[Reader-list] Indian elections: how to woo Muslims to vote for you

[Tasveer Ghar]

Indian elections: how to woo Muslims to vote for you
http://tasveerghar.net/cmsdesk/essay/49/index.html


Dear friends,
Last week, the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 to select India's central
government finally come to an end, and results were out. Some analysts
have pointed out that the Muslims of north India were one of the
important deciding factors for the success or defeat of the different
parties. If one observed the Urdu newspapers in north India, one could
easily see how different parties and candidates tried to attract the
attention of Muslim voters by engaging them on a number of issues from
development and employment to terrorism and communalism.

While Congress and its allies have emerged once again to form the
government, one can see how they and the other parties didn't leave
any stone unturned to present a favourable image of themselves, while
painting their opponents as the worst enemies of the Muslims.
Interestingly, many of these advertisements have bylines not of the
main parties they represent. Rather, these have been issued by
hitherto unknown organizations and NGOs of local Muslims, and in some
cases, religious clergy or even the keepers of local Sufi shrines, who
have a great following among the Muslims. While this is not the first
time that Muslim religious leaders have participated in the campaign
for political parties, but they have certainly come out more openly
this time, often using the iconography of their religious authority.

Tasveer Ghar presents a few examples of such campaign advertisements
from some Urdu newspapers published in Delhi and UP in the last few
weeks:

http://tasveerghar.net/cmsdesk/essay/49/index.html

We would be happy to hear your feedback about the various interesting
image galleries emerging on Tasveer Ghar.

The Tasveer Ghar Team

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