In re-directing the BJP’s campaign after the first phase of voting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has positioned himself and his party as the only ones capable of ‘rescuing’ reservations from Muslims for Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, accusing the Congress of planning to give SC/ST/OBC quotas to Muslims. What has become collateral damage in the process is the BJP’s own Pasmanda outreach in Bihar, which had been in the making for over eight months.
In every Pasmanda village it enters, the party’s minority cell in the State is faced with voters who are both fearful and angry — fearful that the BJP will take away existing reservation for the Pasmandas under the OBC/EBC category and angry about the tone and language Mr. Modi had been using to allude to Muslims in his campaign speeches over the last few weeks.
“Whenever we go into the community now and mention the PM, I am asked, ‘Have you heard his speeches?’,” Kamruzzama Ansari, the party’s minority morcha president told The Hindu, as he and his team prepared for yet another day of campaigning in the Saran Lok Sabha constituency’s Pasmanda villages, which will vote on May 20 in the fifth phase of the election.
Among some of the most backward in terms of socio-economic indicators and severely underrepresented in jobs, education and electoral politics, Pasmanda Muslims in Bihar constitute over 72% of the State’s Muslim population and come under either the OBC or EBC categories. They comprise 29.9% of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) population in Bihar and over 12% of the State’s entire population — making them an important part of the BJP’s plans in the State to break the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) grip over the Muslim vote, until recently.
Caught by surprise
Mr. Ansari of Bhagalpur was appointed the Bihar Minority Morcha’s State president in September last year, the first Pasmanda face to head the unit, and he hit the ground running immediately, organising extensive recruitment drives within the community in Araria, Purnea, Jehanabad, Godda, Saran, Arrah, Gopalganj and many more.
“I set up 31-member teams within the Pasmanda community in each district, recruited aggressively for the minority morcha’s IT cell,” Mr. Ansari said, adding that after the national executive meeting of the party early this year too, they had been asked to make a harder push to reach out to the Pasmanda community by the national leadership of the party’s minority cell.
“We recruited over 1,800 Modi Mitras from the Pasmanda community, organised Sneha Samvaads, and even joined the cleaning drives held in the days ahead of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir inauguration,” he said.
Mohammad Tahir Mansoori, the State coordinator for Bihar’s minority cell, said, “The narrative was set. The caste census data had come out showing the socio-economic status of Pasmanda Muslims, for which we could only hold past governments accountable, and this was working in our favour. Our calculations just before the first phase showed that we had made a strong base among at least 8-10% of the Muslim voters. But we did not see the PM’s change in rhetoric coming.”
Countering fear
As Mr. Ansari and his Saran district team prepare to leave for campaigning in Marhaura, a white SUV with BJP flags on the bonnet pulls up to the parking lot of the hotel they had been staying in. But Mr. Ansari and his team, instead, hop into two other cars, with no party symbols.
The Saran seat is seeing a direct contest this year between the BJP’s incumbent Rajiv Pratap Rudy, who defeated former Chief Minister Rabri Devi in 2014, and has kept the seat since, and the RJD’s Rohini Acharya, Ms. Devi and Lalu Prasad’s daughter.
Walking around village after village, meeting people at homes, mosques and madrassas, Mr. Ansari explained, “What the Prime Minister is saying is that new quotas based on religion are unconstitutional and that this cannot be allowed. This has nothing to do with the reservation rights of the Pasmanda community under the OBC and EBC categories.”
Congress is the party that intends to bring religion-based quotas for Muslims, said Mr. Mansoori, arguing that if this were to be allowed, it will only end up benefiting forward caste Muslims at the cost of the Pasmanda community.
Mr. Modi’s government at the Centre has twice now (in 2019 and 2022) refused to acknowledge the existence of caste discrimination within Islam in affidavits it has filed before the Supreme Court.
“There is no point ignoring the reality that the PM’s speeches have scared the Pasmanda community,” said a Janata Dal (United) Pasmanda leader who is helping the BJP campaign in Saran, adding that it was becoming difficult to brush aside the remarks given that they had come from the Prime Minister.
Minutes after Mr. Ansari and his team left Ghulam Ambiya’s home in Mohammad Patti village after clicking photographs with each other, Mr. Ambiya told The Hindu, “What else does the PM mean when he says he will not allow reservation for Muslims as long as he is alive?” The village chief, Mr. Ambiya, added, “Even if I tried, I would not be able to convince the 50 Muslim households in the village to vote for the BJP.”
In Majhwalia Nagara village about 20 kilometres away, 30-year-old Aslam Ali said, “We understand that neither the RJD nor the BJP has done anything for our people. But only one of them keeps abusing us in this manner.”
Community cornered
But amidst this, icons of the Pasmanda movement in Bihar, such as Ali Anwar Ansari of the All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, said they have had to temporarily set aside the main objective with which the movement had begun in the late 90s — that of seeking representation in the power structure in proportion to their share in the population.
Neither the NDA nor the INDIA bloc has fielded a single Pasmanda candidate in the Lok Sabha election in Bihar, despite a push made by leaders in light of the data that was revealed by Bihar’s caste census.
“This is an unprecedented election. The PM’s poll rhetoric, which some would put under the category of hate speech, is uniting Muslims across castes and classes. But we know that no matter who wins, the issue of our representation has to be brought forward and with force. It has become more important now that the Bihar caste data is out showing the extent of disparities,” Mr. Ali Anwar said.
