Something different happened in Azamgarh on 11 January, 2012. While the boys of Shibli National Postgraduate College boycotted the meeting of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi, he found an audience in 50-odd girls. Almost all of them wanted a one-to-one chat with him. Next day, regional and national newspapers carried picture of burqa clad girls shaking hands with Gandhi. If a picture can say thousand words, then this one did.
For Rahul Gandhi it was no less than a reward for his efforts to set things right for his party in the country’s most populous state. As such, the girls of this district striking a chord with him, is something.
Azamgarh. Naresh Sharma/Firstpost
The snap was not liked by the Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who almost kick-started his Uttar Pradesh campaign from Azamgarh on 1 January (Yadav’s rally got cancelled due to rain). In 2007 assembly elections, SP won four out of ten seats in the district. Gandhi’s popularity in Shibli College was taken seriously by the SP. Two days later, Akhilesh Yadav stayed at the college guest house for three nights.
The idea of Muslim girls mingling with Rahul did not go well with Muslim parties. Ulema Council, a political forum formed in October 2008, distributed the picture in the markets with the caption- ‘death of modesty’.
Nonetheless, the incident had a ripple effect.
Has Rahul’s magic worked in Azamgarh?
Shah Azfar Faizan. Naresh Sharma/Firstpost
“Pictures are deceptive. As a national leader, he is liked by the youth across the country. If students want to talk to him, it does not mean that Congress has become a favourite party in Azamgarh,” says Dr Shah Azfar Faizal, principal, Shibli National College. The college was founded in 1883 by Allahma Shibli Noumani, writer and mentor of Maulana Abul Kalaam Azad, India’s first education minister.
He snubs the reports that Rahul’s entry was boycotted by the Ulema Council. About his effigy burnt outside the college gate, he says, “No such thing happened.”
On 19 September, 2008, Delhi police shot dead two alleged terrorists in Okhla’s Batla House area, in what the police said was an encounter. Atif Amin and Mohammad Sajid, killed in the encounter, hailed from Azamgarh.
Since then, the encounter has become a reference point in the history of this district. Since then, Azamgarh youth have been discussed about, filmed, ridiculed and empathised with and more importantly, politicised.
The first time Azamgarh, birth place of Kaifi Aazmi, poet and father of actor Shabana Aazmi, voted after Batla incident, was in 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
By then, the families of victims had moved the National Human Rights Commission, wrote to the prime minister and almost all political parties, demanding that the terror tag be removed from the district.
Before elections, Mulayam Singh Yadav visited Sanjarpur, village of Aatif and Sajid. He demanded a judicial enquiry in the case. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was silent on the issue and the BJP had opposed enquiry. Curiously, the Congress maintained that justice should be done, but it fell short of demanding an independent probe.
Gauging that it was political circus at its best, Azamgarh pulled a surprise.
Ulema Council was formed to counter all the major political parties. The idea was that Muslims of the district would vote en masse for the Council. Dr Javed Akhtar, an orthopedic surgeon was the Council’s candidate. His son, Asadullah Akhtar is an absconder in police records. He had completed B Pharm from a private university in Lucknow and was looking for a job when he went missing. Dr Akhtar became face of the oppressed in Azamgarh.
Result? Ramakant Yadav of the BJP won from the district, around 20 percent population of which, is Muslim.
This election season the Batla House encounter is the biggest issue on mind of the voters here.
Star campaigners of all major parties including Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh have visited Azamgarh garnering support of Muslims — 18 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s vote bank.
But the voters have made their mind. “Honestly, there is no party which thinks for the welfare of Muslims. But we consider SP less harmful than BSP,” says Mahisuddin Sanjari, social activist from Sanjarpur village. Currently, three of 16 Azamgarh boys various prisons across the country, are from Sanjarpur.
What will work for the SP, says Sanjari, is that it is the only party which has mentioned justice for Azamgarh’s innocent youth, in its poll manifesto.
Further, while the Congress arithmetic might fetch votes in other pockets of Uttar Pradesh, Azamgarh is different. Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, particularly in Azamgarh, blame Congress for its inaction on the Batla House encounter of 2008. “When they can order CBI inquiry in Bhanwari Devi case, why not an independent probe for the encounter?” says Dr Shahid Badra Falahi, former president of Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an organisation banned in September 2001.
Dr Falahi shows a newspaper report dated February 9, 2012, saying that the government has renewed the ban on SIMI. His grudge is that while it was the NDA government which banned SIMI for the first time, the Congress did not remove the ban. “On the face of it, BJP looks anti- Muslim party. But the fact is that the Congress is the worst, says a fuming doctor at his clinic of Unani medicine. “Sachar committee report is a reflection of the current state of the Indian Muslim. It is dismal and Congress is the only party responsible for it,” he added.
Unlike 2009 Lok Sabha polls, this time no Muslim party has Batla House encounter probe as its main agenda. Dr Akhtar, who fought Lok Sabha election in 2009, is busy attending to his patients at his clinic in Brahmsthal area of Azamgarh. On not contesting in the assembly poll, he says, “The students (arrested from Azamgarh) have been charge-sheeted. Any political interference at this stage will not be correct.”
What about political parties making tall claims on the matter?
“These are all bluffs. They are merely political statements,” says he.
However, there are fringe parties which promise to fight for the cause of the Muslims, if voted to power — National Loktantrik Party, the Parcham Party, the Peace Party, Assam United Democratic Front.
But at best, they are seen as parties to split the Muslim vote bank. In 2008, Dr Akhtar wrote an article in Milli Gazette newspaper highlighting the consequences of such parties. “In a radius of 100 kilometers, there were around 10 parties. What do you think they could have achieved?” he says.
Looks like the voter in Azamgarh is speaking his heart.
