Sir,

Your article, “A BJP-Muslim entente cordiale?” published in The Hindu on March 10, 2014 says things that are self-defeating in their very import. Being a loyal reader of your writings, I was left terribly disturbed by what you have written.

First, there is no reason why one should find (as you write in the third paragraph) Rajnath Singh’s apology to Muslims “slightly puzzling” because, as you answer it yourself in the very same sentence, he was doing so for “appealing to them [Muslims] to give the BJP a chance in the coming general election”. There is an elephant in the room, Mr Suroor.

Modi refrained from mentioning Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh because he is fighting this year’s general elections on the promise of facilitating development, not because he has had a sudden change of heart. His party has wrung the Ram Janmabhoomi-Sabarmati Express issues dry to maximise electoral returns in states like Gujarat and Karnataka in the last two decades since the Babri Masjid demolition. In fact, “the election campaign so far has been mostly secular with developmental concerns trumping mandir-masjid-like issues” is what you have written in the closing paragraph.

Today, mandir-masjid issues have become passé. But in no way do they suggest that a man who less than a year back had said that Muslims in his state were akin to hapless “puppies”which had come under the wheels of a car driven by him, and who had said that he was “a Hindu nationalist” who “had done absolutely the right thing” when Gujarat lay burning, has suddenly begun looking at Muslims differently.

No, Mr Suroor.This is one of the many instances of the “all-too-familiar pre-poll tactic to woo Muslim voters” and not “a genuine concern within the BJP over its ‘Muslim problem’”. You have called SwapanDasgupta’s comment about the BJP’s “failure”, a “reflection”. What it seems more like is an evaluation. Dasgupta has clearly played on the politics of language here.

The failure, he is hinting at, is not related to his party’s ideology which is based on a grossly flawed, baseless and untenably racial vision of Indian society. What Dasgupta is alluding to as a failure is the outcome of the BJP’s ideological standpoint on its electoral performances. To alienate 170 million voters of “a certain section of the population” will be seen as an unforgivable failure for any national party in India.

And while you quite readily seem to want to believe that “the Muslim ‘sense of alarmism’ does not exist in a vacuum” because it “may often be exaggerated or fuelled by secular parties to get Muslim votes”, you repeatedly seem to be trying to sugar-coat the BJP’s very obvious moves at luring Muslims in India for immediate electoral gains as a change of heart and a genuine attempt at turning over a new leaf.

Moreover, why is it that you should peg figures as high as 10,000 for members of the Muslim RashtriyaManch based solely on the organisation’s claim about these numbers? It makes your statement one-sided.

And how does the fact that the Manch “said to be engaged in creating a network of sympathetic Muslim clerics”, in any way allude to the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh and the BJP’sefforts at trying to “soften its hard anti-Muslim image”. The RSS is using the Manchas a political ploy aimed at wooing the Muslim vote-bank in Gujarat while the Manch is currying favours in return through its association with the RSS.

Theirs’ is a mere marriage of convenience, nothing more. The clerics do not represent 170 million Muslims in India. An excerpt from your book, India’s Muslim Spring, says that for the Indian Muslim today, “there is a world beyond mullahs”. Yet, in this article, you choose to mention “sympathetic clerics” within the RSS’ fold as something Indian Muslims should consider while deciding their take on the RSS and the BJP.

Moreover, earlier in the article you said that the BJP “will have to cut itself loose” from the RSS, its “puppet-master”, in order to woo Muslims. Here you suggest that the existence of the RSS’s Muslim wing is what should allay the Muslim population’s fears and suspicions. Why the two voices?

What is even more disturbing is that in a section in your article you have openly endorsed and almost advised the BJP to don a mask of hypocritical doublespeak to win over Muslims, much like the Tories have done to assimilate fringe minorities in the United Kingdom. You are then suggesting theBJP “[a]t its core” largely remains a party of “closet” racists, communalists, male chauvinists, and religious fundamentalists while pretending not to be so before its electorate. You have suggested they lure their electorate with promises and positions that they themselves are far from believing in or standing for.

Your view of there being a need for “a huge generational shift in leadership for the BJP to change and become a truly modern party free from sectarian prejudices” is certainly not based on facts. It cannot be. Because no one knows what is running in the minds of youth with a pro-BJP outlook. Many young people who I know are in favour of Modi’s development model are also strongly communal in their outlook, and they do “look down upon” Muslims contrary to what you have written. This cannot be sheer coincidence.

This might not be true for all who vouch for Modi, but it is certainly true for some. And, it does not take many to incite hate and violence in a people, as we have come to see during the Gujarat riots of 2002. So a younger BJP – as opposed to the older guard – does not in any way guarantee its turning towards a liberal, secular outlook.

“The non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ungratefulness towards this land and its age-old traditions but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead – in a word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights”, writes MS Golwarkar in We, or Our Nationhood Defined , a piece the RSS swears by.

So Mr Suroor, you have got it wrong here as well, in that you say that the “basis for [the communalism bogey among Muslims] is the history of SanghParivar’s Muslim-baiting to the extent of questioning their loyalty to their own country”. The Sangh Parivar has not crossed a line or erroneously and unintentionally gone “to the extent of questioning” Indian Muslims’ loyalty and patriotism, as you seem to suggest. The question has always been there. The question is the very raison d’être of the Sangh Parivar. The SanghParivar would never have come up or found relevance in a nation with a 100 per cent Hindu population. It was born because of the presence of “foreigners” in the country.

Your article and its arguments rally around the assumption that the BJP is looking to “effectively govern the country” somewhere in the future. However, the BJP knows that it does not have the numbers to make it this time around. The CNN-IBN-The Hindu Election Tracker poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in July last year said that, “The general election, if held [then], would throw up a badly hung Parliament with both the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance around a 100 seats short of a simple majority of 273” (in the report ‘Hung Lok Sabha predicted as NDA, UPA fall far short’ by Smita Gupta, The Hindu, July 27, 2013).

And this was much before the AAP, a potential spoiler for the BJP’s electoral prospects, was voted in in Delhi this January.
The question is not whether “the Muslim mood” is “set in stone” or not. Muslims are not children who the BJP or any party for that matter, to serve their narrow interests, might humour or pander to according to something as nebulous and abstract as “the Muslim mood”. And “a public show of genuine contrition by Mr Modi for what happened under his watch or a direct appeal by him to Muslims can change the whole climate” isakin to asking for a willing suspension of disbelief ofyour readers. The politics of apologies and appeals are long past their shelf life today. These, indeed, have come to be recognised as shallow tactics, “public show[s]” employed to gloss over the larger and more crucial questions of justice and accountability.

That you so sweepingly say that Muslims in India “should shed their blind anti-BJPism” is surprising. The Indian Muslims’ fears and wariness toward Modi and the BJP are not unfounded. It is not only Muslims in India who are strongly wary of Modi’s moves, secular-minded sections of Indian society with a relatively informed and holistic understanding of the country’s economy are waking up to the apparent dangers of an ultra-Right dispensation if BJP were to govern India today.

You say “No longer do [Muslims] see the BJP as ‘untouchable’, a process which would have gained greater traction if Gujarat 2002 had not happened”. But Gujarat did happen, Mr Suroor. Gujarat did happen.