Election issues in Uttar Pradesh

By Tavleen Singh
Last week I drove from Delhi to Moradabad with the specific intention of finding out about the issues that concern Muslims in this most important of elections in Uttar Pradesh. The way that Muslims vote will affect the results that come out on March 6. I took with me an Urdu poet called Zafar Moradabadi, who moved to Delhi many years ago, and whom I know because he taught my son Urdu. Zafar Sahib had suggested that it would be quicker for us to go by train but I was keen to see if the road had improved under Mayawati’s Government so we went by car. It had. The road to Moradabad that once was a strip of broken tarmac is now a four lane highway that takes you past new residential developments with names like Antariksh and Siddharta Vihar. Unfortunately, these have come up without investment in the requisite municipal services so what you also see as soon as you leave the environs of Delhi is rotting garbage on either side of the fine new road.
At the first toll stop in U.P. I bought the three Hindi newspapers that were for sale and in them discovered huge advertisements from the Congress Party with Rahul Gandhi smiling out of them along side these words. ‘Picchley 22 saalon mein Congress ko chhod key sarkarein aayeen aur gayeen. Par mila kya aapko? Kabhi jungle raj, kabhi kushasan. Kya ab bhi yahi sab bardaasht kareingey aap? Sochiye Zara.’ In the past 22 years you have seen non-Congress governments come and go and what did you get? Sometimes jungle law, sometimes bad government. Is this what you want again? Think.’
The truth is that if U.P. continues to remain so backward that, to use Rahul Gandhi’s words, it ‘drags India down’ the Congress Party is as much to blame. In the forty years that Congress chief ministers ruled this state, right up to the late eighties, it was not just backward but hopelessly so. In fairness to Mayawati she has done more to build the state’s infrastructure than almost any other chief minister I have seen since I started covering U.P. elections but she faces not just an anti-incumbency factor but the possibility of losing the Muslim vote. I had heard this in Lucknow the week before.
When we got to Moradabad we drove deep into the heart of the congested inner city. The lanes were narrow, crowded and filthy and even the small green-washed mosques looked as if they could use a coat of fresh paint. We parked in the widest street in the main bazaar next to an open garbage dump in which pigs frolicked. Zafar Sahib explained that the Hindus in the area were mostly Dalit and they bred pigs. He pointed to an ‘idgah’ across the street and said it was there that last year’s riot started. ‘Pigs were released into the idgah as prayers were ending and this started the violence.’ In the old days when Moradabad was one of the state’s most communally sensitive cities the riot could have ended in a massacre. But, as everywhere else in India, 24-hour news channels have made it almost impossible for riots to spread easily so the violence was quickly brought under control and resulted in the death of only one young Muslim boy who was killed by a police bullet.
I followed Zafar sahib into a narrow lane that took us past a noisy ‘English medium’ school into a network of narrower lanes. Open drains ran along them and mounds of smelly garbage lay on their edges. After a short walk we arrived at the home of Javed Rashid ‘Aamir’ a tax lawyer who is also a part time writer and poet. He had gathered together a group of his friends among whom were poets, lawyers and doctors. When I asked what the main issue was for Muslims in this election they said, without hesitation, that it was development. Javed Rashid said, ‘Moradabad has been badly neglected despite earning the Government of India more than Rs 3000 crores in foreign exchange from brass exports. The city pays sales tax of more than Rs 700 crores but look at the state of it. Look at the filthy streets, the absence of proper sewage lines…and electricity. If there is a light on in this room,’ he said pointing to the single light bulb ‘it is because I have an inverter. Everyone has to have one because the electricity comes and goes when it wants.’
The other big issue for Muslims, everyone said, was the neglect of Urdu. When Mulayam Singh was last chief minister he had installed translators in Government offices so that Muslims could fill application forms in Urdu but under Mayawati there had been no implementation of this measure. For Muslims Urdu is very important because there are many poorer Muslims who are forced to send their children to mosque schools where they do not teach the Hindi script. Madrassa education is not a choice for them it is all they can afford. So because Mulayam Singh has been the only chief minister who has understood the importance of promoting Urdu the group of Muslims I met in Moradabad that day said they were inclined to vote for the Samajwadi Party.
Then, we set off deeper into the city into alleys, that became so narrow that two vehicles could not pass each other, to meet the Imam of one of Moradabad’s more important mosques. He repeated what I had already heard that development and Urdu were the most important issues where Muslims were concerned. It was only when I asked if the Babri Masjid was still an issue that he said, ‘Of course it is. We will not rest until that mosque is rebuilt. It will always be an important issue for Muslims.’
Before leaving for Delhi we went back to Javed Rashid’s home to eat a delicious meal of Moradabadi kebabs, rumali rotis, biryani and chicken curry and our conversation continued. It was at this point that someone mentioned that the MP from Moradabad is the cricketer, Mohammed Azharuddin. When I asked why he had not done more for Moradabad out of his constituency allowance which could well have taken care of improving conditions in the inner city they laughed. ‘Would you believe us,’ one of my lunch companions said ‘if we told you that Azharuddin has never been to Moradabad. Not even during the election that made him our MP did we see him once.’

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