Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made Muslim school director Nafis Ansari a “Modi Mitr” this year. A “Modi Mitr” is someone who is friendly with Modi.
The person who lives in the central state of Madhya Pradesh tells their neighbors and family about the party at weddings and tea parties at friends’ houses. He talks about how the BJP’s welfare programs help everyone and how India is becoming a stronger world power under Modi.
The BJP told Reuters that Ansari is one of more than 25,000 Muslims who have offered to help Modi win a third term in the May elections. Jamal Siddiqui, head of the BJP’s minorities unit, said that the party is looking for community leaders who are ready to “objectively” judge Modi. These leaders could be teachers, business owners, clerics, or retired government workers.
Reuters talked to five Modi Mitrs and six BJP election strategists. They said that the party hopes to win over poor Muslim voters, including women, in 65 key seats with its economic record and plans to make inheritance and gender rights laws that don’t depend on religion.
Details about the BJP’s plan to reach out to Muslims, like the messages it is using to reach people in these seats, have not been made public before.
A bigger goal is to win over India’s 200 million Muslims. The BJP and Modi have a troubled past with these people.
Muslims and rights groups say that some BJP members and allies have spread hate speech and violent vigilantism against Muslims, taken action against non-profits run by people of other religions, and destroyed properties owned by Muslims.
Modi says that there is no religion discrimination in India. Senior BJP official and Muslim Syed Zafar Islam said that violence between Muslims and the Hindu majority is “deep-rooted” but only makes the news now because political opponents use it to attack the party when it is in power.
Analysts and opposition leaders say that the prime minister is ahead in the polls, but a newly united opposition alliance and a recent loss in a key state election have made party leaders worry about an anti-incumbent vote and that the BJP has gained more support from its Hindu nationalist base.
“You won’t know who we are until you get to know us.” If the party wants to reach out to Muslims, Siddiqui said, “Until you recognize us, we won’t become friends.”
Economy-first lawmakers and Muslim voters
“Minority appeasement… at the cost of majority” is what the BJP’s website calls equality in India. A lot of people think that the party has made differences between Hindus and Muslims political, which is why Modi’s cabinet doesn’t have a single Muslim member.
Siddiqui and Hilal Ahmed, an expert on Muslim politics at the Delhi-based Center for the Study of Developing Societies, say this is the first and largest national effort of its kind. The party has occasionally tried to get Muslim support in regional elections in the past.
The BJP wants to get between 16% and 17% of the Muslim vote next year, according to Yasser Jilani, a spokesman for the party’s minorities unit. In the last two national elections, the party got about 9% of the Muslim vote.
Two sources told Reuters that the BJP is focusing on 65 seats in the lower house of parliament where at least 30% of voters are Muslims. This is about twice as many Muslims as live in the country as a whole. They talked about internal party tactics while keeping their identities secret.
Officials from the party said that the BJP currently holds about twenty of the seats, but they wouldn’t say which areas were being specifically targeted.
Modi Mitr’s outreach is mostly about getting the BJP’s economic message out to “Pasmanda” Muslims, who make up the bulk of that religious group and are called “Pasmanda” in Urdu.
Ansari, who is Pasmanda, talks to Muslim neighbors and friends at meetings about new programs, like how the BJP-run state government gives poor women 1,250 rupees ($15) every month and how the central government set up a 150,000 rupee housing subsidy.
“BJP’s welfare schemes are helping everyone, including Muslims,” he stated.
A Modi Mitr businessman in West Bengal named Ujir Hossain also talks about the economy when he goes to the food store owned by his neighbor Mohammed Qasim. The reason Hossain joined the BJP, he said, was because Modi’s achievements are “sky and earth” different from those of the previous center-left government.
Qasim used an honorific Bengali word for “elder brother” to say, “Of course, Muslims don’t like Modi’s party, but Hossain Dada tells us we should at least listen to what BJP has to offer too.”
K.C. Venugopal, a top lawmaker with the opposition Congress party that was in power right before Modi, said, “The BJP has never respected and addressed the concerns of this section of society. Instead, they have systematically pushed them to the edges of society.”
When asked about the claims of small-group appeasement, he said that Congress does not use “divide and rule” as a strategy: “Elections should be fought on economic and development issues, not on the basis of religion and identity.”
Leaders of the BJP, like Islam, who used to be the head of Deutsche Bank India, said that the opposition has ignored the needs of Muslims and taken their votes for granted.
“We have a long way to go, the gap is too steep but it’s getting bridged,” he stated.
The BJP tells Muslim women about its promise to change personal rules. Some Muslim women’s rights groups and other supporters of the plan say it will end traditions that are unfair to women when it comes to marriage, having multiple wives, and property.
Amana Begam Ansari, a Pasmanda writer and political analyst who is not related to Nafis Ansari, said, “You can criticize BJP for a lot of other things, but I don’t think anyone else is willing to change personal laws.”
“Outre Extremists Everywhere”
According to government records, fights between Hindus and Muslims have happened less often since the BJP took power, but tensions are still high. Some analysts say that while the BJP was in power, it often used its enforcement powers to try to keep racial tensions from turning into violence. This was done because it cared about its law-and-order message and India’s image around the world.
Leaders in the community and experts from other countries say that many Muslims are afraid of Hindu activists who are emboldened by the BJP’s politics of cultural nationalism. Some people think that this kind of nationalism is just another word for Hindu dominance.
Ahmed, a politics expert and head of the opposition, said that the BJP is likely to gain support among Muslims next year if the opposition doesn’t do something to stop it.
Ahmed said that the BJP is trying to win over some Muslims by “demonizing” them for its conservative supporters.
“The demonisation of Muslim men will continue but a soft corner will be shown to Muslim women,” he stated. “Similarly … (there will be) some positivity shown to Pasmandas.”
A spokesperson for the opposition Samajwadi Party, which has a lot of Muslim supporters, named Ghanshyam Tiwari. He said that because the BJP is the leading party, it can make policies that will appeal to some Muslims.
“But no matter what BJP does, it doesn’t change its core colours, core elements, which remain an anti-Muslim, anti-minority approach,” Tiwari stated.
Ansari, the Modi Mitr teacher, said that the BJP should get rid of extremist members who “trash” the party’s image but still support it.
