Bjp Striving To Divide Muslim Votes

The BJPs new-found love for Muslims is inspired by its strategy to divide Muslim votes, or at least try and prevent their en-block voting against it.

If the BJP could even prevent the community from voting against it, it could gain a decisive advantage in elections, a BJP leader claimed. He conceded the community was unlikely to vote for the party despite claims by party leaders.

BJP leaders conclude that tactical voting by the minority community prevented it from gaining majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly by-election in 1996, though both the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party contested separately.

 

As both parties claimed to be representative of the Muslim community, the BJP had concluded that the Muslim vote would get divided and give the party a decisive edge. This, however, did not happen.

Similar voting patterns could create problems for the party in its attempt to improve upon its Lok Sabha tally in UP and elsewhere. The BJP secured 52 of the 85 Lok Sabha seats in 1996 and aims to increase this to at least 65 seats in this election.

BJP leader K R Malkani, however, disagreed with this line of thought and claimed the communitys psyche had changed in recent years.

Many Muslim leaders had joined the party and more were interested in getting to know the party from within, he held. The BJP would certainly get Muslim votes this time, he claimed.

But, Malkanis enthusiasm is not shared by many. BJP leader Uma Bharati, who recently organised a series of Muslim youth conference, held the party had being trying to start a dialogue with the Muslim community.

Even if they did not vote for the party, they would not be anti-BJP, she held. A BJP-led government at the Centre could not afford to be seen as being anti-Muslims.

Keeping this in view, BJP and RSS leaders devised a strategy to reach out to Muslims through Muslim youth conferences. They concluded that Muslims voted aggressively only during a charged communal atmosphere, one of them said.

They perceived the BJP as not anti-Muslim, they would at least not take that extra pain to come out of their houses and vote against the BJP, he added. Later on, when leaders like Aslam Sher Khan joined the BJP, the party claimed that it marked a change in the communitys thinking.

Even Samata Partys decision to publicly criticise the BJP because of its stand on Ayodhya, article 370 and uniform civil code emanated from this strategy. Party president George Fernandess constituency, Nalanda, has a sizeable Muslim community, a BJP insider pointed out. An aggressive voting by Muslims could help Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav, he added.