Even before Congress leader Rahul Gandhi or his sister Priyanka Gandhi could reach out to the Muslims, console them and erase the image of uncertainty from their mind, the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee cautioned them against the design of the saffron ecosystem and asked them to remain united and move ahead without any fear.
The shocking defeat of the Congress in three states has turned the Muslims sceptical. Only on November 29 at a public rally in Kolkata, Union home minister Amit Shah, the trouble shooter for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had made his intentions clear to implement the extremely divisive Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) soon. Muslims, by and large, nurse the feeling that with this spectacular victory Shah will certainly not deter to use the RSS plan to politically isolate and socio-economically disenfranchise the community.
RSS for long has been using its frontal political outfit, now of course the BJP, to force the Muslims to repudiate their self-respect and surrender their identity. Modi government has unhesitatingly used the police to tame the Muslims who muster courage to oppose their game plan. There are numerous incidents in which police is found to be working in close relation with the saffron brigade.
The question on top of their minds is: what is next? After the Modi-led BJP government came to power in May 2014, Hindu bigots have carried out a number of lynching incidents, particularly in the Hindi heartland states like Rajasthan. Though Rajasthan has had a Congress government, the communalised state administration did not take action the mercenaries.
The RSS and BJP will once again embark on the same path was quite evident from the threat of the newly elected BJP MLA, a so-called saint, Balmukund Acharya. Just the day after his victory, he went around his constituency shutting down shops selling non-vegetarian food items. He even threatened them for not listening to his warning. He alleged that they were spreading ‘diseases’. The issue is certainly not whether Acharya’s action was planned. The main concern is that the politics of terrorising and threatening Muslims have started with BJP winning the elections.
Nevertheless, the façade of opposition unity had for a while strengthened the feeling in Muslims, like the secular and liberal people, that the saffron terror would come to an end in 2024 with the holding of the Lok Sabha election. This perception got its first reflection in the Sagardighi assembly bypoll. The Congress candidate Bayron Biswas supported by CPI(M) scored a significant win by defeating the incumbent Trinamool by more than 22,000 votes and making his debut in the current Bengal legislative assembly. BJP candidate Dilip Saha, who finished with a share of 14.1 per cent votes, was a distant third.
What has shaken the trust of the Muslims is the prostrating of the senior Congress leaders like Kamal Nath and Bhupesh Baghel before the Hindu seers, who strongly advocate the RSS line of Hindutva. Top Muslim leaders confess that Muslims across the country are frightened of the latest electoral verdict. Advent of Rahul Gandhi had made them of optimistic of a better future. But the ill-treatment meted out to him by the state satraps has turned them fearful. They find it hard to believe that Rahul Gandhi will succeed in curbing the impact of such leaders. They are even not willing to subscribe to the notion that Congress will change for the better.
These leaders also lament that Rahul did not reach out to them post defeat. It is not that Muslims living in Hindi heartland are afraid of the impending political scenario, even those from Karnataka, Telangana, Bengal are terrified. One thing is absolutely clear that Muslims may prefer giving a second thought to switch their allegiance to the Congress. With the state satraps refusing to listen to Rahul and abide by his instructions, Rahul has cut a sorry figure amongst the Muslims. They are not sure whether he would be able to protect them.
The leaders also reveal that some senior Muslims are planning to convene a national meet to review the prevailing political situation sometime next year, of course before the Lok Sabha election. In the meantime, the Muslims leaders close to the BJP and RSS, plan to initiate the move to reach out to the common Muslims, especially the Pasmanda community (those having backward caste background) to rope in their support. Dalits and ST in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh voting substantially for the BJP would be projected as the BJP being a poor and minority friendly party.
Nonetheless, while a substantial section of the Muslims are yet to lose their trust in Congress, the ultimate gainer of the confusion and anguish that grips the Muslims would be the regional parties. The Muslims are in full agreement with Mamata Banerjee’s assertion: “If you are divided, the BJP would benefit.”
Addressing a gathering of Muslims on Sanhati Diwas to commemorate the demolition of Babri Masjid, Mamata Banerjee asserted that Congress lost as the anti-BJP vote got fragmented. She emphasised unity as a counter measure. She cautioned against getting entrapped in provocations, and said the Muslims should maintain restraint and exhibit patience. What was the most important part of her speech was the stress on voting en-masse for the most suitable candidates to defeat the BJP.
Mamata’s initiative to counsel the Muslims and assuage their feelings has come at the appropriate time when they were in a state of stupor and groping for an alternative. True enough, more than being a word of caution for Muslims, what Mamata said was a warning to the Congress: mend or perish. The Muslims ought to realise that a fight against the divisive politics of the BJP was not merely for power but also for the protection of the people, their fundamental rights and basic civil liberties. It is an open secret that BJP is trying to divide the country and the unity of the anti-BJP forces was the only panacea to protect our now fragile nation.
The BJP political ecosystem and its IT cell have already started projecting Modi as the public face for 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This is simply a design to show the opposition in a bad light and convey the message that they are incompetent that they even cannot converge on a single name. This is the part of their psychological warfare to demoralise the opposition parties and confuse the people. (IPA Service)
