DOCSLIB.ORG

West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Does a ‘Party Society’ Really Subsume the Politics of ‘Identity’ and ‘Development’?

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Does a ‘Party Society’ Really Subsume the Politics of ‘Identity’ and ‘Development’? ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021: Does a ‘Party Society’ Really Subsume the Politics of ‘Identity’ and ‘Development’? EPW ENGAGE While West Bengal’s “exceptionalism” is often touted to explain the claimed lack of communal and caste-based politics in the state, the rise of populist forces has somehow managed to take advantage of identitarian fault lines without creating space for democratic political mobilisation of marginalised sections. Elections for 294 seats of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly are scheduled to be held between 27 March and 29 April 2021 in eight phases. The key political players in the upcoming elections include: (i) The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and its allies, including the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha; (ii) The Sanyukta Morcha, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]), other parties comprising the Left Front, the Indian National Congress (Congress) and the Indian Secular Front (ISF); (iii) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies; (iv) Unallied other parties including the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) and the Lok Janshakti Party. Like in the previous assembly elections in the state in 2016, the ruling TMC, led by current Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, faces challenges of anti-incumbency as well as dual ideological opposition from the left and the Congress on one side and the BJP’s Hindutva right on the other. Will Banerjee’s popularity see her through another successful electoral ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 campaign or will BJP’s majoritarian rhetoric and strategy of inducting former TMC leaders win out? What will the impact of the “alternative” alliance between the CPI(M)-led Left parties, the Congress and Abbas Siddiqui’s ISF be? And will Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM be able to play a key role in determining the political outcome, like it did in the 2020 Bihar assembly elections? While the electoral prospects of the various parties contesting the West Bengal elections will be known only after the counting of votes and announcement of results on 2 May 2021, this reading list attempts to analyse the key themes that are likely to play out in the voting choices in the state. Primacy of Local Political Organisation? Unlike other states in India, where factors of caste, religion and ethnicity have been analysed as determining the “vote banks” of political parties, West Bengal has a unique history of affiliation to political parties and polarisation along party lines. Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya explained this as a “party society.” In 2021, he wrote: In the long rule of the left, a combination of centralised organisation and decentralised governance turned the state’s political field into what I called ‘‘party society.’’ Party kora or ‘‘doing the party’’ is a peculiar Bangla expression; it once referred to Communist Party of India (Marxist)—(CPI[M])—cadres, now it refers to the TMC workers. West Bengal politics generally spins not on caste, religious or ethnic associations, but on their absorption within this or that political party. Subhasish Ray (2017) described the extraordinarily dense party organisation of the CPI(M), which penetrated into each and every aspect of life in rural West Bengal (where a majority of the state lives) as the “core instrument” of the party’s hegemony. Since the time of the long-running Left regime in the state, the party’s organisation was known to mediate interactions between the state and the public, such as in the delivery of public services. Referencing Bhattacharyya, Suman Nath (2018) noted the evolution of the party society: Bhattacharyya (2010: 53) notes that the evolution of such party society germinated from the “violent class-based movements of the poor peasants as they fought against the domination of the landlords ... These movements—facilitated by the left parties—for food, land, security of tenure, and freedom for ‘the intrusion of the excluded.’” Eventually, the domination adopts what Ruud (2003) notes as a form of “symbolic capital” in Bourdieu’s sense of the term. Bhattacharyya (2010: 55) further argues that “this enabled ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 the communities to use political parties as conduits to pose their demands to the institutions of government, and allowed the party, in return, to transfer policies to the society by dissemination within the communities.” He went on to highlight the extensive role played by the Left’s political organisation when it was in power: Bhattacharyya (2016: 126) also notes several unique characteristics of politics in West Bengal such as the (i) absence of “other channels of public transactions,” (ii) lack of political focus on caste, religion or ethnicity-based social divisions, (iii) partisan forms of conflicts, (iv) accepted position of party as “moral guardians” of social life, and (v) party’s exclusive control over the panchayat system. In the context of TMC’s rise to power and its defeat of the long-running Left government in 2011, Nath (2017) contended that “party-based and organisation-dependent delivery system promoted by the Left Front” had been supplanted by a service delivery model mediated by powerful local leaders and corruption. He explained: The political mediation through different hierarchies—booth committee, branch committee, local committee, and finally, district committee—through which decisions were made used to be well organised, but simultaneously time- consuming. “For getting certain things done, CPM took months … they had their political hierarchy and protocol to follow, TMC did not have much protocol to follow … as a person you need to know whom to ask for what and you must be willing to pay a certain amount” (One of the villagers in Bankura, field notes, January 2015). This notion has been popularised by the TMC as opposed to the CPI(M) in each of the gram panchayats I studied. While Nath interpreted this mediation by “strong leaders with local networks and command over local administration” as an “alternative to ‘party society,’” Bhattacharyya (2021) viewed the new affiliations of the public to local TMC leaders as an extension of “party society” itself, with allegiances continuing to forged along party lines. Though TMC has no organisation that matches what the CPI(M) once had, Mamata has given a relatively free hand to local satraps to run the party in lieu of absolute loyalty to her leadership. Therefore, despite the vote share of the BJP having increased to 40.23% with 18 seats in the ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state as compared to 17.02% with two seats in 2014, Bhattacharyya held that electoral outcomes at the central level are likely to be a poor indicator of those at the state level: While the local elections in West Bengal are the best barometers indicating changes in party society (panchayat election in 2008 signalled Mamata’s rise), parliamentary elections are the least resonant of the state’s deep social politics. Consequently, the logic of voting for Parliament and for assembly are incongruous in West Bengal, and the former is the least reflective of who controls political power in local society. In this light, will the BJP’s rhetoric of a “double-engine sarkar” (meaning a BJP-led government at both the centre and the state) to bring about development in the state hold sway with voters? Communal Polarisation and Caste-based Assertion While Bhattacharyya has argued for the primacy of “party society” in West Bengal’s political landscape, the electoral significance of other identities—based on religion, caste and ethnicity—cannot be discounted. Rajat Roy (2017) wrote: Muslim population in Bengal is around 28%, and that of Scheduled Castes is around 23%, a majority of them peasants. These peasants successfully resisted the erstwhile Left Front government’s bid for land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram, thus paving the way for the TMC coming to power. After coming to power, the Mamata government took some steps to bring benefits to these socio-religious sections of the society. The BJP’s Hindutva campaign has continually attacked the Banerjee government’s pro- Muslim measures as “blatant appeasement of Muslims.” Roy contended that the sociopolitical space for the Hindutva right was created by the decline of the left. He explained: It is true that ever since partition, the politics of the left and the left-of-centre dominated the political scene in Bengal, and the politics of the Hindu rights never got many takers. However, the decline of the left and Congress in the state has created a void. Instead, caste and community-based identity politics have started raising their heads. Because of a history of partition, West Bengal ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 had a sizeable number of Hindus who had come from the eastern part of undivided Bengal. While the middle class had resettled themselves in Kolkata and other urban areas, the lower class, mostly peasantry and artisans, were settled in rural areas, many in the districts bordering Bangladesh. The loss of livelihood, coupled with the lack of proper rehabilitation programme taken up by the government made them angry and frustrated. The refugee movement was co-opted by the left and they gave vent to their anger by supporting the left in successive elections. With the passage of time, the refugee movement lost its steam, yet the sense of loss for their lost home and livelihood remained strongly in their mind. The bitter memory of partition had left an indelible mark in their minds that made them hostile to Muslims when fomented by communal politics. The refugees’ disenchantment with the left grew as they got little succour even after the left came to rule the state for more than three decades. In the 1990s, at the advent of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the BJP saw its vote share increase (in Lok Sabha constituencies) in border districts, where the refugee voters are a dominant force, wrote Roy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Freedom in West Bengal Revised
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington Freedom and its Enemies: Politics of Transition in West Bengal, 1947-1949 * Sekhar Bandyopadhyay Victoria University of Wellington I The fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence became an occasion for the publication of a huge body of literature on post-colonial India. Understandably, the discussion of 1947 in this literature is largely focussed on Partition—its memories and its long-term effects on the nation. 1 Earlier studies on Partition looked at the ‘event’ as a part of the grand narrative of the formation of two nation-states in the subcontinent; but in recent times the historians’ gaze has shifted to what Gyanendra Pandey has described as ‘a history of the lives and experiences of the people who lived through that time’. 2 So far as Bengal is concerned, such experiences have been analysed in two subsets, i.e., the experience of the borderland, and the experience of the refugees. As the surgical knife of Sir Cyril Ratcliffe was hastily and erratically drawn across Bengal, it created an international boundary that was seriously flawed and which brutally disrupted the life and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Bengalis, many of whom suddenly found themselves living in what they conceived of as ‘enemy’ territory. Even those who ended up on the ‘right’ side of the border, like the Hindus in Murshidabad and Nadia, were apprehensive that they might be sacrificed and exchanged for the Hindus in Khulna who were caught up on the wrong side and vehemently demanded to cross over.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 43 Electoral Statistics
    CHAPTER 43 ELECTORAL STATISTICS 43.1 India is a constitutional democracy with a parliamentary system of government, and at the heart of the system is a commitment to hold regular, free and fair elections. These elections determine the composition of the Government, the membership of the two houses of parliament, the state and union territory legislative assemblies, and the Presidency and vice-presidency. Elections are conducted according to the constitutional provisions, supplemented by laws made by Parliament. The major laws are Representation of the People Act, 1950, which mainly deals with the preparation and revision of electoral rolls, the Representation of the People Act, 1951 which deals, in detail, with all aspects of conduct of elections and post election disputes. 43.2 The Election Commission of India is an autonomous, quasi-judiciary constitutional body of India. Its mission is to conduct free and fair elections in India. It was established on 25 January, 1950 under Article 324 of the Constitution of India. Since establishment of Election Commission of India, free and fair elections have been held at regular intervals as per the principles enshrined in the Constitution, Electoral Laws and System. The Constitution of India has vested in the Election Commission of India the superintendence, direction and control of the entire process for conduct of elections to Parliament and Legislature of every State and to the offices of President and Vice- President of India. The Election Commission is headed by the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners. There was just one Chief Election Commissioner till October, 1989. In 1989, two Election Commissioners were appointed, but were removed again in January 1990.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Studies Paper-15 Geeta Mukherjee-Architect of the Women's
    Women’s Studies Paper-15 Geeta Mukherjee-Architect of the Women’s Reservation Bill Module-16 PERSONAL DETAILS Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University, Allahabad Paper Coordinator Dr. Sabu George & CWDS, New Delhi Dr. Kumudini Pati Independent Researcher Associated with the Centre for Women’s Studies Allahabad University Content Writer/Author Dr. Kumudini Pati Independent Researcher Associated with the Centre for Women’s Studies Allahabad University Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University Language Editor (LE) Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University, Allahabad DESCRIPTION OF MODULE Subject name Women’s Studies Paper name The stories the States Tell Module name/Title Geeta Mukherjee-Architect of the Women’s Reservation Bill Module ID Paper-15, Module-16 Pre-requisite Some awareness of the context of the Women’s Reservaton Bill Objectives To give the student an understanding of the history of the Women’s Reservation Bill and the long struggle that has gone into it. Keywords Quota, constitution, election, Lok Sabha, Parliament Geeta Mukherjee-Architect of the Women’s Reservation Bill Introduction A modest self-effacing personality but with a steely resolve to fight for the rights of women and the toiling people of India, Geeta Mukherjee, CPI M.P. from Panskura, West Bengal, remained active till the last day of her life. She was a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1967 to 1977, winning the Panskura Purba Assembly seat 4 times in a row. She was elected a Member of Parliament for 7 terms, and remained active in parliamentary struggles for a period of 33 long years.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Media Stars:Kerala
    SOCIAL MEDIA STARS: KERALA Two people whose reach goes beyond Kerala and its politics — Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and BJP’s surprise candidate for the Thiruvananthapuram Assembly constituency former cricketer S Sreesanth — lead the Twitter charts in the state. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and BJP state president K Rajasekaran are also active, often tweeting in Malayalam. Due to long-standing alliances in the state, the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress has a handle of its own, in addition to independent handles of the parties. Neither the Left Front nor its leaders seem to have figured out Twitter. In the last of a four-part series on social media stars in the poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala, N Sundaresha Subramanian looks at the Twitter scene in God’s Own Country OOMMEN CHANDY Chief Minister, Kerala (Congress) Twitter Handle: @Oommen_Chandy Tweets No. of followers 6,129 51.4K SHASHI THAROOR Congress MP, Thiruvananthapuram Twitter Handle: @ShashiTharoor S SREESANTH Tweets No. of followers BJP candidate, Thiruvananthapuram 30.8K 4.09M Twitter Handle: @sreesanth36 Tweets No. of followers 6,268 1.04M PARTY HANDLES UDF KERALA V MURALEEDHARAN Twitter Handle: @udfkerala BJP veteran Tweets No. of followers Twitter Handle: @MuraliBJP 103 4,602 Tweets No. of followers 625 4,415 CPI(M) KERALAM Twitter Handle: @CPIM_Keralam KUMMANAM RAJASEKHARAN Tweets No. of followers 4,127 State president, BJP 958 Twitter Handle: @Kummanam Tweets No. of followers BJP KERALAM 1,324 10.8K Twitter Handle: @BJP4Keralam Tweets No. of followers RAMESH 3,993 4,906 CHENNITHALA Home Minister , Kerala (Congress) Twitter Handle: @chennithala KERALA CONGRESS Tweets No.
    [Show full text]
  • Red Bengal's Rise and Fall
    kheya bag RED BENGAL’S RISE AND FALL he ouster of West Bengal’s Communist government after 34 years in power is no less of a watershed for having been widely predicted. For more than a generation the Party had shaped the culture, economy and society of one of the most Tpopulous provinces in India—91 million strong—and won massive majorities in the state assembly in seven consecutive elections. West Bengal had also provided the bulk of the Communist Party of India– Marxist (cpm) deputies to India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha; in the mid-90s its Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, had been spoken of as the pos- sible Prime Minister of a centre-left coalition. The cpm’s fall from power also therefore suggests a change in the equation of Indian politics at the national level. But this cannot simply be read as a shift to the right. West Bengal has seen a high degree of popular mobilization against the cpm’s Beijing-style land grabs over the past decade. Though her origins lie in the state’s deeply conservative Congress Party, the challenger Mamata Banerjee based her campaign on an appeal to those dispossessed and alienated by the cpm’s breakneck capitalist-development policies, not least the party’s notoriously brutal treatment of poor peasants at Singur and Nandigram, and was herself accused by the Communists of being soft on the Maoists. The changing of the guard at Writers’ Building, the seat of the state gov- ernment in Calcutta, therefore raises a series of questions. First, why West Bengal? That is, how is it that the cpm succeeded in establishing
    [Show full text]
  • Uhm Phd 9519439 R.Pdf
    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality or the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely. event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. MI48106·1346 USA 313!761-47oo 800:521-0600 Order Number 9519439 Discourses ofcultural identity in divided Bengal Dhar, Subrata Shankar, Ph.D. University of Hawaii, 1994 U·M·I 300N. ZeebRd. AnnArbor,MI48106 DISCOURSES OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN DIVIDED BENGAL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE DECEMBER 1994 By Subrata S.
    [Show full text]
  • E-Digest on Ambedkar's Appropriation by Hindutva Ideology
    Ambedkar’s Appropriation by Hindutva Ideology An E-Digest Compiled by Ram Puniyani (For Private Circulation) Center for Study of Society and Secularism & All India Secular Forum 602 & 603, New Silver Star, Behind BEST Bus Depot, Santacruz (E), Mumbai: - 400 055. E-mail: [email protected], www.csss-isla.com Page | 1 E-Digest - Ambedkar’s Appropriation by Hindutva Ideology Preface Many a debates are raging in various circles related to Ambedkar’s ideology. On one hand the RSS combine has been very active to prove that RSS ideology is close to Ambedkar’s ideology. In this direction RSS mouth pieces Organizer (English) and Panchjanya (Hindi) brought out special supplements on the occasion of anniversary of Ambedkar, praising him. This is very surprising as RSS is for Hindu nation while Ambedkar has pointed out that Hindu Raj will be the biggest calamity for dalits. The second debate is about Ambedkar-Gandhi. This came to forefront with Arundhati Roy’s introduction to Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of Caste’ published by Navayana. In her introduction ‘Doctor and the Saint’ Roy is critical of Gandhi’s various ideas. This digest brings together some of the essays and articles by various scholars-activists on the theme. Hope this will help us clarify the underlying issues. Ram Puniyani (All India Secular Forum) Mumbai June 2015 Page | 2 E-Digest - Ambedkar’s Appropriation by Hindutva Ideology Contents Page No. Section A Ambedkar’s Legacy and RSS Combine 1. Idolatry versus Ideology 05 By Divya Trivedi 2. Top RSS leader misquotes Ambedkar on Untouchability 09 By Vikas Pathak 3.
    [Show full text]
  • It Is Well Known That After Independence, West Bengal Has Been Lagging Increasingly Behind Many Other States of India in the Field of Industrial Production
    The Political Economy of Decline of Industry in West Bengal: Experiences of a Marxist State Within a Mixed Economy Subhash C. Ray University of Connecticut Working Paper 2011-10 May 2011 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DECLINE OF INDUSTRY IN WEST BENGAL: EXPERIENCES OF A MARXIST STATE WITHIN A MIXED ECONOMY Subhash C Ray Department of Economics University of Connecticut Storrs CT 06269 USA [email protected] Over more than six decades following Independence, industry in West Bengal has steadily gone downhill. Usually the Left Front government effectively controlled by the Marxist Communist Party (CPM), that has ruled the state for the past 34 years until its recent defeat in the state assembly elections, is held responsible for the plight of industry in the state. The party and its followers, on the other hand, blame denial of the due share of the state in the central resources by a hostile government at the center for industrial retardation. This paper takes a close look at the available statistical evidence to argue that the main reason for the decline is a direct outcome of poor work culture, political interference, and failure of governance that has resulted in industrial anarchy that scares off private investment in the state. While the Left Front has its share of responsibility, the newly anointed Chief Minister of the State, Mamata Banerjee, has herself contributed generously to fostering and cultivating this chaos by calling wildcat general strikes in her erstwhile role as the ‘one person opposition party’. The only thing that can revive industry in West Bengal is liberating civil administration from the grip of political party bosses.
    [Show full text]
  • Oram, Shri Jual
    For official use only LOK SABHA DEBATES ON THE CONSTITUTION (ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIRST AMENDMENT) BILL, 2014 (Insertion of new articles 124A, 124B and 124C) AND THE NATIONAL JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS COMMISSION BILL, 2014 (Seal) LOK SABHA SECRETARIAT NEW DELHI EDITORIAL BOARD P.K. Grover Secretary General Lok Sabha R.K. Jain Joint Secretary Vandna Trivedi Director Parmjeet Karolia Additional Director J.B.S. Rawat Joint Director Pratibha Kashyap Assistant Editor © 2014 Lok Sabha Secretariat None of the material may be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Lok Sabha Secretariat. However, the material can be displayed, copied, distributed and downloaded for personal, non-commercial use only, provided the material is not modified and all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the material are retained. CONTENTS Tuesday/Wednesday, August 12/13, 2014/Shravana 21/22, 1936 (Saka) Pages THE CONSTITUTION (ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY- 1-105 FIRST AMENDMENT) BILL, 2014 (Insertion of new articles 124A, 124B and 124C) AND THE NATIONAL JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS COMMISSION BILL, 2014 Motion to consider 1-2 Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad 2-13, 77-99 Shri M. Veerappa Moily 16-26 Shri S.S. Ahluwalia 26-31 Dr. M. Thambidurai 31-38 Shri Kalyan Banerjee 39-46 Shri Bhartruhari Mahtab 46-52 Shri Anandrao Adsul 52-53 Shri B. Vinod Kumar 53-55 Dr. A. Sampath 55-59 Shri Ram Vilas Paswan 60-63 Shri Dharmendra Yadav 63-64 Shri Rajesh Ranjan 65-66 Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    CHAPTER - I INTRODUCTION West Bengal is now the third most populous state in India, with a population density of a little more than 900 persons per square km. The state continues to attract a large number of migrants from neighbouring states as well as neighbouring countries. Its topography is dominated by the alluvial plains of the Ganga and its tributaries, except for the hilly terrain of North Bengal, extending into the Himalayan foothills. During the last few decades West Bengal has recorded high rates of agricultural growth. It also has a strong industrial base which needs to be further strengthened and diversified. Before we begin our detailed review of the situation of women in West Bengal, it would be useful to gain a broader perspective by looking at certain important socio-economic indicators which have been compiled in Tables S 1, S 2 and S 3. The first two Tables depict the position of West Bengal in an all-India context while the third presents a birds eye view of regional variations within the state of West Bengal, based on available district level information. West Bengals population growth rate during 1991-2001 has been 1.8 per cent per year, lower than the all-India annual growth of rate of 2.1 per cent. Similarly, levels of infant mortality, maternal mortality and total fertility are also well below the respective national averages. However, though the states female literacy rate at 60 per cent is appreciably higher than the all-India proportion of 54 per cent, its worker-population ratio for women at 18 per cent is substantially lower than the all-India figure of about 26 per cent.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright by Nathan Alexander Moore 2016
    Copyright by Nathan Alexander Moore 2016 The Report committee for Nathan Alexander Moore Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Redefining Nationalism: An examination of the rhetoric, positions and postures of Asaduddin Owaisi APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: _______________________ Syed Akbar Hyder, Supervisor ______________________ Gail Minault Redefining Nationalism: An examination of the rhetoric, positions and postures of Asaduddin Owaisi by Nathan Alexander Moore, B.A. Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin December 2016 Abstract Redefining Nationalism: An examination of the rhetoric, positions and postures of Asaduddin Owaisi Nathan Alexander Moore, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Syed Akbar Hyder Asaduddin Owaisi is the leader of the political party, All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul- Muslimeen, and also the latest patriarch in a family dynasty stretching at least three generations. Born in Hyderabad in 1969, in the last twelve years, he has gained national prominence as Member of Parliament who espouses Muslim causes more forcefully than any other Indian Muslim. To his devotees, he is the Naqib-e-Millat-The Captain of the community. To his detractors he is “communalist” and an “opportunist.” He is an astute political force that is changing the face and tone of Indian politics. This report examines Owaisi’s rhetoric and postures to further study Muslim-Indian identity in the Indian Republic. Owaisi’s calls for the Muslims to uplift themselves also echo the calls of Muhammad Iqbal (d.
    [Show full text]
  • Congress in the Politics of West Bengal: From
    CONGRESS IN THE POLITICS OF WEST BENGAL: FROM DOMINANCE TO MARGINALITY (1947-1977) ABSTRACT Fact remains that the Indian national movement found its full-flagged expression in the activities and programmes of the Indian National Congress. But Factionalism, rival groupism sought to acquire control over the Congress time to time and naturally there were confusion centering a vital question regarding ‘to be or not to be’. The situation was such that the task of political independence from the British in 1947 became a long chapter with a heavy cost in the form of partition of the country. The next question about the Indian National Congress and its seriousness was centered in a situation to adopt a fresh role to build a new India. In this promise what a few historians call ‘social creation’ was designed to pursue revolutionary steps to reconstruct the new nation. After independence, the Indian national Congress became the rulling party for decades in the national level as well as in most of the provinces of India including West Bengal. It is a fact that the first congress government was dominated by Dr. B.C. Roy, although at the initial stage Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh had the previlage to chair the Chiefministership for a short time. The 1952 general election gave a full verdict on the Congress party and all other non congress parties made a poor show and naturally they had to enter into the West Bengal Legislative Assembly as the opposition group. From 1952 to 1967 the Congress could enjoy single majority in West Bengal politics and it obviously drew the attention of the all India politics.
    [Show full text]