Symbols are often reinterpreted to serve causes different from their original intent. But when personalities who symbolise a certain idea redefine themselves they invariably inverse the meaning their actions once conveyed, at times farcically, often pathetically. This is the tragedy of Shazia Ilmi, who laboriously seeks to justify her leap of faith – from leaving the Aam Aadmi Party to hibernating for six months before proving right the persistent prediction that she would join the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The geriatric nature of our political class would make Shazia Ilmi seem a pygmy politician, a wannabe understandably nursing the ambition of sitting at the high table of Indian politics. Yet, during those innocent months of the anti-corruption movement, through the incubation of AAP in 2013, she symbolised an idea refreshingly different and remarkably inspiring.
Her name, as is always the case, was the marker of her identity. Shazia Ilmi sought to give a new meaning to it, by joining a movement not engaged in raising issues pertaining to her community alone. She breathed modernity, was articulate and feisty, besides boasting the enviable skill of working the crowds. She seemed to defy the stereotype of the kind of leaders the Muslim community produced.
Once AAP was floated the incipient symbol that Ilmi had become began to shine, holding out the promise of new stirrings. She chose to contest from the RK Puram Assembly constituency, where Muslims account for a mere 4.5% of the electorate. This is very rare for politicians who are Muslim, particularly those who are the notables of any party – and Ilmi, it must be said, did fit the bill of being a notable as far as AAP was concerned.
Defying politics of identity
I pointed to her breaking away from the past in a piece, A capital test for a Muslim candidate defying vote bank politics, that was featured in The Hindu. Even a towering personality such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was fielded by the Congress from the Muslim-dominated constituency of Rampur in the first Lok Sabha election. His complaint that he was a mass – and not just a Muslim – leader was in vain.
I pored through the election data of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and discovered that not one of the 26 Muslim MPs in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections had been elected from constituencies where Muslims were 10% of the electorate. I then studied the data of five state Assemblies — Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, all of which have become the playground of competitive communal politics. Just one MLA, Syeda Shadab Fatima, had won from a constituency – Zahoorabad, Uttar Pradesh – which had Muslims comprising less than 10% of its electorate.
All this testified to the salience of the politics of identity. Ilmi was consciously playing the card of gender politics. The RK Puram constituency was where a physiotherapy student was raped in December 2012, provoking Delhi to pour out into the streets. Some of the rapists too lived in RK Puram, which then had as its MLA Barkha Singh, who also headed the Delhi Commission for Women. Its role had been neither salutary nor a salve.
To me, Ilmi had then said, “You have Hindu politics, Muslims politics, Jat politics. So I said, why not gender politics. I want to be in politics as a citizen of this country, not as a Muslim.” She reiterated this in another interview I did with her for a website, but, for good measure, she added, “After the Muzaffarnagar riots…it is being said in the (RK Puram) constituency that ‘yeh to Musalman hai (she is a Muslim).’ But this is exactly what we want to change. We want to work on civic engagement, we want to work on citizen’s identity. If I fall prey to the same sentiments (of vote-bank politics), then why join a new party. I might as well go to the Congress or the BJP.”
Inspired by Modi's initiatives
The Shazia Ilmi of 2013 has now done precisely what she had expressed abhorrence of – joined the BJP, which is undeniably the practitioner of Hindu vote-bank politics. Not only has she allowed herself to be appropriated as a symbol, she has in her attempt to justify her decision to jump ship inversed the very meaning she eloquently symbolised once.
Ilmi insists she is still working to bring about a new civic identity of being an Indian citizen. “It takes a lot, I do have a Muslim name and I am joining the BJP,” she said on the day she was inducted into the BJP, prompting the incorrigible cynic to label her induction as her ghar wapsi. However, Ilmi does not believe ghar wapsi is a BJP-sponsored programme, all because a few of the party stalwarts vouched for it.
But Ilmi has been a journalist. She must have surely heard of the Sangh Parivar, of which the BJP is one of the many elements who owe their allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and seldom deny its orders. Ilmi the politician ought to know the names of BJP MPs who have tried to fan the embers of communal hatred in western Uttar Pradesh, from Muzaffarnagar to Moradabad to Aligarh. And Ilmi the gender activist can surely fathom that “love jihad”, apart from being communal, is aimed at denying women the right to choose who they wish to love.
She says she is inspired by the new initiatives of the Modi government, such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Perhaps misplaced civility deterred all of us from reminding Ilmi that the Swachh campaign is often reduced to a farce, best illustrated through the careful littering of a pavement with plastic bottles and “relatively cleaner filth” such as torn bits of paper that she and BJP state president Satish Upadhyay were photographed sweeping.
Repeating cynical rationales
The pavement where this farcical sweeping programme was undertaken hugs the Islamic Cultural Centre. Could it be that this venue was chosen because Ilmi was to grace the occasion? It is true she cannot escape the political meaning a Muslim name inevitably acquires. But look at the contrasting manner in which she leveraged her identity in 2013 and now.
She exploited her Muslim name in 2013 to arrogate credit for cracking the mould of identity politics. It is her Muslim name she is now consciously milking to trumpet her courage in joining the BJP, which is unabashedly anti-Muslim. This is why she tried to tug at our heartstrings by invoking her Muslim name and identity on the day she joined the BJP.
If this isn’t an inversion of the symbol that Ilmi was in 2013, what is it then? From defying the politics of identity to endorsing the Hindutva agenda of the BJP, Ilmi the symbol has been turned on its head.
She has justified her decision to join the BJP by trying to establish a moral equivalence between the party and the rest, claiming all of them play vote-bank politics of one kind or another. She said, “Have you ever seen Sonia Gandhi speak against Imam Bukhari?... Or Arvind Kejriwal speak against Tauqueer Raja? But you all expect Mr Modi to speak…” This is neta-speak, this is the language politicians of subaltern parties often invoke to justify their corruption – “The media doesn’t speak of the corruption in the Congress or the BJP, but only of our corruption.”
At this statement of hers you can say Ilmi the symbol has not only been inverted, but she herself has also been reduced to just another cynical politician who mouths jargons to service his or her selfish ends of climbing the ladder of importance and staying in the news. Indeed, the bane of our democracy is that even a greenhorn wishes to have a fulltime career in politics. It is on the altar of careerism even the most noble ideals are sacrificed. Shazia Ilmi is the most recent example of it.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
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The geriatric nature of our political class would make Shazia Ilmi seem a pygmy politician, a wannabe understandably nursing the ambition of sitting at the high table of Indian politics. Yet, during those innocent months of the anti-corruption movement, through the incubation of AAP in 2013, she symbolised an idea refreshingly different and remarkably inspiring.
Her name, as is always the case, was the marker of her identity. Shazia Ilmi sought to give a new meaning to it, by joining a movement not engaged in raising issues pertaining to her community alone. She breathed modernity, was articulate and feisty, besides boasting the enviable skill of working the crowds. She seemed to defy the stereotype of the kind of leaders the Muslim community produced.
Once AAP was floated the incipient symbol that Ilmi had become began to shine, holding out the promise of new stirrings. She chose to contest from the RK Puram Assembly constituency, where Muslims account for a mere 4.5% of the electorate. This is very rare for politicians who are Muslim, particularly those who are the notables of any party – and Ilmi, it must be said, did fit the bill of being a notable as far as AAP was concerned.
Defying politics of identity
I pointed to her breaking away from the past in a piece, A capital test for a Muslim candidate defying vote bank politics, that was featured in The Hindu. Even a towering personality such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was fielded by the Congress from the Muslim-dominated constituency of Rampur in the first Lok Sabha election. His complaint that he was a mass – and not just a Muslim – leader was in vain.
I pored through the election data of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and discovered that not one of the 26 Muslim MPs in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections had been elected from constituencies where Muslims were 10% of the electorate. I then studied the data of five state Assemblies — Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, all of which have become the playground of competitive communal politics. Just one MLA, Syeda Shadab Fatima, had won from a constituency – Zahoorabad, Uttar Pradesh – which had Muslims comprising less than 10% of its electorate.
All this testified to the salience of the politics of identity. Ilmi was consciously playing the card of gender politics. The RK Puram constituency was where a physiotherapy student was raped in December 2012, provoking Delhi to pour out into the streets. Some of the rapists too lived in RK Puram, which then had as its MLA Barkha Singh, who also headed the Delhi Commission for Women. Its role had been neither salutary nor a salve.
To me, Ilmi had then said, “You have Hindu politics, Muslims politics, Jat politics. So I said, why not gender politics. I want to be in politics as a citizen of this country, not as a Muslim.” She reiterated this in another interview I did with her for a website, but, for good measure, she added, “After the Muzaffarnagar riots…it is being said in the (RK Puram) constituency that ‘yeh to Musalman hai (she is a Muslim).’ But this is exactly what we want to change. We want to work on civic engagement, we want to work on citizen’s identity. If I fall prey to the same sentiments (of vote-bank politics), then why join a new party. I might as well go to the Congress or the BJP.”
Inspired by Modi's initiatives
The Shazia Ilmi of 2013 has now done precisely what she had expressed abhorrence of – joined the BJP, which is undeniably the practitioner of Hindu vote-bank politics. Not only has she allowed herself to be appropriated as a symbol, she has in her attempt to justify her decision to jump ship inversed the very meaning she eloquently symbolised once.
Ilmi insists she is still working to bring about a new civic identity of being an Indian citizen. “It takes a lot, I do have a Muslim name and I am joining the BJP,” she said on the day she was inducted into the BJP, prompting the incorrigible cynic to label her induction as her ghar wapsi. However, Ilmi does not believe ghar wapsi is a BJP-sponsored programme, all because a few of the party stalwarts vouched for it.
But Ilmi has been a journalist. She must have surely heard of the Sangh Parivar, of which the BJP is one of the many elements who owe their allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and seldom deny its orders. Ilmi the politician ought to know the names of BJP MPs who have tried to fan the embers of communal hatred in western Uttar Pradesh, from Muzaffarnagar to Moradabad to Aligarh. And Ilmi the gender activist can surely fathom that “love jihad”, apart from being communal, is aimed at denying women the right to choose who they wish to love.
She says she is inspired by the new initiatives of the Modi government, such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Perhaps misplaced civility deterred all of us from reminding Ilmi that the Swachh campaign is often reduced to a farce, best illustrated through the careful littering of a pavement with plastic bottles and “relatively cleaner filth” such as torn bits of paper that she and BJP state president Satish Upadhyay were photographed sweeping.
Repeating cynical rationales
The pavement where this farcical sweeping programme was undertaken hugs the Islamic Cultural Centre. Could it be that this venue was chosen because Ilmi was to grace the occasion? It is true she cannot escape the political meaning a Muslim name inevitably acquires. But look at the contrasting manner in which she leveraged her identity in 2013 and now.
She exploited her Muslim name in 2013 to arrogate credit for cracking the mould of identity politics. It is her Muslim name she is now consciously milking to trumpet her courage in joining the BJP, which is unabashedly anti-Muslim. This is why she tried to tug at our heartstrings by invoking her Muslim name and identity on the day she joined the BJP.
If this isn’t an inversion of the symbol that Ilmi was in 2013, what is it then? From defying the politics of identity to endorsing the Hindutva agenda of the BJP, Ilmi the symbol has been turned on its head.
She has justified her decision to join the BJP by trying to establish a moral equivalence between the party and the rest, claiming all of them play vote-bank politics of one kind or another. She said, “Have you ever seen Sonia Gandhi speak against Imam Bukhari?... Or Arvind Kejriwal speak against Tauqueer Raja? But you all expect Mr Modi to speak…” This is neta-speak, this is the language politicians of subaltern parties often invoke to justify their corruption – “The media doesn’t speak of the corruption in the Congress or the BJP, but only of our corruption.”
At this statement of hers you can say Ilmi the symbol has not only been inverted, but she herself has also been reduced to just another cynical politician who mouths jargons to service his or her selfish ends of climbing the ladder of importance and staying in the news. Indeed, the bane of our democracy is that even a greenhorn wishes to have a fulltime career in politics. It is on the altar of careerism even the most noble ideals are sacrificed. Shazia Ilmi is the most recent example of it.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.