At a time when almost all major mainstream political parties are engaged in a fierce battle to win the hearts of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, a section of Muslim clerics busied themselves to push the community into a deadly religious ideological trap. Their aim was not only to ensure a just and proper share in the allotment of tickets to enter the assembly and to have an adequate share of power but also to settle their scores through this election.

With this bizarre goal in mind, a purely religious group of Barelvi Sunni Muslims known as the All India Ulema Mashaikh (clerics and nobles) Board turned political overnight. Its religious leaders are out in public to ensure that candidates owing allegiance to the Deobandi-Wahhabi school of thought are defeated in the elections, irrespective of the party they belong to. If they have their way, it would be the first time in the electoral history of the country that Sunni Muslim votes would be split on ideological lines. “We are not only going to oppose all the Deobandi candidates but will also make sure that they get defeated,” thundered AIUMB leaders Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichhochhavi and Syed Babar Ashraf at the Sufi Mahapanchayat in Moradabad in October. They claim 70 percent of Sunni Muslims follow Barelvi ideology.

The Barelvi leaders and Sufis were belching fire at the influential Darul Uloom, Deoband, the orthodox Islamic seminary. Reaction from the clerics and lay Muslims was sharp. A bewildered mohtamim (vice-chancellor) of Darul Uloom, Deoband, summoned a press conference where he countered the charge and questioned the credentials of the AIUMB.

Yet none could ignore the Barelvi clerics’ message. Shaista Ambar, the president of All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, said that instead of empowering the community to assert its rights in the fast-changing world, some leaders (clerics) were out to spread fitnah (to create a chaotic situation that tests one’s faith).

Deobandis, the Barelvis think, get the largest chunk of tickets and dominate educational institutions and all other services. Not only this. They think, 80 percent of their mosques have been captured by Deobandis. While Barelvis are moderate and closer to Sufism, sharing the local culture and have adopted local traditions and customs, Deobandis under the influence of the 250-year-old Wahhabi movement preach Islam in its original and puritan form. They even have their dress code (skull cap and knee-high pajama with beard being compulsory) to maintain their separate identity.

The sense of anger among Barelvis got expression in this election posing a challenge to the parties that could hardly distinguish between Barelvis and Deobandi-Wahhabis. Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali, a senior member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said that any attempt to play up religious ideological differences on the eve of election would harm the community’s cause.

This coincided with the Congress party scion Rahul Gandhi visiting well-known Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Nadwat-ul-Ulama on the banks of the Gomti in Lucknow and met its chief maulana Rabe Hasan Nadvi seeking the blessings of the Ulemas. Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav also visited the prestigious institution. Soon Mayawati also sent her confidant and BSP’s Muslim face Nasimuddin Siddiqui to the seminary to impress the Muslim voters.
This was not all. Rahul went to Azamgarh and shook hands with Burqa-clad college and school girls. SP’s youth icon Akhilesh Yadav moved in his chariot through Muslim-dominated areas meeting people and reminding them of his party’s secular credentials.

Frequent visits of political leaders to Nadwatul Ulama have led to a curious development—some scholars here have started showing interest in politics. Though the institution has been apolitical in nature, one of its leading scholars, Maulana Salman Nadvi, formed an Ittehaad Front (unity front) to work as an umbrella organisation for regional Muslims-oriented parties like Ulema Council, Parcham Party, Welfare Party of India (of Jamaat-e-Islami), Nationalist Loktantrik Party, Qaumi Ekta Dal and Peace Party. Later, the Peace Party that has emerged influential in some areas was eased out because its ambitious chief Dr Ayub indicated that his party was a natural ally of the BSP.

On the other hand, perfume-making businessman Maulana Ajmal Badruddin-led Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF), which has already set the mighty Brahmaputra and Barak rivers on fire by doubling its seats from nine to 18 in the last assembly polls, has announced his decision to contest all the 403 seats. Rich in resources and with the backing of Deoband (he is on the advisory board, shura, of the seminary), he might emerge as a rally point of Muslim outfits.

However, all these developments were taking place at a time when Muslim youths were giving clear signals that they were no longer interested in emotional issues or sectarian ideology. Social scientist Badri Narayan said the young Muslim generation was trying to modernise itself and was interested more in higher education, profession and job reservation than slogans by their Ulemas.

Keeping these aspirations in mind, political parties showered Muslims with promises of job reservation. Indeed it was Mayawati who read the writing on the wall and sent a letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh in September last year, saying she favoured reservation for backward Muslims to increase job opportunities for them in all sectors. The centre keeping in mind the Congress’s electoral politics in UP and other poll-bound states announced 4.5 percent job quota within the 27 percent quota for OBC.

Unmindful of the controversy that the centre’s quota-within-quota had kicked up, minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid promised to increase the same to nine percent after the polls, only to be pulled up by the election commission. Mulayam Singh Yadav did not lag behind and promised 18 percent quota for backward Muslims if voted to power.

According to Narayan, this promise for reservation has enchanting power for Muslim youth because it creates a sense of empowerment and gives them a sense of security and status in society.

Interestingly, while AIUMB was raising a storm and spreading the ideological trap for Muslims, parties were vying with one another for allotting to Muslims as many tickets as possible. The BSP took the lead by allotting 84 seats out of 403. This constitutes 21 percent of the total tickets. It was followed by 75 seats by SP and 61 by the Congress. In the outgoing house, there are 56 Muslim MLAs, the highest so far.

All this because the thinking contours of the new generation Muslim voters have changed fast, said political analyst Surendra Singh Rajput. He pointed out that the proverbial RSS threat to their identity, Mandir-Masjid controversy, the talk of ‘Islam in danger’ and other emotional issues no longer bother them. “The young generation now feels that the past two generations were consumed by emotional issues and in turn Muslims piled up a backlog of miseries, poverty, illiteracy and backwardness. But now there is awakening among the voters. They have become assertive and socio-politically extrovert and this new assertion is leading to the search for a new identity.” Rahul Gandhi has realised this.

Clearly, the political parties in UP were reading the face of young voters who along with others constitute nearly 45 percent of the voters. But the new assertion and growing aspiration along with others have alarmed the clergy and this feeling might be the reason behind the Barelvi-Deobandi clash just before polls.

In fact, it was all about capturing the crucial Muslims support. Muslims’ electoral strength matches only the numerical strength of dalits who constitute 21 percent of the population against 18.5 (unofficial estimate puts it to 20) percent Muslim votes. In UP, Muslim votes play a deciding role in as many as 130 seats.

Muslims number about 20% in 70 assembly seats, whereas they are between 30% and 45% in 20 seats in western UP, 10 seats of eastern UP (Poorvanchal), five seats of central UP (Awadh) and one seat of Bundelkhand (Jhansi area).

In the 2007 assembly elections, there were around 51 seats where Muslim candidates were either on the first or second positions and more than 31 seats saw Muslim candidates getting the third slot. 

Traditionally, Muslims were considered a Congress vote bank, but in the wake of the Mandir-Masjid movement the community saw Mulayam Singh Yadav as their messiah and shifted its loyalty to the Samajwadi Party.

However, just before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the SP supremo hoping to get Lodh votes (2.5%) put in danger his secular credentials by inducting Kalyan Singh whom Muslims saw as the villain of the Babri Masjid demolition, into his party. Many of Yadav’s trusted leaders, including Azam Khan, not only deserted him but also campaigned against the SP the way Kalyan Singh had campaigned against the BJP in 2002 after he was removed from the CM’s post in 1999.

Despite the fact that it was Kalyan Singh who had extended support to Yadav to form the government after Mayawati had resigned in 2003, Muslims were livid at the Mulayam-Kalyan friendship and tilted towards the Congress. As a result, Yadav lost many Lok Sabha seats but was still number one in the tally. Though the Congress doubled its seats, Mayawati suffered losses.

But in UP, the socio-economic divide among Muslims is still very sharp. It has historical reasons. In the wake of the partition, upper-caste, educated, wealthy and aristocratic Muslims attracted by the greener pasture on the other side of the border had migrated to Pakistan, leaving behind the middle-class people and artisans. Later, in a series of riots, especially in towns where traditional art and crafts were concentrated, those artisans lost their very means of livelihood. In subsequent elections, they were forced by their own leaders to fight for emotional issues that didn’t ensure them livelihood and education. Muslim leaders wanted to play the role of the champions of the community in the Ganga belt in a way that the widespread illiteracy and economic backwardness among Muslims remained intact. The logic was simple: the more they were socio-economically backward, the more they could be exploited emotionally and politically.

Contrary to the situation in UP, Muslims in southern and western India were better off because wealthy Muslims in the region stayed back at the time of partition and prospered in their own regions.

Data collected by psephologists in the past showed that while in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls only seven percent Muslims voted for BSP and 61% had voted for SP, in the 2007 assembly polls 32% voted for BSP and 40% for SP. Though Mayawati tried to make it 60:40 in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, she failed because while Mulayam Singh Yadav almost maintained his Muslim vote share, a sizeable number of Muslims tilted towards the Congress.

On the basis of field feedback, Badri Narayan predicts that in this election, Muslim votes are expected to be divided between SP and the Congress. Muslims feel that despite high-sounding promises, only a handful of Brahmins and Muslims hanging around Mayawati ate away their share of the cake. This kind of feeling along with the raging ideological war is bound to create new political contours in the UP elections.