Competitive iftaring

Iftar dinners have become so much a part of the political party calendar in the Capital that hardly anyone notices anymore that they have...

Iftar dinners have become so much a part of the political party calendar in the Capital that hardly anyone notices anymore that they have been reduced to a complete sham. In the competition to capture what is being called the Ramzan vote8217;, breaking bread with Muslims is the least important part of the whole exercise. That has been overtaken by a number of other selfish concerns.

A critical part of the business is being seen publicly to host an iftar and an impressive list of guests. So the media must be called out in strength and wearing skull caps or a fez is obligatory. The run-up to the event is as full of suspense as a mini-election. One of the points of interest this year was to figure out how the BJP, hosting its first iftar since coming to power, would conduct itself. In the event, it played it according to the rules of the game, doing all the appropriate things and making up for a shortage of prominent Muslim figures with a whole lot of new faces. Thanks to the efforts of its Minorities Morcha andMPs who roped in local constituents, the party was able to show that it is second to none in chasing Muslim vote-banks.

Political party iftars would be incomplete if they did not provide an opportunity for delivering other kinds of political messages as well. Those who did the talking this year were the ones who did not show up. For J Jayalalitha and Mamata Banerjee it was of paramount importance to express resentment with Atal Behari Vajpayee over one more aborted cabinet expansion. For Mulayam Singh Yadav who sometimes goes by the title Maulana, it was essential to deny the Congress any advantage with Muslim vote-banks.

What better way to do that then to arrange his own iftar on the same night Sonia Gandhi was holding hers. Janata Dal leaders went to dine with the Congress. Some communists turned up at Mulayam8217;s, others at Sonia8217;s. At the end of the day, the final scoreboard shows the Third Force remains at sixes and sevens. The most fortunate politicians were those who went out of town and escapedhaving to participate in the farce of competitive iftaring.

Scarcely anyone is really taken in by the hypocrisy. But try telling political leaders to have quiet iftars away from the glare of the media.

Many of them have little time or inclination to attend to minority issues and are convinced that symbolic acts will present them in the best light to the Muslim community. The reason iftars have become so popular with politicians of all colours is that it is a painless way of showing a bit of solidarity.

Everyone can go home claiming it was a strictly social occasion with no religious ceremonies involved and that their participation has contributed to the minority sense of well-being as also to upholding secular values. Few people are influenced by this kind of high-minded talk when the political opportunism of the hosts is so plain to see. Image-building is all that matters. Compared to the costs of other public relations exercises, an annual dinner is a low price to pay for presenting oneself as achampion of minority rights.