In his Presidential Address, the newly elected President of the BJP Shri Bangaru Laxman has called for the inclusion of the Muslims in its social base and asked the workers of his party to endeavour to this end.
However, this is not the first time that the BJP leadership realises that it cannot reach any higher from the plateau it already occupies without making itself more acceptable to other social groups and in those regions of the country where it does not have a hold. This was the essential motivation behind the formation of the pre-election National Democratic Alliances before the 1999 General Election.
The BJP then also took pains to emphasise its secular character and its concern for the religious minorities because it realised that it did not command the goodwill of the religious minorities, particularly of the Muslim community. But, at the time of distributing its tickets, once again it ignored the Muslims. As a result, today it has only one Muslim member in the Lok Sabha, who by virtue of being a Muslim has also been inducted into the Council of Ministers, though as a newcomer he does not have the stature to serve as an influential link between his party and his community.
Since Mr. Laxman's point of departure is the Muslim vote, his remarks are likely to be discarded as election rhetoric or political gimmick. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that his own 10-Point plan for the upliftment of the backward sections of the people does not even mention the 'minorities'.
To many Muslim intellectuals, Mr. Laxman's invitation immediately recalls Jonathan Swift's fable of the Spider and the Bee. The spider may be anxious to welcome the bee to his parlour, but after 50 years of democracy, the 'bee' has become wiser. At the same time the credibility of the political parties and of politicians has sunk to a record low. No section of the electorate is like to accept the Bonafide’s of any political party or its declarations at their face value. The general tendency is to treat such a declaration as a political manoeuvre.
The Muslim community itself has tried many parties, which carry Secularism on their sleeves, and yet it feels cheated. It feels frustrated and disenchanted with the system when it finds that in many State legislatures it is not represented at all and even in the Union legislature, the parliament, its level of deprivation is nearly 50 per cent.
And no secular party is bothered about it. However, the BJP heads the coalition government at the Centre and rules UP, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh, us well as through the NDA it has a hand in the governance of other States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP had indeed come to occupy the centre of the political stage. Its natural desire to maintain and strengthen its political hegemony is understandable. Therefore, it would not be wise for the Muslim community to reject the overture summarily off-the-cuff or to ignore the ideology of the BJP, its nexus with the RSS and its track record of anti-minorityism.
The BJP is and remains committed to the ideology of Hindutva, which equates India with Hinduism, Indian history with the history of the Hindu people and Indian culture with the Hindu culture. There is a touch of obscurantism, revivalism and revanchism in this ideology. The BJP sees politics as a zero-sum game in which every loss to the 'other' is regarded as a gain for the Hindus. The BJP stands for the transformation of India into Hindu Rashtra, for the dominance of the Hindus. The religious minorities, in particular the Muslims, naturally see in Hindutva the threat of religious assimilation and cultural submergence, Under the BJP rule they have experienced the systematic translation of these apprehensions into facts of life through coercion, indoctrination and brain washing through methodical saffronisation of education, culture and government controlled media. Mr. Laxman or for that matter any top leader of the BJP has not disassociated the BJP from this pernicious and exclusivist ideology. Nor can he dare to delink it from its close nexus with the RSS. Even a leader like Atal Behari Vajpayee who symbolically attends the shakha, salutes the RSS flag, donates Guru Dakshina and calls the RSS 'our mother', 'our guru' and even 'our soul' is forced by political compulsions publicly to affirm his RSS links and share the dais with, and the dreams, of the VHP brand of Sadhus and Sants! As Prime Minister, he routinely consults the RSS hierarchy. His Ministers report to it. For all practical purposes, the RSS has today the status of the 'Rajguru' and an extra-constitutional remote control in modern terms.
The political track record of the BJP from its very inception and in its earlier incarnation as the Jan Sangh has been constantly anti-Muslim. It has always opposed and adopted a hostile attitude towards any legitimate interest or aspiration of the Muslim community, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to its most routine grievances. It never lifted a finger for the legitimate claims of the Muslim victims of communal violence or against discrimination in the distribution of welfare and development benefits. Indeed it has projected the Muslims as the historical adversary of the Hindus who must be punished or put in their place, now that the time had come ta balance the account of the centuries. The RSS and the Sangh Parivar including the BJP have even refused to recognise the very concept of minorities or the identity of non-Hindu religious communities. Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, once the President of the Party and now the Minister of Human Resource Development, labelled the Muslims as 'Mohammadi Hindus' and the Christians as 'Masihi Hindus'. Even Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's proclamation quoted by Mr. Laxman sounds like a programme of assimilation of Islam as a 'Panth' of the Hindu Dharma.
As a political party the BJP has always ignored the genuine grievances of the Muslim community - under- representation in the political structure, economic deprivation, educational.backwardness, deliberate demonisation of the community, vilification of all that Muslims hold dear and sacred, Allah, the Holy Quran and the Holy Prophet, systematic aspersions against all Muslim institutions, Masjids and Madarsas and, in general, the treatment of Muslims as second class citizen. To provide a mask, the BJP relied on few Muslim stooges but it has never tried to build any communication with the Muslim masses, organisations, institutions and leadership. Its spokesmen blame the Muslim community for the 'sins' of invasion and Partition and ridiculed Islamic history. The Sangh Parivar's object is to create an environment of distrust and suspicion against the Muslim community, thus sow both fear and revenge in the Hindi mind which can be harvested as votes or brought into action in conflict situations of Parivar's making.
With this track record it is obvious that the Muslim community will not take Mr. Laxman at his words but put the BJP to a rigorous test to find out whether there has been a change of heart, a change in its mind-set, whether it has discarded the RSS ideology, the philosophy of Hindutva and the policy of anti-minorityism, whether it has disowned the thoughts and edicts of Savarkar and Golwalkar, whether it really looks upon the Muslim Indians as the children of Mother India and as equal citizens of the Indian State, whether it will defend and protect them against violence, vilification, injustice and discrimination, whether its governments will curb those who plan and execute programmes of violence against the life, property and honour of the community and whether in situations of conflict they would stay neutral and punish the aggressors. And whether the BJP shall show any understanding of the legitimate Muslim aspirations, which are in consonance with the Constitution as well as the international laws and conventions applicable to the minorities and universal norms of human rights.
The Muslim Indians would certainly ask themselves whether the BJP is trying to put on a pro-Muslim mask to secure their votes at no cost or whether it is really trying to extend its outreach among the secular Hindus and the liberal fence sitters in order to achieve absolute power and whether, on forming a Sangh-controlled government on its own, the BJP will then ruthlessly execute its plan of Hinduisation of India and liquidation of all traces of Islamic presence from India.
The Muslim Indians today demand no special rights, concessions or privileges but Identity, Dignity, Justice and Security. They say NO to religious assimilation, cultural homogenisation, physical humiliation and mental torture. They want an end to discrimination in public and private employment, in the flow of public credit and in the distribution of benefits of development and welfare. They are against separatism and they demand participation in governance through equitable representation in the legislature, the political executive, the permanent executive and the judiciary.
If Mr. Laxman is really serious about the status of the Muslim Indians and his motive and purpose are not merely. to snatch the Muslim vote from the secular parties or to neutralise it, it has to engage in heart-searching and try to win the heart and mind of the Muslim community by declaring a solemn commitment to implement the final judicial verdict on the Babari Masjid and stop the sabre-rattling by the VHP and Bajrang Dal against the law of the land and the consequent threat to public order and vicious propaganda against the Muslims. The BJP should solemnly declare also that it does not stand for any change in the Muslim personal law, against the will of, and without any demand from within, the Community, that it shall recognise the Muslim Indians as a Backward Class and extend to them the policy of reservation in public employment and welfare measures, that it shall give serious thought to the introduction of, proportional-representation system, or as an alternative, introduce reservation with joint electorate for them in the legislatures, that its governments, particularly in UP, shall enable Urdu-speaking children to learn their mother tongue at school and receive their primary instruction through its medium and shall not try to vilify or destabilise Muslim institutions or terrorise them into closure.
The BJP spokesmen accuse the secular parties of engaging on deliberate propaganda against their party and thus misleading the Muslim community and exploiting it as a vote-bank. The Muslims are not babes in the wood, they are politically mature and take their own decisions. The Community is not the bonded labour of any political party. And unfortunately, many a time it has also to choose between more than one secular parties. But today it does not serve as a vote bank for any political party because largely it votes tactically and constituency-wise, for the most winnable candidate of any secular party.
The BJP spokesmen also make the point that other parties have deliberately kept them economically and educationally backward and far from the national mainstream of progress. If the secular parties failed the Muslims when they were in power, the real cause was the constant accusation of minorityism and appeasement by the BJP and other members of the Sangh Parivar, the infiltration by the RSS and other Hindu communal elements in the administration and the creation of a political environment in which all parties feared massive shift of Hindu votes towards the BJP, if they were seen as 'pampering" the Muslims.
Today, the BJP, is out of the zone of consideration for Muslim voters for obvious political reasons. It is for the BJP to change its image and prove by words and deeds that the allegations by the secular parties against it have no basis. The initiative in the form of explicit change in the mindset and concrete action must come from the BJP and its sister organisations in the Sangh Parivar. So far, the BJP has tried to neutralise Muslim antagonism by using its stooges, by coining slogans, of 3 Ts (a la Arif Beg) and 4 S's (a la Naqvi) or by shedding crocodile tears over their backwardness, specially the miserable let of Muslim women or by giving verbal assurances on the occasion of elections but doing nothing!
Wisely, the Muslims have always refused to walk into the spider's parlour or believe the sweat words or trust the liberal mask of the BJP. Nor will they place any more credence in the words of President Laxman, unless and until he comes out with a time-bound Programme of Action and sees to its implementation by the governments of, or led by, his party at the Centre or in the States. To jump aboard the BJP ship, in desperation or fear or euphoria would be to commit political suicide.
The BJP will be judged by the Muslims not by its promises but by the performance of its governments, not by the words of its leaders but by its deeds in situations of conflict, not by its profession of secularism but by its practice, when the Muslims face violence and injustice.
For this the BJP has to be re-born as a party of Indian Nationalism and not of Hindu Nationalism, as the messenger of Bharatiyata and not of Hindutva.
1st October, 2000
