The great turn-around of AIMIM leader Assaduddun Owaisi after Pahalgam massacre

The Lok Sabha member is trying to compete with Narendra Modi on nationalism

- BY SUSHIL KUTTY

Who doesn’t dislike AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi? You can count them on the fingers. Of a thousand and one hands! Asaduddin is not easy to like. Bangladeshi writer Tasleema Nasreen wouldn't duck if she spots Asaduddin Owaisi across the road. She will run!

There are folks in Hyderabad who hate Owaisi’s guts. Like, for example, T Raja Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party. There are Lok Sabha MPs who consider Owaisi a “good for nothing!”

But from ‘Jai Palestine!’ to ‘Jai Hind’? How surprising is that? It goes to show another facet to Owaisi, who has been chosen to be part of one of the delegations that will fan out to countries across the world to defend ‘Operation Sindoor’.

Owaisi is on Cloud Nine! There is a transformation in him, a sentiment hitherto unseen or unnoticed. People always took Owaisi as less than loyal to India. The image stuck. The ‘Jai Palestine’ smudge wouldn’t go away even as he tore up a copy of the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025, in the Lok Sabha. Asaduddin Owaisi was an ‘object’ and there remained the feeling that he didn’t want to be a subject of India.

At least he sounded so in his many utterances inside and outside Parliament. And, then, suddenly, just when needed most, Asaduddin Owaisi has been chosen to defend India's war against arch enemy Pakistan.