What lurks behind the AIMIM's 'secular' offer

Owaisi can taunt 'secular' parties more forcefully, but it's unlikely to sway Muslims against the MVA government, which has kept the BJP out

Imtiaz Jaleel, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Lok Sabha MP from Aurangabad, must be laughing. An offer he made when a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) minister came to his house to offer condolences for his mother's death has all parties in Maharashtra in a tizzy. Tired of being called the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s B team, the AIMIM, said Jaleel, was willing to become the fourth wheel in the three-wheeler Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to help defeat the BJP.

The angry reactions from the Shiv Sena, the NCP, and the Congress, which make up the MVA, and even from the Samajwadi Party that supports the government from outside, shows that they took Jaleel's offer seriously. But did the Aurangabad MP make the offer seriously?

Imagine for a moment that Asaduddin Owaisi's party joins the MVA coalition. What then will the AIMIM leader say in his election rallies? Will he direct all his fire at the BJP alone?

Owaisi has attacked Narendra Modi ever since the latter took over as prime minister. But so have all other parties. What sets Owaisi apart is his concentrated onslaught on so-called secular parties. Since October 2014, when he entered Maharashtra to fight his first Assembly election outside his home state, Owaisi has had one plank: Exposing the secular claims of the Congress and other non-BJP parties. He last did this just weeks ago in UP, where the Samajwadi Party was his target.

The AIMIM's electoral victories have harmed mainly these parties, not the ruling Hindutva party. In Maharashtra, for instance, his candidates in 2014 cost the Congress two seats. In the 2019 general elections, his tie-up with Prakash Ambedkar cost the Congress-NCP alliance seven seats (the alliance won a miserable five seats). The most powerful political orator in the country is at his best not when attacking the most powerful man in the country, who should be his main target, but when railing against parties currently down and out.

The reason for this seeming anomaly is simple: Owaisi wants the Muslim votes these parties get. How better to appeal to those Muslim voters than by pointing out to them how they have been cheated by the so-called secular parties for whom they've always voted? That's when he can wax eloquent about Muslim sufferings since Independence, which have indeed been too many.

Now, if the AIMIM chief were to ally with these very parties whose governments have been responsible for these sufferings, what plank would he be left with?

It's not as though parties don't ally with old rivals whom they may have bitterly opposed, to get to power. But for Owaisi, the stakes are far too high for him to play this cynical game. His USP is his claim to be the only leader since Independence, who can give the country's largest minority the place it deserves in legislative bodies, and hence in State policy. He makes this claim on the basis of being the supremo of a Muslim party that's slowly spreading its wings beyond its base in Hyderabad. Lending strength to this claim is his unabashed assertion of Muslim identity at a time when this identity is under threat from the ruling party.

For his claim to be taken seriously, Owaisi must fight till all "secular" parties are rejected by Muslims, leaving him as the sole Muslim voice. Given this goal, how is it even conceivable for the AIMIM chief to ally with these very "secular" parties? Even more absurd is the idea of the AIMIM allying with a coalition headed by the Shiv Sena, the original Hindutva party which still proclaims its allegiance to "true Hindutva".

The same question applies in reverse. How can any of the MVA parties ally with Owaisi? For the Sena to do so is out of the question. And both the Congress and the NCP depend on votes from all communities. Will they be able to get these votes once they ally with a leader whose main plank is religious identity?

Why then was the offer made? Because Jaleel knew it would be rejected. Now Owaisi can taunt "secular" parties even more forcefully than before, projecting their rejection as their "fear of a strong Muslim leadership emerging among them."

Will this interpretation get him Muslim support in Maharashtra? Is that why the offer was made on the eve of Mumbai's municipal elections? Unlikely. In the October 2019 Assembly polls, with Modi back as PM and Muslims desperate to get rid of the BJP-Sena government, the AIMIM could win only two of the 44 seats it contested. Today, the MVA has managed to keep the BJP out; Muslims know for them, there's no better option.

(Jyoti Punwani is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.