Udupi is a long way from Lucknow, but the hijab controversy is just the kind of emotive issue that could help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) polarise voters in the UP election.
By all accounts, no stone is being left unturned to make the wearing of the hijab by Muslim girl students a national issue. The issue is being agitated in the streets, in the High Court, by politicians on social media as well as in Parliament. Hindutva's foot-soldiers in Karnataka are not bothered by the Puttuswamy judgement on the right to privacy and the fundamental right to choose one's attire. They are instruments for another purpose. Even Opposition MPs from 8 parties staged a walk-out asserting that wearing a hijab is not a crime and protesting that an "atmosphere of fear is being created."
The BJP desperately needs all this noise, even the Opposition's opposition, to whip it into an issue relevant for the UP elections. Its experience is that past elections were won when a large population of the state votes along communal lines. It probably believes that the Hindu voter in the state is 'confused' – unable to decide whether to prioritise its religious sentiments over livelihood issues of rising prices, youth unemployment, falling incomes in agriculture and the experience of how the government dealt with the farmers' agitation. An emotive issue will perhaps bring them back to the fold.
To win the election, the BJP must not only break the OBC-Jat caste consolidation forged by the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance, but it must prevent the Muslim vote from consolidating behind the alliance. In Western UP, there are 136 seats across 26 districts where the Muslim population is slightly above 26 per cent. Western UP is extremely important for the BJP because in 2017, while the party had received 41 per cent votes in the state, its vote share in Western UP was 44.14 per cent, partly the result of religious propaganda about Hindus fleeing Kairana. In the 2019 general election, while the BJP vote share for the entire state of UP was 50 per cent, it was 52 per cent in Western UP.
While the BJP has not fielded a single Muslim candidate in the region, which goes for polling on February 10 and 14, the SP has fielded 12 Muslim candidates, the Congress 11, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 16 and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musalmeen (AIMIM) 9. By dividing the Muslim vote, Asaduddin Owaisi is seen to be playing the same role that he played in the Bihar Assembly polls of 2015 when he was dubbed as the "B-Team of the BJP". Mayawati, too, will help divide the Muslim vote by fielding a large number of Muslim candidates.
Is it entirely a coincidence that Owaisi has brought the hijab issue to the UP elections? Addressing a rally at Sarai Tarin in Western UP, Owaisi said, "I pray that our sisters fighting for their right to wear hijab are successful in their fight." While campaigning in Sambhal, again in Western Uttar Pradesh, Owaisi claimed, "The BJP government is not allowing our daughters to wear a hijab and study, but Prime Minister Modi talks of empowering Muslim women with the triple talaq law." He urged Muslims everywhere to show the same courage as shown by the hijab-wearing students saying, "I salute the women of Karnataka. I tweeted about how a burqa-clad woman walked into a saffron crowd and chanted 'Allah Hu Akbar'. This is the courage every Muslim should have." No doubt other political parties will rally in favour of the girl students as well, thereby perhaps falling into a carefully laid trap.
Managing the Muslim vote becomes especially important today as UP seems to have little appetite for communal violence. The farmers' agitation, with one of its epicentres in Western UP, has forged a Hindu-Muslim unity that may not come apart so soon over communal provocations. Several recent attempts to polarise the voters on religious lines have failed. Union Home Minister Amit Shah's speech in Kairana raking up claims that Hindus had allegedly fled the area in 2017, reminding them of the communal riots of 2013 in Muzaffarnagar and an outlandish claim that the BJP and Jats shared a legacy of fighting the 'Mughals' for 650 years did not have much impact. This is why many feared that the BJP might stoke communal confrontations in states other than UP and use the sentiment generated for propaganda in UP.
Not surprisingly, the communal provocation came from Karnataka, a BJP-ruled state which is fast turning into the Hindutva laboratory of South India. Nor is it surprising that following the BJP government's order against girl students wearing headscarves in Karnataka schools, the issue is being pumped up by the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh and the BJP-NR Congress alliance government in Puducherry. Both have come out against wearing hijab in schools.
On the other hand, Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Choudhary are wary of taking a stand that might be seen as minority appeasement. Political observers point out that this time around, the SP-RLD combine has been very careful not to field too many Muslim candidates in Western UP and has denied candidature to those Muslim leaders of the region who have thrived on the politics of religious polarisation. Those left out in the cold include Imran Masood, who left Congress to join SP, Mavia Ali, who was a claimant for the Deoband seat, Kadir Rana, who jumped ship from the BSP to join the SP and three-time MLA, two-term Lok Saha MP and one-term Rajya Sabha MP, Amir Alam Khan who wanted to contest from Bijnor.
The Muslim vote is sought to be driven by emotive issues like the clumsy 'firing at' Owaisi's car while campaigning in UP. The "assassination bid" was by a youngster associated with the BJP. Nevertheless, the firing has already become a part of the poll discourse in UP. As the election moves into other parts of UP, one can expect more incidents aimed at provoking the voters in UP.
(The writer is a journalist based in Delhi)