ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Engendering Hope Among Muslim Youth The Aam Aadmi Party JYOTI PUNWANI Vol. 49, Issue No. 20, 17 May, 2014 Jyoti Punwani ([email protected]) is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and human rights activist. It seems that the Aam Aadmi Party’s politics has found resonance among Muslim youth. Disgruntled with the Congress and other secular parties, the new generation of educated Muslims are flocking to AAP, who they think would provide them with a non-discriminatory and an enabling environment for fulfilling their aspirations. What is the special appeal that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) holds for Muslims? Across the country, Muslims are a visible presence at the party’s offices. Such has been the enthusiasm within the community for the new party that groups working with Muslims have had to sit up and take note, while the Congress has had to work overtime to win back its base. The question itself–what is AAP’s appeal for Muslims?–implies that Muslims must be somehow different from other voters. The AAP phenomenon has been analysed to shreds; its popularity, especially among the youth who had stayed away from “dirty politics”, is now a given. There is reason enough to believe that it is also popular among Muslim youth. The Surprise Element The surprise this popularity has caused is for two reasons. First, it discredits the prevalent myth of “the Muslim vote”. Despite every election proving that Muslims do not vote uniformly as a community, journalists cannot rid themselves of the notion that they do. Hence the sight of Muslims surrounding AAP leaders, sets their antennae buzzing It is not as though the same phenomenon was not visible when the Samajwadi Party was formed in 1992, or before that when V P Singh had resigned in 1987 and presented himself as an alternative to Rajiv Gandhi. Indeed, whenever there has been a credible alternative to the Congress, Muslims have supported it. The difference this time lies in AAP itself; it is a party that is not yet a political party in the conventional sense, with many of its leading lights having come from fields of academia and activism. Majority of them being first-timers in politics, they come without any of the trappings associated with politicians. Even after joining AAP, they have remained activists ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 first. Then there is the unusual campaign theme of AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal that whoever wins, be it Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress, the end result will be the same, that is, the rule of corporates and continuance of corruption, which only AAP can put an end to. Finally, AAP got into the 2014 general elections knowing it was not going to form the government at the centre. The fight has been for something less tangible. For all these reasons, AAP was not where one expected Muslims to gather. Muslims by and large, have been conspicuous by their absence in activist circles. Their activism has been related to their community; if they have gravitated to new parties, it has been on the promise that these will form governments. But those who have been surprised, including this writer, have obviously not understood what has been going on under the surface in the community. We have seen the obvious signs of political activity, and these have confirmed our worst fears. The hordes of topi-clad bearded men (no women) at anti-George Bush rallies in Delhi and Mumbai (organised by Left groups in 2006), protests against the Danish cartoons that ridiculed Prophet Mohammed and the Iraq and Afghan wars–all causes linked to their community. Similar crowds showed up at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan rally in August 2012 called by religious leaders to protest violence against the community in Myanmar and Assam, which itself degenerated into a riot against the police and media. These rallies only confirmed the stereotype of the ghettoised fanatic Muslim. Aspirations of Muslim Youth That there exists another kind of Muslim youth has been evident in recent developments–the visible presence of Muslims in call centres, malls and to a lesser extent in English newspapers; the profusion of burqa-clad girls in colleges, to cite two very obvious instances. In social media, young Muslims were vocal in condemning the violence by their coreligionists in Azad Maidan. 21-year-old Shaheen Dhada, whose Facebook post against the shutting down of Mumbai for Bal Thackeray’s funeral led to her arrest, was a vivid example of the new Muslim who comments on social issues with confidence, unencumbered by the baggage of being Muslim that marked her elders, at least in Maharashtra, where Thackeray’s Shiv Sena held sway. These developments have been noticed, but what they signify has been missed‒the yearning for change in leadership, a changing set of values that have little to do with religion and a desperation to get out of the ghetto. The amazing thing is that these aspirations seem to have taken even Muslim leaders by surprise. The spontaneous upsurge in support for AAP among Muslim youth took place without any consultations within the community. By the time the Congress and its NGOs and maulanas decided to sound the tired notes of their old bugle “vote Congress, don’t split the ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 secular vote”, many Muslims had already enrolled as AAP volunteers. Some had enrolled as early as 2011 itself, when Anna Hazare brought his India Against Corruption movement to Mumbai. Young Aadil Khatri, an exporter from Mumbai, was one such youth. “When I joined Anna’s morcha, I felt for the first time a sense of Indianness,’’ he recalled. The RSS Tag In fact, among the first persons to meet Arvind Kejriwal and Mayank Gandhi in Mumbai at that time were the community’s established “leaders”. But the association did not last long. These “leaders” were tied to the establishment; following the unknown Kejriwal was a risk they could not dare take. As the Congress told them off for hobnobbing with the enemy, they backed off, saying Anna had Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) support. But ordinary Muslims had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Asked about the India Against Corruption’s RSS connection, Aadil replied, “Yes I’d heard about it but I didn’t feel anything like that among the people I marched with in Mumbai”. Even today, the RSS tag has not left AAP. When party leader Kumar Vishwas praised the RSS in April, Mumbai’s Muslim leaders sent out mass text messages to Muslims to quit APP, but hardly anyone did so. When asked about this, S M Malik, who had once worked for the implementation of the Srikrishna Commission Report and is now a member of AAP’s Social Justice cell in Mumbai, responded, “If Kumar Vishwas is so pro-RSS, why is he with Kejriwal?” AAP meetings are incomplete without the singing of patriotic songs and slogans such as Inquilab Zindabad (long live the revolution), Vande Mataram (Mother, I bow to thee!) and Bharat Mata ki Jai (victory for mother India). The latter two slogans have for long been the staple of Hindutva parties. But this writer saw AAP’s Muslim supporters shout Bharat Mata ki Jai as vociferously as anyone else, with a few even shouting Vande Mataram. Interestingly, AAP’s non-Muslim members have in the process got sensitised to the Vande Mataram controversy. Advocate and activist Shakil Ahmed, known in Mumbai for pursuing the Srikrishna Commission Report on the Mumbai riots and the Gundewar Commission Report on the police firing that killed 11 dalits in Mumbai in 2007, joined AAP as soon as the party was formed. He set up the Special Justice Cell to focus on the special problems of dalits and Muslims and found himself explaining sensitive topics such as reservation, Vande Mataram and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 to AAP’s non-dalit, non-Muslim and hitherto apolitical members. “For the first time, I was talking to the unconverted’’, he recalls. “I found them open-minded and willing to debate these issues’’. Ahmed’s was the only Muslim name in the party’s Maharashtra executive committee, and he was flooded with calls from his community, wanting to join without pre-conditions. This was in direct contrast to many “leaders” who wanted to convey their support, but refused to do ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 so till AAP candidates approached them, a reflection of the politics of patronage that is a hallmark of the Congress. AAP a Natural Choice AAP’s initial silence on the issue of secularism, the absence of a “policy for Muslims”, which has so troubled the traditional Muslim leadership as well as secular intellectuals, has not mattered to its Muslim supporters. Obviously, the new generation of educated Muslims do not see themselves as separate from other Indians. Take Javed Azmi, who campaigned for Jalal Ansari, an engineer and AAP candidate from the communally sensitive town of Bhiwandi, whose campaign team comprised his colleagues in the profession. Javed said, “We are pure Indian Muslims. We believe in the Constitution. We don’t need a separate package, nor do we need lollipops of the kind the Congress tempts us with. We have many Hindus in the party. We joined AAP because it gives a voice to the person who works behind the scenes, and because we also want swaraj‒we want to decide how our town is run”. Bhiwandi got a municipal corporation only 12 years back. But already, its residents are disillusioned with the way corporators have looted the powerloom township without doing anything for it.