Mumbai: In the first reaction after winning the assembly election, Imtiyaz Jaleel, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) legislator from Aurangabad (Central) constituency in Maharashtra, defended the party politics and said the party's victory was consequence of the existing Indian politics.
"The MIM victory in Maharashtra is a natural consequence of how Indian politics is evolving", he said while talking to media.
“All communities in India have their own party to represent them, except for the Muslims. That’s changing", he added.
“Muslims in India have been hearing the same refrain from Congress for a long time: ‘vote for us, or the BJP will get into power’. This menace sounds hollow now", he said.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Hyderabad based political party which had fielded 23 candidates in the 2014 Maharashtra assembly election, have won two seats.
The MIM victory in Maharashtra has stirred a debate in the political circle with some welcoming the new development, and some others warning that the 'religious based negative politics' will further polarise the already divided society.
“What seems to be happening is a consolidation of the Muslim vote. AIMIM candidates have been able to persuade voters that Hindus are voting for the BJP. It poses a problem for the BJP’s claim that they’re taking votes from across the spectrum", The Wall Street Journal quoted Harsh Pant, who teaches international relations at King’s College London, as saying.
On the similar lines, Kaleem Kawaja, a Washington based Indian-American activist, in a recent article said, "In the last one year one Muslim party - the Muslim Ittihad Muslimeen (MIM) of Hyderabad - is increasingly trying to ruplicate the polarising religion based politics of Shiv Sena and BJP.
"Perhaps this is so because of the success of these two Hindu fundamentalist parties in recent elections. MIM's tactics and strategy appear to be a throwback to the pre-independece politics of the erstwhile Muslim League and its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. MIM's two top leaders Asad Owaisi and Akbar Owaisi have increasingly adopted shrill religion based political tactics in tapping the despair and anger of the dispossessed Muslim youth."
But there are other who blamed the failure of the secular parties for the rise of the MIM.
"I do not subscribe to the politics of the MIM. But, its victory in the 2014 election is a welcome sign. It is the result of failure of the Congress and other secular parties. The MIM victory should work for them as an eye-opener", Feroze Mithiborewal, an activist, said while talking to ummid.com.
"Muslim disaffection with Congress has been going on for fifteen years: the Maharashtra election is showing us the end game. Congress has not delivered on promises they made to their Muslim electorate, and they're getting their payback", Subir Sinha, a senior lecturer in Indian politics at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London, is quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
Sinha noted that events that have marked India’s Muslim community – including the start of the process that eventually led to the razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, or the failure by an enquiry commission to single out those responsible for a 2002 Muslim pogrom in Gujarat – happened when Congress was in power in New Delhi.
"Both events have helped to distance the Muslim community from the Congress party, and the Maharashtra election results are a good indicator of what may happen at a national level," he said.
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