Nitish Kumar on the rampage targeting Muslim protestors

Nitish Kumar on the rampage targeting Muslim protestors

http://twocircles.net/2011jun06/forbesganj_firing_police_killed_women_infant_pointblank.html#.Te6ByHnL0tg;facebook

 

Forbesganj firing: Police killed women, infant from pointblank

Shocking video of the dead persons expose brutal face of Bihar police under JDU-BJP rule

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,


Patna: The Bihar police are becoming more brutal and communal under the rule of Nitish Kumar who is heading a coalition government of Janata Dal (United) and Bharatiya Janata Party. In less than six months in Muslim-dominated Araria district, the police have opened fire to kill Muslim rural protesters on two different occasions.

On 3rd June 2011, residents of Rampur and Bhajanpur villages under Forbesganj block in Araria district came out, after Juma Prayer, to protest against blockade of the connecting road between the two villages for a factory. The police not only opened fire on the protestors but chased them to their homes, entered in and killed even women and infant pointblank. Six people including two women and a six-month-old infant of the two villages of 90% Muslim population were killed. While the state government claims that four people were killed, TwoCircles.net has got a video of the bodies of all six victims including the infant.



What exposes the brutal face of the police is the bullet marks on the bodies. All the victims have got bullets on head, face, neck, chest and abdomen. This clearly tells that the police opened fire on them to kill not to just terrorize them. There are burnt marks around the bullet holes, evident that they were killed pointblank. Moreover, video clip shows bullet marks on walls and windows of homes.

Forbesganj police firing victim  The poverty that looms large on the area belies the police claim that protestors were armed and they fired on police.

Case:
Rampur and Bhajanpur villages (90% Muslim population) had an old connecting road. For last some time they were using the NH 57 but after it was converted into a four-lane road and a flyover was constructed over it, the villagers stopped using it due to high traffic and accidents and returned to their old road. Meanwhile, the land between the two villages including the road was given to a company Auro Sundaram International Company by Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority to set up a Glucose factory. 

The villagers demanded that their road is not disturbed. If not the same, they should be given alternative road. But none heeded to their demand. However, of late some talks began between the villagers and the company officials with the mediation of the district administration.


Forbesganj police firing victim  There was a meeting on Wednesday (1st June 2011) between the company officials, administration and villagers. They agreed on a road but next day (on Thursday) the company turned back and started blocking the road. The news spread like wildfire and next day (on Friday), hundreds of people of the area came out protesting after Friday prayer. They demolished the portion blocking the road and put on fire a jeep of the company. Senior officers including SP reached the site. Police fired on the protestors. They chased them to village, entered their homes and killed people including women and infants.

Influence of Sangh Parivar in the district

Over many years, Araria district, though has Muslim population (41%), has elected BJP candidates. Bhajanpur and Rampur villages come under Rampur Panchayat which comes under Forbesganj block. The block falls in Forbesganj Assembly constituency which is held by BJP MLA Padam Parag Roy 'Venu'. Local MLC is Ashok Agarwal, also BJP. And Araria district is represented in Lok Sabha by BJP’s Pradeep Kumar Singh. Since JDU-BJP alliance came to power six years back, RSS has held several meetings here inviting top Sangh leaders.

Forbesganj police firing victim  Very interestingly, one of the directors of the Auro Sundaram International Company is Saurabh Agarwal, son of BJP MLC Ashok Agarwal.
“The entire region has been peaceful. Never any ISI ‘agent’ was picked up from here, but for last some years the entire belt has been presented as haven for terrorists. Sangh and BJP people have been making such propaganda. ABVP calls it chicken net. Since BJP came to power in alliance with JDU, RSS and Sangh have held here several meetings and their top leaders have arrived here,” says Mr Nayyaruzzaman, state president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. He belongs to Araria district and was living there until one month back when he was elected state president of JIH and shifted to Patna but he frequently visits Araria.

Forbesganj police firing victim  Police becoming lawless under Nitish regime
Condemning the bloody police firing on local Muslims, Mr Nayyaruzzaman said: “The wrong policies of Nitish Kumar Government have made state police lawless. Full power has been given to police that is violating civil rights.”
“If there was any dispute it should have been resolved through dialogue. If the police had worked with wisdom, the tragedy could have been averted.”
He sent a two-member team to the affected area on Saturday to find out the truth. The firing had taken place at 3 pm on Friday. Fortunately, the team could get to the bodies of the victims and what they saw and captured in the video is simply shocking. Young kid, and women were killed pointblank. Six were killed including one child and two women.

Forbesganj police firing victim Govt claims and media carried it that villagers attacked police party with arms and there was an encounter between police and public for one hour. But Mr Nayyaruzzaman refutes it saying, “It is false. The villagers are very poor, they are jute mill laborers.” And this is evident from the cluster of huts and kuccha houses in the villages.
This police firing has occurred in less than six months. About 17 km away from this firing spot is Batraha village in Kursakanta area in the same district. At Batraha, on 20th December 2010, SSB jawans had opened fire on the Muslim protestors when they reached the camp to complain that some of the jawans the previous night had entered one of village homes and misbehaved with women. Four Muslims were killed in that firing. They were Mohammad Shahnawaz, Mohammad Jabir, Mohammad Qurban and Farhat Jahan.

Forbesganj police firing victim Mr Nayyaruzzaman has demanded dismissal of SP and all policemen involved in the firing in Forebesganj, Rs 10 lakh to kin of each deceased, Rs 1 lakh to each injured and a job to the family whose lone breadwinner has fell to the police bullets. He also demanded a road to the villages from the government land. “Govt has huge swath of land there. They got it after Bhodan Andoanl when many local landed Muslims donated their land,” he informed. This is a tragic turn of history that Muslim landed people donated land to the government but when members of the same community today demand a road they are given bullets.


Bullet marks on window of a house in Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj
A team of Jamaat Islami Hind visiting the affected area Jamaat Islami is planning to give a bandh call against the police firing. “I will visit Araria in two days. If govt does not fulfill the demand we will call a one day hartal and chakka jam at each block and district headquarter against the police action,” Nayyaruzzaman informed.

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Muslim India: Ireland aims to be home of Islamic finance in Euro...

Muslim India: Ireland aims to be home of Islamic finance in Euro...: "Indian Brahminical reservation against Muslims and Muslim world is the main stumbling block in India's enormous potential to develop Isla..."

Ireland aims to be home of Islamic finance in Europe - By Lisa O'Carroll - The Guardian, UK

Indian Brahminical reservation against Muslims and Muslim world is the main stumbling block in India's enormous potential to develop Islamic Banking System, as an alternative to the exploitative bankrupt western capitalist/credit system that is fraught with grave future upheavals in world economy.

India with its communal minded Brahmin class applying its Islamophobic stranglehold on Indian financial sector, is missing a golden opportunity to bring in a paradigm change not only in world finances, but in its own fractured financial sector that has yet to reach more than 500 million of its own people which are totally deprived of any access to banking facilities. 


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/02/ireland-islamic-finance

Ireland aims to be home of Islamic finance in Europe

Sharia-compliant financial regulations will make Dublin a centre of excellence for Islamic finances, taoiseach says

• Lisa O'Carroll
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 June 2011 17.49 BST
• Article history

Ireland's sharia-compliant financial regulations could make Dublin a centre of excellence for Islamic finance, says the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, above. Photograph: Julien Behal/PA
Ireland has launched a bid to become the home of Islamic finance in Europe as it seeks to rebuild its once dominant financial services sector. The taoiseach, Enda Kenny, who was swept to power on a wave of public anger at the taxpayers' €70bn (£62bn) bailout of failed banks, told the Irish Funds Industry Association (IFIA) that he was doing everything he could to "ensure" Dublin became "a centre of excellence for Islamic finances". Irish tax laws and financial regulations are now sharia-compliant, he said, and the government had recently signed double-taxation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. "There is first-mover advantage. If they [Islamic institutions] feel comfortable in a particular jurisdiction and you develop a cluster, more will follow," said Ken Owens, chairman of the IFIA. He said there was currently "a scramble" for Islamic business internationally and Ireland is just behind the UK in terms of adjusting its laws to be sharia-compliant. Sharia law prohibits the payment of interest on loans or overdrafts, or the receipt of interest, and also prevents investment in certain categories including defence, adult entertainment and gambling. "Their investment universe is quite limited. Islamic funds want to own the ship or the building, not a share in it. They want to own things outright because they can't pay interest. They want commmodities, infrastructure, manufacturing, property," said Owens. On the mortgage market, institutions buy the house or the commercial real estate; the buyer then pays rent instead of interest. Owens said Irish and UK financial institutions, which were devastated by the financial crisis, saw opportunities worth billions in Islamic finance, either seeking to get a toehold in Islamic countries or attract Islamic institutions to Dublin. "The US and European asset management firms are already out in the Middle East and Asia with their products but now you've got those guys in China going 'I know China better than any US or European investor' and coming to Europe to compete with us," he said. Owens, who is a partner in Pricewaterhouse Coopers Ireland, has one Middle-Eastern client who is about to open nine funds in Ireland; and the Irish Central Bank has recently authorised several Islamic institutions to operate in the Dublin's International Financial Services Centre. The value of funds administered in Dublin is worth €1,890bn, split evenly between Irish and non-domiciled funds.

Business

• Financial sector

Money

• Islamic finance

See also

• 13 Jun 2006
  Q&A: Islamic finance
  
• 13 Apr 2005
  Lloyds TSB expands Islamic finance scheme
  
• 12 Mar 2006
  A home for young Muslims' funds
  
• 3 Apr 2007
  Lloyds launches sharia business account
  

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Brahmins fighting a fratricidal war over who will rule India By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, June 06, 2011

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Brahmins fighting a fratricidal war over who will rule India

Baba Ramdev fled for his life. Hours later, while safe in his Dehradun Ashram, he had the look of the man who has witnessed the face of death. The night crackdown by Brahmin Congress using thousands of police using lathis (batons) and teargas brought down the entire India and the far world too, over the Italian origin daughter-in-law of the Kashmiri Brahmin Nehru-Gandhi family, Sonia Gandhi, as the real culprit in the saga.

In each turn of event, both sides came out with pat lies and allegations that cannot hide the bald fact, that India is witnessing a fratricidal war between two Brahmin groups that have made a mockery of India’s democracy.

Lauded all over half a century, India as the world’s largest democracy is in essence anything but a democratic nation. Only 3% Brahmins have ruled the ‘independent’ India by clever political tactics, cornering 85% of Indian population by pitching 15% Indian Muslims as the ‘Other’. That magical line-up is fast disintegrating as the new generation of better educated Indian youth across the board, have realized how thin the legitimacy, the Brahmin Raj can command, when all pieces of jigsaw puzzle fall in place.

The price Sonia Congress had to pay in ‘corruption crores’ just to remain in power has on one side depleted its ability to stem the rot the corruption in public sphere has now appears well-entrenched; while on the other side had increased the demands the other Brahmins are making as a proportionate share in the corruption pie. This war is being fought in full glare of media, public, parliament, judiciary, army and security forces. All bets of off and its free for all.

Sonia Congress’s use of police to attack men, women and children, sleeping in open maidan, gathered in their thousands, to participate in the cheap version of a Gandhian fast unto death, reminded the nation and the world of the dreaded ‘Emergency’ that Indira Gandhi imposed on democratic India, to save her rule, threatened by a court order.

For some, India is now ripe for an ‘Arab Spring’ – like people’s revolution.

However, like Egyptian revolution, where the same army is securely in the saddle, fortified by another billion dollar grant from the ‘benevolent’ Obama, Indian revolution too is sure to be an interrupted revolution, until and unless the Brahmins are weaned out of equation. And that is not coming anytime soon.

Indian people will remain voiceless, powerless, virtually disenfranchised, under constant threat of organized violence over one pretext or other. The Brahmins themselves are in serious trouble now that they are in virtual slavery of the US war machine and its Jewish/Zionist operators.

India can be saved by its own people, if they could realize how fragile their freedom that they have won from the British is. Unless a new wave of freedom struggle to free India from the clutches of Brahmin Raj is organized and sustained, any change that India will witness will be brutal as well as superficial.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

http://ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com  

In India and Israel, the burden of protest falls on the victims of injustice - By Pankaj Mishra - THE GUARDIAN

OBAMA preaching non-violence to 'Muslim World' appears as world's most stupefied hypocrite, nominally ruling over world's most brutal warmongering mafia that has ever assembled on the face of earth. US at the moment is more lethal and dangerous than Hitler ever could have been. The world rose up to tackle Hitler's convoluted world-view. Millions of innocents perished. It is an open question, what forces will be needed to defang the new menace threatening the world. Ironically, Pankaj Mishra, an Indian Brahmin, is able to single out world's two most notorious conspirators, that are always in the forefront of immense blood baths that world has ever witnessed. The world has to know and recognize its tormentors, who pose as victims and are relentlessly infiltrating civilized world to turn it into hell on earth.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/india-israel-obama-non-violence?INTCMP=SRCH

In India and Israel, the burden of protest falls on the victims of injustice

The moment of truth is approaching for Obama and his like who preach the high morality of non-violence to the powerless

• Comments (382)

• 
• • Pankaj Mishra
  • The Guardian, Monday 6 June 2011
  • Article history
At a dark moment in postcolonial history, when many US-backed despots seemed indestructible, the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, whose centenary falls this year, wrote: "We shall witness [the day] when the enormous mountains of tyranny blow away like cotton". That miraculous day promised by the poet finally came in Egypt and Tunisia this spring. We have since witnessed many of the world's acknowledged legislators scrambling to get on the right side of history.   Addressing – yet again – the "Muslim world" last month, Barack Obama hailed "the moral force of non-violence", through which "the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades". But Obama failed to acknowledge to his highly politicised audience the fact that the United States enabled, and often required, the "relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity". And he gave no sign that he would respect the moral authority of non-violent mass movements ranged against America's closest allies, India and Israel.   Let's not forget: before the Arab spring of 2011, there was the Kashmiri summer of 2010. Provoked by the killing of a teenage boy in June last year, hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris took to the streets to protest against India's brutal military occupation of the Muslim-majority valley. Summer is the usual "season for a face-off in Kashmir", as the Indian filmmaker Sanjay Kak writes in Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir, a lively anthology of young Kashmiri writers, activists, rappers and graphic artists. There is little doubt that Kashmiris, emboldened by the Arab spring, will again stage massive demonstrations in their towns and villages.   The chances of a third intifada in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel are just as high, as Binyamin Netanyahu devises ever greater hurdles to self-determination for his Arab subjects. In the next few months we will see more clearly than before how India and Israel – billed respectively as the world's largest, and the Middle East's only, democracy – respond to unarmed mass movements.   Certainly, they have shown no sign of fresh thinking, even as the victims of their occupations grow more inventive. India's security establishment fell back last summer on reflexes conditioned by two decades of fighting a militant insurgency during which more than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, have died; 8,000 have "disappeared", often into mass graves; and innumerable others have been subjected to "systematic torture", according to a rare public outburst by the Red Cross.   Last summer soldiers fired at demonstrators, killing 112 civilians, mostly teenagers (Kashmir has many of its own Hamza al-Khatibs). The government imposed round-the-clock curfews (one village was locked in for six weeks) and banned text messaging on mobile phones, while police spies infiltrated Facebook groups in an attempt to hunt down demo organisers.   Faced with non-violent Palestinian protesters, who correctly deduce that their methods have a better chance of influencing world opinion than Hamas's suicide bombers, Israel hasn't varied its repertoire of repression much. For years now the West Bank village of Bil'in has campaigned against the Israeli government's appropriation of its lands. Israel responded by jailing its leader, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, often called the Palestinian Gandhi, for 15 months – "solely", according to Amnesty International "for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and assembly".   Encouraged by Egyptians and Tunisians, masses of unarmed Palestinians marched last month to the borders of Israel to mark the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians in Mandate Palestine. Israeli soldiers met them with live gunfire, killing more than a dozen and wounding scores of others.   Of course, occupations damage the occupier no less than the occupied. Revanchist nationalism has corroded democratic and secular institutions in both India and Israel, which, not surprisingly, have developed a strong military relationship in the recent decade. Hindu nationalists feel an elective affinity with Israel for its apparently uncompromising attitude to Muslim minorities. In 1993 the then Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, reportedly advised the Hindu nationalist leader LK Advani to alter the demographic composition of the mutinous Kashmir valley by settling Hindus there. Advani, later India's deputy prime minister, fondly quoted from Netanyahu's book on terrorism, given to him by the author. Israeli counter-insurgency experts now regularly visit Kashmir.   India and Israel, both products of botched imperial partitions, were the Bush government's two most avid international boosters of the catastrophic "war on terror", fluently deploying the ideological templates of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – democracy versus terrorism, liberalism versus fundamentalism – to justify their own occupations.   Aggressively jingoistic media helped hardliners in both countries to demonise their political adversaries as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. Meanwhile, liberal opinion grew almost inaudible. Writing recently in the New York Review of Books, the Israeli scholar and activist David Shulman lamented: "Israeli academic intellectuals as a group have failed to mount a sustained and politically effective protest against the occupation." This is also true of the Indian intelligentsia.   So the burden of non-violent protest in India and Israel has fallen almost entirely on the victims of the occupation. Indeed, many liberal commentators try to condone their passivity by deploring the absence of non-violent protests in Kashmir and Palestine (never mind the fact that the first intifadas in both places in the late 1980s turned violent only after being savagely suppressed).   The moment of truth is fast approaching for those powerful men who preach the high morality of non-violence to the powerless. Only an American veto seems likely to prevent the member states of the UN from declaring a new Palestinian state in September. But Palestinians may rise up against their colonial overlords well before this expected rejection. And, as the political philosopher Michael Walzer points out, Israel would then confront "something radically new. How can it resist masses of men and women, children too, just walking across the ceasefire lines?"   The tactics of young tech-savvy Kashmiris have already confused and bewildered the Indian government, whose recent actions – censoring the Economist, forcing spying rights out of BlackBerry and Google – evoke the last-minute desperation of the Arab world's mukhabarat (secret police) states. The mass movement in Kashmir, which has emerged after two decades of a futile militant insurgency and has no compromising links to Pakistan, poses, as the Kashmiri journalist Parvaiz Bukhari writes in Until My Freedom Has Come, an unprecedented "moral challenge to New Delhi's military domination over the region".   The stage is set, then, for a summer of protests, of unarmed masses rising up to express, in Obama's words, "a longing for freedom that has built up for years". They may well meet with live bullets rather than offers of negotiation and compromise. It will be fascinating to see if Obama makes good his claim last month that the United States "opposes violence and repression" and "welcomes change that advances self-determination". Certainly, as the corpses of the Palestinian and Kashmiri Hamza al-Khatibs pile up, there will be the usual flurry of intellectual rationalisations – the bogey of Islamic terror will again be invoked. And we will witness how the "enormous mountains of tyranny" in the world's greatest democracies do not blow away like cotton.

Question in public arena around the world : Will US invade Pakistan? - Ghulam Muhammed

Question in public arena around the world : Will US invade Pakistan?

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

------------------------------

http://rt.com/news/usa-pakistan-afghanistan-war/

US a very young nation with too much power – ex-Pakistani spy chief

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Published: 31 May, 2011, 12:25

US a very young nation with too much power.
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TAGS: Conflict, Military, NATO, Asia, Interview, Middle East, Politics, Terrorism, Afghanistan, USA

Amid the fallout between Washington and Islamabad over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, RT spoke to Hamid Gul, former chief of Pakistan's Intelligence Agency. He calls the US a haughty empire spoiled by a sense of authority.
­“You have to understand the arrogance of the West, especially the US. They are a very young nation that received too much power. They created the image of Bin Laden to justify war with Afghanistan,” said Gul. “They wanted to finally look as if they are victorious and make the world believe it, because they can’t forget the defeat in Vietnam.”

Hamid Gul stated that while US had been using the image of Bin Laden for the past several years, the terrorist had been dead for a long time already:

“Osama Bin Laden was not killed. He died of natural causes years ago. In any case, even if he was alive, he was a living dead. Because if he was hiding in Pakistan, let’s assume that the story is right, then how effective could he be from there?” stated Gul.

According to former chief of Pakistani Intelligence Agency the US had an obvious aim in staging Bin Laden’s death.

However, Gul maintains Bin Laden’s death will on no account cause terrorism to double.

“Osama was not a symbol of resistance. I don’t think he did much, I don’t think he carried out 9/11,” he said.

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The Identity card By Arati R. Jerath - Timecrest - The Times of India - Mumbai

The most welcome development of Muslim mainstreaming in India is, that unlike all Brahminical political formulations from Congress to BJP to CPM, Muslim regrouping is not based on hate, insecurity and divisionary politics. On the contrary, Muslim leaders are fully aware of the power of inclusion in their quest to provide a healthy, moral and peaceful alternative.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

------------------------------

http://www.timescrest.com/society/the-identity-card-5458

TIME CREST, THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMUNITY CALCULUS

The identity card

Arati R Jerath | May 28, 2011

CHANGING COLOURS

The emergence of Muslim political parties is expected to fracture India's complex electoral mosaic even further

The Congress party's hat trick in Assam in the recent state polls almost overshadowed a significant development that marks what could be a new chapter in the Indian Muslim narrative. Here, in only its third election, the six-year old Muslim-dominated All India United Democratic Front, floated by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, beat the BJP and the AGP to emerge as the main opposition force. It almost doubled its seats, from 10 to 18, came second in another 17 constituencies and bumped up its vote share from 9 per cent in 2006 to 13 per cent in 2011.

It was a remarkable achievement. Muslim political parties - with two honourable exceptions, the Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala and the All India Majlis-Ittehad-ul-Muslameen in Hyderabad - have rarely been more than a flash-in-thepan phenomenon, never surviving beyond one election. But, as the rise of the AIUDF indicates, things seem to be changing. Indian Muslims, like the Dalits and the OBCs, are increasingly rejecting the politics of patronage and opting for identity politics through community-based parties. In Assam, they've put their faith in the AIUDF. In Uttar Pradesh, it's the Peace Party of India that, in just three years, is making waves in Muslim pockets. And more recently, the ultra-conservative Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, which has consistently opposed electoral politics as "haraam", announced its political debut with the launch of the Welfare Party of India.

The trend is bound to fracture India's complex electoral mosaic further. At the same time, it signals the start of a long over-due process of mainstreaming. For six decades, Muslims have functioned on the margins of Indian politics, haunted by insecurity to seek protection and patronage from the so-called secular parties. In the aftermath of Partition and widespread communal violence, they turned to the Congress. Later, as the BJP rose, and the Congress declined, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, they surrendered their votes to regional secular formations like Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party and Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal.

Today, they are emerging from the shadows of fear to behave like other social groups that are leveraging their numbers through political parties of their own for a better deal. And like these groups, Muslims too are staking claim for their share of resources and more equitable development. What is significant is that unlike past efforts by Muslim groups to mobilise community votes, the political idiom of the newer parties is notable for the absence of emotive, or communal, rhetoric. Mobilisation is no longer on the basis of religion. Parties like the AIUDF and PPI talk mainly of education, employment, health care and social justice.

The push for a new politics, according to Manzoor Alam, chairman of the Institute of Objective Studies, is coming from the youth who have understood the dynamics of the democratic electoral process and want to leverage it to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. "The idea is developing a better bargaining capacity for the community by influencing votes in Muslim-dominated pockets. It is a strategic and tactical move, nothing to do with communal polarisation, " he says. "Dalits and OBCs have their own resistance. Why not Muslims ? They are only trying to get their due within the constitutional framework."

The eye-opener was the Sachar Committee report which, in 2006, mapped the community's falling human development indices in excruciating detail to declare Muslims as worse off than Dalits. "Muslims realised that mainstream secular parties have done nothing for them. They use Muslims during elections and then forget about them. They make promises without delivery, " says Alam. Since then, the community has been introspecting for effective ways to use its considerable numbers to get ahead.

Given the high level of trust deficit between Hindus and Muslims, there are many who see this as a dangerous trend. Certainly in Assam, the growing political strength of the AIUDF polarised the Hindu vote in favour of the Congress, especially in the communally-sensitive districts. But political scientist Yogendra Yadav of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies disagrees. "I would say that Muslim politics is finally becoming normal, " he maintains. "Muslims are using their identity like everyone else. They trade it, bend it, stretch it, gerrymander it. Let me stress that it's not communal. The appeal is not Islam. It is identity. Muslim-ness is very much constitutive of that identity. "

The discernible shift in the mood on the ground has sent a frisson of anticipation through the community. It's the hot topic of debate in Urdu newspapers and on Muslim websites which have become platforms for avid discussions on the Jamaat's new political face or the success of the AIUDF. Interestingly, a survey done by psephologist Yashwant Deshmukh's C-Voter in November 2010 found that more than 50 per cent of Muslim students in minority colleges and madarsas wholeheartedly supported the idea of having political parties for, of and by the community.

While the Sachar Committee report was the catalyst for change, the BSP seems to have been the role model. "Muslims have seen how the BSP has given respectability and status to the Dalits, " says social activist Tanweer Alam. "White collar Dalits are coming forward and bargaining with Brahmins. They are talking as equals. After seeing the success of the BSP, Muslims have started realising the value of their vote."

Certainly, the AIUDF and PPI are trying to use the electoral calculus of the BSP to do their poll mathematics. In other words, cultivate a core community vote base and then add to it by putting up candidates from other social groups. The AIUDF, for instance, fielded as many as 30 non-Muslim candidates in the 80 odd seats it contested in Assam. Two of them actually won. The PPI in UP has recently entered into a coalition with seven non-Muslim parties including Ajit Singh's Jat-based Rashtriya Lok Dal.

The alliance has potential in western UP where the Jat-Muslim combination was used by Singh's father, Charan Singh, to lethal effect. Deshmukh acknowledges that he has started factoring in the PPI in his pre-poll surveys for UP where assembly elections are due in 2012.

These are early days yet, but community analysts believe that Muslim politics is finally coming of age in India. "Muslims have moved on, " says Aijaz Ilmi, editorial director of the Kanpur-based Siyasat group of publications. "For decades they were fed on a diet of Islam being in danger. Now they have realised that Muslims themselves are in danger of economic and educational obliteration. So they are taking matters into their own hands and realising that they have other options."

He believes that the Muslim psyche changed after the BJP was comprehensively defeated in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Suddenly, the BJP no longer looked invincible and it happened through the power of the ballot. It was a huge affirmation of democracy. This is borne out by Yadav's findings of the Muslim vote share in 2004. The morale of the community was so poor that it recorded a low voting percentage that year. But with their faith in the electoral process restored, Muslims came out in large numbers to vote in 2009, a trend that was seen again in the recent assembly elections.

Muslim politics is still evolving and it is too early to predict whether a pan-India Muslim party can come up or be successful. The community is as disparate and as divided on caste and regional lines as the Hindus. But Manzoor Alam believes that the community is realising the importance of political mobilisation, if only to act as a pressure lobby. In West Bengal, for instance, where Muslims voted almost wholesale for Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (she won 70 per cent of the seats with sizeable minority populations ), the All India Milli Council has formed a watchdog to monitor delivery on the party's election promises. At the very least, it expects her to implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report by increasing the community's representation in government jobs, educational institutions and grassroots political bodies like panchayats and municipal boards. "If she fails to deliver, another Muslim political party may emerge in the state where Muslims are 28 per cent of the population," he warns.

Tanweer Alam too sees the trend increasing unless mainstream secular parties like the Congress start addressing the developmental aspirations of the community. "Muslims should vote for mainstream parties," he says. "Unfortunately, mainstream parties have ignored their needs for too long."
arati.jerath@timesgroup.com