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Journalism of Courage
Mohammad Naushad Siddiqui, 28, was elected to the West Bengal Assembly from Bhangar in South 24 Parganas district in 2021. A pirzada (custodian) of the mazar (shrine) at Furfura Sharif in the Srirampur sub-division of Hooghly district — the second-most venerated mazar-e-sharif in India after Ajmer — he joined his elder brother, pirzada Abbas Siddiqui, when the latter floated the Indian Secular Front (ISF) before the 2021 Assembly elections, as its chairman.
The Sufi shrine has followers in Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and even Bangladesh. And politics is not strange to the family — it had once played a key role in the formation of the Indian Muslim League, but then took political backstage. Before Abbas and Naushad, their uncle pirzada Toha Siddiqui had already dabbled in politics, having established a close working relationship with the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). The brothers launched the ISF as a party that would oppose both the TMC and the BJP, promising to fight for poor Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis by reviving the grassroots unity between these groups in the state. For the Assembly polls, they joined an alliance with the Left Front and the Congress called Sanjukta Morcha.
In the run-up to sealing the alliance, the ISF had said, “In our efforts to stop the BJP, our party is ready for any pre- or post-poll alliance with non-BJP parties. But the TMC should first apologise for neglecting Bengal’s Muslim community. In constituencies where the ISF does not have candidates, it will back other candidates against the BJP.”
While launching his party, Abbas Siddiqui said, “In Bengal, years of Congress rule, followed by CPI(M) and then Trinamool Congress, has done nothing for the Muslims or the poor people.”
However, in the Assembly polls that followed soon after, the ISF failed to make any impact, with most Muslim votes once again coalescing around the ruling TMC as a most prominent force against the BJP, even in districts where the young pirzadas were reputed to have strong followings, like the south Bengal districts of Hooghly, Howrah, South 24 Parganas, Malda, and Murshidabad. Collectively, the entire Sanjukta Morcha sank, with its traditionally largest constituent, the Left Front, going without a seat for the first time. Naushad’s Bhangar victory was the lone bright spark, secured from the TMC after a hard-fought battle.
Since then, though, the lone ISF MLA has played a prominent role in the Vidhan Sabha, taking bold positions on almost every political issue.
Naushad Siddiqui is now in police custody, along with 17 ISF supporters. They were arrested on January 21 while celebrating ISF’s birth anniversary with a rally in Bhangar, when TMC cadres allegedly attacked them and ransacked their offices. When Naushad tried to intervene, they also allegedly attacked him, at which the young MLA led a protest march from Bhangar in Kolkata’s outskirts to the busy Esplanade crossing at the heart of the city, where they were confronted by the police.
In retaliation, another Furfura Sharif pirzada, Kashem Siddiqui, has now threatened to bring Kolkata to a standstill if the prisoners are not released. On January 23, the ISF held its state committee meeting at Furfura, where a senior leader said, “Naushad is the main opposition for the TMC in Bhangar ahead of the panchayat polls. So, it was necessary for them to send Naushad to jail. However, we are confident that he will be released very soon and we will win all panchayat seats in Bhangar.”
Another ISF leader, Simal Soren, said, “Naushad always tried to voice the peoples’ opinion and demands in the Assembly. He has always stressed the development of Bhangar, and tried to raise the education quality of the poor. That is why he is now the enemy of the ruling party.”
Naushad, who has played a big role in the Assembly, said before the presidential elections that he would abstain as both candidates are of RSS origin, indicating that TMC has links with the RSS. Last September, he put the state government on the backfoot when he questioned it on a spike in silicosis patients across the state and what steps the government had taken to curb the disease.
Although normally, a lone MLA rarely gets more than five minutes to speak in any debate, his performance in the House has been such that Speaker Biman Banerjee has allowed him extra time to speak, while Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, too, has allotted him time from his own quota.
On Naushad’s arrest, TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh has said, “Clerics should not be involved in politics.”
BJP leader Shamik Bhattacharya has said, “We have to keep in mind that religion and politics should not mix. However, we are politically against the arrest of Naushad.”
