The last few days have seen the Aam Aadmi Party pick up a bunch of endorsements, most that it probably doesn’t want. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee appealed to Delhi citizens to vote for the AAP as did Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat. But then Shahi Imam Ahmed Bukhari, the chief cleric at Delhi’s Jama Masjid mosque, appealed to all Muslims to support the AAP – only for the party to promptly reject Bukhari’s endorsement.
"AAP wants to make it clear that our party has nothing got to do with Bukhari,” party leader Ashutosh said on Friday, as other leaders also made it clear to the media that the Imam’s appeal was being unequivocally rejected.
Ostensibly the reason given was that the AAP doesn’t support Bukhari’s ideology. "People from all religion will vote for us. AAP doesn't support the ideology of Imam Bukhari, we don't need their support,’ said Sanjay Singh, senior party leader.
A surface-level view of this situation might appear to be odd. Bukhari is often referred to as the head of India’s most important mosque and seen as being influential in the Muslim community, which, area-based results suggest, voted heavily for the Congress as a bulwark against the Bharatiya Janata Party during the December 2013 elections. But scratch even slightly below the surface and you’ll find a different picture altogether.
Backed by a loser
When Congress President Sonia Gandhi met Bukhari last year, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, it was widely seen as a completely unnecessary move, one that was most likely to work against the party that Muslims traditionally voted for. Presuming, of course, that religious communities vote en masse, Gandhi might have thought that a bit of Muslim tokenism might have worked. They don’t all pick the same candidate, of course, although the phenomenon of tactical voting has been observed in the Indian context, swaying a large portion of one community.
But even if Muslims did vote en masse, Bukhari would be the wrong person to go to. In his own backyard in local Delhi elections, the Bukhari-endorsed candidates have lost five times in a row. His family has a history of stop-and-start political involvement, starting parties that attempt to influence politics in vain and falling out with senior leaders of other parties.
In the 2004 elections – with the 2002 Gujarat riots fresh in the national mind – Bukhari even appealed to Muslims to vote for the BJP, a decision that has since been attributed to the Imam attempting to placate the ambitions of his brother. It has long been believed that Shahi Imam fatwas are not hard to come by, if you can pay a price, and to add to it all Bukhari has an actual record of being charged in criminal cases involving violence.
Taking on a winner
Bukhari also has a rival for the affections of the Muslims, and everyone else in the area around the Jama Masjid: Shoaib Iqbal. The journeyman five-time Member of Legislative Assembly has constantly taken on the Imam on his own turf, and the voters of the area keep rewarding him for it. Iqbal doesn’t stick to a party, he’s contested as a Janata Dal candidate, a JD-S candidate, a JD-U candidate, as a member of the Lok Janshakti Party and, this year, he’s running on a Congress ticket.
Almost no one expects the Congress to do well in these upcoming elections, but most polls still expect them to pick up a few seats. Chief amongst those is Matia Mahal, home turf for Iqbal, a seat that hasn’t failed him since 1993. But the Congress has also fallen entirely out of favour with the marginalised communities of Delhi, whether you count the Muslims or the urban poor amongst those.
So, far from expecting the Shahi Imam to be putting his support behind the AAP as a measure of fighting for a secular future, it’s quite easy to read Bukhari’s endorsement as something much simpler: a chance for some electoral revenge.
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"AAP wants to make it clear that our party has nothing got to do with Bukhari,” party leader Ashutosh said on Friday, as other leaders also made it clear to the media that the Imam’s appeal was being unequivocally rejected.
Ostensibly the reason given was that the AAP doesn’t support Bukhari’s ideology. "People from all religion will vote for us. AAP doesn't support the ideology of Imam Bukhari, we don't need their support,’ said Sanjay Singh, senior party leader.
A surface-level view of this situation might appear to be odd. Bukhari is often referred to as the head of India’s most important mosque and seen as being influential in the Muslim community, which, area-based results suggest, voted heavily for the Congress as a bulwark against the Bharatiya Janata Party during the December 2013 elections. But scratch even slightly below the surface and you’ll find a different picture altogether.
Backed by a loser
When Congress President Sonia Gandhi met Bukhari last year, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, it was widely seen as a completely unnecessary move, one that was most likely to work against the party that Muslims traditionally voted for. Presuming, of course, that religious communities vote en masse, Gandhi might have thought that a bit of Muslim tokenism might have worked. They don’t all pick the same candidate, of course, although the phenomenon of tactical voting has been observed in the Indian context, swaying a large portion of one community.
But even if Muslims did vote en masse, Bukhari would be the wrong person to go to. In his own backyard in local Delhi elections, the Bukhari-endorsed candidates have lost five times in a row. His family has a history of stop-and-start political involvement, starting parties that attempt to influence politics in vain and falling out with senior leaders of other parties.
In the 2004 elections – with the 2002 Gujarat riots fresh in the national mind – Bukhari even appealed to Muslims to vote for the BJP, a decision that has since been attributed to the Imam attempting to placate the ambitions of his brother. It has long been believed that Shahi Imam fatwas are not hard to come by, if you can pay a price, and to add to it all Bukhari has an actual record of being charged in criminal cases involving violence.
Taking on a winner
Bukhari also has a rival for the affections of the Muslims, and everyone else in the area around the Jama Masjid: Shoaib Iqbal. The journeyman five-time Member of Legislative Assembly has constantly taken on the Imam on his own turf, and the voters of the area keep rewarding him for it. Iqbal doesn’t stick to a party, he’s contested as a Janata Dal candidate, a JD-S candidate, a JD-U candidate, as a member of the Lok Janshakti Party and, this year, he’s running on a Congress ticket.
Almost no one expects the Congress to do well in these upcoming elections, but most polls still expect them to pick up a few seats. Chief amongst those is Matia Mahal, home turf for Iqbal, a seat that hasn’t failed him since 1993. But the Congress has also fallen entirely out of favour with the marginalised communities of Delhi, whether you count the Muslims or the urban poor amongst those.
So, far from expecting the Shahi Imam to be putting his support behind the AAP as a measure of fighting for a secular future, it’s quite easy to read Bukhari’s endorsement as something much simpler: a chance for some electoral revenge.