| Again uses Communal Card in UP | Focuses on exodus, Kashmir, Jinnah and Pakistan | Prime sources of stoking fear, prejudice among Hindus against Muslims
DM MONITORING
NEW DELHI: There is evidence to suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the help of his trusted associate Union home minister Amit Shah, has worked consistently to increase and utilise the prejudice of the majority communities against minorities. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its wings have provided the majority support, and the Hindu right has now effectively morphed itself into a well-oiled machine to stoke fear in the psyche of the majority communities against their fellow citizens from the largest minority community. This has been the success mantra of the saffron party, particularly after 2013-14.
On January 22, Shah went to Kairana in the Shamli district of western Uttar Pradesh to carry out a door-to-door campaign for his party. It has a sizeable Muslim population, and it appeared that Shah avoided the Muslim doors.
After getting down from his chopper, Shah straightway went to a Hindu colony. He then went to the Quila gate area and selectively met a couple of trader families including that of a sweet seller.
The sweetshop was a stone’s throw from the house of Nahid Hasan, sitting Kairana MLA and Samajwadi Party candidate for the same seat, and also other houses of Muslims. Hasan was arrested in the Gangster Act a week ahead of Shah’s visit.
This was Shah’s visit to Kairana for the first time after 2014. He told reporters, “I met the Mittal family. Eleven of them who had migrated have returned and are doing business. Those who were forced to migrate have come back in [Adityanath] Yogi’s regime. The government has delivered well on the law and order front.”
Playing the communal card again
Muzaffarnagar which is barely 50 kilometres from Kairana had witnessed communal riots in 2013, which had broken the ambience of bonhomie between the Hindus and Muslims living in the region for centuries. This atmosphere of communal tension and animosity provided traction to the BJP’s politics, especially in the 2014 elections.
This year too, Shah and the RSS-BJP cadres have made “Hindu exodus” the main issue. However, investigation by independent media houses found glaring discrepancies in the exodus claim, and found it to be exaggerated and false as many of the people had migrated for various reasons. AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi in 2016 had claimed that at least 50,000 Muslims migrated after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
After the BJP secured victory in 2017, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath began talking about “exodus” more loudly, targeting the Muslims in the name of “cow protection” and “love jihad”. As per reports from human rights groups, between 2015 and 2018, at least 44 people were killed by radical cow protection groups; the victims were mostly Muslims. Also, Uttar Pradesh topped the list of states for cow-related violence. In 2018, the state reported 40% of deaths (four of 10) and 29% of attacks (six of 21) over cow-protection.
As of now, the Kairana-Muzaffarpur region which is going to the polls on February 10 and February 14 is relatively peaceful. The year-long farmers’ stir has played a major role in re-cementing the bond between Hindus and Muslims. Ground reports suggest that the people at large want to forget what happened in 2013-14 and live in peace and harmony.
On the same day as Shah’s Kairana visit, Adityanath – a louder protagonist of the Hindutva politics – campaigned in Aligarh and Bulandshahr. He said, “The party that got power in 2012 [Samajwadi Party] tried to create Kashmir-like situation in Uttar Pradesh by engineering an exodus from Kairana.”
The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) spokesman and also a resident of Muzaffarnagar, Rakesh Tikait, said, “They [BJP] want to play Hindu-Muslim. But it is no longer an issue. Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Pakistan are ‘guests’ for two months; they will vanish after elections. The stories of Hindu-Muslim divide are ‘false’. The people will not vote them [BJP] this time around.”
