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The 'Osama' of India's
Bihar
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - While Britain's Prince Harry
is now likely regretting his recent Nazi attire
gaffe, here in India there is an Osama bin Laden,
a look alike that is, who is using his resemblance
to the US's most wanted man to seek votes on
behalf of a prominent Indian politician.
Three Indian states - Jharkhand, Haryana
and Bihar - will vote next month to elect a new
assembly and a chief minister. The most critical
polls, from the political parties' point of view,
are in the state of Bihar, where the said bin
Laden accompanies his political master, Ram Vilas
Paswan, a former railway and communication
minister of India a a mass leader of the dalits -
a large community of people considered of the
lowest caste who are wooed as a huge electoral
vote base - on the campaign trail. Paswan is
aiming to upset the citadel of his political
bete noir, the mercurial Laloo Prasad
Yadav, incumbent railway minister, who has ruled
Bihar for 15 years, first as chief minister
himself and then by proxy through his wife Rabri
Devi, who currently heads the government in the
state.
It has been reported that the bin
Laden clone - Meraj Khalid Noor - is a young man
from Bihar who likes to be addressed as "Laden" as
he feels that nobody can recall his actual name.
Noor had sought an election ticket from Paswan
only on the basis that he looked like bin Laden,
but Paswan had turned down the request though he
decided to make use of him for campaigning.
To understand how the Indian bin Laden
fits in, it would be instructive to understand a
little bit about the politics of Bihar. Lalu's
record in developing Bihar has been abysmal, yet
he has managed to win elections, whether to
parliament or the assembly, due to an unbeatable
backward caste in Yadav, the community that Lalu
belongs to, and the Muslim vote, which supports
Lalu en masse, forming over 30% of the state's
votes. Over the years, Lalu has carefully
cultivated this constituency, not so much by
ensuring their economic mobility, but by providing
them with a social voice, regaling them with
rustic wit and jingoistic jargon about the pride
of taking on the higher caste, which has
traditionally included feudal lords and is seen as
the oppressor. To his credit, Lalu has garnered
the Muslim vote by making sure that the state of
Bihar remains free of communal violence, though
crime and caste violence rack the state.
The upper castes, meanwhile, also comprise
a formidable number of votes and have in the past
decade thrown their support behind the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), however the front created by
Lalu, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, has the numbers on
its side. It should be noted that in the last
national elections in May 2004, the Congress
Party, Paswan - who has formed his own party
called the Lok Jan Shakti Party, and Lalu all
fought together to take on the BJP when Atal
Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister. But the
unraveling of the BJP in the wake of its defeat in
the parliamentary polls and the subsequent
leadership crisis have proved the dictum that in
politics there are no permanent friends or
enemies.
Now, the Congress, which heads
the coalition government in New Delhi and is
supported by Lalu's party in parliament in the Lok
Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament),
fancies its chances in Bihar. The Congress feels
that it can wean upper caste votes away from a
weakened BJP and also bring the Muslims, who have
traditionally supported the Congress Party, into
its fold away from Lalu. The go-it-alone policy of
the Congress forms part of party president Sonia
Gandhi's grand strategy to elevate the Congress
back to its national status, instead of relying on
regional parties and satraps such as Lalu, who
often follow their own agenda. The Congress and
Paswan, with his formidable dalit base and who now
looks to be fronting against Lalu, both feel that
the upper caste-dalit votes can form an unbeatable
combine if the Muslims can be co-opted, which
would be an easier task than winning the lower
caste Yadav voters who swear by Lalu. Enter the
bin Laden look-alike to influence the Muslim
voters.
Indeed, like elsewhere in the
world, bin Laden does grab attention in India from
time to time. A few months back the US's Fox News
Channel and a website reported to have close links
to Israeli intelligence agency Mossad claimed that
an Indian air force reconnaissance plane sighted
bin Laden's convoy in the Tibet-Ladakh region
close to the northeastern border of Pakistan, near
India and China. The view was endorsed by the
website Debka.com, which is believed to be run by
Mossad. Additional surveillance aircraft were
called in and identified the al-Qaeda leader on
the move with a 10-vehicle convoy of black
Japanese minivans, the website said. Fox made
similar claims.
In an interview published
in a prominent newspaper, Paswan was asked whether
it was appropriate to try and influence minority
voters by using a man who has become the symbol of
global terrorism. A slightly nonplussed Paswan
replied, "What can you do if your face looks like
Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden?" He claimed the
man who looked like bin Laden, Noor, was the son
of a close friend. "His father and I have known
each other for a very long time. We had together
joined the old socialist party," said Paswan.
Paswan emphasized that he could never
support terrorism, especially a terrorist figure
such as bin Laden. But he was honest enough to
admit that bin Laden did have some supporters
among the Muslim youth, although the bulk of
Muslims strongly feel that he has harmed Islam and
its tenets. Downplaying the entire episode, Paswan
said it "did not mean anything" just because
"somebody who looked like Osama" has campaigned
for him.
There are two ways to look at the
cloning episode. One is to dismiss it as an
election stunt to draw people during public
rallies. Indian politicians are known to use every
stratagem to attract voters during election
campaigns. Film and television stars, especially
those who have played the roles of gods, are roped
in to address and influence the masses of poor and
downtrodden who flock to such election meetings.
The bin Laden look-alike could be looked at from
this prism.
On the other hand, there could
be something more sinister at work. Is the use of
the Laden image an attempt to appeal and
sympathize with more fundamental instincts, in
which many Muslims across the world see themselves
as victims of Western excesses and look to bin
Laden as a hero who has given it back to the
oppressors? If so, this is much more serious.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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