The real picture behind BJP’s outreach to minorities

The 38% cut in funds for minorities in the Union Budget is a cold fact that BJP leaders can’t fudge

Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can heave a sigh of relief. They no longer need to rack their brains figuring out how to do the impossible: reach out to Muslims without expecting votes in return. That’s what Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told them to do last month.

He also told them to visit churches, ignoring the fact that these places of worship have been frequently vandalised by miscreants, who in many cases have owed allegiance to Hindutva organisations. Forget churches, Christians praying inside the privacy of their homes have also been attacked on suspicion that they were converting Hindus.

But now there’s no question of such an outreach. The 38 per cent cut in funds for minorities in the Union Budget presented on February 1 is a cold fact that BJP leaders can’t fudge. The ruling BJP knows that of all minorities, Muslims are the most educationally backward. Figures presented in Parliament in 2022 by former Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi testified to this reality. His breakdown of the disbursal of the pre-matric scholarship scheme for minorities showed that India’s largest minority had benefited the most from it.

Under this scheme, minority children attending primary school used to get the princely sum of Rs 1,000 a year, with the income limit set at an incredibly low Rs 1 lakh a year. Priority was given to the poorest applicants. That Muslims formed the bulk of this ‘largesse’ reveals the extent of their deprivation.

The scheme was discontinued for students from Std I to VIII in November. This was followed by the scrapping of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship for post-graduate minority students in December, and of the Pardesh Padho scheme that helped minority aspirants study abroad. Now comes the 38 percent fund reduction in the Budget for all minority welfare schemes.

The current minister for minority affairs has given reasons for the scrapping of scholarships, but her explanations are far removed from the situation faced by students on the ground. The real reason for their scrapping isn’t a mystery. The BJP had opposed these schemes, terming them as ‘discriminatory’ right from the start, when they were introduced by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government following the 2006 Sachar Committee report (which revealed the shocking backwardness of Muslims). In fact, Narendra Modi’s government in Gujarat was forced by the Gujarat High Court to implement the scheme in 2013, five years after it was started.

It was also challenged, unsuccessfully, by Hindutva activists in the Bombay High Court.

Yet, as minority affairs minister from 2016 to 2022, Naqvi ensured that these schemes were used effectively, and even expanded. He boasted, perhaps with some justification, that more Muslims were benefiting from the Modi government’s welfare measures than under the UPA government. Perhaps personal knowledge of the conditions of his community triumphed over party ideology. Had Naqvi been allowed to continue as minority affairs minister, the outreach to Pasmanda (backward caste) Muslims that Modi urged his party to make might have been easier.

Naqvi was the only Muslim minister in Modi’s Cabinet. He resigned when his Rajya Sabha term ended in July, and was not renominated. His replacement by Smriti Irani, has sent a clear message. That message has since been reinforced by a number of other developments: including the objectionable comments on the Prophet Muhammad made by a BJP spokesperson on TV; the emergence of the bulldozer as an anti-Muslim weapon in the BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam; the cases filed against Muslims praying in public, and most importantly, the release from jail of Bilkis Bano’s rapists.

The last in this relentless series of messages came on Republic Day, when the Mughal Gardens of Rashtrapati Bhavan was renamed Amrit Udyan. Not only does the new name erase the distinctive style in which the gardens were designed, but it also has absolutely no connection with either the gardens or with Rashtrapati Bhavan. As for the spiel about ‘shredding a colonial relic’, what else is Rashtrapati Bhavan itself? Can we forget that it was built by and for our colonial masters?

Interestingly, the Bombay High Court, while hearing petitions challenging the renaming of Aurangabad and Osmanabad in Maharashtra to Sambhaji Nagar and Dharashiv respectively, has asked the Maharashtra government if objections had been called for before the renaming was done.

Names aren’t devoid of history, and sentiment. The only conceivable reason the Mughal Gardens lost its name was because the BJP cannot bear the thought that Muslim kings once ruled over the Hindu majority. If you are constantly signalling to a section of your citizens that you reject their identity, why talk of ‘outreach’ at all?

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist. The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.