Many were stunned when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Thakur Ramveer Singh won the November 2024 by-election in Kundarki, a Muslim-dominated Assembly constituency in Moradabad district, Uttar Pradesh. Despite having over 60 per cent Muslim population, Kundarki had remained a Samajwadi Party (SP) stronghold for decades, barring a lone BJP victory in 1993 by Chandra Vijay Singh.

Ramveer Singh polled over 1,70,370 votes (76 per cent), while his nearest rival and SP candidate, Haji Mohammed Rizwan, secured only 25,880. Ironically, Singh was the only Hindu candidate pitted against eleven Muslim candidates.

According to media reports, the local Muslim population included nearly 82,000 Sahibzadas—Rajput converts to Islam—who voted for Singh, also a Rajput. Moreover, local converts were opposed to ‘outsider’ Muslims led by influential SP MLA-turned-MP Zia-ur-Rehman Barq; they did not vote for Rizwan, a Turq/Turk. The Barqs are also from the Turq community, which claims descent from various Turkic tribes settled in the region for centuries.

This subtle divide between local and ‘alien’ Muslims is not confined to Kundarki or India and surfaces time and again. The idea of a global Muslim Ummah (brotherhood) appears to be slowly coming apart, melting back into its pre-Islamic origins.

The Neo-Ottomans

Politicians are also widening this divide. Turkiye’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, has been trying to re-establish Turkic hegemony within the Brotherhood, much to the chagrin of Arabs and others. Aggressively pursuing a ‘neo-Ottoman’ foreign policy in an attempt to restore Istanbul’s leadership within the Ummah, he has unsettled non-Turks across the Middle East. Erdogan has also interfered across former Ottoman territories in Asia, Africa and Europe — including Greece and Israel.

In 2019, he attempted to cobble together a pressure group of non-Arab Muslim countries within the Saudi-led Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), seeking support from Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. The Arabs, having been freed from the Ottoman yoke a century ago, were unwilling to let the Turks call........

© News18