What Shahnawaz Hussain’s shift to Bihar says about Muslim leaders’ options in BJP

Shahnawaz Hussain can pick up where Chirag Paswan had left off in ‘Mission Nitish Demolition’. The BJP can also ensure his induction as the sole Muslim face in Bihar cabinet.

BJP leader and Bihar Industries Minister Shahnawaz Hussain | Photo: Twitter

Twenty years after he became the youngest Union minister at 32 in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain is returning to Bihar politics. The Bharatiya Janata Party has nominated him as a candidate in the Bihar legislative council polls. Hussain’s election is a mere formality, given how the numbers are stacked in the state assembly. There are two ways to look at this nomination: the BJP has rehabilitated him, finally; the BJP has shunted him out of Delhi, finally.

The rehabilitation theorists would argue that Shahnawaz Hussain had been in political wilderness for years, having contested his last election in 2014, unsuccessfully despite the ‘Modi wave’. Now he has the opportunity to emerge as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s tormentor-in-chief, given their not-so-cordial relations. Shahnawaz Hussain had publicly blamed Kumar for “taking away” his Bhagalpur Lok Sabha seat—in Janata Dal (United) quota—in 2019.

Hussain can pick up where Chirag Paswan — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Hanuman’ — had left off in ‘Mission Nitish Demolition’. The BJP can also ensure his induction into Kumar’s Cabinet, making him the sole Muslim face in the council of ministers. While none of the 11 Muslims candidates of the JD(U) won in the last assembly election, the BJP and other constituents of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) didn’t field any Muslim candidate. Imagine a senior minister, a Muslim, sniping at the CM day in and day out! Nitish Kumar must dread the prospect.

As good as it can get

If you ask a BJP leader, the party has entrusted Shahnawaz Hussain with an important assignment — that is, if he is also made a minister in the Nitish Kumar government. And it’s a big ‘if’.

So, would Hussain be happy even if he is made a minister in Bihar? Well, does he have a choice? In fact, in both the 2015 and 2020 assembly elections, the BJP central leadership wanted him to contest but he refused. He obviously considered becoming an MLA or a state minister a demotion. After all, he had barely crossed 30 when he created history, winning Muslim-dominated Kishanganj Lok Sabha seat as a BJP candidate in 1999. Vajpayee inducted him as a junior minister, only to elevate him to the Cabinet rank within a couple of years.

In subsequent years, Hussain won the Bhagalpur parliamentary seat twice. He lost the 2014 Lok Sabha election by a narrow margin but was looking to be accommodated in the Rajya Sabha and then in the Union Cabinet. That was never to be. One look at the BJP’s nominees to the Rajya Sabha since 2014 is enough. Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have had a tough time finalising the names. Not because there were more deserving candidates and less berths in the Upper House but because it’s the other way round.

Imagine what Hussain must be thinking when he saw his party nominating Syed Zafar Islam, who had joined the BJP in 2014, to the Rajya Sabha last year. In 2019, Hussain, a member of the BJP’s central election committee (CEC), was denied a ticket because his party bosses gave away his constituency, Bhagalpur, to the JD(U) in the seat-sharing arrangement. After losing his constituency, he became ‘homeless’, too, in Delhi. He was staying in a Pandit Pant Marg bungalow, allotted to a party MP. As that MP was also denied a ticket in 2019, Hussain was rendered homeless. He finally shifted into a rented accommodation in South Delhi.

Limited space, limited role 

So, what’s the best prospect for Shahnawaz Hussain now — to become a state Cabinet minister 20 years after serving as a Union Cabinet minister? Because as much he wishes and tries to, he can’t become the chief ministerial face of a party that chose not to field a single Muslim candidate in a state with 17 per cent Muslim population. But the BJP had adopted the same strategy in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, too, where Muslims constitute 19 per cent of the population. The BJP didn’t field a single Muslim on the 384 seats it contested in the 2017 assembly election. It later nominated a Muslim to the UP Legislative Council and made him a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. It’s the best that can be on offer for Shahnawaz Hussain.

His decision to shift to Bihar, barely three months after refusing to contest assembly election, is driven by desperation to be back in the corridors of power—in Patna, at least.  He must be wondering how he fell out of favour with his party bosses. He was very close to Uma Bharti and late Sushma Swaraj and enjoyed good rapport with former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje. In the early 1990s, in the midst of the political upheaval following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Bharti had ‘arranged’ his marriage with a Brahmin woman he was courting then; her parents were against this inter-faith marriage then. ‘What has religion got to do with love’ was his common refrain then. Of course, he doesn’t repeat it anymore—not publicly, at least.

Shahnawaz Hussain is probably paying for not adjusting his politics to changing times — by way of dumping his old political patrons the way many of his colleagues did in the Modi-Shah era. Unlike most prominent Muslim leaders of his party, Hussain had cut his teeth into politics with the BJP. Being a young Muslim leader of the BJP at the height of the Ayodhya movement wasn’t easy. He must envy the luck of late Sikander Bakht, the BJP’s poster-boy at one point in time. A Congressman for years, Bakht had joined the Janata Party before becoming a founder-member of the BJP. He went on to become the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, a Union Cabinet minister and then Kerala’s governor. Kerala Raj Bhawan is occupied by another Muslim leader from the BJP now—Arif Mohammad Khan — who had joined the party in 2004 after his long associations with the Congress and other parties.

For a 53-year-old politician like Hussain, a stint in state politics wouldn’t be a bad thing. Many politicians would consider it as taking one step backward to go two steps forward. He may not be so sanguine though. A Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi at the Centre, a Mohsin Raza in the Adityanath government, and probably a Hussain in the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar is the most the BJP can do to garnish its ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ offering. Naqvi may be a very competent minister but that doesn’t make him eligible for anything better than the minority affairs portfolio. As reported by ThePrint last year, of a dozen states where there are BJP CMs, Uttar Pradesh was the only one to have a Muslim face in the council of ministers — minister of state Mohsin Raza.

No prize for guessing his portfolio: Minority Welfare, Muslim Waqf and Haj.

Ambitious Muslim leaders of the BJP must wait till their party finds them electorally useful. That is likely to take a long, very long time, if at all. Shahnawaz Hussain will be better off in Patna, in the mean time.

Views are personal.