In Western UP, Muslims seek political identity outside conventional binaries

Muslim, Dalit voters play a major role in deciding the poll outcome in the region, and the BSP has been a major beneficiary of this

Saharanpur: Sweetmeat shops are decking up their stock of freshly roasted vermicelli ahead of Eid next week. Otherwise, Bazdaran Street, with emporiums displaying the world-famous Saharanpur woodcraft, bears a deserted look.

The latest addition to the traditional stock of furniture and souvenirs this year are the replicas of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. And they are selling well for an industry that has been fast losing its luster.

"GST did us in. The cost suddenly rose and made our goods uncompetitive," Saifulla, who runs his shop on a rented accommodation.

Most shop owners here are concerned about the declining trade and crafts that feed more than a lakh families in this last outpost of UP at the foot of Uttarakhand Shivaliks. 

Ten kilometers from the city center, on the Delhi-Shamli highway, buses are rolling as BJP supporters pour in to listen to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A BJP hoarding outside has a tagline ‘Aastha se nahin hoga khilwad.’ Translated into English, it roughly means — ‘There shall be no compromise on matters of faith.``

In his hour-long speech at the Saharanpur rally, the Prime Minister says the Congress manifesto bears an imprint of the Muslim League.

"For us, Ram Temple is not just a mere election issue, but a mission," he tries to ideologically juxtaposition BJP vis a vis the Congress which has fielded its rabble-rousing Muslim face — Imran Masood infamous for his "boti-boti" statement against Modi in 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

With over 30 per cent, Saharanpur has one of the highest percentage of Muslim population in UP. Home to one of the biggest Islamic seminaries in South Asia, at Deoband, it also bears a symbolic value in a polarised polity. Message from Saharanpur has a resonance in more than a dozen seats in UP and Uttarakhand.

Precisely the reason why the grand SP-BSP-RLD alliance held its first rally to sound the poll bugle for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Deoband.

However, due to its quintessential caste calculus, Saharanpur in particular has remained a dark spot for BJP in the post-Mandal era. Since 1999, the party has won this Lok Sabha seat only once in 2014.

The constituency, comprising 5 Assembly segments in the district (the remaining two are part of the adjoining Kairana LS seat) has an equally strong Dalit population. The Dalit-Muslim combination here makes Saharanpur a laboratory of identity politics, especially for the Bahujan Samaj Party. BSP founder Kanshi Ram contested and lost from here by a small margin in 1998. Since then, the BSP has won this seat 3 out of 5 times.

In 2019 too, Haji Fazlur Rehman of the BSP-SP combine came up trumps by over 20,000 votes over BJP’s Raghav Lakhanpal despite Imran Masood of Congress polling over two-lakh votes.

This time the Mayawati-led party has fielded Majid Ali, from Deoband, the richest candidate in eight seats of western-UP going to the polls in the first phase.

For Muslims of Saharanpur, it is once again a choice between Imran —nephew of five-time MP Rashid Masood — and the BSP candidate. Imran, the local boy gets the legacy votes but could never win from here.

"Whereas BSP brings in the committed Dalit votes to the table. If you top this up with Muslims, you get a winning combination,” says an artifact shop owner who did not want to be named.

Caught in this competitive minority politics of the ‘secular’ parties like BSP, SP, and Congress on one side and of the BJP’s Hindutva on the other, the citizen identity of UP Muslims has been worn thin in power games.  

"The opposition is also responsible for the current situation for its inability to evolve beyond caste politics," says Sanjay Garg, former SP MLA from Saharanpur who recently joined the BJP.

Most shop owners and artisans in Bazdaran Street this time sound indifferent to the upcoming polls. The common refrain one hears is— "jeteegi to BJP”.

Saifulla, too, does not evince much enthusiasm in the local political situation evolving before the April 19th polling.

He’s more interested in knowing about the PM Vishwakarma Yojna, the government's flagship scheme for skilled artisans.