Various Dimensions of Indian Politics and Arif Mohammad Khan

Politics is not always the same. Change relative to time and circumstances is a natural process; it has happened before, it is happening today, and it will continue to happen. This is why the politics that existed before Mahatma Gandhi was not there in his time, the politics of his time was not there in Nehru's time, and the politics of Nehru's time is not here today. In the future, this politics will not remain the same either; it will change according to the needs of the time. It is worth noting that this change in politics is significant not only in the context of India but also in the context of the politics of every country in the world. It is because of this change that the Russia of Gorky, Tolstoy, and Lenin does not exist today, the Germany of Hitler does not exist, the China of Mao Zedong does not exist, the America of Abraham Lincoln does not exist, and the Britain of Winston Churchill does not exist today.

Everything has changed everywhere; from politics to circumstances and the country's situation, everything has changed today, and what is today will not be the same tomorrow; everything will surely change. Talking in the context of India, in 1947, when this country was freed from centuries of British slavery as part of a change, the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had said that the work of the Congress was also complete and it should be dissolved. But this did not happen because by then, the 62-year-old Congress had become a strong vote bank source in independent India for a particular political class that was fighting for the country's freedom. Consequently, the Congress was not dissolved, but its form changed due to time and circumstances. In the meantime, after several changes over about seven decades, the form in which the Congress exists today is not hidden from anyone.

This aspect of change applies similarly to other parties as well. Whether they are the staunchly leftist Communist Party of India and the Marxist Communist Party, or the staunchly rightist Hindu Mahasabha, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and the Bharatiya Janata Party! This wind of change has blown with equal speed in all directions, and even the centrist parties of India like the United/Praja Socialist Parties, along with countless regional parties like Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, AIADMK, DMK, Telugu Desam, Biju Janata Dal, and Shiv Sena, could not escape this wind of change. The names of BSP and SP are also included in these. The form in which all these parties exist today was not their form when they were formed. Without going into much detail, two or three examples can be given in this regard.

In the current context, after the changed Congress, the name of the Janata Party comes to mind, which had defeated the Congress in the elections after winning the country's so-called second freedom struggle fought under the leadership of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan in 1977. Where is that Janata Party today?

Until a few years ago, a Janata Party was running under the leadership of Subramanian Swamy, but with his becoming a member of the Rajya Sabha, that Janata Party also became a part of the ruling BJP. The second example is of the Bharatiya Janata Party itself, which, after changing its form several times as Hindu Mahasabha, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and so on, took on a new avatar as the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. The extent to which this party has reached in its 40 years of existence is also not hidden from anyone! A third and important example of political change in India is the rise and fall of the Janata Dal. Just as JP had started a wave of change against the Congress led by Indira Gandhi in the name of the Janata Party and was successful in it, in the same way, the Janata Dal led by VP is lost somewhere today. It may be recalled that Vishwanath Pratap Singh, a member of Indira's son Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet and a rebel leader of the Congress, had launched a campaign against him in the name of the Janata Dal and had partial success in it. Due to this success, in 1989, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, with the support of the Left on one side and the staunchly rightist BJP on the other, also became the Prime Minister of the country in place of Rajiv Gandhi. But today, that Janata Dal is nowhere to be seen, but most of the leaders of that era, i.e., of the Janata Dal formed by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, are very close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the center today, and due to this closeness to the BJP, they are also adorning the posts of governors of many important states of the country.

One such personality is Arif Mohammad Khan, who has been the Governor of Kerala for the past two years. President Ram Nath Kovind had signed the order for his appointment as the Governor of Kerala on September 6, 2019. Arif Mohammad Khan is an old Congressman and had separated from the Congress with Vishwanath Pratap Singh in 1987-88 due to differences with the then Congress President and Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, on the Shah Bano case regarding Muslim Personal Law. His views on the Muslim Personal Law case have been in line with those of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and on this basis, he later joined the BJP. Before joining the BJP from the Congress, Arif was also a minister in the VP Singh government as a member of the Janata Dal. He also adopted the BSP. One specialty of Arif is that although he is a minority leader, he has never taken political advantage of being a minority leader.

Many leaders of the Janata Dal era, who had left the Congress with Vishwanath Pratap Singh, are today the governors of many states in the country. Besides Arif Mohammad Khan, another name is that of the Governor of Bengal, His Excellency Dhankhar. A short while ago, Satyapal Malik was also the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. It would not be wrong to say that most of the old leaders of the Janata Dal are now dyed in the color of the BJP. Arif Mohammad Khan, in this era of changed times, is close to the BJP, but unlike others, his temperament is a bit different. Arif is counted among the progressive leaders of his time, and he is also a leader who cannot tolerate any wrongdoing, no matter who it is. He himself does not like to be called a leader of the minorities. Whenever such occasions arose in his political life, where his party tried to present him as a minority Muslim leader or said something in this context that he did not like, he thought it better to leave that party. The latest example is from a decade and a half ago when in 2004, the then senior leader of the BJP and former Home Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, spoke of making him the president of the BJP Minority Morcha, he thought it better to leave the party. Earlier, due to his intolerance of wrongdoing, he had also left the Congress, and there is a similar story with the BSP. In 1980, after winning the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket and coming to Delhi, during an interview with an Urdu magazine, Huma, it is said that when the journalist wanted to know something about the welfare of minority Muslim voters, Arif Mohammad Khan disappointed his fellow journalist by saying that winning the election from a Lok Sabha constituency like Kanpur does not mean that he is only a minority Muslim leader; the contribution of Hindu and other voters to his victory is much more than that of Muslim voters. Therefore, the mistake of considering him a leader of the minorities should not be made.

Arif Mohammad Khan, who started his political career from the Anupshahr assembly seat of Bulandshahr district in Uttar Pradesh, did not succeed in winning the election for the first time, but later he was successful in winning the election from there on a Janata Party ticket and became a minister in the Uttar Pradesh Janata Party government. In the meantime, saddened by the Shia-Sunni riots in Kanpur, he had resigned from the Janata Party and the government. This was probably in 1978. This was probably the first incident of a Janata Party leader giving such a big blow to the party within a year. Arif has mastery in Urdu (Hindustani) as well as Hindi and English. Impressed by this quality of his, around 1978, former Prime Minister and Congress leader Indira Gandhi contacted Arif Mohammad Khan after returning from her jail journey during the Janata Party rule at the center. For this reason, Arif was made to contest the election from the Kanpur Lok Sabha seat in 1980 on a Congress ticket, in which he won. This story is also very famous about this election that at that time most of the parties had fielded their Muslim candidates, due to which a natural division of Muslim votes was to take place, yet Arif won the election and reached Delhi. His journalist father-in-law, Maulana Ishaq Ilmi, is also said to have made a major contribution to his victory. Maulana Ilmi was the editor of Siyasat Jadeed. Arif Mohammad Khan was married to his elder daughter, Reshma. While assessing his personality as a public representative, Arif clearly believes that in this capacity, he does not represent any particular class but represents the assembly or Lok Sabha constituency from where the people have elected him and sent him to the assembly or Lok Sabha. As a public representative, for him, the voters of all sections of his constituency, their problems, and their rights matter equally, and he believes in working for everyone, not for any particular class.

Arif Mohammad Khan, who joined the BJP via the Janata Party, Congress, Janata Dal, and BSP, lost the Lucknow (Kaiserganj) Lok Sabha seat election in Uttar Pradesh in 2004 and then stayed away from active politics. If someone ever asked which party he was in, he would say he was neutral... not associated with any party. Arif Mohammad Khan distanced himself from political platforms. Now he was limited to the programs of social/cultural organizations. As an Islamic scholar, due to his outspoken criticism of fundamentalism, right-wing organizations were in a race to invite him on such issues. This was a matter just before he became the Governor of Kerala. The BJP think tank, Syama Prasad Mookerjee Foundation, had organized a lecture on triple talaq at the Constitution Club in New Delhi. The chief guest was the then BJP President and Home Minister, Amit Shah, who had then said that for the first time after the law was made, he was speaking on triple talaq. At the beginning of the discussion, Amit Shah praised Arif Mohammad Khan extensively. He said that he wanted to congratulate Arif Mohammad Khan on behalf of everyone that despite being a Muslim, he speaks with such intensity for the rights of women and has been speaking openly against issues like triple talaq. While praising him, Amit Shah also said that Arif Khan's firm stand against the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision in the Shah Bano case on the issue of triple talaq is also an example, and even today he continues to speak out on triple talaq. After this praise from Amit Shah, speculations started that sooner or later he was going to get some important responsibility. A short while later, when the decision to make Arif the Governor of Kerala came to light, it became clear that the government could use his progressive face by giving Arif Mohammad Khan some important responsibility in the future.

Arif Mohammad Khan's statement on triple talaq has always been a shield for the BJP. Through the statements of Arif, who has written the best-selling book 'Quran and Contemporary Challenges', the BJP has tried on many occasions to show that the triple talaq law has not been brought against Muslims but in the interest of Muslims. The reason for liking Arif Khan in the BJP is his style of attacking the Congress on various contexts and religious fundamentalism with arguments and illustrations. The BJP feels that Arif Mohammad Khan is a progressive face.

Born in 1951 in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, Arif Mohammad Khan has been a former cabinet minister. He has held several ministries ranging from energy to civil aviation. Arif Mohammad Khan has studied at Jamia Millia School in Delhi. After that, he pursued higher education from Aligarh Muslim University and Shia College in Lucknow. Arif Mohammad Khan has been active in politics since his student life.

He joined politics in his early days. He started his political career as a student leader. Arif Khan contested the assembly election for the first time from the Siana seat of Bulandshahr on the ticket of a local party called Bharatiya Kranti Dal, but he lost. Then, at the young age of 26, in 1977, Arif Mohammad Khan was elected as an MLA for the first time. After becoming an MLA, Khan took membership of the Congress party and became an MP by winning the Lok Sabha elections from Kanpur in 1980 and from Bahraich in 1984. The Shah Bano case was going on in this decade, and Khan advocated for the progressiveness of Muslims in strong support of the rights of Muslim women. After this, Arif joined the Indian National Congress and contested the Lok Sabha elections from Kanpur in 1980 and from Bahraich in 1984, winning both. In 1986, due to the passing of the Muslim Personal Law, he separated from the Congress. In 1986, angered by Rajiv Gandhi's stand in the Shah Bano case, Arif Mohammad Khan had resigned from the Congress party and his ministerial post. He was against the triple talaq law and had differences with Rajiv Gandhi on many levels. It is strange that the same Arif who left the Congress over the Shah Bano case and, along with VP Singh, launched a national-level political campaign against the then Congress President Rajiv Gandhi, was not allowed to hold a public meeting in favor of VP Singh in that Lok Sabha election of Allahabad by some of VP Singh's close associates, fearing that a public meeting by Arif might anger the Muslim voters. Arif Mohammad Khan, who has always openly supported reform within Muslims, has been involved in many policy-making processes regarding Islamic reforms in his political journey, and at the same time, as a writer, he has also been expressing the evolutionary thinking hidden within him from time to time, which presents his personality as a leader and a person who, despite suffering, never compromised with his principles and his ideas. Therefore, due to his honesty, integrity, and dedication, his name is taken with respect in political circles today.