ANALYSIS After playing Dalit card, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to prevent polarisation of Muslim "vote bank" that can help or deny victory to competing political parties in the upcoming general elections. For this, the BJP has decided to field Muslim candidates from some minority-dominated constituencies.
There are even some within the saffron brigade who fear that his strident Hindu bias might alienate the Muslim community, raising the chance that they could vote as a block against a Modi-led BJP.
The party has already identified 100 constituencies where Muslims constitute 30 percent of the total population. In order to chalk out a strategy to woo Muslim voters, a meeting the party's workers and some leaders of the minority community has also been called on Tuesday.
Sources in the BJP told INNLIVE, "Though the party is getting a nationwide support after the projection of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, there is a threat that the Congress party and its allies (who project themselves as Muslim hypothesisers) may spoil the game."
"We fear that so-called secular parties (Congress, Janata Dal-United, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party) may polarise Muslim voters in politically crucial states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Had it been so, Muslims would unitedly vote against BJP and we would have to suffer a major loss in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections," he said.
Another BJP insider, who did not want to be identified, said the party wants to "convince Muslims that it is not against them and is equally concerned about their issues".
"This strategy is aimed at curbing the possible polarisation of Muslim votes. The party knows it well that Muslims will never vote in its favour but it is trying hard to stop Muslims to use their franchise unitedly against BJP," he said.
He further said fragmentation of Muslim votes will always help the BJP.
"With an aim to win the confidence of the minority community, the party has decided to field Muslim candidates on some seats. It doesn't matter how strong the candidate is," he revealed.
The problem with the saffron brigade is that it does not have sufficient participation of Muslim leaders. The party has only two tall leaders - Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Shahnawaz Hussain. In this situation, the party is searching for Muslim leaders to field them from Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
Now, the question arises here is whether the so-called Indian Muslim vote bank can look beyond Narendra Modi's political record and the nationalist pro-Hindu proclamations of certain BJP members.
Although Narendra Modi has been given a clean chit by a local court for his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots that killed over 1,000 people, Muslims still believe the Gujarat CM deliberately allowed the sectarian mob violence to flare up.
Earlier, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, "I sincerely believe it will be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as the next PM. If by a strong PM you mean someone to preside over the mass massacre of citizens on the streets of Ahmedabad, that is a measure of strength I don't think is needed."
While Muslims constitute 13.7 percent of India's population and are not traditional BJP voters, a block vote for any particular political party is extremely rare, as was shown in the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections when 31 per cent of Muslims voted for Narendra Modi.
But will the Muslim community be able to see past the 2002 Gujarat riots and consider his other political and fiscal merits? The answer to that will only be truly known when the election results are known.
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