Kanchan Gupta: Paswan's Laden in Lalu's Bihar

The Pioneer/Edit Page/02.02.05

Paswan’s Laden in Lalu’s Bihar

Kanchan Gupta

He prefers the name ‘Laden’, as in Osama bin Laden,
because “nobody will remember my real name”. The other
reason why Maulana Meraj Khalid Noor has opted for
this nom de guerre is because he looks like Osama bin
Laden. Obviously, this preacher of Islam from Narpat
Ganj in Bihar is infatuated by either the physical
features or the ideology of the world’s most
recognised face of terror, if not both. And, Mr Ram
Vilas Paswan, who is locked in a bitter,
no-holds-barred fight over Bihar with Mr Lalu Prasad
Yadav, his colleague in the United Progressive
Alliance Government, finds it politically expedient to
take ‘Laden’ along with him every time he ventures
forth into a Muslim dominated area. After all, as he
recently told a newspaper reporter, “Osama does have
some following among the Muslim youth”.

Not to be outdone by his rival, Mr Yadav has come up
with a cockamamie report that absolves the Muslim mob
which set fire to a railway coach full of Hindus at
Godhra of all guilt, promised communal reservation in
jobs and educational institutions (a promise also made
by Mr Paswan and his Lok Jana Shakti Party) and
pledged to make Urdu a compulsory subject for all
school students. For good measure, he has also secured
the public endorsement of a motley group of ulemas,
led by Tauqeer Raza Khan of All India Millat Council.
And, just in case all this has not driven home the
point that Muslims, who constitute anything between 16
and 18 per cent of Bihar’s electorate – perhaps higher
if you factor in unabated waves of illegal immigration
from Bangladesh between the conclusion of the Census
of India survey and this month’s Assembly election --
are best looked after by Mr Yadav, his Rashtriya
Janata Dal has been putting up posters with visuals of
the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

Mr Paswan and Mr Yadav, of course, are “secular”
politicians who are key allies in the Congress-led
“secular” dispensation that rules India. So, their
pandering to the lowest common denominator of base,
communal politics, is nothing less than a shining
example of how “secularism” must be upheld in India;
it is a weapon forged by India’s “secular consensus”
to defeat the “communal” Bharatiya Janata Party. The
Central Election Commission, which sees itself as an
all-empowered authority, has had no hesitation in
choosing sides in this cynical exploitation of rank
communal sentiments: it is with both Mr Paswan and Mr
Yadav. Had that not been the case, the Election
Commission would have acted by now and carried out its
laughable threat against those appealing for votes in
the name of religion to its logical conclusion. By not
taking punitive action against either Mr Paswan or Mr
Yadav, the Election Commission has made known its
passive endorsement.

Long years ago, when the BJP was yet to taste power,
such despicable pandering to minority communalism was
known as “minorityism”, a word made fashionable by Mr
L.K. Advani in his fight against pseudo-secularism.
The pathetic manner in which Rajiv Gandhi caved in to
India’s mullah brigade and used the Congress’
parliamentary majority to undo the Supreme Court’s
judgement ordering maintenance for Shah Bano, a
destitute Muslim woman thrown out by her husband,
marked the high point of minorityism. Other examples
were the Congress seeking Muslim votes through fatwas
issued by Syed Abdullah Bukhari, the imam of Jama
Masjid, and the offer to pay imams from public funds,
an offer which P.V. Narasimha Rao believed would serve
as absolution for his perceived role in facilitating
the destruction of the disputed Babri Masjid structure
by enraged Hindus. Since minorityism necessarily
implied repudiation of India’s Hindu majority
sentiments and rejection of Hindu aspirations, the
Ayodhya movement was declared both illegitimate and
beyond the pale of secular politics.

The intervening years since the annulment of the
Supreme Court’s judgement aimed at providing justice
to an indigent Muslim woman saw the gradual eclipse of
the politics of minorityism as practised by the
Congress. The BJP, in the mistaken belief of garnering
incremental support, did desperately try to
“secularise” its identity during last year’s Lok Sabha
election campaign by borrowing more than one example
set by the Congress. Witness the BJP’s absurd promise
of creating jobs for two crore Urdu teachers, a number
later scaled down to two lakh by a red-faced PMO, its
pledge of setting up more madarsas and the hilarious
‘Himayat Yatra’ which featured garishly painted buses
plastered with the portraits of Gen Pervez Musharraf
and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It was a comical sight to
see BJP leaders with bright red tikas, saffron
angavastrams and skull caps; some other standard
bearers of Hindutva had themselves photographed
sporting a chequered kafiyah. And, amazingly so, the
BJP even secured an endorsement from Syed Ahmed
Bukhari, who has replaced Syed Abdullah Bukhari as the
imam of Jama Masjid.

All that, however, did not wash with the Muslim voters
who voted with double their usual enthusiasm to defeat
the BJP’s candidates, as well as those of the other
parties who contested as members of the National
Democratic Alliance. It has been suggested, and
forcibly so, that the BJP lost in 2004 because of the
riots in Gujarat in 2002. That may be partly true, but
if riots were so overwhelmingly instrumental in
deciding popular vote, then the Congress would have
never won an election in Assam after the Nellie
massacre of 1983 when 3,300 Muslim men, women and
children were slaughtered in a single day or come to
power in Punjab after the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984
which witnessed more than 4,000 innocent people being
butchered. Nor, for that matter, would Mr Yadav have
won repeatedly since 1990 on the strength of Muslim
and Yadav votes after the October 1989 riots in
Bhagalpur during which more than a thousand Muslims
were killed by Yadav mobs.

There is something perverse about popular Muslim
response to the political perversity called
minorityism: so long as the pandering is done by
leaders of the Congress or other parties who wear
their “secular” credentials on their sleeves, Muslim
voters are willing to be swayed. This could be
entirely because given the track record of these
parties that claim to protect Muslim interests even
while doing enormous damage to the community – in
Bihar, Muslims are at the bottom of the pile, living
in wretched impoverishment – of taking recourse to
regressive and retrograde measures that appease those
who are drawn by Osama bin Laden and flock to see Mr
Paswan’s ‘Laden’, who in turn influence voter
preference. In short, the communal card played by
“secular” parties carries greater conviction than the
BJP turning a trick or two.

In a sense, the pandering to crass communal sentiments
during this month’s Assembly elections mark the return
of minorityism to Indian politics: in the form of
conducting a campaign that is shorn of all pretences
of following the laid down code of conduct and
unrestrained by an Election Commission which is
patently partisan and, therefore, lacks the legitimacy
to conduct a free and fair election. This could be
construed as good news for the BJP that may yet
rediscover the merits of steering an ideological
course and revive its political battle against
minorityism which, in the 1980s and 1990s, fetched it
the support of Hindus across India’s social classes
tired of passively watching the cynical exploitation
of Muslim sentiments for political gains. Unless, of
course, the BJP chooses to discard the Indian
angavastram for the Arabic kafiyah and skull cap.