As an effective speaker, he could have become a part of the opposition at the national level. But he remains a lonely figure who seems destined to play the role of a “vote katua” (cutter) who will hurt the “secular” parties by securing the votes of a section of the Muslims. It is for this reason that Owaisi has been accused of playing the BJP’s game.

It is to erase this taint that Owaisi has reached out to Mamata Banerjee to urge her to join him in unitedly fighting the BJP in next year’s West Bengal elections. But it is unlikely that he will get a satisfactory response, for aligning with him is tantamount to signing a suicide note by a secular party because it will add grist to the BJP’s propaganda mill alleging a link between the “sickular” brigade and jehadis.

It’s a double whammy for the AIMIM leader. While the secularists accuse him of covertly being in league with the BJP, the BJP will malign the secularists for teaming up with an “anti-national” if Owaisi joins them. Yet, he has to continue being in electoral politics and win a few seats, as his party did in the recent Bihar elections, even if the winners can belong to neither of the two main political groups.

There is little doubt that Owaisi is a victim of the BJP’s anti-minority politics going back to Savarkar’s thesis that Muslims and Christians are essentially aliens since their “holy” places or “punyabhu”, as he called them – Mecca and Rome – are in foreign countries. For Savarkar, it doesn’t matter if their “pitribhu” or fatherland is India because their sites of pilgrimage are elsewhere.

It is the categorization of minorities as outsiders whose loyalty to the nation is uncertain which enables the Hindutva camp to depict the Muslims as pro-Pakistani who cheer Pakistan during a game of cricket with India. The BJP has been remarkably successful in instilling this prejudice among sections of Hindus with the result that the “secular” parties, including those on the Left, will think twice before cohabiting with an outfit like the AIMIM in northern, western and eastern India.

The south, however, is different where, in Kerala, the Indian Union Muslim League has been operating as an ally of the Congress. It is not the same, however, as Jinnah’s Muslim League just as the south Indian Muslims are poles apart from their northern co-religionists. The reason for the difference is that Islam came to the south via the Arab traders unlike in the north where Afghan, Turkish and central Asian Muslim hordes came as conquerors.

There was hardly any resonance, therefore, of Jinnah’s two-nation theory in the south where the Muslims had assimilated the local language and culture and were bewildered by the exodus of the north Indian Muslims towards the north-west which was foreign territory for the southerners in terms of the way of life.

Owaisi’s party, however, is in a different category from the other South Indian Muslim outfits because of its earlier connections with the Razakars, an Islamic paramilitary organization, which wanted to set up a country for the Muslims in Hyderabad, which was their base. Although the AIMIM has disowned that link, it is like an albatross hanging from the party’s neck.

With the BJP forever ready to exploit that association, it is an uphill journey for the AIMIM in most parts of the country despite its occasional electoral successes. Any support which it has been receiving is from those Muslims who may have come to believe that parties like the Congress have been taking them for granted because they are convinced that the Muslims have nowhere else to go.

Because of this conviction, these “secular” parties have not only been paying no more than lip-service to the concerns of the minorities, but even appear uneasy about being seen to be too close to them. These parties have also been gravitating towards a softer version of Hindutva to counter the BJP’s charge of minority appeasement against them and also because they believe that such a stance will fetch them a section of the Hindu votes.

It is a forlorn hope because soft Hindutva cannot compete with the real, harder variety. Moreover, in the process of being too clever by half, the “secular” parties are only undermining their own liberal identity, leaving the Muslims in a quandary. Although they are aware that supporting the AIMIM is the waste of a vote because it will never have a formidable all-India presence, some of the Muslims may still support it because of local factors or simply to punish the deceptive secularists. The confusion and disarray can only make the BJP smile. (IPA Service)