For Muslims in Maharashtra, Uddhav’s Sena emerges as ‘right choice’
Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray addressing a public meeting for the Lok Sabha election, in Solapur on Monday. he paradigm shift that occurred in Maharashtra politics in 2019, when the then united Shiv Sena walked out of the NDA to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the State, along with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), is perhaps best exemplied by the fact that leaders of the Muslim community are now looking at Uddhav Thackeray’s faction as its most likely bet in the Lok Sabha election, even from among the MVA constituents.
According to Ghulam Arif, convener of the “Community Talking” platform, a debating group among the Muslim community in Maharashtra, it has not been an easy journey. For the community, which felt alienated from the Shiv Sena before the 1992 riots, the Sena (UBT) has become the rst choice among its voters, sometimes even over the Congress, as its relative strength makes it a more formidable opponent to the BJP.
“Currently, there is an existential crisis in the Muslim community, which fears that a return of the BJP may lead to erosion of constitutional rights of minorities. Any reservation that Muslims have about the Sena (UBT) is superseded by this sense of crisis,” he said.
“Unlike Muslims in the Konkan belt, where society is better integrated on religious lines, Mumbai Muslims had felt alienated by the Shiv Sena,” he added. Muslims comprise nearly 10.6% of the population and are largely in the urban centres and some areas in the Konkan region.
However, none of the MVA constituents have elded any Muslim candidate in this Lok Sabha election, a fact that has led to the resignation of Maharashtra Congress working president Arif Naseem Khan.
Farid Khan, socio-political activist and convener of Urdu Karavan, an organisation devoted to the promotion of Urdu, does point out to the lack of positive a¦rmation when politicians come to solicit support.
“We are literally like a barren eld, which is to be ring-fenced but nothing is to be spent to cultivate it,” said Mr Khan. In fact, a few days back, Rais Khan, Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA from Bhiwandi (East), who recently also quit the party over di¡erences, held a meeting of Muslim community members exhorting them to vote for the MVA constituents as an “extraordinary” situation was prevailing in the country.
Mr. Khan, however, does add that the two years of the MVA saw not just the pandemic but also the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, and that both challenges were handled by the then government “keeping everyone’s sensitivities in mind”.
In Western Maharashtra, Shabbir Ansari, the founding president of the All India Muslim OBC organisation, said that apart from tactical reasons, the Muslim community, especially OBCs among Muslims, was heartened by the promise of a caste census promised by the MVA constituents.
The Assembly election, just a few months away, will be the real test, but for now, for the Muslim community, the Sena (UBT) has emerged as the “right choice”.
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