AIMIM Party Chief and MP Asaduddin Owaisi on allegations of vote chori, Modi 3.0 and lack of Muslim leadership at the national level. The conversation was moderated by Manoj CG, Chief of Bureau (Politics), The Indian Express. Manoj CG: On the last day of the Monsoon session, except for the debate on Operation Sindoor, there was not much business. The disruptions continue while the government passes bills without taking question hours or where the MPs have an opportunity to grill the government. If the Parliament functions, it is good for our democracy. We owe our duty to the people of India who voted for us and made us MPs. So the Opposition has a very important role to play in asking pointed questions to the government and exposing it. And if Parliament doesn’t function, the biggest beneficiary is the ruling party. But sometimes the Opposition will have to oppose certain important issues even if the government does not want to debate. When this discussion on Operation Sindoor took place, after all the debates and speeches, the government was on the backfoot. It was unable to answer certain questions. It is unfortunate that Parliament has not functioned and this government has an expertise in passing important bills in the dead of the night because of their majority. Manoj CG: Do you see any difference in Modi 3.0 in Parliament? There’s no difference whether it is 2014, 2019 or 2024. They are as aggressive in terms of implementing their ideology and achieving their Hindutva goals. The reason is that the parties that are supporting the BJP, whether it is TDP, JDU, Chirag Paswan’s party( (Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas)) — they are not able to establish their importance. That is why BJP feels that it can go ahead. In fact, I read today that even their allies didn’t know that they were going to bring those three bills. Manoj CG: You were one of the MPs who raised objections to the introduction of the three bills — The Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill, Government of Union Territories (Amendment) Bill and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill. What are your main concerns? This practice of sending bills to the MPs at12.30 am should change. To sit and read and then speak to some lawyers who know what it is and then file a notice to oppose their introduction — it becomes very difficult. But the important thing, for which I had given a notice to oppose, was that this violates the theory of separation of powers. The Executive would be taking over the role of Legislature. These three bills are making the Executive very powerful. Secondly, it undermines our democracy, wherein as a minister one is answerable to the people of that state. Now here you are answerable to, what I call the unelected dictators — the bureaucrats. And thirdly, can any state government take a decision, which, in their opinion, is a populist decision? The bureaucrats will refuse. And lastly, you have Article 74(1) in the Constitution that says that the President should act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. The Constitution says this. This bill says that the President can remove the PM. And wherever the governor is appointed by the Executive and any decision which any government takes, which is unpalatable to the Executive, then you have ED, CBI, IT entering into it. The main heads of all these organisations are appointed by the Executive. So you can expect disaster. This was the 1933 Gestapo moment in Indian political history. Vikas Pathak: There is a line of thought that Muslims in India feel cornered but your politics ends up in seats where Muslims are in good population and divides the Muslim vote. Do you agree? No, I am ready to debate with anyone who is making this claim. How is it that my contesting is helping X or Y? It has no role. The data tells you that the NDA Alliance is getting 50 per cent of the polled Hindu votes. Muslims are not only marginalised socially and educationally but also politically. The real question is how do you stop BJP from getting that much of the majority community votes? It is not me but if they want to give me the credit, I am ready to accept it because that makes me more important in Indian politics. But the real issue is this: even in Seemanchal last time, we were part of this alliance with Babu Singh Kushwaha. We were given 19 seats. We won five. In the remaining six, the RJD alliance won. And even if you add up the votes which our candidate got, that would not have helped the NDA alliance.The remaining nine were won by the NDA alliance. Our votes would not have really helped the RJD alliance to win. Now we have this debate about chori. Who stole my four MLAs? And when the same thing happened to the Shiv Sena and then in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, it was called a murder of democracy. But you take away my four MLAs. Is that an act of Gandhianism? Asad Rehman: Rahul Gandhi has been raising allegations of vote chori. There was a large protest in Delhi. Where is your party on these allegations? Our state president in Bihar, Akhtarul Iman, is a petitioner in the Supreme Court. Before the campaign started, all Opposition parties, including the BJP candidate and some Congress leaders, went to the Election Commission (EC) and said that in Hyderabad Parliament constituency and one Assembly segment, where our MLA was there, these things have happened. So the EC took the media to three places with video cameras. There were more than 96 per cent voters living there and EC wrote a letter saying that you have given a false complaint. So I used that letter in the election campaign to show them what they are doing. If SIR (Special Intensive Revision) happens and if names of genuine voters are not included, then there will be questions raised about their citizenship. If you read the instructions given by the EC to Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), they are that if you find someone suspicious or you don’t find them after three visits, you give it to the ERO and he in turn can inform the competent authority under the Citizenship Act 1955. So, for me, SIR is important. And our experience of Bihar tells us that the majority of Muslim names are being excluded or not included. That is very worrisome. Jatin Anand: You were part of the international delegations post Operation Sindoor. There have been questions on whether India was able to sustain the narrative of war against Pakistan after the Pahalgam attack. Indian government should have spoken to international journalists immediately after May 7. They didn’t do it for reasons better known to them. The delegation, which I was part of, was headed by Baijayant Panda and wherever we went — from Bahrain and Kuwait to Saudi Arabia and Algeria — we were very well received. All these countries were telling us, why don’t you speak to Pakistan? So we told them that we had spoken to them in the past — after 26/11 and then during the attack on Air Force base (2016 Pathankot attack). In fact, I criticised the PM for inviting ISI to the air base but nothing came out. I cannot speak of the others but in our delegation, we were successful in putting forward India’s viewpoint. On the recent bills | These three Bills are making the Executive very powerful, violating the principle of separation of powers, which is part of the basic structure. I feel this was the 1933 Gestapo moment in Indian political history Deeptiman Tiwary: Most parties, in the past 10 years, have been shy of talking about Muslims. Do you think BJP’s Hindu politics has changed Hindi heartland’s minority politics? Or has talking about minorities become difficult for mainstream parties? This whole politics, unfortunately, didn’t start from 2014. It has always been there. But after 2014, it took a very definite and concrete shape. So in the present political environment, many parties who call themselves secular are very reluctant to talk about the issues pertaining to the biggest minority of this country. And you don’t find them talking about the verdict that came on the train blast. In fact, some leaders of the Congress party said that the government should appeal. You don’t find them talking about the second Malegaon verdict or the recent Nagpur exoneration of those eight youths. If you are reluctant to talk about injustice, then it shows what kind of politics you are doing. It’s not a question of marginality. You don’t talk about Muslims because you might antagonise and will not get the majority community vote. But if you are not talking about injustice, then what do you stand for? Deeptiman Tiwary: Why hasn’t an enlightened Muslim leadership risen at the national level? How do you make a leadership? You make leadership by encouraging the community. Whether it is upper caste leadership, Dalit leadership, backward class leadership, the parties encourage them. You bring them to the forefront. But if you don’t do it, BJP will never do it. They don’t even have a Muslim MP. The other parties have only made us showboys. We are only there to show that these people are secular. And we are only good for holding iftar parties, taking a chadar of flowers to Ajmer Sharif. We have been reduced to this symbolism. That is why I had said in UP ‘Kab tak aap dari bichhayenge? Neta baniye’ (Till when will you lay out the durries? Become a leader). No one wants to. When I talk of political empowerment of Muslims, it is looked at in a very weird way. Why is it that you have fewer number of Muslim MPs? It is not because of Muslims who don’t have enlightened leadership, it is because some people are not enlightened in terms of accepting the spirit of the Constitution.They have forgotten the independence struggle. We are living in an age wherein anyone can discard, marginalise the Muslim community. Liz Mathew: What do you make of India’s response to Gaza’s situation? We are just keeping quiet. This Modi-led government is not condemning Israel’s killing of over 62,000 Palestinians. You have 20,000 children who are dead over there. Every day people are shot just because they are going to collect food and not a single word is uttered by the PM or by his government. And then you stand up and say, we stand for a two-state solution. If they come out openly and condemn it, which other global south countries have done, then that would be a great change. But if you want the global south to listen to India, then you have to also listen to what they are doing. Now is the time for Mr Modi to be on the right side of history. Aakash Joshi: What do you make of the relative silence of the national parties on the Bangladeshis issue, where a poor Bengali, often Muslim, is picked up without due process. Why are we keeping that deposed leader in our country? Send her back. We will then have good relations with the present regime. You have these poor Bengali-speaking Indians who happened to be from Malda or Murshidabad, who were put on an aircraft and sent from Pune to Kolkata airport and then they were dumped in no man’s land. And what right does the police have? Anyone who speaks Bengali becomes a Bangladeshi? This shows the xenophobia which has penetrated. Shahid Pervez: After Pahalgam attack, many of your statements on Pakistan went viral and various quarters on the Right started seeing you in a new light. Why do you think this happened? You don’t speak for a country so that some Johnny would like you. You don’t speak against a barbaric attack, which happened in Pahalgam, to appease some leader or some organisation. But if this brings them to, ‘Oh, we didn’t know this side of him’, I cannot blame them. In 2012-13, too, I was part of a delegation which went to Pakistan along with Mani Shankar Aiyar and Yashwant Sinha. And in that group, there was Kirti Azad, who was in the BJP then; Supriya Sule was there. We said the same thing in Pakistan. Now they have been hating me for opposing the Bill. In a democracy, everyone has the right to criticise. On developing muslim leadership | You make leadership by encouraging the community. You bring them to the forefront. But if you don’t do it, BJP will never do it. They don’t even have a Muslim MP Vandita Mishra: The BJP’s majoritarian politics excludes minorities in a very real sense, but what about the hesitation of the so-called secular parties in speaking up? The so-called secular parties have just abdicated their responsibility. They have realised that we should talk less about Muslims and more about development issues and progress. How do you accept the marginalisation of 15-16 per cent of the population and talk about progress? The problem is with the Muslim community as well. They should do a political suicide by not voting for this party completely. Because even if you vote for them, BJP is still winning or some communal guy is still winning. Muslims should realise enough is enough, You have to assert yourself and assertion does not mean helping the BJP. It means that you believe in the constitutional message that you must attain your rights. You have to achieve those liberties, that objective of fraternity, justice, equality. No one is going to come and give it to you on a platter. Vandita Mishra: Whenever an election comes around, there is a conspiracy theory about you helping the BJP. I want to ask them: give me proof. During elections, there are many theories which suddenly emanate and these theories start 48 hours before the polling day. How long can one talk about this nonsense when the reality is completely different? Shalini Langer: The new NCERT module holds Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Congress and Lord Mountbatten responsible for Partition. Why is Partition still a debate? The BJP uses Partition because they don’t have a single individual who participated in the freedom movement. They can’t show one photograph, one name. They’re very good at appropriating Subhash Chandra Bose and Baba Saheb Ambedkar. Ninety per cent Muslims didn’t have the right to vote. It is only the jagirdar or the zamindars who did. To blame Partition on Muslims is completely wrong. That’s why I said I’m going to write a letter to the NCERT that please include Shamsul Islam’s book, Muslims Against Partition, so that people know how Partition really happened. We lost one million lives. RSS has nothing to show. Yes, that country (Pakistan) was given a religion, but this country stood for pluralism and diversity. Sameeksha Mishra: BJP often talks of appeasement politics . How does one talk about rights of the Muslim community but also not give in to their narrative of appeasement politics? BJP does not believe in any kind of justice to the Muslim community because of their ideology of Hindutva. How you deflate this argument and expose BJP is by giving empirical evidence. For example, what the PM said about infiltration. Demography is changing. It’s completely rubbish. The population decadal growth in Bihar and Assam is lower than the state. In one place it’s lower than the national decadal population growth. They refuse to give a number on infiltration. How is it that Muslim numbers have increased in self-employement and have come down in labour? So one will have to speak and expose BJP.
