Facing a test of survival in Uttar Pradesh, the Rashtriya Lok Dal has come up with a strategy of getting the votes of Jats and Muslims. The Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 have dented the vote base of the party in the two communities.
The party has fielded two candidates who have had inter-religious and inter-caste marriages, expecting votes from the communities of the man and wife in the communally sensitive western U.P.
This novel strategy is being termed the RLD’s counter to the Hindutva group’s propaganda of “love jihad”, which was one of the major reasons for communal tensions between the Jats and Muslims.
Thus, the Ajit Singh-led party has fielded Anju Muskan, a Dalit from the reserved Assembly constituency of Hapur. Ms. Muskan, aka Muskan Devi, is married to a local RLD leader, Farman Ali. Similarly, the party has fielded Kusum Devi, a Dalit from Hastinapur, who is married to a Gujjar from the same constituency.
Senior RLD leader Mukesh Chaudhary told The Hindu that by fielding candidates who had had inter-religious and inter-caste marriages as “a deliberate strategy, the party seeks to stitch together, and also heal, the broken fabric”.
The party hopes that Ms. Muskan would get support from the Dalit community, which has about 45,000 votes in Hapur, and as she is married to a Muslim, she could get the support of the Muslim community, which has over one lakh votes out of the total vote of 3.2 lakh.
“Besides Muslims and Jatavs, I am expecting the support of the Jat community which has nearly 50,000 votes, and which is coming back to the RLD,” Ms. Muskan said. She contested the Lok Sabha polls as an RLD candidate from Bulandshahr.
Mr. Farman Ali, whose marriage to Ms. Muskan in 2006 faced severe resistance from his caste of Muslim Rajputs, proudly told The Hindu that his wife had not converted. He has been appealing to both Hindus and Muslims to vote for the “idea of unity”. Mr. Ali underlined the support of the local khaps for the RLD candidate in the past two days through panchayats.
Local RLD leaders pointed out that in the Hastinapur seat in Meerut, out of total three lakh voters, 70,000 are Gujjars and 45,000 Dalits. It was this strategic combination of caste factors that ensured Ms. Kusum’s victory in the Zila Panchayat poll in 2016.
