Do the Owaisi brothers have a pan-India potential?

The two successes of the MajliseIttehadul Muslimeen MIM of Hyderabad in assembly elections in Maharashtra may not affect government formation in Mumbai but reverberations will be felt in the nationrsquos politics for a long timeVictories in Aurangabad and Byculla were awesome for a first time entrant Equally impressive was the fact that the MIM felt emboldened to field 24 candidates Of these three came second and seven stood third In the last election the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP and Shiv Sena had won seven of these seats The MIM entry in the contest demolished the Congress and the BJP and Shiv Sena picked up 14 seatsAsaduddin Owaisi PICAFPThe Congress taunt is Look you helped the BJPShiv Sena That this calculated risk was taken by Muslims shows how irredeemably low the Congress has sunk in the communityrsquos esteem Time was when the BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayeersquos leadership would have been embraced by a community desperate to discard the Congress habitBut the Narendra Modi establishment has been indifferent to the Muslims It does not wish to come in the way of party president Amit Shahrsquos tactic of polarising votes by targeting them This method of building Hindu nationalism will remain in play so long as voters are required to be polarised in elections from state to state The minorities are determined not to vote for the Congress or Nationalist Congress Party NCP and are increasingly averse to the Samajwadi Party SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party BSP also The BJP is equally resolute in building Hindu nationalism by targeting them So which way must the Muslims turn There is nothing on the horizon which can threaten the BJP by an infusion of the Muslim vote But the Muslim can be targeted for greater Hindu consolidationAt their witrsquos end Muslims are unlikely to make grand strategies for future They will stand still and acquiesce in the politics of the ghetto In this mood the bold rhetoric of the Owaisi brothers will captivate themOver the past decade the national mood has been determined by whatever choices the 24X7 channels make for highlighting on their prime time shows These choices differ vastly from the fare available to the Urdu newspaper readership Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddin Owaisi are frontpage material for this audience of course But even though the mainstream media ignored them their lethal speeches have been carried extensively on the social media Two parallel tectonic plates are moving They may clashOne of the factors behind the Samajwadi Partyrsquos rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha election were a barrage of deadly speeches by Asaduddin Owaisi carried on the social media after he was stopped from addressing a rally in Azamgarh on Feb 1 2014 The MIM had taken the Akhilesh Yadav government to task for a spate of communal riots in Uttar Pradesh during the build up to the general election He accused the SP as equal partners with the BJP in profiting from communal politics While the BJP sought Hindu consolidation said Owaisi the SP tacitly encouraged an atmosphere of insecurity so that the Muslim voters turn to SP for protection Returning from the Dhule riots 150 km from Aurangabad in January 2013 I was surprised to hear Akbaruddin Owaisirsquos speeches being played by young men on their mobile phones at a wayside tea stall Owaisi brothers it seemed were like pop stars among Muslim youthThe substance of Akbaruddin Owaisirsquos speeches do cross red lines and are intemperate Asaduddin is more composed But together the two brothers represent an explosive style of oratory which went out of fashion since the days of the Parsi theatreIn a mixed crowd their combative style could lead to violence But they maintain their infectious tempo from behind the fortification of their Hyderabad ghetto The social networks carry their oratory far and wide And now encouraged by the market the Owaisis are planning to open offices in Uttar Pradesh Bihar and West Bengal Who knows the potential for a dangerous politics may be developing with the MIM orators knitting together hopeless Muslim ghettos rather like a series of Bantustans ensuring Muslim exclusion and for that reason explosiveA senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs Saeed Naqvi can be reached at saeednaqvihotmailcom The views expressed are personal