Election In Pincodes: Insecurity and aspiration under the Charminar

It’s 6.30pm on an early April day and the sun has begun to set around the imposing Charminar, bathing its turrets in an orange glow. The siren for the “aazaan” descends on Old Hyderabad, and the call pierces the cacophony of the packed streets below. It is the holy month of Ramadan; devout Muslims file into the Mecca Masjid in droves to offer Maghrib prayers. When they emerge, they find a city waiting for “iftaar.”
In Madina, some pack into Shadaab restaurant for haleem; others wait in queue at the famed Pista House at Shah-Ali-Banda. It isn’t just food. To the north, towards Patherghatti are shops that sell top-quality pearls for the rich; others that sell imitation pearls for the middle class. In the backdrop, every night, the Charminar is illuminated, its pearly lights a setting for revelry.
Two kilometres away from these lights are the lanes of Hussaini Alam. Here, too, there is festivity. And some politics. Hundreds of people throng a hall next to a mosque. For a while, they wait for the “Daawat-e-Iftaar” to begin.
At 6.45pm, in a light-green striped sherwani , All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president and Hyderabad member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi walks in. As people scramble to greet him, he moves slowly, greeting the hands that reach out to him with his characteristic salaam. For the most part, Owaisi says very little, and breaks his fast by eating a date and a small grape. Then he is off again, circulating among the crowd that has by now broken into the occasional “Owaisi Zindabad” slogan.
Owaisi’s iftaar is an annual exercise; and yet in 2024, there is special significance. In a matter of weeks, the loyalty of this sea of people will be tested at the hustings, when Hyderabad goes to the polls in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections on May 13. It is a loyalty that has seen Hyderabad turn into a fortress for the AIMIM, regardless of the Union or state government in power. This is a Lok Sabha seat it has never lost in 40 years.
The dominance of AIMIM
The political history of the Lok Sabha elections in Hyderabad is separated neatly in two clear periods. Between 1952 and 1984, it was a Congress bastion, represented by four members of Parliament. In 1984, Asaduddin Owaisi’s father Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi won the Hyderabad seat for the first time, going on to win five more times. In 2004, he handed over the reigns of both the party, and his constituency, to his son Asaduddin Owaisi.
And yet, this rise to undisputed political dominance in the seat was less a bolt-from-the-blue; more a steady, measured climb. Owaisi’s father, Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, who earned the moniker “Salar-e-Millat” entered politics soon after he graduated from the Aligrah Muslim University. At 29, in 1960, Salahuddin won elections to the Mallepalli division of the municipal corporation of Hyderabad. Two years later, he made a debut in the state assembly (then undivided Andhra Pradesh), representing Patherghatti, winning the seat continuously till 1983.
For these 21 years, AIMIM was not recognised as a political party, and Owaisi fought as an independent. It was only in 1989, after Salahuddin Owaisi’s second Lok Sabha term, that the AIMIM earned recognition from the Election Commission. “It was a long journey for the AIMIM. It first made its presence felt with a few corporators in the municipal council, which it then captured. Till 1984, it had only three MLAs in the assembly, and then gradually went up to the seven it has now,” said former legislative council member Syed Amin-ul-Hasan Jafri.
To be sure, the party’s origins date back to 1927, when it was founded as the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, which advocated Hyderabad’s independence from India. Around India’s independence, it was headed by Qasim Rizvi, who was allowed by the Nizam to create a controversial private army, the Razakars. They were accused of killing progressive Muslims advocating Hyderabad’s integration with India, and atrocities against the Hindu population. The Indian Army defeated them during a campaign called Operation Polo , which lasted all of five days in September 1948. Rizvi was jailed, and released in 1957, when he left for Pakistan. He named Abdul Wahid Owaisi as his successor.
But AIMIM’s rise came when Abdul Wahid’s son Salahuddin Owaisi became the voice of a community racked with insecurity — a fear that has its roots in the merger of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. “Though Hyderabad itself remained peaceful, the end of the Nizam threw Muslims into a state of insecurity,” said Mir Ayub Ali, a political commentator based in Hyderabad.
A powerful orator, Salahuddin told the community that they must fight their battles on their own, and grow into a political force. “The Muslims rallied behind him and his party,” Jafri said.
Over the decades, there were attempts by other Muslim outfits, such as the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and Tamir-e-Millat, to emerge as alternatives. But the Majlis had a political head start, and over time built a well-oiled organisational network. “The IUML has failed to win a single assembly seat, while the Tamir-e-Millat remained more or less a sociocultural organisation,” Urdu scholar Ayub Ali Khan said.
The furtherance of insecurity
Despite the tensions post the merger, in the years after Independence, Hyderabad remained calm. Then, in 1978, the alleged rape of a Muslim woman and the killing of her husband, ostensibly by police in Nallakunta, changed everything. Violence erupted in the by-lanes, and as a Congress government led by Marri Channa Reddy floundered to contain the violence, nine people died.
A sense of polarisation settled on Hyderabad, and the city seemed constantly on the boil from then on. In 1991, large-scale riots erupted, leaving more than a 100 dead. A year later, as the Babri Masjid was demolished and a wave of communal polarisation swept India, there was violence again. Then, in 2007, the city fell victim to multiple terror attacks. On May 18, there was a blast at the Mecca Masjid that left nine dead, with five more killed in the police firing that followed; on August 25, there were twin blasts at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat Bhandar that left 42 dead. Six years later, there were twin blasts in Dilsukhnagar, where 18 people were killed.
Multiple agencies launched probes that often turned controversial; a right-wing group called Abhinav Bharat was the subject of investigations for the Mecca Masjid blasts, and international terrorist groups such as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam (HuJI) and Indian Mujahideen were accused of carrying out the Lumbini Park, Gokul Chat and Dilsukhnagar blasts.
But the effects of these blasts played out in old Hyderabad’s alleys. Ibrahim Ali Junaid, for instance, now a Unani practitioner, still shudders with fear at the mention of the year 2007. Junaid says that all he did was to take the injured to hospital. But in the aftermath of the explosions, as a 26-year-old, he was in prison for months, only to be acquitted a year-and-a-half later.
The acquittal brought little succour. He struggled to get his degree certificate; his family found themselves socially ostracised. “The police still a keep a watch on me,” he said.
Not everyone faced what Junaid did, but the sense of perceived injustice lingered. “More that insecurity, there is a sense of discrimination. In such clashes, people don’t get bail easily, and there was a feeling that members of the other community get away. There was a stage when people from other parts of Hyderabad treated the old city as some sort of haven for terrorists,” said Mazhar Hussain, a social activist who runs the Confederation of Voluntary Associations.
Through this period, in Parliament and in Hyderabad, the AIMIM posited themselves as the voice of the Muslims. “There is no alternative to the AIMIM because of their support, and that is how the Owaisi brothers are able to succeed in election after election,” Hussain said.
The AIMIM campaign
The Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat has seven assembly segments — Malakpet, Karwan, Goshamahal, Charminar, Chandrayangutta, Yakutpura and Bahadurpura — six of which are represented by the AIMIM. The sole BJP seat, Goshamahal, is represented by firebrand MLA T Raja Singh, once suspended by the party for comments against Prophet Mohammad. The 2011 Census pegs the Muslim population in Hyderabad at 43.35%, but this number rises to close to 65% in the old city.
And yet, experts say, the AIMIM’s dominance is characterised not just by its long-standing representation of Hyderabad’s Muslims, but a well-oiled political machinery. that constantly re-energises its connection with the people. Come election season, for instance, the AIMIM campaign has three major components, applicable not just to the Owaisi but every public representative they have. The day begins early, with a padyatra through the city that stretches till 10am. In the evening, there is another round of door-to-door meetings and street-corner speeches. The third component is the “Jalsa-e-Halaat-e-Hazera” (public meeting on current affairs), where the Owaisi brothers – Asaduddin and his younger brother, MLA Akbaruddin – address large gatherings and attack their political rivals. “Add to this the use of social media campaigns like YouTube, Facebook and of course WhatsApp and X,” a senior leader said.
Over the past three decades, Hyderabad’s identity has grown beyond the Charminar, metamorphosing into a glittering urban jungle with towers of glass that house some of India’s best technological know-how, shiny malls that cater to the well-heeled, and apartment complexes that offer modernity as a way of life.
As the city has changed, aspirations, even in the old city, have changed too. “During this period, a large number of Muslims went to the Gulf and ploughed back their earnings. Educational opportunities increased, and several institutions that provide skill training in areas like software have emerged, resulting in more jobs for the youth,” Ahmed Ali said.
Daneesh Majeed, 30, for instance, studied South Asian area studies from the University of London, and returned a year ago. Majeed is clear. He wants a greater role for the Muslims of old city of Hyderabad in the development of modern Hyderabad. “The AIMIM must help people grow economically, and not just look at them as a vote bank,” he said.
The other side
Over the past two decades, the only competition for the Lok Sabha seat has come from the BJP. In four of the five Lok Sabha elections since 1999, it is the BJP that has finished second. The gap, however, remains considerable. In 2014, as the BJP swept to power nationally under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the AIMIM won the seat by 202,454 votes. Five years later, as the BJP extended its lead, the AIMIM did the same in Hyderabad, winning by 281,715 votes.
This time, the BJP candidate is social activist and classical dancer Kompella Madhavi Latha, chairperson of the Virinchi hospital in Hyderabad. Through her campaign, Latha has claimed that her activism has included working with Muslim women on issues such as triple talaq. But on April 20, the Hyderabad police booked Latha under section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious belief) for allegedly gesturing to shoot an imaginary arrow at a mosque during a Ram Navami procession on April 17. “I would like to clarify that it is an incomplete video, and if sentiments are hurt, then I would like to apologise as I respect all individuals,” Latha later said in a post on X.
Goshamahal MLA T Raja Singh said that the BJP was hopeful of breaking the AIMIM stranglehold, for three reasons. “First, we have been able to curtail the enrolment of bogus voters in the old city of Hyderabad. Second, the Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi have put up non-serious candidates. And third, even Muslim voters are disappointed with the AIMIM,” Singh said.
The AIMIM said that despite these efforts, its dominance over the seat would continue. “We have a network in every nook and corner, and committees down to the polling booth level. Every representative, from corporator to MP’s are available round the clock. Why would people want an alternative?” Jafri asked.
At the Nimrah Café adjacent to the Charminar, sipping his daily evening Irani chai, Muhammad Ali is just about to close his shop. For thirty years, he has sold fruit with the monument in the background; for 30 years he has watched as Hyderabad has changed, yet stayed the same. “The cost of living is higher, but the corresponding revenue hasn’t increased. I have voted for the AIMIM all this time, but there has been little change. The question has always been: Is there really an alternative?”