PM MODI SAYS INDIAN MUSLIMS WILL LIVE AND DIE FOR INDIA ON EVE OF US VISIT, MESSAGE STILL TO PERCOLATE TO BJP

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will need to rein in his protegee BJP President Amit Shah and the Bharatiya Janata Party if he is to give substance to an interview he has just given CNN’s Fareed Zakaria where he has sought to give a clean chit to the Indian Muslim insofar as terrorism is concerned.

“Indian Muslims will live for India, they will die for India, they will not want anything bad for India,” the Prime Minister has said in the interview that will be telecast on Sunday. “If anyone thinks Indian Muslims will dance to their tune, they are delusional,” he said in response to a question about the al Qaeda in India.

This is a first for the Prime Minister whose views have clearly not percolated as yet to his party, the BJP and the front organisations that continue to brand Indian Muslims as terrorists. His comments come after widespread criticism of the ‘Love Jihad” campaign being carried out in Uttar Pradesh in particular by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the front organisations, particularly the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. Large scale violence has taken place in western UP in particular, with the recent debacle of the BJP in the by polls in UP being attributed to the communal campaign by the media.

The Prime Minister’s visit to the US also comes after an almost decade long ban on a visa for him to visit that country following the large scale massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. The ban had been imposed in 2005, leading to considerable tensions between him and the US administration that has still not been totally erased. The kind comments about the Indian Muslims by PM Modi are clearly intended to appease sentiment in the US, where Sikh groups are currently planning a big demonstration against him in Washington.

It remains to be seen if the Prime Minister’s new approach will be taken up by the BJP, particularly following media assessment that the poor performance in the bypolls was because of the party moving away from the development agenda to outright communalism. During and after the elections till date BJP leaders have been on a roll, targeting the minorities at different levels, including terrorism.

Most recently, in fact just four days ago, BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj questioned why there was a “different code” for madrasas from schools in India saying, “madrasas should also teach the same things rather than teach terrorism.”

BJP leader Giriraj Singh maintained earlier, “since terrorism is a matter relating to the country and not to a community, why secular leaders remain silent when all persons arrested in terrorism cases belong to a particular community. Are there only a few to define religious non-discrimination? Is it not true that all the terrorists caught belong to one community? I am not saying that all the people in that community are terrorists but whoever is caught belongs to same community.”

PM Modi or for that matter any of the senior BJP leaders in the party and the government have not protested against these remarks. No one has been pulled up for the campaign that tends to dub Indian Muslims as terrorists. In fact now BJP president Shah had joined the campaign during the elections when he said, "Azamgarh is the base of terrorists as there is no fear of the government (Samajwadi government in UP), which is advocating their release.”

Interestingly the social media is full of accounts describing themselves as supporters of the BJP and even PM Modi who send out messages directly attacking Muslims for terrorism. And insisting that anyone who is critical or questioning in his or her discourse is ‘anti national’, a ‘terrorist’ and should ‘go to Pakistan’. Several Muslim organisations have protested against what they call the ‘targeting’ of Indian Muslims but this has not elicited a concrete response from the ruling coalition as yet. They have issued statements asking the Prime Minister to check the BJP leaders from making such remarks and creating tension and insecurity across the country.