Over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attempting to reach out to India’s minority communities, even if solely for the purpose of breaking the opposition’s vote banks. He has done this by introducing programmes to woo the Pasmanda and Bohra Muslim communities and choosing to reach out to the Christian community in Kerala.
In July last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held a national executive meeting in Hyderabad to reach out to the marginalised and “non-elite” sections of the minority communities. To expand the party’s support base, the prime minister suggested a few ideas as part of his subsequent push for winning over the Muslim and Christian communities.
However, for the first time, the party ranks, except those in Kerala, refused to follow the supreme leader’s command. The defiance was so stubborn that for the next three months, his appeal went unheeded. As a result, the whole programme remained a PMO project. Even the initiative for his visit to a cathedral in New Delhi on Easter this year came from the PMO and church officials simply obliged.
At the Delhi National Executive meeting this year, Modi looked emphatic and curt. He brusquely told the 300-odd senior leaders that he was determined to see his new outreach plan fully implemented.
Before he arrived, the leaders, including the elderly veterans, were asked to surrender their mobiles at the counter. Maybe to prevent them from recording Modi’s speech. At the outset, the prime minister told his followers it was time for them to look beyond the Ram temple and establish a bharose ka rishta (confidence building) with Muslims and Christians. There was an immediate need for looking for support beyond the traditional Hindu base.
For this, the party leaders should organise Sufi music nights, attend church programmes and visit Valmiki temples. They should also avoid making ‘incendiary’ speeches about minority communities and unnecessary remarks against films. It was a reference to the Hindutva protests against Shah Rukh Khan’s film Pathaan. A senior leader who attended the meeting was quoted as saying that the thrust of Modi’s address was that Hindutva had reached a saturation point. He was crisp and curt.
However, Modi’s directives to his followers have not gone down well with the ranks. Apparently, his senior colleagues were wary of disturbing the BJP’s core support base.
In fact, when godi media channels began extolling the virtues of Modi’s new ‘bold’ initiative, people from the BJP spokesman’s office were deployed to individually contact the TV channels, agencies and print media asking them to play down the minority outreach theme. The party staff had to work till late that night.
While the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) remained silent, BJP leaders were worried about a possible backlash from the Hindutva crowd. This forced Modi to freeze the outreach plan for over two months since the national executive meeting. His visit to the national capital’s Sacred Hearts cathedral was intended to test the waters.
Next, Modi chose Kerala for his outreach push. Kerala, where the BJP has failed to have any representation in the assembly, has no problem with toeing the prime minister’s outreach to minorities. On April 24, Modi personally met leaders of eight Christian groups and sought the clergy’s support for the BJP. Though they welcomed the prime minister’s gesture, they also put forward a few preconditions: stop attacks on churches in different states, concede the demand for reservation for Dalit Christians, offer solutions to the problems of fishermen, etc. He agreed to consider these demands.
The problem with accepting all these demands is that they are highly contentious with the Hindutva groups, who have allegedly targeted Christian groups in several places in the country.
Also Read: Modi’s Candle for Christ and Sage Advice for Clergy Will Not Reassure Indian Christians
Some of the local RSS leaders criticised Kerala BJP leader A.N. Radhakrishnan’s church visit in April. They also revived old controversies related to the dispute over a Christian shrine. The party’s internal opposition to the Muslim outreach was even more fierce. This forced the BJP leaders to drop their earlier plan to visit Muslim homes during Eid.
Kerala Catholic journal Sathyadeepam reminded the church leaders about the continuing attacks on Christians and churches in many states. It mentioned the killing of father Graham Staines and the anti-minority philosophy of the RSS.
A week after Modi’s Easter outreach, the Christian community gathered at Azad Maidan and protested against the rising attacks on them.
At the ground level, Hindutva hardliners responded by opposing concessions to the minority groups and intensifying attacks on them. Look at the cases of defiance that happened after Modi announced minority outreach.
While Modi has been wooing the minorities, his most trusted colleague Amit Shah defended the Karnataka decision to scrap the 4% reservation for Muslims. Not just that, but Shah also vowed to scrap the minority quota if the BJP came to power in neighbouring Telangana.
Two days after Modi’s goodwill visit to the Delhi cathedral, three churches were destroyed in BJP-ruled Manipur.
Senior Karnataka BJP leader K.S. Eshwararappa, with whom the prime minister had telephonic contact last week, said his party does not need ‘a single Muslim’ vote to win.
Ignoring Modi’s olive branch to minorities, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh announced its decision to pull down ‘illegal’ madrasas.
UP police admitted that Hindutva supporters used beef in an attempt to implicate Muslims in gau hatya.
Maharashtra had 50 anti-Muslim rallies with calls for economic boycott, protests against ‘love jihad’ and hijab as the themes.
The day Modi met bishops as part of his minority outreach, 250 Muslims were booked by the police for offering Eid namaz on the road outside the Idga in Aligarh, Kanpur and Hapur.
Bipan Nandi, a popular vlogger in Tripura, was thrashed by a BJP leader in front of a large crowd. His fault: acted in a video on Eid which called for religious harmony.
At Jagdalpur, VHP and BJP leaders took a pledge for an economic boycott of Christians and Muslims.
Screengrabs from videos showing right-wing groups disrupting a meeting in a church in Siddharthnagar, Uttar Pradesh.
What are Modi’s motivations?
What prompted Modi to abandon the Hindutva-driven growth strategy and instead attempt to woo Christians and Muslims? Clearly, his has been a desperate political gamble with an eye on next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
Prospects of opposition unity since the budget session have upset all his earlier calculations. Pooling of the opposition votes, if successful, can severely hurt the BJP’s chances in large parts of the subcontinent.
However, Modi’s outreach programme is also being field-tested in Karnataka. In the thick of the election campaign, the inherent contradiction between the two lines came into sharp focus. With pre-poll surveys predicting that the Congress has the upper, the BJP campaigners – including Modi – had to revert back to the familiar communal and caste refrains.
The other reason is the saturation of Hindutvisation. The BJP’s ‘80:20 formula’ worked well in places like Gujarat and UP, where it ensured a substantial hatred-driven vote bank.
Lokniti’s study noticed a big jump in the share of Hindutva votes in BJP’s UP tally, both in 2014 and 2019. However, replication of the Hindutvisation has met with stiff resistance in large tracts of the country.
This realisation – that Hindutvisation has reached a saturation point – prompted Modi to go in for the other option: seek the support of minorities. This explains his efforts to woo some Christian and Muslim groups. If these efforts bear fruit, they will bring a double benefit to BJP: While chipping off a chunk of minority votes, it will also eat into the rivals’ otherwise captive vote block.
P. Raman is the author of Tryst with Strong Leader Populism.