Explained : Tragedy of Contemporary Muslim Politics in India and Its Impact

The question of whether Asaduddin Owaisi is politically leading Indian Muslims or inadvertently contributing to their further marginalisation requires a historically informed and structurally grounded examination, rather than emotive reactions or personality-centric debates.

Post-Partition Context and the Burden of History

In the aftermath of Partition, Muslims who remained in India lived with a deep sense of moral and political vulnerability. The demand for Pakistan, spearheaded by the Muslim League, resulted in the creation of West and East Pakistan, but the demographic reality of British India made complete migration neither feasible nor desirable. Millions of Muslims, deeply rooted in India’s hinterlands, remained citizens of India by necessity and conviction.

In independent India, Muslims chose constitutional nationalism and largely aligned with the Indian National Congress, not because of ideological uniformity, but due to its accommodative character in a deeply divided polity.

Unlike Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Muslims did not receive political reservations. Their representation in Parliament and state legislatures remained contingent, fluctuating across parties and electoral cycles, typically hovering around three to four percent nationally.

Congress Decline and the New Political Vacuum

For decades, Muslim political presence, limited though, was sustained largely through the Congress system. With the Congress now facing an existential crisis across much of India, a vacuum has emerged. It is within this context that parties such as All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) have expanded their visibility.

Yet, it must be acknowledged that the Owaisi family’s political ascent itself was historically nurtured under the Congress ecosystem.

The present posture of persistent hostility towards the Congress, therefore, appears less as principled critique and more as political ingratitude, particularly when such criticism further fragments opposition politics under conditions of extreme polarisation.

Representation without Power: The Structural Constraint

The Indian political system operates under the First Past the Post (FPTP) model, which structurally disadvantages fragmented minority assertion. Under such a system, smaller identity-based parties rarely translate vote share into proportional power.

Empirically, AIMIM has tended to secure victories only in constituencies where Muslim candidates could win irrespective of party affiliation.

This raises a critical concern: such victories may symbolically amplify Muslim assertion but do little to arrest the broader decline in Muslim representation across legislatures. In states like Bihar, Muslim MLAs have sharply declined over successive elections, a trend that fragmentation has arguably accelerated.

Muslims today face acute institutional marginalization; disproportionate incarceration rates (approximately 27–28 percent against a population share of 14–15 percent), negligible presence in higher judiciary, executive services, and decision-making bodies, and increasing vulnerability to extra-legal punitive actions such as demolitions.

These realities demand strategic political consolidation, not rhetorical maximalism.

Media Spectacle and Communal Polarisation

Certain public interventions by AIMIM leadership, such as repeatedly foregrounding the idea of a ‘burqa-clad Muslim’ woman as Prime Minister; while constitutionally unobjectionable, function politically as symbolic provocations.

In a media ecosystem driven by Hindu–Muslim binaries, such statements offer easy fodder for communal polarisation, the costs of which are disproportionately borne by Muslims.

Comparative political experience from culturally comparable Muslim societies is instructive. Leaders such as Benazir Bhutto, Khaleda Zia, and Sheikh Hasina governed without foregrounding religious attire as political symbolism.

Their legitimacy stemmed from political organisation and electoral arithmetic, not identity spectacle.

Statements by AIMIM leaders endorsing large family norms directly contradict socio-economic data and inadvertently reinforce communal stereotypes, especially in an environment already saturated with demographic anxieties.

The Limits of Rhetoric against a Formidable Regime

Owaisi is correct in identifying the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a formidable political force and the opposition as structurally weak.

A barrister trained in Britain must also acknowledge a central electoral truth; under FPTP, parties like AIMIM or AIUDF are institutionally incapable (impossible) of dislodging the present political dispensation at the national level.

Media visibility cannot substitute for political power, nor can moral posturing compensate for numerical arithmetic.

The tragedy of contemporary Muslim politics in India lies not in the absence of voices, but in the misalignment between political expression and structural reality.

While the Owaisi family has undoubtedly flourished politically, the material, legal, and institutional conditions of ordinary Muslims continue to deteriorate.

What is required is not further fragmentation, but a sober rethinking of strategy, diversification of Muslim candidates across secular parties, electoral convergence, and a conscious retreat from symbolic politics that deepen polarisation.

In the present context, rhetorical radicalism may offer personal prominence (AIUDF and AIMIM chiefs), but it extracts a collective cost that Indian Muslims can ill afford.

[The writer, Dr Amir Hussain, is an Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya. & Academic Counsellor (IGNOU)]

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