Atal Behari Vajpayee’s poll-eve promises invite anger and scorn; Rahul Gandhi’s last-minute attempts to whip up a late Congress wave create not a ripple in these parts; and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s prolonged flirtation with the BJP that may end up in a post-poll marriage leaves them with a profound sense of disquiet. Caught between untrustworthy trustees and sweet-talking turncoats, the aam Mussalman in the Barabanki-Kaisarganj-Bahraich-Gonda belt of eastern Uttar Pradesh is a bewildered soul. That is why less than 36 hours before elections take place in eastern UP on Monday, there is a distinct listlessness, a discernible wariness among large sections of Muslims who are waiting till the proverbial eleventh hour to make up their minds. Zaidpur, a large village in interior Barabanki with a 90 per cent Muslim population, mirrors the schisms within the community. Mufti Md Yaqub is the headmaster of the largest and oldest madarsa here—Jamia Imdadululoom—and also president of the district madarsa teachers’ association. Amid the cacophony created by little boys and girls huddled over their Korans in the crumbling old edifice, Yaqub insists that most Muslims in Barabanki will vote for sitting Samajwadi Party MP Ram Sagar Rawat. ‘‘He has given lakhs to madarsas here and also money to build walls around our cemeteries.’’ But a few yards outside the madarsa, Anisur Rahman—one of the hundreds of impoverished weavers that populate Zaidpur—is not so sure. ‘‘Ram Sagar Rawat has been MP for three terms but he has done nothing. He may have given a bit of money to a few madarsas, but how does that help the rest of us?’’ His fellow bunkars nod in assent, and then wearily add: ‘‘This time we will vote Mulayam—we don’t have a choice.’’ At a chai shop in Shahabpur Chowk past Barabanki town, a group of Muslim youths disagrees. ‘‘This time we will vote for the BSP because the SP has done nothing. This time, people are looking at the candidate, not the party,’’ says Aziz Ahmad. But Mohammad Aqil, a die-hard SP supporter, cuts him short. ‘‘Some people are looking at the candidate, but others still go by the party.’’ What if Mulayam were to join the NDA after the elections, Ahmad counters. Aqil has no answer, but two others pipe in: ‘‘We can tell you one thing—this is Mulayam’s last chance. If he joins hands with the BJP, he will not get a single Muslim vote in the assembly elections that follow.’’ The division over candidate versus party, over the SP versus the BSP, is a running theme right through our drive through this particular stretch of UP. It is particularly graphic in Kaisarganj where the BJP’s new recruit Arif Mohammad Khan is a clear front-runner at the close of campaign. But like the solitary swallow that failed to make a summer, one Arif Mohammad Khan does not signify a shift in the Muslim mood towards the BJP. Almost everyone you meet in Kaisarganj—Muslim and non-Muslim—will tell you that Arif is ahead for two reasons—because he is a ‘‘good candidate’’ and had done a lot for the area in his various terms as MP from neighbouring Bahraich; and because the SP’s veteran leader and three-term MP Beni Prasad Varma ‘‘has done nothing’’. If there is one wave in UP today, it is the wave of anti-incumbency. Except that given the many khichdi sarkars in both Lucknow and Delhi, it is the sitting MP who is the victim of anti-incumbency more than any party. If Varma and Rawat are in trouble in Kaisarganj and Barabanki, the same is true for BJP sitting MP Padmasen Choudhury in Bahraich. The BJP might retain Gonda only because it has replaced sitting MP Braj Bhushan Singh with Ghanshyam Shukla. Anti-incumbency apart, two other distinct—and unanimous—views emerge in the course of our conversations over two days. One, a continuing anger against the BJP. In Zaidpur, Md Abrar Siddiqui cannot contain his rage against Vajpayee’s recent speech promising funds to madarsas and posts for Urdu teachers. ‘‘He was prime minister for six years, and never did anything, never even said anything on the subject. Does he think we are fools? They abuse us, loot us, kill us—and then at election time suddenly want our votes? And then lets Narendra Modi campaign in UP!’’ At Jarwal Road close to Kaisarganj, there is more amusement than anger. ‘‘Now that the BJP is losing its Hindu vote, they have suddenly discovered the Muslim vote. Even in the last assembly elections, BJP leaders said they did not need us. So why now?’’ The second theme is that the Congress has done too little, too late. ‘‘If Rahul Gandhi had started campaigning earlier, if he had come to these parts even two months ago, it would have made a difference,’’ said a Zaidpur weaver. But as things stand today, goes the unanimous view, the Congress in this region is just dal mein namak ke barabar (negligible, unseen).
