Lucknow: As part of its outreach to the Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress unit has written to the ulemas urging them to encourage the community to become “positive voters” and flagging the likelihood of Muslim representation getting marginalised in Parliament in the event of Muslim-dominated seats getting reserved for women.
The party leaders have said that just like Muslim-dominated seats got reserved for the Dalits (according to the Sachar Committee report), when the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act 2023 is implemented and 33 percent reservation is given to women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies, the Muslim-dominated seats are likely to be reserved for women.
Through such letters, the party plans to warn the Muslims that “other political parties had only been using them and taking them for granted.”
In the first such letter addressed to the ulemas last week, Shahnawaz Alam, the chairman of the party’s minority affairs department, said “nobody makes Muslims part of the government because we (Muslims) vote to defeat the BJP, whereas other communities vote to help someone win.”
The Congress minority department further wrote that the other parties make leaders of other communities part of the government in return for their votes, but the Muslim community has “become non-political due to their attitude” and “situation has worsened so much that the Muslims started feeling it is good to stay away from politics”.
“…leaders are not born in our community any more … In this way, we were forced to reckon with the non-political leaders imposed by others. This is a way to end our leadership, which we ourselves end up making successful,” reads the letter in possession with ThePrint.
Before the rise of the Samajwadi Party, the Muslims formed a core vote bank of the Congress. The party saw this section of voters melt away with the rise of SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav whose Muslim-Yadav formula and outreach made the regional outfit the first choice of the Muslims since the 1990s.
As many as 73 percent of Muslims voted for the Mahagathbandhan comprising the SP and Mayawati’s BSP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, according to a Lokniti CSDS analysis. The SP also got 79 percent of votes from the community in the 2022 assembly polls, it shows.
Alam told ThePrint that more such letters will be sent to community leaders as this is “a way of constructive engagement.”
“Around 1,000 letters have been sent to Muslim ulemas and religious leaders across 60 districts especially in rural areas of districts like Hapur, Bulandshahr, Muzaffarnagar, Barabanki, Gonda, Bahraich, Siddharthnagar, Sonbhadra, Bhadohi, Banda, Rampur, Saharanpur, and Moradabad,” he added.
‘Seats with Muslim population will be reserved for women’
The seats that “they (Muslims) used to win due to their increased share in the population will be reserved for women (in the future) the way the seats were reserved for Dalits”, the letter informs.
“While communities making up four-five per cent of the state’s population are producing dozens of leaders from within the community, on the strength of their votes, we have made ourselves negative voters. The Congress wants to change this scenario,” it says.
“Between 1980-84, as many as 49 Muslim MPs had won in the country which was almost 8.5 per cent of its 14 percent population at that time.”
“Earlier, the Congress has made chief ministers in Bihar (Abdul Gafoor), Rajasthan (Barkatullah Khan), Assam (Syeda Anwara Taimur), Maharashtra (Abdul Rahman Antulay) and Pondicherry (Hasan Farook). This was when we used to vote to help the Congress win and not to defeat someone,” the letter adds.
The letter is a part of the larger Muslim outreach programme ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress minority department has held silent meetings and held programmes to pay respect to Mughal emperors like Akbar and Bahadur Shah Zafar.
In October, the party held demonstrations to highlight the plight of madrasa teachers not being paid their salaries. It also honoured retired government employees on the birth anniversary of former Rajasthan chief minister Barkatullah Khan, in the same month.
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‘Cong responsible for decreasing political participation’
But, SP spokesperson Manoj Singh Kaka asserted that it was the Congress which was responsible for the decreasing political participation of minorities as it had been in power for years.
“If the political participation of minorities is decreasing, its responsibility lies with the Congress. The party has given the lowest number of tickets to Muslims in Rajasthan and MP. It denied tickets to backward leaders, who then came in touch with us and the Azad Samaj Party. If it is resorting to such politics, the Congress needs introspection. Voters will vote only for those working for inclusive development and if there is anyone working towards that, it is Akhilesh Yadav who has not only given voice to their needs in the manifesto but also raised their concerns from time to time,” he told ThePrint.
It was due to such discourse that “the SP leadership was forced to say that the character of BJP and Congress is the same”, Kaka added.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party is a part of the Congress-led INDIA bloc.
Asked if the interests of the two parties were clashing, UP Congress chief Ajay Rai commented that the party will approach everyone from village to village. “We will reach out to everyone…farmers, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains, etc. We will approach everyone.”
Alam, however, said that the other parties don’t appreciate the favour of the Muslims and think they have nowhere to turn to.
“Hence, the community is taken for granted and is not in a bargaining position. According to the reports of the Sachar committee and Ranganathan commission, Muslims’ plight is worse than that of Dalits and the seats with more Muslim population have been reserved for Dalits. In the coming future, the seats with Muslim population will be reserved for women,” he said.
‘All parties hurt Muslims’
Meanwhile, a senior Muslim cleric said that the Congress has not given space to the youth in leadership and that their Muslim leaders failed to remain in touch with the community on ground.
Maulana Aarif, the Shahi Imam, Jama Masjid in Bulandshahr’s Sikandrabad, added that every party has used the Muslims.
“Congress was in power for 70 years. How many leaders have they groomed from within the community? Every party used us as a vote bank and abandoned us. Nobody is our enemy, including the BJP. Everyone is damaging us in their own way. If Muslims have been weakened it is because of the Congress,” he told ThePrint.
Aarif added that even the Muslim MPs from the Congress remained elusive after they became leaders. “Has Salman Khurshid ever travelled on the ground? Why is the Congress investing in such old individuals? Why are youth not being included in leadership? They were taking votes for 30 years but apart from appointing Muslims as home guards and teachers, no proper jobs have been given to the community,” he rued.
Aarif said that while parties have been scaring the community in the name of the BJP, the party’s thinking is not the same as “a particular CM of a particular state.”
“One CM may have some polarising thinking but the thought process of the party is not the same in every state. No party has fallen short of damaging the Muslims. Some have damaged our eyes, some our hands, others our feet and some took away our brain itself. But now, Muslims are becoming more aware,” he said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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