Both BJP veteran lK Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi have extended a hand to the Muslims of the country, by assuring them a stake in inclusive development. This is an important development
The first opinion of the person of intellect is the last opinion of an ignorant person.
—Imam Ali
Chief of the BJP Election Campaign Committee Narendra Modi’s targeting the Muslim vote nationally, is a first class initiative with far-reaching possibilities. This is the first time the BJP has been explicit about reaching out to Muslims nationally, and it marks a very worthwhile shift in policy. Mr Modi has indeed secured 25 per cent of the Muslim vote for the BJP in his home state of Gujarat. But this fact is not readily accepted by other Muslims who remain suspicious as of now. There is even talk of the Stockholm Syndrome, the Patty Hearst syndrome, wherein the 25 per cent Muslim voters who went to Mr Modi are supposedly mirroring or appeasing their tormentors as the lesser of two evils.
On the contrary, despite this arrant nonsense, Mr Modi’s version of secularism, which seeks to provide equal opportunities to all, was, and is, the intent of the Constitution of India, and its founding fathers. It is not a biased appeasement of designated vote- banks as practised by the Congress. This has been squarely understood and voted for by a quarter of Gujarati Muslims. These people have seen and experienced the benefits of being treated fairly.
Recent reports continue to state that the Muslim per capita income nationally is the lowest amongst the minorities, lower than Christians, lower than Sikhs, and probably everyone else. The BJP can hardly be blamed for this state of affairs despite its spurious communal label, because it has ruled at the Centre for just one term and ruled some States for no more than a decade or so.
Therefore, it is the so-called secular forces that have short-changed the Muslims, who can’t get a job in the organised sector by and large. Another recent report said their presence in Government jobs has gone up from seven per cent to 10 per cent since UPA1. This is hardly earth-shaking when the Congress’s heart apparently bleeds for the minorities!
For his initiative to reach out to all Muslims across the country, Mr Modi himself does not discriminate between the various sects extant. But it can be said that some Sunnis of India are well-entrenched beneficiaries of the Congress already, insofar as the party does anything for the Muslims at all, beyond paying them lip-service.
They are also favoured dependents of outside supporters such as the Samajwadi Party, that currently rules Uttar Pradesh. But most of this support is also theatrical, rather than substantial. So, the Sunnis as a whole, particularly the highly politicised richer ones, may or may not be inclined to switch over to the BJP and its blandishments. Though the poorer Sunnis are, and have been, just as neglected as the Shias.
So, it is the Shia population of over 50 million nationally — making them a third of all Muslims in the country — who may heed Mr Modi’s call first of all. They know what it is to be neglected, and worse, by their so-called own! Some 20 or 30 million poor Sunnis may also do likewise. At 80 million, that is almost half of the total population of Indian Muslims, and they can together make a dramatic difference to BJP’s fortunes at the hustings. These people have all been largely ignored or given second-class treatment by the Congress for long, and now by various constituents of the UPA too.
And not a word ever emerges from our Government about the regular slaughter of Shias across the border in Pakistan, though the latter makes bold to comment on goings-on in India regularly, at all levels, including its National Assembly and via such radical ‘non-state’ India-haters like Hafiz Saeed of the lashkar-e-Tayyeba or the Jamaat, or whatever new label he attaches to himself in order to shift ground.
Mr lK Advani, the BJP patriarch, was vilified and punished by his own, in an act of ingratitude and churlishness against the man who put the BJP on the map and propelled it to power. This was some years ago, when he had the temerity to praise Mohammed Ali Jinnah as a secularist. After all, the founder of Pakistan, was, in effect, both an honorary Englishman, a pork-eating, alcohol-drinking one at that, and a Shia. And so, knowing how it feels, and seeing the wisdom in being inclusive, the octogenarian Mr Advani was quick to lend his support to Mr Modi’s clarion call.
If the BJP rank and file, the RSS cadres, the other elements that make up the Sangh Parivar, such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, often given to anti-Muslim pogroms, join hands with this brilliant initiative of Mr Modi’s in right earnest, much electoral dividend could result. Not only that, the ‘untouchability’ factor that always plagues the BJP in terms of post-poll allliances, will also be greatly assuaged and nullified.
The Indian Shia minority, concentrated in Uttar Pradesh’s State capital and the erstwhile abode of the Nawabs — lucknow, and Andhra Pradesh/Telangana’s Hyderabad, formerly the capital of the Nizamate and one of the richest Princely States in British times — is waiting for an alternative that does not discriminate against them in favour of the Sunnis.
And the concentrations of prosperous Shias in Delhi and Mumbai are also significant electorally and influential too, because they live in the most prominent metros in the country. In lucknow, the lines in the sand seem to have been drawn. Shia community leaders expressed their disappointment with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party by staying away from his Iftar parties recently.
The SP Government is perceived to favour the State’s Sunni sect and came down with ill-advised police action against Shia men, women and children in a procession recently. A long-standing demand for a Shia Wakf Board for Uttar Pradesh has been languishing too. Abroad, Pakistani Shias, persecuted and hunted daily by their Sunni countrymen, will be watching Mr Modi’s progress with sympathy. As will the people of Shia- majority and oil-rich Iran and the population of southern Iraq, around the Shia holy shrine of Karbala, chafing under the minority Sunni domination of Iraq.
This is, therefore, not the opportunism a panicked Congress thinks it is, but a voice for a brave and accomplished set of people that count many famous Indians in their midst, including late Shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan, several Khans from Bollywood, Javed Akhtar, the poet and screen-writer, tennis player Sania Mirza, and others. Whether the Shias and their spiritual leaders will recognise this opportunity to leverage their advantage via the BJP, remains to be seen.
(The accompanying visual is of Muslim women tying Rakhis to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan at Gandhinagar on August 20. PTI photo)