SAMAJWADI PARTY LEADER Maria Alam, niece of veteran Congress leader and former Union law minister Salman Khurshid, addressing a gathering on April 29 in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh, urged Muslim voters in India to wage a “vote jihad” against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. In an election already riven by a Hindu-Muslim binary, this statement sparked another row, bringing the Muslim voter once again to the centre stage.
Modi was quick to connect “vote jihad” with the already extant “love jihad” and “land jihad” narratives and mount a multi-pronged attack. Quoting a 2006 statement by former prime minister Manmohan Singh in which the Congress leader had said that minorities, particularly the Muslims, had the first right to the country’s resources, he equated it with Rahul Gandhi’s idea of wealth redistribution to paint it as a ploy to take away the wealth of the Hindus, including the mangalsutras of married women, and give it to the Muslims. Simultaneously, the prime minister accused the Congress of offering reservations to Muslims at the cost of other backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in pursuance of its minority appeasement and vote bank politics.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) patriarch Lalu Prasad’s May 7 statement that Muslims should get “full” reservation only added fuel to that fire. After Modi cited his remarks as proof of the Opposition’s bias in favour of Muslims, Lalu was forced to clarify that “social backwardness is the basis for reservations. Narendra Modi wants to finish reservations”. Notably, the BJP’s own ally, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has promised reservations for Muslims in Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, Maharashtra leader of the Opposition, Congressman Vijay Wadettiwar, had stirred the pot some more on May 5 when he alleged that a police officer affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and not Ajmal Kasab had killed the then state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks Pakistan had instigated. It led to Modi widening his Opposition-bashing to India’s Islamist neighbour, calling the Congress a “mureed” (disciple) of Pakistan and hinting at a hidden nexus between the two.
The Muslim
