger with the State Government, Muslims by and large will vote for the Congress-NCP alliance, conclude observers like Mr. Engineer. Although the SP could play spoiler as it did in 1999 in a couple of constituencies, overall its presence will not make a difference.