NATIONAL POLITICS

Ashok Malik on Congress-BSP Pact

The BJP has stopped growing socially in UP. Its Savarna vote has more or less reached a plateau. The party can now only hope for mortality and attrition to ship sway at what remains of the Congress' upper caste base Yadavs are still largely estranged from the BJP. The Kurmi vote is divided and the Chamars- the largest Dalit group and, at 10 per cent, the biggest social unit in UP- remain firm behind the BSP.

There is sufficient evidence to argue that there is more posturing and less substance in the Congress-BSP alliance.

P.V. Narasimha Rao has ensured that the United Front cannot woo the BSP alone and ignore the Congress as irrelevant though it is so- in UP.

Kanshi Ram certainly realizes that there is little to be gained by tying up with the Congress. The Savarna alienation from the Congress is unlikely to be reversed and, whatever the status of other non-BJP forces, a section of Muslims will not vote for Mr. Rao's candidates.

Who then does Ram see as his real ally? The UF has to be ruled out because of its multiplicity of leaders and because of BSP's antipathy towards Mulayam Singh Vadav. That leaves Mr. Ram with only the BJP.

Despite their short-lived marriage in 1995, which led to Mayawati becoming UP's chief minister, the BSP and the BJP have enough reason to renew their links and even extend it in the next Lok Sabha polls. The BJP would be looking towards winning at least 200 seats in the next general elections. Only then can it woo regional parties in, say-Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and assure them of its ability to lead a lasting coalition at the Centre.

With the potential for increment in the south and the east fairly limited, the BJP's best hope is to maximize its strength in the north and the east. IN UP... it is no longer a question of the 52 seats which were won but of the 33 which were not. This is where a partnership with the BSP seems logical. If Mr. Kanshi Ram is convinced that some power is better than none, he may agree to be a junior partner in New Delhi in return for a chunk of UP's 425 assembly seats and, perhaps, the chief minister's post in Lucknow.

Despite its unruly finale, the upshot of the coalition the BJP and BSP forged in 1995 has been positive for both parties. Fears that the BJP's savarna voters would revolt against the support rendered to a party abusive of them have proved unfounded. Similarly, the initial misgivings in the Chamar intelligentsia about grasping the BJP's hand have not translated into poll reverses for the BSP. In the absence of specific opponents, both parties can take these segments somewhat for granted. In fact, Ram can even promise his supporters a longer Dalit regime as reward for the compromise.

The problem with this scenario is that it suits the BSP more than the BJP. Mr. Ram is ever unreliable and may change tracks between the assembly and general elections. The BJP's grip on non-Yadav OBC's loosened during Mayawati's rule; this threat remains. Related to this will be Kalyan Singh's reluctance to sacrifice the chief minister's post.

(Source: The Times of India, 15 July, 1996)

The Sunday Report on the Changing Muslim Psyche

Syed Shahabuddin lost Mohsina Kidwai, Salman Khurshid, Akbar Ahmed, Arif Mohammad Khan, Aslam Sher Khan and several others did not win either. There are then only 21 Muslim MPs in this Lok Sabha and it has never been lower. Why?

Jaffer Sharief, too, would have lost if he had recontested from Bangalore North despite its large number of poor Muslims for whom he did much when he was the railway minister.

As questionable is the victory of Salahuddin Owaisi of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen from Hyderabad.  The fatwa was to vote for the candidate of the breakaway Majlis-Bachao Tehrik. And most Muslims care little for Owaisi's kind of politics now.

Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav drew similar responses. And though a bulk of the Muslims of their two states voted for them, they are examining other options. In many places, too, many of them did not vote at all.

And why do some Muslims like Atal Behari Vajpayee despite the BJP and Kanshi Ram in spite of Mayawati? Do the ulemas matter politically any more? Why have Muslims in many places stopped voting? And is there anything like a Muslim factor anymore?

Vajpayee was voted out of office because more than 20 national and regional parties came together against the BJP. Plus, larger Muslim suspicions about the BJP remain.

On one level, the Muslims have no love lost for the Samata-BJP alliance.

And yet, Ejaz Ali, the son-in-law of the former Bihar Assembly Speaker, Ghulam Sarwar, pulled off a backward-forward divide among Muslims in Nalanda in support of Fernandes.

And nearly 40 other places, including Dhanbad, Palamu, Godda, Bettiah, Motihari, Chapra, Munger, Basti and so on, the Muslims either voted against the Janata Dal or boycotted the polls.

The reason for this is that Lalop Yadav has been taking the Muslims for granted.

Even so, there is real little fear just yet that the Muslims will desert Laloo Yadav. But their hurdles have been put in his way. And more and more, Muslims have taken to not voting at all. And this is not just in Bihar.

In Madhya Pradesh, especially in Bhopal, which has the largest number of Muslims in all of the state (3.23 akh), this was still more evident. "30 to 40 per cent Muslims did not vote at all," says an assessment made by the state government.

Prof. Imtiaz Ahmad, a sociologist in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, thinks that a section of the Muslim upper classes might not have voted.

And it has happened in more places with Muslims and not just with the upper classes. In the walled city area of Delhi, many Muslim women did not vote.

Many Muslims kept away too in Gujarat where they are 12 per cent of the population. And in Karnataka, says Mumtaz Ali Khan, a Bangalore sociologist, "No more than 60 per cent of them voted. They feel nobody will help them and they have resigned themselves to the situation.

There is less of such feeling in the countryside, however. It has been Imtiaz Ahmad's old thesis that Muslims and non-Muslims vote together here because they have similar stakes and that, therefore, there is little or no sense of alienation.

In the villages, Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party got votes of the forward class of Muslims, for instance, while the backward class of Muslims together with Dalits voted for the Bahujan Samaj Party.

And Muslim support to the BSP is growing. And by putting up 23 Muslim candidates in this election, and not just in Muslim-majority areas, the BSP has strengthened itself with Muslims.

This is not so with the Samajwadi Party. It has been fielding Muslim candidates only from Muslim-dominated constituencies and not from either Yadav or OBC - majority places.

In the cities and big towns, however, Muslims have voted tactically to keep out the Bharatiya Janata Party. The biggest fear of Muslims still is that the BJP will come to power.

And the Congress party has benefited the most from it. J.P. Agarwal won from the walled city area.

And Narasimha Rao's son, Rajeshwar Rao, got 2.5 lakh votes over his BJP rival, Bandaru Dattatreya, in Secunderabad because Muslims backed him solidly.

But city and village Muslims were no different in one respect. They did not vote as the ulemas might have wished.

In Bahraich, UP the local clergy opposed Arif Mohammad Khan. Arif Khan lost the elections. But reports from his constituency show that but for 4,000- 5,000 Muslims who might have been swayed by the ulemas, the rest voted for him.

In Hyderabad, the clergy opposed Salahuddin Owaisi, but he won. In the Telengana region and in Secunderabad, their appeals were ignored. And in Delhi, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid did not issue a fatwa because there was a good chance that it would be disregarded.

In An earlier Assembly election in UP, he had asked Muslims to vote for the Janata Dal. They all went for the Samajwadi party. This time, he put to Narasimha Rao such demands as proportional representation in Parliament and the Assemblies and quotas for Muslims that Rao expectedly rejected.

Even so, Muslims voted in large numbers for J.P. Agarwal, the Congress candidate.

The political influence of the ulemas has been declining since the demolition of the Babari Masjid.

Fatwas, then, have come to have little sanctity and even less political impact.

So, there is no set pattern to Muslim voting. Some of them like Vajpayee. Then, voters in cities and villages have voted differently. The rich among them haven't voted at all.

There is more. Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav are facing, for the first time, a run on their vote-banks. Fatwas do not work.

On top of this, this last election has returned the lowest number of Muslim MPs ever. It was only higher in the first election (22 MPs in 1952) and it is way below the tally of 47 in the 1980 polls.

What can be done? It would help if they are put up from places were Muslims number little. Their identity, then, would be not just of a Muslim alone.

This is Atal Behari Vajpayee's big chance. He says that the Bharatiya Janata Party is secular and some Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Karnataka even believe him.

(Source: The Sunday, 30 June-6 July, 1996)