A retrograde move

Marriages of convenience in Indian politics have often been misconceived experiments in bad blood and poor politics. That Jan Morcha, an umbrella organisation of one left and three ‘democratic’ parties formed at former PM V P Singh’s behest, has decided to ignore that is clear from its decision to align with the People’s Democratic Front (PDF) — a newly floated agglomeration of Muslim outfits, in Uttar Pradesh. We wonder how exactly would pandering to minority communalism help strengthen the cause of democracy and development in the state. The alignment is, indeed, disturbing. There needs to be a challenge to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government from outfits other than the BSP. UP certainly deserves to be delivered from raging epidemics, periodic gang wars and continual communal conflicts. The current alignment can, however, hope to deliver none of that. The point is not merely to unravel Mulayam’s identity-based electoral arithmetic. The point is to offer the denizens of the state an alternative political agenda of development.
In UP, minority disaffection and marginalisation are certainly not imagined problems. The attempt to economically cleanse the weaker community during the communal riots in the state last year, has underscored the continued existence of vicious Hindu communalism. Moves to form minority parties, in such circumstances, would further legitimise the sangh parivar’s specious ‘action-reaction’ thesis, and strengthen fringe lumpen groups like the Hindu Yuva Vahini. A pan-Muslim party like the PDF would, in any case, not work in UP. The Muslims there are far more socio-economically differentiated than, say, in Assam. One of PDF’s key demands — job reservation for Muslims — is unlikely to find resonance among a significant section of Muslim OBCs. The PDF, clearly, manifests the elite Muslim’s anxiety in UP. The Muslims question in the state is really about making the mainstream less exclusionary, even as the community is internally reformed. The Jan Morcha must foreground this modern core of Muslim aspirations.

-- The Economic Times Editorial