Asaduddin Owaisi: The Muslim politician taking on India's Hindu right-wing

But any conformity with the stereotype of a meek Muslim politician trying to stay in his narrow lane on the increasingly communal highway of Indian politics ends there.

The 54-year-old fire-breathing politician from the city of Hyderabad in the southern state of Telangana is an anomaly in Indian politics.

An equal-opportunity offender, Owaisi has thrown down the gauntlet to his rivals left, right and centre.

His avowed opponents include Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the leadership of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party that has traditionally rallied Muslim support as the standard-bearer of secular politics in India.

Home to a population of 1.4 billion people, the world’s largest democracy is currently in the middle of a weeks-long general election. Pundits predict a landslide victory for Modi’s BJP as the Hindu-majority—but constitutionally secular—country descends into a cesspool of majoritarianism.

Human rights groups have accused the Modi government of advocating “hatred and violence” against the 200 million-plus Muslim population, thus altering the secular character of India.

The electoral success of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)—the Owaisi-led party known for its politics centred around Muslim and low-caste Hindu Dalit issues—has been limited to a handful of constituencies in a small number of states.

Yet Owaisi is probably the most recognisable Muslim leader across India, thanks to his take-no-prisoners style of media-savvy politics that often leaves his opponents seething with rage.

“He’s an immensely articulate, though often misunderstood, politician. He has a better worldview and a wider perspective than others. That’s what makes him different from the rest of Muslim political leaders, many of whom have possibly contributed to the ghettoisation of the Muslim community in India,” Ruben Banerjee, general secretary of the Editors Guild of India and former editor-in-chief of the Outlook magazine, tells TRT World.

Jinnah 2.0?

In their book India Tomorrow, authors Pradeep Chhibber and Harsh Shah quote Owaisi as saying that he hoped his gravestone would say he was a “constitutionalist”.

Not many mainstream politicians couch their message in purely constitutional terms as Hindu nationalism has taken deeper root in India, with the Modi-led BJP coming to power in 2014 and expanding its parliamentary majority in 2019.

But instead of cowering and yielding ground in the face of majoritarianism, the four-time member of the lower house of parliament uses the constitution as a potent weapon to ward off any attacks on the Indian identity of Muslims.

“I feel (the constitution) is the best document for India, for Indians, for Muslims, for Dalits. That is the best document to attain social justice,” Owaisi told the book authors.

Analysts say Muslims are often otherised in the world’s most populous country, sometimes as “inauthentic Indians” who are either the descendants of invaders from centuries ago or misguided converts who should embrace their Hindu past to reclaim their full status as citizens.

“Muslims will not leave India. They will fight democratically to achieve all the rights guaranteed to the citizens in the constitution of India. As long as we live, we will follow Islam and the constitution,” Owaisi told a public gathering in Telangana in 2022.

"We will not remove our beards or hijab as the constitution guarantees us certain rights. We will stay in India and will also die here. We will not be intimidated by the BJP and RSS," he said while referring to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of Modi’s BJP.

A trained lawyer from London’s Lincoln’s Inn, Owaisi claims Islam is fully compatible with the Indian constitution, which declares India a secular state and promises equality to all citizens regardless of their religious beliefs.

Yet the centrepiece of his secular politics remains the Muslim community, the poorest religious group in India with the worst social and economic indicators.

According to British historian Patrick French, Owaisi appeals to the non-sectarian Muslim identity instead of the Muslim faith. In that way, he is like Muhammad Ali Jinnah, another Lincoln’s Inn barrister who grew disillusioned with the Hindu-centric politics of the Congress in the 1940s and went on to found a separate country, present-day Pakistan, out of the Muslim-majority provinces of the Indian subcontinent.

But the label of Jinnah 2.0 is one that Owaisi rejects vehemently. On more than one occasion, he’s spoken against Jinnah, saying his battle against majoritarianism has nothing to do with separatism.

“My fight is within the four walls of the Indian constitution,” he said while calling any comparison with Jinnah “absurd”.

That Owaisi’s politics is for Muslims instead of Islam is evident from his unorthodox positions on a range of issues, such as the subsidy given to Muslims for Hajj – the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. He calls it “stupid” and wants the government to use the money to build schools for girls instead.

Similarly, Owaisi has called members of the Muslim clergy—usually spared by politicians trying to win Muslim votes—“johnnies” who choose silence over protest during communal riots to save their skins.

Faisal Devji, a professor of history at the University of Oxford, says Owaisi is the first Muslim leader since Jinnah to be able to criticise his community’s religious classes and their concerns without risking his own status.

But Banerjee of the Editors Guild of India says it’s “premature” to compare Owaisi with Jinnah because he’s still trying to become a national figure and, by and large, remains a “very localised phenomenon”.

“He’s largely confined to the city of Hyderabad with some sprinkling of support here and there,” he says, noting that there’s currently no single leader who speaks for the entire Muslim community at the national level.

Owaisi is the latest in a long line of politicians coveting the mantle of pan-India Muslim leader.

Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, a long-serving member of parliament from the northeastern state of Assam, set up the All India United Democratic Front almost two decades ago to galvanise Muslim votes across state lines, but his efforts have yielded limited electoral success.

Efforts by other Muslim politicians trying to rise above the state lines to become the nationwide voice of Indian Muslims have met the same fate.

Secularist, but against secular parties

Owaisi has been a thorn in the side of the BJP government as he headlines the protests following each episode of anti-Muslim bigotry, be it the demolition of mosques, arbitrary arrests, mob lynching or changes in the Muslim Personal Law.

But what surprises many is Owaisi’s staunch opposition to secular parties like Congress, which have long claimed to be the protector of minority rights in India.

For Owaisi, Congress is the other side of the BJP coin. Why? Because it asks Muslims for their votes in the name of secular politics but allegedly shies away from nominating Muslims to contest polls and represent their constituents in legislative chambers.

In other words, a secular Congress wants Muslims to be faith-blind while voting for Hindu representatives but hesitates to field Muslim candidates in winnable constituencies.

“No one tolerates the leadership of the Muslim community. They only ask for their votes. Will you (Muslims) remain as vote givers, or will you become vote takers? Muslims are being made invisible in the country’s politics,” says Owaisi.

Only 27 of the 542 members of the 2019 Lok Sabha, the lower chamber of the Indian parliament, are Muslim. This means only five percent of parliamentarians belong to the Muslim faith, as opposed to the community’s share of nearly 15 percent of the Indian population. Only one of the ruling BJP's 303 winning candidates is Muslim.

India’s Muslim population, for the record, is the third biggest in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan.

“If you eat the cream and the curd, drink the milk and then run away with the utensils, what will I do? Will I keep waiting in the queue with my hunger? That can’t happen… This has to end. That is why I want to contest elections,” Owaisi says.

The AIMIM has kept its distance from the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a Congress-led multi-party coalition formed to fight the 2024 election against the ruling BJP-led ruling alliance.

Owaisi sneers at the alliance by calling it an “elite club” of the so-called secular politicians that won’t back him as a candidate, fearing it’ll scare away Hindu voters. “Why are they not fighting the BJP on ideology? They can go to hell,” he says.

Tanweer Fazal, professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, says Owaisi’s politics “thrives” on the question of Muslim identity in India. On the contrary, supporters of the BJP tend to paint Muslims of India as either Pakistanis or Pakistan sympathisers.

“That's how they try to bring the Hindus together. Otherwise, the Hindus themselves are a diverse community,” he tells TRT World.

No Muslim was given candidature by the anti-Modi electoral platform of INDIA for any of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, the second-biggest state in terms of population. The same is the case in other populous states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh.

Secular politicians have accused the AIMIM chief of helping the BJP by dividing the Muslim votes that would otherwise be cast in unison for secular parties like Congress.

Owaisi calls the accusation a covetous blame game, saying his party fields candidates in a small number of constituencies, whereas Congress has been losing seats in all parts of India.

Dashed electoral hopes

Owaisi beat his opponents in the 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections by winning more than half of the votes in the Hyderabad constituency, a city that has been a political fortress for his family for decades.

However, he’s largely failed to transform his personal popularity into votes for his party candidates. The AIMIM, once led by Owaisi’s father and grandfather, could win only two Lok Sabha seats – one each in Maharashtra and Telangana – in the 2019 polls.

Owaisi has been trying to take his political party to the national level, but analysts say his support is thinning in its traditional stronghold of Telangana, where its candidates polled less than usual votes in last year’s election for the state assembly.

According to Jamia Millia Islamia professor Mujib Ur Rehman, the AIMIM fared poorly in every state where its candidates ran for office during the last decade.

“Even if he does very well, I don’t think (the number of parliamentary seats of the AIMIM) will cross into double digits. It’ll remain a single-digit party, which, in Indian politics, is not that important,” he tells TRT World.

Yet Owaisi remains a force to reckon with because of his huge presence in national media, Rehman says.

“The reason Muslims aren’t voting for Owaisi is that they aren’t looking for a Muslim leader to vote for. They’re looking for a political party that can defeat the BJP,” he says.