By Sushil Kutty
Nobody can stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from doing electoral social engineering using Pasmanda Muslims and Kerala Christians for fodder. If the secular parties can, so can the so-called communal. But giving crumbs with one hand, and taking away crumbs (given by secular parties) is BJP-plated. So, take back the 4% Muslim reservation in Karnataka even if BJP President JP Nadda asks BJP leaders and workers to sing “Sufi qawallis” in Ajmer Sharif. May be, it will reach the ears of the Muslims of Karnataka and they will vote for the BJP!
That for you is the workings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mind as he goes about laying the ground for winning 400+ Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections. What is distressing to the anti-Modi Indian, of whom there are crores, is that the Congress and other secular parties haven’t yet caught on to the BJP’s Pasmanda Games.
Secular parties’ leaders appear unconcerned as the BJP consistently makes inroads into the Pasmanda strongholds, alluring this Muslim majority with degrees of appeasements including four MLC seats in Uttar Pradesh, which was a dream come true for the down in the dumps marginalized Pasmanda Muslim community.
What are the Congress and the SP/BSP waiting for, a complete BJP takeover of Muslim votes? Priyanka Gandhi standing shoulder to shoulder with Tauqir Raza doesn’t matter to the Pasmanda. Somewhere along the way, after the BJP got a brute majority of 303 in 2019, the BJP decided to turn on its charm on the vulnerable and deprived Pasmanda Muslim community.
The “high caste Ashrafi” wouldn’t fit the bill, the majority down-trodden Pasmanda would. But the Muslim asked for recompense and the election-victories-hungry shameless BJP bent backwards to appease, do what it had kept accusing Congress of for decades. The Big Fat Lie, as it turns out, is a BJP specialty.
And honour is something the BJP never heard of, unless it is the RSS that we are talking about, the only other entity that will turn on a dollar and look away after breaking a promise. The BJP has dishonoured tens and scores of poll-promises made to its Hindutva vote-bank. So much so, there is confusion even in the ranks of the RSS brotherhood.
BJP spokespersons like Shehzad Poonawala have switched from saffron “gamcha” to pale-green ones; subtle signal to the Pasmanda Muslim, who the BJP thinks must be an idiot just like Hindutva common man, stupid enough to hold Narendra Modi aloft on his shoulders in 2013-14. Modi has now shoved the Hindutva Modi worshiper to the back of his head!
Instead, now there is also the Kerala Christian in the BJP’s appeasement basket. Anil K Antony must have been contacted months before he “outed”. And the remaining Congress turncoats thereafter. As they say, “Love jihad toh bahana hai, Christian vote-bank nishana hai!” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Kerala visit, on the (w)heels of the Vande Bharat, appears to have gone about smoothly.
There’s an air of studied uncertainty in Kerala; what are two Gujaratis up to in Kerala, ‘God’s Own Country’, Parshuram’s gift to mankind? The Kerala Muslim, and the Kerala Christian, are among the 100% literate capable of making educated guesses and taking appropriate decisions. Have they come to the conclusion that the BJP can be trusted with the lives of the children, and their religions?
We’ll have to wait for 2024 to get an answer. The six states’ assembly elections will not provide a conclusive answer. Like they say some states in the United States, blue and red, are bell-weather states and in the Indian context, Kerala is one such except that the only bell-weather signal from Kerala has been that Malayalis never vote BJP in large election-winning numbers, period.
Will that change henceforth? It is hard to believe, but stranger things have happened and “miracles” are associated with Christians while black magic is often linked to some Muslim apostates and tantra-mantra with dark mumbo-jumbo some Hindus take to the cremation ground. Which is why it is hard to give an answer to whether Modi will succeed or not?
Karnataka is different. If the BJP loses Karnataka that will be the start of the BJP’s slide. If Kerala is a blank to start from scratch, Karnataka is a slate that can be wiped clean and written all over it again. Honestly speaking, in BJP’s bluster is its hidden nervousness. The going guess is the Pasmanda Muslim will not vote for the BJP, the Hindutva vote-bank will hold back, twice bitten and not quite wanting a third prick.
It is also proved beyond doubt that for BJP governments, legislators and ministers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Na Khaunga, Na Khaane Dunga” is a “jumla” that has made a laughing stock of the Bharatiya Janata Party. This time the election juggernaut will end up in a ‘Khud’, a hole the BJP dug for itself! (IPA Service)
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