#dnaEdit: Polarised for a kill

Finally, the right wing Hindutva parties are getting a taste of their own medicine. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s (AIMIM) stupendous gains in the Aurangabad municipal elections — 26 seats out of 113 — must have come as a big jolt to the Sena-BJP, though the alliance has managed to win comfortably with 52 seats. The MIM has found its feet, voice and a following in a Sena bastion by playing the same game of polarisation in constituencies where the Muslims are a majority. It has begun to pay handsome dividends because the minorities have reasons to be wary of the current dispensation. Following a bitter realisation that the Congress, a spent force, has for far too long exploited their insecurities against the saffron wave, Muslims have turned to the Owaisi brothers. An emasculated Congress has made the job easy for Asaduddin and Akbaruddin Owaisi who are now the most vocal and visible champions of Muslims rights. 

From being a Hyderabad-based party, the MIM has made slow but steady progress in Maharashtra in the past one year— first, by winning two seats in the 2014 assembly elections, and now emerging as the largest opposition party in the Aurangabad municipality. Though a long way from being considered a force to reckon with, the MIM’s achievement in Aurangabad, at the cost of the Congress, should not be dismissed as a one-off phenomenon. 

By drawing Dalits into the fold — another oppressed section like the Muslims — the party has not only widened its support base but brightened its chances of an impressive tally. Five of the 13 Dalit candidates fielded by the MIM have won, whereas the Bahujan Samaj Party, the self-proclaimed custodian of Dalit interests, barely scraped through with 5 seats. This proves that the brothers, with a strong grasp of the ground realities, have delivered a masterstroke. The Congress-NCP with 13 seats have realised that they have lost currency and relevance in Aurangabad’s deeply polarised electorate. Though flush with victory, the Sena can barely conceal its worries at the growing MIM influence in the Marathwada region. 

Given Aurangabad’s political history and demographics, it was an obvious choice for the MIM. The party had already tested the waters in the Nanded civic body polls in 2012, where it wrested 12 seats from the Congress. A jubilant, confident Imtiyaz Jaleel, MIM’s MLA from Aurangabad, has ratcheted up the heat by calling the Aurangabad victory a trailer and that the BMC polls in 2017 will be the real show. 

This is an open challenge to the Sena-BJP and a call to the Muslims of the city to rally behind the party. Though Mumbai has minority-dominated pockets, to make a splash in the corporation polls will prove to be far more challenging and complex. What is worrying, however, is the open call for religion-based polarisation by both the saffron parties and MIM. In the current scenario, not only has secular politics taken a backseat, there seems to be no attempt to revive it. The fault lines in Mumbai are already sharp and deep, with Muslims finding safety in ghettos. MIM’s growing presence will now increasingly make the Sena-BJP anxious on its own turf.