By Kaleem Kawaja,
Along with helping defeat the communal approach of BJP in the Bihar election, the Muslims of Bihar also administered a big blow to Asad Owasi and his MIM party’s attempt to inject religion based politics in the state’s Muslim community. By ensuring the defeat of all 6 MIM candidates from Muslim majority districts, the Muslim community demonstrated their maturity and secular face for all to see, and assured the country that indeed they are secular Indians.
Muslim parties like IUML, AIUDF have always behaved in a secular manner; they have never used religion in electoral politics and have not used sectarian and inflammatory language and approach in their campaigns. They have never behaved as mirror images of Shiv Sena or Bajrang Dal in indulging in rabble-rousing. Their leaders have not adopted the stance that Togadia types are known to take. Also before they got into election in their areas, they performed some social service for the community and to improve relations between Muslims and others and participated in municipal elections.
Please look at MIM/Owasi attitude. In Hyderabad they have done some social service and then some political work, and then entered elections first in munipilaties etc.. But without doing any of that anywhere in Bihar or UP or Mahartashtra they showed up at Assembly election time, indulging in religion based politics and appealing to Muslims to vote for them in the state Assembly election.
Also in the Bihar election all candidates of secular parties that MIM candidates opposed, were Muslims. MIM did not put up any candidates against Hindu candidates of BJP anywhere in Bihar. Look at the rhetoric of Owasi; he is duplicating Togadia, Adityanath and such other Hindu extremists. Yes, MIM is able to mislead a few Muslims to vote for them; but most Muslims in Bihar have ignored them.
Maharashtra: In Maharashtra there are a few cities that were formerly part of the former Hyderabad state, eg Aurangabad, Osmanabad etc. In those cities a large number of Muslims are ‘Hyderabadi origin Muslims’. It is because of this factor that MIM has won some seats in local municipalities and one seat in state Assembly. The other Assembly seat they got was from a heavily Muslim population area, an area that has faced lots of repression from Shiv Sena and BJP.
In the last few months, after the Dadri incident, a wide majority of top quality and top level Hindus, have responded with tremendous outrage against BJP and its religion based politics and injustice to Muslims, and have emphasized the secular nature of the Indian society. If Muslims support opportunists like Owasi, they will loose the support of secular Hindus and they will be left to the mercy of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, Togadia, Adityanath etc.
Surely Muslims can not indulge in a double standard. Themselves support Owasi and ask Hindus to ignore Togadia, Adityanath, Shiv Sena, BJP etc.
Courtesy: Muslim Mirror
http://muslimmirror.com/eng/bihar-muslims-ignore-owasi-show-maturity/