Elections in India: BJP backpedals on Hindutva to woo Indian Muslim vote

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Ever since the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya, India a decade ago, a Hindu nationalist movement known as Hindutva has dominated the Indian political scene. Several political parties have played the Hindutva card to stoke emotions (and thus votes), and no group has been more successful at this than the currently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But now that the BJP and its PM Atal Behari Vajpayee are entrenched at the top of India’s political pyramid, and other, more extreme Hindu nationalist groups are using the same strategy, the BJP is looking back at the 12% of India that it left behind – the Muslims – as a possible new votebank. The “new and improved” BJP has been working overtime to field Muslim candidates (most stolen from the secular Congress party) and tout recent overtures to Pakistan in order to recast the group as respectful and even representative of India’s 120 million Muslims. “My government has never discriminated against anybody on communal lines,” said Vajpayee at a Muslim-dominated election rally in Bihar. “Gujarat must not happen again.” But many Muslim voters, tired of being taken for granted by Congress and wary of BJP’s new image, remain unconvinced. “After what happened at Ayodhya and the communal riots in Gujurat, there is a lot of insecurity within our Muslim community, and the BJP is responsible for it,” said media consultant Sadia Devli. “They are responsible for Ayodhya and what happened in Gujurat and Muslims should vote to get rid of them.” But in the first days of a three-week election process in the world’s largest democracy, exit polls show that the new strategy may be working. In the end, the BJP – who reached the top after years of struggle and desperately want to stay in power – simply did the math and realized that there are more Muslim voters than extremist Hindu ones.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.