Joshi, Ansari: Varanasi war

At first sight, the equations seem simple. If the voter is poor and a Muslim or non-Brahmin Hindu, count his vote in favour of the jailed Bahujan Samaj Party candidate, Mukhtar Ansari. If he or she is Brahmin and well off, the vote likely goes to the “intellectual” Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP.

In the battle of the Varanasi “dons” — an alleged gangster versus a former academic — passions are running high on both sides of the Ganga. The battle is for the “soul” of the holy city of which Mark Twain said: “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.”

If the sentiments are toned down, though, there’s a chance that the Samajwadi Party’s Ajay Rai could sneak into the running. And even sitting MP Rajesh Mishra of the Congress may not be written off.

Rai got a leg-up after a massively attended meeting addressed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan on April 9. His caste following of Bhumihars — who make up over one lakh of the constituency’s 15 lakh voters — has got consolidated, encouraging some Muslims to start looking at him as a serious option though he was till recently a BJP MLA.

The Samajwadi line is that a vote for Rai is a vote for Mulayam, and a vote for Mulayam means more sops for Varanasi’s large community of Muslim weavers. As chief minister, the Samajwadi boss had fixed a flat monthly power rate of Rs 65 for loom owners.

On the face of it, the BSP’s Ansari has little in common with the weavers, coming as he does from an elite land-owning family of Ghazipur, 50km east of Varanasi. The family, however, had adopted its current surname to identify itself with the dominant weaver caste of Muslims in the region, who are called Ansaris.

The BSP candidate counts his namesake, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, one of the earliest presidents of the Congress, as an ancestor. He faces over 30 criminal cases, relating mainly to murder and kidnapping, and is lodged in Kanpur jail. “That is no deterrent; he is so well networked that his men can do anything through remote control,” said a silk textile magnate, a “posh” Muslim and, therefore, an unlikely Ansari backer.

During the last Friday prayers before the April 16 vote, groups of Ansari’s workers were seen in every mosque. No political call was issued anywhere, but the bush radio was clearly at work.

“Till last week, many of us were divided between the Congress and Ansari. But since the BSP’s Dalits and some of the Most Backward Castes support Ansari, we thought it would be wise to vote for him because he is best-placed to defeat Joshi, as of now,” said Syed Imam Shastri, professor of social sciences at Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth.

Aftab Ahmed, an official at Sir Syed Public School in Lallapura, a Muslim-majority area, explained why Ansari had emerged the community’s first choice. “If the government slaps cases and brands someone as a mafioso, so be it. But in a city where police routinely round up innocent Muslims on mere suspicion after a communal skirmish, we need a strong man like Ansari to protect us,” Ahmed said.

Cut to Joshi, a former physics professor from Allahabad. “We have three dons in the contest: a mega don (Ansari), a minor don (Rai) and a would-be don (Mishra). One erudite individual stands out among them and he is Dr Joshi. Kashi needs a national leader like him if its identity is to be preserved,” said Uday Narayan Pandey, a retired BHU professor.

Pandey and “like-minded” people, mostly upper caste professionals, are spreading the message from door to door that a city whose history boasts names such as Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Dr Sampurnanand and Kamlapati Tripathi must not be “defiled by criminals and goondas”.

“Brahmins are whispering Joshi’s name like a guru mantra into the ears of non-Brahmins. But the question is whether the upper castes will turn out to vote in large numbers,” a government employee said.

Conventional wisdom has it that unless Varanasi’s polity gets sharply polarised, the BJP doesn’t have much of a chance. Joshi’s supporters had a shot at it during Holi when they allegedly threw gulal on a mosque, but the Muslims were not provoked.

“If by some misfortune Joshi loses to Ansari, it will send out a dangerous signal that intellectuals have no place in politics. We will turn out in record numbers on polling day,” said Murli Lal Srivastava of the Kayastha Mahasabha.

Mishra, who won convincingly in 2004, suffers from the perception that he has failed to deliver on his promises. It has earned him the nickname “Ashwasan Guru” (master of assurances). If the Hindus accuse him of “going out of his way” to work only for Muslims, the Muslims feel he didn’t stretch himself enough.

Varanasi goes to the polls on April 16