Mayoral Election Ahoy!

A former journalist and long-time supporter of the Samajwadi Party (SP), Vandana Mishra will contest for the seat of Lucknow’s mayor in the civic elections to be held early next month in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The SP announced the names of eight candidates contesting mayoral seats in the state. Soon after her name was made public, Vandana vowed to win and to demolish the belief that Lucknow is a citadel of the ruling party.

Out of eight names declared by the SP, five are of women. While Kajal Nishad, a Bhojpuri actress will contest from Gorakhpur, Archana Verma is the SP candidate in Shahjahanpur, Mashrur Fatima in Firozabad and Seema Pradhan in Meerut. Seema is the wife of SP legislator Atul Pradhan.

Although nearly 127 political parties are burning the midnight oil in the hope of a victory in the urban local body elections to be held in two phases early next month, the main contest is between the SP and the ruling party. Some 14,684 posts in 760 local bodies will be contested for 17 mayors, 199 Nagar Palika Parishad heads, 5,327 Parishad members, 544 Nagar Panchayat heads and 7,178 Panchayat members.

As many as 1,420 corporators will also be elected using the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) against the demand of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Chief Mayawati that ballot papers should be used during the polls instead of the EVM.

At a press conference, Mayawati batted for the use of ballot papers in the elections for mayors and corporators of municipal corporations and said that her party will contest the election wholeheartedly by fielding able and fearless contestants from the Dalit, OBC, Muslim and other minority communities.

Polling will take place in two phases on May 4 and May 11, and counting will be held on May 13. The experience in the past has been that a majority of victors in local body elections are often contestants belonging to the political party that is in power.

However, the ruling party of the day is not taking its victory for granted. It is leaving no stone unturned to be victorious even if it means putting up Muslim candidates. At closed door meetings with top state unit leaders, the ruling party is working overtime in preparing for the polls.

The strategy is to branch out into different parts of the state to win over voters, especially those belonging to the other backward castes (OBC) and to weigh their support also for the Lok Sabha elections to be held in 2024.

Today the non-Yadav OBC voter is key to winning polls. The ruling party has been trying its best to woo OBCs, especially the non-Yadavs away from the SP. The effort is to weaken the Yadav and Muslim bloc that has often voted en masse for the SP.

Wooing The Muslim Voter

In a surprise step away from the politics of religion, the ruling party recently announced that it would field Muslim candidates in minority dominated areas, and OBC candidates in plenty. In the last two state elections, the ruling party did not find even a single Muslim who was worthy of contesting elections on its behalf.

However, the ruling party is now on a massive hunt for Muslim contestants, but from the Pasmanda, or the backward community.

The adjective pasmanda was first used by Ali Anwar Ansari, former MP and leader of the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz in the late 1990s.

Pasmanda means those who have not kept pace with progress. Pasmanda refers to the hierarchical structure of Muslim communities in India.

Although Islam professes equality amongst all human beings, Muslims are broadly divided into three caste-based social categories like the Ashraf or nobility, Ajlaf or those who converted to Islam in India, and Arzal or untouchables.

In UP at least 70 percent of Muslims count as Pasmanda, who remain economically and socially backward. There is a demand that this ‘Dalit’ section of Muslims be counted as part of the OBC category.

The strategy of the ruling party to get Muslim votes poses a challenge to all the leading opposition parties, including the SP, BSP and the Congress Party who have been taking the Muslim voter for granted for decades. The ruling party accused the Congress and the SP of using Muslims as a vote bank in the past while doing nothing for the welfare of the community.

In the past a large number of Muslims had voted for the BSP. At a meeting of BSP party workers, Mayawati recently said that the ruling party’s chase for Muslim votes has turned the entire state into a population of pasmanda, meaning backwardness has increased in UP under the administration of this ruling party.

Aah Ghalib!

Mirza Ghalib, country’s greatest Urdu poet was surely an Ashraf born as he was into a family of rulers. His paternal grandfather was a Turkic warrior who came to India from Samarkand in Uzbekistan in the 18th Century.

His fiefdom was the sub district of Pahasu in UP’s Bulandshahr district. All his children including four sons and three sons were born here.

Ghalib’s mother was a Kashmiri and the poet grew up in the home of his maternal grandfather. Ghalib was born in Agra and wrote reams in Urdu and Persian about his love for the colourful traditions of the country.

Now there is a charming edition in English translation of the poet’s Persian verses on Varanasi. Called ‘Chiragh-e-Dair’, the temple lamp, the unknown verses are now accessible to many more people.

Delhi based poet, translator and cultural critic Dr. Maaz Bin Bilal has translated Ghalib’s Persian verses to say that the 19th Century poet saw Varanasi as the ‘Kaaba’ of Hindustan. Ghalib described Varanasi as more beautiful than his beloved Delhi.

Ghalib had reached Varanasi on his way to Kolkata to get the English authorities to restore his pension in 1828. His journey from Delhi to Kolkata and back took him to many cities, including Varanasi.

In Varanasi, Ghalib had wondered how the world had not ended considering that few around him valued compassion, goodness and love, when brother was ready to murder brother?

Ghalib concluded that doomsday had been stalled only because there was Varanasi, a city that radiated a light of hope for all humanity.

Padma Shri Yogesh Praveen

Lucknow Bioscope is a City Museum of Culture conceived by Sanatkada, an NGO in love with the traditional cultural diversity and inclusiveness of the way of life in Lucknow.

On April 12 Lucknow Bioscope hosted an online conversation in memory of the third death anniversary of Padma Shri Yogesh Praveen, an ardent chronicler of the history of Lucknow. Speakers at the event regretted that with the passing away of Praveen, chronology had been orphaned. That the quintessential way of life of Lucknow was robbed of its mirror.

A mirror like Praveen who had revealed a myriad aspects of the city in his inimitable style. Poet Jyoti Sinha pointed out that during his lifetime, Lucknow had waited impatiently to hear itself be described by the pen of Praveen.

For all those who enjoyed Praveen as a person and poet, the large body of work of at least two dozen books left by him on the history of Lucknow and Awadh is great consolation. That legacy alone is enough to never allow Praveen to be forgotten by Lucknow.