Asaddudin Owaisi | The champion of identity politics

The 12 months was 1994. Two years after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, there was turmoil within the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), a celebration established by Abdul Wahed Owaisi. Members have been deserting the AIMIM for not being vocal sufficient on the demolition of the masjid and there was an outcry that educated Muslims weren’t coming to affix politics.

All eyes have been on the 25-year-old Asaddudin Owaisi, Abdul Wahed’s grandson, who had simply returned from London after finishing a level in regulation. “If in the early 1990s, you had told me that I would be contesting elections, I would have said you have gone bonkers,” Mr. Owaisi later said. It was a time when he worked at a denim store on Oxford Street, London, and served meals at McDonald’s to cover the tuition fee.

The young Owaisi, who wanted to be a lawyer, had to file his nomination papers to contest the 1994 Andhra Pradesh Assembly election.

Almost a lifetime since, he had been elected an MLA twice and an MP four times from Hyderabad, a seat that his father Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi represented six times. He has recast the archetype for Muslim leadership. Does he regret giving up law to be a lawmaker? “Regret…? I don’t know… It is a very subjective thing. I don’t regret things in life, you look at the good side of it and go ahead,” Mr. Owaisi stated.

Rebirth of the celebration

The AIMIM is the reincarnation of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen that opposed Hyderabad’s accession into the Indian union. Once the Hyderabad State was built-in into India, the celebration was banned and fell into disarray, many of its leaders migrating to Pakistan. Prefixing ‘All India’ to the MIM, Mr. Owaisi’s grandfather resurrected the celebration. Mr Owaisi doesn’t fail to remind regularly that the AIMIM is a celebration of those that didn’t go to Pakistan.

Years later, the identical cause that led to Mr. Owaisi’s entry into politics can be a cause for his celebration’s growth. The Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), who have been cautious of participating with Seemanchal voters on the query of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), left a vacuum into which Mr. Owaisi walked in, profitable 5 seats within the Bihar Assembly election.

In his speeches throughout Seemanchal, he repeatedly asserted that he was the one one to tear off a replica of the “unconstitutional” CAA inside Parliament. He spoke of the “betrayal” by the RJD and the Congress. He delivers his speech in chaste Urdu, a language that isn’t precisely alien to his Bihari viewers however undoubtedly not conversational. His speeches have been peppered with invocations of ‘Allah’. The Muslim identity is firmly in place, with an extended sherwani, a skullcap and a moustache-less beard. The speech was delivered at a tempo and pitch, just like the Friday sermons by the clergy.

Broader alliance

However, Mr. Owaisi insists that he’s not a “Muslim leader”. In a latest interview to The Puucho, he stated: “We are not an exclusive Muslim party. I, Asaddudin Owaisi, am not a Muslim leader. I don’t want to be a Muslim leader, that is not my ambition or objective of my political journey.” The AIMIM has been engaged on forging an alliance between the Muslims, the Dalits and different backward teams.

Nor does he need his politics to be restricted to Hyderabad. The AIMIM expanded in Maharashtra in 2012, profitable within the Nanded Municipal Corporation election. The celebration’s success earned him the moniker of being a “BJP agent”, an extended leap from supporting the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance throughout the 2018 no-confidence movement. Mr. Owaisi’s persistent indictment of mainstream events for taking the ‘Muslim vote’ granted, coupled with the opposite events’ try and look way more Puucho, has had political dividends for the AIMIM.

“They can call me all they want. It is like water off the duck’s back. During my childhood, RSS workers used to come to our home often, abuse us in an attempt to intimidate me. So, it is part of my growing up years,” he stated.

Years in the past, Mr. Owaisi might have joined politics unenthusiastically. But on November 10, when the Bihar outcomes got here, his 10-year-old son, sporting an analogous lengthy sherwani, sat on a chair subsequent to him when he addressed his victory press convention. “He is a child. He wanted to sit with me, so how could I deny him,” Mr. Owaisi stated.

He claims he was at all times a median pupil. He tries to learn, however says that he’s a really gradual reader and its takes lengthy preparations for him earlier than talking in Parliament. Despite Hyderabad being his base, Mr. Owaisi doesn’t communicate Telugu. He says he has tried many occasions to check the language with a tutor who used to return to his house in Hyderabad. But politics at all times overtakes his plans.