Speaking to Jyoti Punwani for Mumbai Mirror, Jamia Millia Islamia student and one of the faces of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)-National Register of Citizens NRC) movement, Ladeeda Sakhaloon, declared that, to her, Bahujan Samaj leader and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan is an "Imam." Imam means leader though, in common parlance, an imam is one who leads prayers at mosques.

I am not surprised at Sakhaloon calling Ravan her Imam.

Recently, Ravan cooled his heels at Tihar Jail for allegedly inciting violence at an anti-CAA protest in Delhi. The brave Delhi police which broke bones of many unarmed students studying at Jamia library but were found crying at the beatings they received from lawyers earlier hauled Ravan into prison for a crime he claimed he never committed.

Clad in crisp while kurta-pyjama, Ravan joined thousands of Muslim worshippers at the historic Jama Masjid on Jan 20, a Friday to protest the black law. That cold Friday afternoon Jama Masjid’s official Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari reportedly sounded subdued in his sermon. Bukhari who, just a few days before, had fiercely defended CAA calling it “not against Muslims” while addressing a few hundred Muslims at the same mosque, didn’t even mention CAA-NRC in that Friday sermon.

Once the Friday namaz got over, Ravan joined the huge crowd at the mosque. Surging towards him, the crowd jostled to meet him, shake hands, take selfies. Standing on the stone steps of the Jama Masjid, the same steps from where freedom fighter-scholar Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had given a clarion call to Muslims in 1947 against leaving India for Pakistan, Ravan read out the Constitution’s Preamble.

The Preamble, among other things, talks about “equality, fraternity, secularism”, principles that are under severe threat from a regime which is immune to protests from thousands, including women, braving biting cold and at times police brutalities. Or why else Home Minister Amit Shah could declare in Lucknow on “danke ki chot par” that CAA would not be recalled but has no time to reach out to the protesting women of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi?

While the youthful Dalit leader was being mobbed by the Muslim crowd, Imam Ahmed Bukhari cut a sorry figure a few feet away. Standing forlorn with just a few supporters for company at the ramparts of the mosque, Ahmed Bukhari saw a new “Imam”, a new leader of the Muslims being adored. He must have resented this sight. Ditching their habitually incendiary Imam who in the past would not pull punches when it came to pillory “enemies” of Muslims (he once called actor-activist Shabana Azmi nachne gaane wali tawaif), the Muslim youths have begun banking on leaders outside the community.

That Friday afternoon Imam Ahmed Bukhari seemed a pale shadow of his late father, Imam Syed Abdullah Bukhari who had fearlessly given a call of rebellion against Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. Thousands of community members from the walled city would follow his “firman” and stand like a rock behind him whenever he sought their support. It was said that Abdullah Bukhari commanded so much awe and respect at and around the Jama Masjid that he might have treated it as his fiefdom.

That “kingdom” seems to have slipped from under the feet of the current “Shahi” Imam of Jama Masjid, one of the architectural marvels of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Imam Ahmed Bukhari is not the only Muslim leader left licking his wounds in the current countrywide anti-CAA movement where the community is flocking to new non-Muslim leaders.

Bukhari joins the lengthening list of traditional Muslim leaders, including Jamiatul Uema-e-Hind’s general secretary Maulana Mahmmod Madni, senior Shia cleric Kalbe Jawad, Ajmer Dargah dewan Syed Zainul Hussain Chishti, leaders of All India Muslim Personal Law Board and Jamate Islami Hind, being turfed out to make way for new non-Muslim leaders.

Last week this writer attended the massive anti-CAA protest at Bhiwandi, the textile town near Mumbai often called “India’s Manchester”. Over a lakh poured into Dhonbi Talao, Bhiwandi’s only stadium, waving the tiranga, denouncing CAA, NPR and NRC.

Women, in black burqa and proudly holding the tricolour, filled a corner of the massive stadium. And guess, who was the chief speaker at the gathering? Not a maulana from one of the big madrassas that dot India’s huge landscape. Not even an imam or a cleric. It was Swaraj India founder, the soft-spoken scholar-activist Yogendra Yadav. Nobody raised the Islamic slogan “Allahu Akbar” there even as the chants of Azadi, from CAA, RSS, communalism, fascism, continued to fill the air.

A day earlier, at YMCA ground at Central Mumbai, an exclusively women’s protest against the divisive, unconstitutional CAA saw the likes of NCP leader Supriya Sule and activist Teesta Setalvad hitting the Centre working on the agenda of the Hindutva hate brigade. And now I am told former JNU students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar is among the leaders scheduled to yet another anti-CAA rally at the same YMCA ground this coming Friday.

So, I was not surprised when I saw some of the senior women citizens, daabang daadis as they call them, at Shaheen Bagh greeting Chandrashekhar Ravan by holding his framed photographs. In the photographs he is seen twirling his long, pointy moustache.

That leads us to a pertinent question: Why does Ravan sport a long, pointed moustache? In some parts of India, especially rural Hindi heartland, moustache symbolises machoism. A section of upper caste Hindus, in the wrong medieval notion, believe that sporting moustache is their prerogative.

They dislike and frown upon the sight of a member from “low” caste Hindu sporting moustache. They also don’t appreciate if a bridegroom from a low caste rides a horse at his wedding ceremony. In open rebellion against this high caste supremacist feeling, the likes of Ravan “flaunt” their well-groomed moustaches. Moustache is a statement which some make by flaunting it.

Talking of moustaches, the last time I bumped into my friend Nasir Jamal in Mumbai I saw him with a pointy moustache. “Are you following the revolutionary Bhagat Singh?,” I asked him jokingly. “I am following the Urdu poet Allama Iqbal,” he said. Now, we have seen Iqbal in some of the photographs sporting a moustache.

After his release from Tihar on bail, Ravan again visited the Jama Masjid. Yes, he also visited some other places of worship in Delhi. But the headline-hunting media is obviously more interested in this Dalit leader’s visits to an iconic masjid than Hindu temples. And they never stop reporting it feverishly.

If the restless, agitating Muslim youths today find themselves listening more often to the likes of Ravan, Kanhaiya Kumar, Yogendra Yadav, NCP leader Jitendra Awhad, it speaks volumes about the marginalisation of traditional Muslim leadership.

Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan may not lead a prayer at a mosque. But he is among the new imams of Muslims, the community currently fighting an existential battle in an India which is being changed forever.