In June 2018, Hyderabad MP and chief of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi exhorted all Muslims to vote for Muslim candidates ‘if you want to keep secularism alive’. ‘If Muslims become a political power, secularism and democracy will be strengthened,’ he asserted.98 This was not very different from Sonia Gandhi’s appeal to India’s Muslim community during the 2014 general election campaign, jointly issued with the Shahi Imam of New Delhi, to reject Narendra Modi and protect ‘secularism’.
