Up Muslims Take A Fresh Look At Bjp

Tired of being used as vote banks, Muslims in Uttar Pradesh appear to be overcoming their fear of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is trying hard to woo the largest minority community.

Four months of BJP governance in the state together with the temperate stance of party prime ministerial nominee Atal Behari Vajpayee appear to have moderated the attitude of Muslims, many of whom appear to be willing to give the BJP a chance to rule India, if reactions from a cross-section of Muslims are anything to go by.

Their new attitude is most visible among Muslim youth in different parts of Uttar Pradesh where the minority community forms about a fifth of the eligible voters.

 

Young Shia entrepreneur Tooraj Zaidi is actively campaigning for the BJP along with several Shia youths. We are not interested in the past. We must look ahead and with Atal Behari Vajpayee as Prime Minister, I am sure Muslims in India, will get a fairer deal than they have ever received in the past, said Zaidi.

Dismissing the charge of the BJP rivals that the party is communal, he asked, are they not aware of the second grade treatment meted out to Shias in Pakistan, which claims to be an Islamic country? He added, I am sure Shias are safer in India than in Pakistan, where several Shia mosques have been pulled down or damaged.

Taking note of the lifting of the ban on religious processions of the Shias and Sunnis, Naseem Alam, a shopkeeper in the local Aminabad market, said there can be no denying that the BJP has not been as bad as we were given to believe; by allowing both Sunnis and Shias to take out our respective processions they have shown that other governments too could have done it, if they were truly sincere to our cause.

Shamim, who runs a watch repair kiosk, said, I do not approve of the BJP as a party, but with a man like Atal at the helm of affairs, I am sure the party will also improve its ways.

The lifting of the ban on the Shia Azadaari and Sunni Madde-Sahaba processions this year by the Singh government has pleased both Muslim sects.

Haseeb Ansari, a young Sunni who has a sewing machine shop in the citys Muslim quarter is no longer angry with the BJP over the December 1992 demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

I have nothing against them any more because if they were to be blamed, then the Congress (party) too must share the blame equally, he said.

He said that unlike what the Muslims expected under a BJP government, there is no particular discrimination against us under the Kalyan Singh regime. Anwar, a 25-year-old rickshaw puller, said all governments had discriminated against Muslims.

Muslims also do not seem to be any more impressed with Union defence minister Mulayam Singh Yadavs diatribe against the BJP. Yadavs Samajwadi Party has virtually monopolised Muslim voter support in the state ever since the Babri mosque demoltion.

By repeatedly calling the BJP communal, we know that effort is being made to terrorise us, but enough is enough, said Parvez Abedin, general manager of a leather factory in Kanpur.