Owaisi scripts success story while 'secular' parties lose narrative

Though he had no connection with the Hindi belt politics, Owaisi captured the public imagination by appealing to nationalists, Dalits, Muslims in a single pitch

After a long conversation in a Muslim-dominated area in Uttar Pradesh during the 2017 state polls, Asaduddin Owaisi, the chief of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), was perplexed to hear someone say that the priority was to defeat the BJP.

“I told them you cannot defeat BJP on your own. Better you focus on your interests,” a disappointed Owaisi told journalists in Parliament premises, soon after the election results in 2017, in which his party did not win a single seat.

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That was when Owaisi changed his direction, having realised that Muslims will not trust him if he fails to convince them that he can actually raise Muslim issues, in the absence of secular parties willing to do it.

Attending Parliament after his fourth Lok Sabha victory in 2019, with “Jai Bheem, Takbeer Allahu Akbar, Jai Hind” Owaisi hit a few birds in one stone—a nationalist slogan used by Azad Hind during the freedom struggle, the Muslim prayer and a slogan hailing Dalit icon Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, which would strike a chord with many sections of voters.

Owaisi said in a poll rally that the Congress party cannot be strengthened even with the best injection of calcium. He was asking Muslims to think beyond Congress.

In Maharashtra, AIMIM had an alliance with Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) in Lok Sabha polls and won a Lok Sabha seat. In Assembly polls, his party contested alone in 24 seats. In both elections, it damaged the NCP and Congress.

In the Bihar polls, by allying with the Dalit party of Uttar Pradesh, BSP, and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP, Owaisi tried to form a Dalit-Muslim-backward classes platform. After his victory of five assemblies in Seemanchal in Bihar, the Muslim-dominated stronghold of RJD and Congress, Owaisi is now eyeing the Assembly polls in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.

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His strategy paid off. Social media accounts of Muslim voters and intellectuals from Bihar indicated that Owaisi, who had no direct connection with the Hindi belt politics, captured their imagination.

Owaisi is not new to controversy. When the BJP won the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, many opposition parties raised the issue of voting machine manipulation. But Owaisi said, “Hindu mind has been rigged and not the EVMs”. He raised many eyebrows when he said in 2015 that the Haj subsidy should be scrapped and the money should be spent on educating Muslim girls. He also came out with strong anti-Islamic State views.

Unlike his rabble-rouser brother Akbaruddin Owaisi, Asaduddin Owaisi is calculative. He never forgets to bring in the Constitution to buttress his arguments and makes sure that his platforms do not get the anti-national tag.

Owaisi has been often accused of being the “B-team” of the BJP, and a “vote-cutter”. But Owaisi argues that he cannot be blamed for the defeat of the anti-BJP forces in Bihar. He dismisses the outrage of non-NDA parties against him as “bogus politics”, and asks the logic behind their rejection of its own identity for his party.

Owaisi minces no words while tearing into the other parties that doubt him. His tough questions on “secular” parties not bringing up secularism during campaigns, not raising questions on the Citizenship Amendment Act, and not having Muslim leaders on stage in poll rallies, meet with deafening silence. A good English speaker, a fitness freak, and an avid biker, Owaisi is also famous for his poll predictions. During a luncheon with left-liberal journalists in Delhi ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he asked how many seats the BJP could get.

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Most predicted seats below 200. Owaisi asked: “Where are you all? They are winning big.” And he was right. In December 2018, he rightly predicted an absolute majority for TRS.

Abhor him or adore him, Owaisi has arrived. He cannot be ignored—something the RJD and the Congress party learnt the hard way in Bihar. He has managed to create a space in Indian polity which is difficult to replace.