New Delhi: Samajwadi Party leader Maria Alam’s controversial call for Muslims to wage ‘vote jihad‘ against the BJP at an INDIA bloc rally has formed the basis of plenty of commentary in the Hindu Right press.
Citing this speech, Organiser editor Prafulla Ketkar wrote that the Muslim community has historically used religious influence to sway political outcomes, but now it was time they “analysed and introspected” on the trend. In a 13 May editorial, he also asked Muslims to heed the call given to them by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “get out of the mindset of ‘who to put in power and who to remove’ for the sake of the future of their children”.
To strengthen his argument, Ketkar cited MS Golwalkar, the second Sarsangchalak of the RSS, who appealed to Muslims “to forget all their separatist memories” and “merge themselves in the life of this soil”.
According to Ketkar, Golwalkar asserted that Muslims “belong to the same race and blood as ours”, but were converted to Islam at the sword’s point by Mughal, Turk, and other foreign invaders, and eventually “mentally merged themselves with aggressors”.
In his editorial, Ketkar blamed “liberal seculars” for keeping Muslims mired in “ghetto politics”.
“Instead of making the Muslims realise that they are not outsiders or aggressors in this land but the victims of invasions that happened from 712 onwards by Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, this self-certified gang of liberals are distorting history by glorifying invaders and whitewashing of their crimes,” he wrote.
The biggest beneficiaries of this “liberal-secular treachery”, he argued, “are the radicals who try to play with the sentiments of the large masses over emotive issues and pan-Islamic identity.” This group, he added, believe it is their “divine duty” to subvert “democracy with the use of demography eventually to impose the Sharia law on everyone.”
He noted that the strategy of ‘vote jihad’ may seem “fruitful”, but only isolates Muslims from mainstream development. While acknowledging that it is not desirable to destroy different ways of worship, Ketkar said that Gowalkar’s call for Muslims’ “integration with the nation in its practical life” would be better for the country and humanity both.
Also Read: Muslims say law and order has improved in western UP. ‘But voting for BJP against our imaan’
Sam Pitroda’s ‘Divide and Rule’ statement
Congress leader Sam Pitroda’s statement comparing Indians from different parts of the nation to Chinese, Arabs, Whites, and Africans, seemed to be inspired by the British policy of Divide and Rule, which eventually led to Partition, a 19 May article in the Hindi-language RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya argued.
“The points raised by the British in their ‘Divide and Rule’ theory are the same as in Pitroda’s statement that the British were the first to declare Aryans invaders and linked them with the European race. Also, they described South India as different from North India and linked the forest dwellers to the African race,” the article said.
The British deliberately deepened social divisions in India by forming regiments and creating prison manuals based on caste, creed, and religion, according to Panchjanya.
“Two regiments were formed in most of the provinces,” it said, citing the examples of the Punjab Regiment and Sikh Regiment, Rajasthan Regiment and Rajputana Rifles, and the Maratha Regiment and Mahar Regiment. “The British also made the Muslim Regiment on the basis of sect or creed.”
According to Panchjanya, Pitroda’s statement was a complete reflection of “English conspiracy and leftist sophisms”.
“Once again it has been proved that even though the British left India, the people who followed their customs and policies are still in India,” the article added. “They are following British culture with full force, and are giving English colour to Indian policies.”
‘Muslim reservation’
The opposition INDIA alliance’s claims about the BJP aiming to change the Constitution are mere propaganda, and it is in fact the Congress that previously tried to unconstitutionally grant religion-based reservations to Muslims, argued a 12 May article by editor Hitesh Shankar in Panchjanya.
“Now once again Congress and Lalu Yadav are promising Muslim reservation in this election,” Shankar alleged. “They see only Muslims as minorities. Jain, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis etc are not minorities for them, so one can understand what their agenda is.”
The article said that such a “sectarian reservation” could not be effected without changing the Constitution.
“Can the limit of reservation be increased by more than 50 percent without changing the Constitution? Then what they are saying is violating the provisions laid down by Baba Saheb Ambedkar,” it added.
The article echoed a line often taken by PM Modi, claiming that the Congress has, on multiple occasions, tried to give reservations to Muslims by eating into caste quotas, and that it plans to follow this agenda if it comes into power.
However, the Congress’s manifesto does not mention religion-based reservation. It only states that it will “pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 percent cap on reservations for the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC).”
Why Muslims ‘vote more’
Indians should take a warning from the demands for the imposition of Sharia law by “Islamic radicals” in the UK, declared a 12 May ‘special report’ by Ravi Mishra in Organiser.
“For many decades, London has been peaceful as it was under the control of the local people. However, the city is in a mess due to the rise in the incident of crime and rape by migrant Islamic radicals,” Mishra wrote. “The demand and support for implementation of Sharia Law is also growing in the country. Even thousands of Muslims are using Sharia to settle disputes each year.”
The article claimed that the “most interesting fact” was that those who were demanding Sharia law in Europe recorded the highest voting turnout.
“[T]his is not for the respect of democracy, but to topple anti-Islamist government and bring pro-Muslim government,” it added.
Quoting the ‘vote jihad’ statement by Maria Alam, who happens to be the niece of Congress leader Salman Khurshid, the article warned that “Bharat” was under similar siege.
“A large section of Muslims in Bharat only voted to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party despite availing benefits of all the developmental schemes,” it said, pointing to Muslim-dominated seats with high voter turnouts. “In-Dhubri in 2014 the voting percentage was 88.36, which increased to 90.66 per cent in 2019. In Bihar, Muslim-dominated Lok Sabha seats have the same trend of high voting. In Uttar Pradesh, of all the 80 seats, Amroha seat, represented in the 17th Lok Sabha by Danish Ali, topped in voting with 71 percent of the vote.”
Earlier this year, a survey of Conservative Party members by the anti-racism advocacy group Hope not Hate found that over half believed parts of European cities to be under Sharia law, the Guardian reported. However, while Sharia councils do operate in countries like the UK, they have no legal power and only handle matters like divorce and arbitration under Islamic law.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Also Read: RSS-BJP separation is official now. It’s been a long time coming under Modi decade