Indian Muslims need Asaduddin Owaisi, not Azam Khan

In November 2009, the then home minister of India, P Chidambaram, visited the Darul Uloom seminary at Deoband. By doing so, Chidambaram once again confirmed that, as far as the so-called secular parties were concerned, Muslim clerics and their political acolytes were the true representatives of India's Muslims. After most of India's Muslim nationalist leadership left for Pakistan in 1947, a new suitably co-opted nationalist Muslim leadership class emerged to take its place in the new "secular" order that emerged. In 1947, the meaning of the word "secular" itself underwent a transformation. In the rest of the world, to be secular means that a person who does not believe in supernatural beings, entities, or realms; a person who does not engage in religious behaviours; and a person who does not identify as religious and is not a member of a religious community.

Secularism in India just means equal treatment of all religions by the state. Quite unlike the Western notion of secularism that means a separation of religion and state in its Indian conception, secularism means acceptance of religious laws as binding on the state. This applied differently to Hindus who didn't have a representative religious hierarchy, and other faiths that had institutions that monitored and ruled on practices and behaviour. Muslims are about 14 per cent of India, and this abdication of temporal power to the clerics and their preferred leaders was most felt on how their leadership evolved. The Congress party gained hugely by this construct of a secular state, as it just co-opted this new class and turned them into interceders and interlocutors, who would deliver the vote. Other parties too followed.  This nexus between clerics and politicians and wheeler-dealers resulted in a small class of people whom the community snidely referred to as "sarkari Musalmans".

Uttar Pradesh has the largest concentration of Muslims in India, who comprise about 18.5 per cent of the population. Even within UP, Muslims are concentrated in the urban areas and semi-urban areas of Muzzafarnagar, Shahjahanpur, Moradabad, Bulandshahar, Ghaziabad, Hapur and Meerut, and are a majority in the towns of Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Amroha and Bahraich.

This concentration makes them potent vote banks and with it comes commensurate power for their leaders, who have made fine living as their representatives in the durbars of the secular parties. These "sarkari Musalmans" operate as pressure groups within larger so-called secular parties and use their perches for political relevance and self-aggrandisement. 

Azam Khan with his base in the Muslim majority town of Rampur is one such leader. He grew into politics as a fiery student leader in the Aligarh Muslim University, whose advent also coincided with the Babri Masjid/Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. It was not long before he caught the eye of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was trying to carve out a Yadav-Muslim coalition to assure him of a big place in UP's politics. Azam Khan has, by and large, met Mulayam's expectations of him.

He also did well for himself. Tales abound of how much real estate Azam Khan has acquired in Rampur, where he has had frequent run-ins with the erstwhile ruling family over property. Whatever be his clout with Mulayam Singh, without the umbrella of the Samajwadi Party, he does not amount to much. To many he is yet another "sarkari Mussalman".

Traditionally, UP has been the nursery of India's Muslim politicians. The recent rise of Asaduddin Owaisi represents a shift from this. To understand his place in our politics, one needs to know a bit about the mantle he now wears.

The Majlis Itehaad-ul-Musilmeen (MIM) was founded in November 1927 with the blessings of the Nizam of Hyderabad. In 1938 the charismatic Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung was elected its President. Bahadur Yar Jung was also the founder of the Anjuman-i-Tabligh-i-Islam, a proselytising Muslim organisation whose prime activity was the conversion of Hindus. Bahadur Yar Jung's fiery oratory made him popular among the Muslims. He also had the ear of the Nizam, Osman Ali.

The main thrust of Bahadur Yar Jung was to establish that Hyderabad was separate from the rest of India and that it should be declared a Muslim state. Bahadur Yar Jung summed this up very succinctly: "The Majlis policy is to keep the sovereignty of His Exalted Highness intact and to prevent Hindus from establishing supremacy over Muslims."

After the Nawab's death in 1944, Syed Qasim Rizvi was elected as MIM's leader. Rizvi also set up the Razakars (volunteers), as the MIM's military wing to resist merger with India. About 150,000 Razakars were mobilised to fight against the Indian Union and to assert the independence of the Hyderabad State. Their battle cry was to raise the Asifia flag on the Red Fort. The Razakars resistance against the Indian Army lasted about twenty fours. After the Hyderabad's integration in 1948, the MIM was banned.

Before completing his prison term in 1957, the Pakistan bound Qasim Rizvi handed over the responsibility of whatever remained of the MIM, to Abdul Wahid Owaisi, a lawyer. Abdul Wahed Owaisi restructured the party and organised it into the All India Majlis Ithehad-ul Muslimeen.

His son Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi took control of the MIM in 1975 and as its salaar-e-millat, created a political fiefdom based on the Muslim concentrations of Hyderabad city. He parlayed his position into a keeper of the peace in the twin cities and won advantageous terms every successive Congress chief minister. He was elected MP from Hyderabad in 1984 and served till his death in 2004. He used his political value to establish a number of institutions that are now controlled by his two sons. After his death the elder son, Asaduddin Owaisi, a London educated lawyer, took over the family fiefdom and has been Hyderabad's MP since then.

The MIM like many small and radical parties, which grow in terms of support, is also growing up intellectually. The MIM transformation from a Muslim nationalist party into a nationalist Muslim party picked up pace since November 2012, when Asaduddin withdrew support from the UPA. Since then he has been endeavouring to reposition his party as a pan Indian nationalist Muslim party. If he succeeds he will be the first Muslim leader who will sit on the nations high table on his own terms, without being there as a "sarkari Mussalman".

Because of our history and the partition, to be a Muslim in India is also to have to constantly reaffirm one's loyalty to India. A shrewd and canny politician, Asaduddin has created a new constituency that espouses Muslim interests and this often puts him in collision course with the ulemas and sarkari Musalmans. He has recently stated his opposition to the state funding the Hajj.

Owaisi's swift put down of a Pakistani maulana during a debate on Pakistani TV, which went viral on YouTube, further burnished his image among Indians as a whole. In tune with this, he has now taken offence to Azam Khan writing to the UN about the supposed plight of Muslims under a BJP ruled India. Owaisi has taken the position that the Indian Constitution and political system gives enough space for Muslims to fight for the betterment and rights, and it is unpatriotic to internationalise internal disputes. This is a far cry from the Razakars who made the Nizam's government to take the Hyderabad issue to the UN. The Muslim nationalist party has come full circle as a nationalist Muslim party.