Almost a year ago Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) won the first seat in the so-called Hindi belt by winning the Kishanganj by-election in Bihar. I remember that the arrival of Owaisi in the Seemanchal region of Bihar had generated huge interest among the locals of Chakulia, Kishanganj’s nearest assembly constituency that falls in West Bengal.
Kishanganj is the nearest city for this part of Bengal and thus very important for the local political economy. In tea stalls and sweet shops, people enthusiastically discussed if AIMIM leaders would cross the state border to try their luck in Uttar Dinajpur, a Bengal district with 48% Muslim population.
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Owaisi found huge popularity among a section of Muslims who widely shared his fierce Urdu speeches, given in the parliament and elsewhere, attacking Hindutva of the BJP and soft-Hindutva of the Congress. During the by-election campaign, his passionate speech against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Kishanganj resonated with many in the region which shares an international border with Bangladesh.
Last year I attended an anti-CAA rally at Chakulia on November 16, 2019, jointly organised by local Left Front MLA Ali Imran Ramz (Victor) and Kolkata-based economist Prasenjit Bose’s Joint Forum Against NRC. While former JNU Students Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was speaking on the dais, a local Muslim youth sitting next to me commented, “I heard Owaisi sahab at Kishanganj. Kanhaiya is great but no one can speak on the problems of Muslim quam like him.”
Also read: Bihar: What Worked in AIMIM’s Favour in Five Assembly Seats of Seemanchal?
Kishanganj, with its sizeable Muslim population, had seen the appearance of outspoken Muslim leaders from outside even earlier. Former Indian diplomat Syed Sahabuddin and president of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (a motley group of Muslim organisations) contested and won this seat in 1985 Lok Sabha elections on a Janata Dal ticket. He lost his place to former Union minister M.J. Akbar in the 1989 elections, only to snatch it back in 1991, which he celebrated with a helicopter ride to Kishanganj from Patna.
The issue of language
After AIMIM’s remarkable success in Kishanganj district in the recently-held Bihar election, where they won four of the six assembly seats, they have earned not only national fame but also certain confidence that has led Owaisi to declare that his party would fight next year Bengal assembly polls.
He particularly mentioned four districts of West Bengal with high Muslim population as his target: Malda, Murshidabad, Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur. Among all of them, Uttar Dinajpur is not only closest to Kishanganj and Araria, where AIMIM’s gains are concentrated but also it shares a peculiar history and demography with Seemanchal region.
AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi at a rally in Bihar’s Kishanganj. Photo: Asaduddinowaisi/Facebook
The issue of language in Uttar Dinajpur is vital to AIMIM’s prospects. Muslims are mainly divided between Surjapuri and Shershahbadia community just like in Kishanganj. Though Surjapuri people speak in Surjapuri dialect (also known as deshi bhasha), many among them see Urdu as their language and associate it with class mobility. Shershahbadia community, whom local Surjapuris view as outsiders from Malda and Murshidabad district, speak in badia dialect and learn Bengali in schools.
Also read: After Bihar Debut, Asaduddin Owaisi and AIMIM Eye Further Expansion
For Owaisi, his popularity on account of his impressive Urdu speeches could act as his strength here unlike in other parts of Bengal. Before coming to Bihar, he expanded his base in the Urdu speaking parts of Maharashtra where Deccan identity played a significant role in rewarding him with few MLAs and one MP.
In West Bengal, Urdu speakers are mainly spread in parts of Kolkata, Asansol subdivision in Burdwan and Islampur subdivision of Uttar Dinajpur. As per the West Bengal Official Language (Amendment) Act, 2012, in Islampur subdivision, in which Chakulia, Chopra, Islampur, Goalpokher, Karandighi assembly constituencies fall, Urdu has been given official status because a section of local Muslim population campaigned for it.
The appointment of an Urdu teacher in Daribhit High School near Islampur caused massive unrest among the local Bengali speaking refugee population in September 2018 and led to police firing resulting in two dead and three injured. Calling deceased local youths as language martyrs, and to counter its Hindi belt party tag, West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh this year declared September 20 as the West Bengal Mother Language Day.
The complex history of Uttar Dinajpur and Kishanganj
When partition happened in 1947, Radcliffe Line divided this region in a way that territorial link between North Bengal and South Bengal was snapped with erstwhile Purnea district sandwiched between both of them. Later State Reorganisation Commission approved the remapping of state boundaries in a way where parts of Kishanganj and Katihar subdivision was added to former West Dinajpur district to restore the link. Later West Dinajpur was further divided in 1992 into North and Dakshin Dinajpur.
This part of India has always flirted with many political experiments in the past. On the account of partition in 1946, Dinajpur and parts of Purnea were the epicentres of historic Tebhaga movement to demand two-third of the produce for sharecroppers. At that time local Muslim farmers formed the backbone of Kishan Sabha, the peasant front of the Communist Party of India. The history of peasant revolution did not end just there. In late 1960s northern part of West Dinajpur had become the heart of Naxalbari movement. The armed uprising was crushed by the then West Bengal government, but nonetheless, communist parties established their stronghold in this region. The local hero of Tebhaga movement, a poor Muslim labourer called Bacha Munshi whom Jyoti Basu respectfully called ‘Bachada’, later fought assembly elections on a Communist Party of India(Marxist) ticket and became MLA from Chopra constituency.
The most senior politician of this region is a septuagenarian figure Abdul Karim Chowdhury. He has been a record 10 times MLA and a former West Bengal minister in the Mamata Banerjee government. He is an old Congressman who has won both Chopra and Islampur constituencies since the early 1970s, after being sidelined by former Raiganj MP and senior minister at the Centre, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, joined TMC. After winning in 2001 assembly elections from Islampur constituency, he became the first TMC MLA from north Bengal.
TMC MLA Abdul Karim Chowdhary. Photo: Facebook
He holds the seat even today, however, local newspapers are regularly publishing news on his rift with TMC district president Kanhaiyalal Agarwal, a local Marwari businessman. Agarwal, who is a former Congress MLA from the same Islampur seat, joined TMC to contest Lok Sabha elections from Raiganj in 2019 but lost to BJP’s Debasree Chowdhury, who is currently serving as Union minister of state for women and child development in the Modi government.
Also read: Lessons From the Bihar Results on the Electoral Politics in West Bengal
Congress leader Dasmunshi and his wife Deepa Dasmunshi mentored several Muslim youths in this region during their time as MPs who went on to become MLAs in several constituencies of Uttar Dinajpur. However, most of them later joined TMC as Congress lost its influence in the region with 2014 Lok Sabha debacle and Mamata Banerjee actively wooed them to expand her party in the district. Prominent among them is Hamidul Rahman and Golam Rabbani who are now the sitting MLAs from Chopra and Goalpokher respectively. The latter is also the minister of state of labour in the current Mamata government.
Apart from political patronage, family links have remained an important factor that dominated the local politics in several constituencies. So, in the case of Golam Rabbani, his father was an old Congressman and elected panchayat official. In Chakulia (before delimitation part of Goalpokher) constituency, Ramzan Ali was a local strongman from All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), a Left front ally, who had won the seat from 1977 to 1991. After he was killed in 1994 in MLA hostel in Kolkata by his wife Talat Sultana, AIFB gave the ticket to Ramzan Ali’s brother Hafiz Alam Sairani who later on became relief minister in Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s government. Sairani later lost the seat to Congress leader Deepa Dasmunshi in 2006 assembly election.
However, when Deepa Dasmunshi decided to contest Raiganj Lok Sabha poll after her husband fell ill, in 2009 by-election AIFB fielded Ali Imran Ramz who won the seat. He is still the MLA from Chakulia and a strong Left contender for the upcoming elections. Recently there was news that Prashant Kishor team apparently tried to poach him for TMC, but members of that team denied such news and alleged Ali Imran Ramz himself approached them.
In Karandighi, a constituency with 53% Muslim population, has not had a Muslim MLA since Haji Sajjad Hussain who won the seat from 1971 to 1991. His brother Sheikh Sharafat Hussain was the MLA of Goalpokher in 1971–77. Both were Congressmen and enjoyed considerable support from local Rajbongshi population who form an important voting bloc. In recent years, be it AIFB, Congress or TMC, all preferred Rajbongshi candidate in this seat. Currently, Manodeb Sinha of TMC is the MLA in this constituency.
Who will be the Akhtarul Iman of Uttar Dinajpur?
Most political analysts agree that the key figure in the rise of AIMIM in Seemanchal is Akhtarul Iman. He won from the Amour constituency (next to Karandighi) with a huge margin in the latest Bihar assembly polls. Before joining AIMIM in 2015, he had already earned considerable political experience as Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA from Kochadhaman and 2014 Lok Sabha candidate from Janta Dal (United).
Bihar AIMIM chief Akhtarul Iman. Photo: Facebook/Akhtarul Iman Fans ID.
The morning after the Bihar election results, I was sitting at a tea stall in Chakulia where a local Muslim cleric who runs a stationery shop made a valid point. He said, “It is just not enough to be famous to win elections. Akhtarul Iman Sahab organised at the grassroots for years to gift Owaisi Sahab with all these seats.”
To break the entrenched politics of patronage and family lineage, AIMIM needs to find its Akhtarul Iman of Uttar Dinajpur to convert the fame and curiosity of people regarding Barrister Asaduddin Owaisi into votes to enter Bengal state assembly from this region.
Dr. Adil Hossain is a freelance journalist based in Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal, and holds a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford.