So many prominent Indian Muslims like Arif Mohammed Khan and Najama Heptullah and late Sikander Bakht in the BJP? Will it help BJP in getting Indian Muslims vote? A.B. Vajpayee want Indian Muslims to try BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party). Vajpayee asks Indian Muslims to overcome ‘fear psychosis’. Will peace with Pakistan help getting Muslim votes.
Indian Muslims are tradionally Congress voters.
Elections in India are scheduled for April 2004.
Think again, try us: Vajpayee to Muslims
25-February-2004
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/00025200001.htm
New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Wednesday appealed to Muslims to get over their fear of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reconsider and support it in the upcoming national elections. Addressing a “minority convention” organised by the BJP, Vajpayee cited the ongoing India-Pakistan peace moves to drive home his government’s amicable intentions and invited the Muslim community to a debate on contentious issues. “The country is at crossroads - Muslims have to get over their fear, think and decide very carefully on where there welfare lies,” Vajpayee, sporting a green headscarf worn by Muslims, said at the convention that was dominated by Muslims, India’s largest minority.
“We invite a debate - come - there is no issue that cannot be resolved through talks,” Vajpayee said, assuring that his government would never want any community to live in fear.
Observing that it was “difficult to win votes” from every section of society, he questioned why voters with differing ideologies could not agree on the issues of development and progress.
This, he said, was the BJP’s main campaign theme in the December state elections.
In his government’s tenure, he continued, peace and brotherhood had flourished in India. “Stray clashes are checked and no one is encouraged to spread communal tension and vitiate the atmosphere.”
Vajpayee sought to remind his audience about the time when the Congress party, according to him, “threatened Muslims to either vote for it or face deportation to Pakistan.”
“Today there is no question of sending people to Pakistan - people go and come back, queue up for visas. This movement should continue.”
He drew a contrast between his “successful coalition” and the Congress attempts to forge electoral alliances, telling the minority sections to see how his government believed in taking everyone along, not dividing.
Repeatedly appealing to Muslims to rethink their views, Vajpayee urged them to consider whether the development works and progress in the country had benefited “only Hindus.”
“There has been no discrimination or segregation in our rule, no oppression based on religion.”
Vajpayee boasted about his government’s success in mending fences with Pakistan and bringing relative peace to the terror-plagued Jammu and Kashmir.
“The borders have not seen this kind of peace in many years. Now gunshots are not being fired – when the troops of both sides meet, they shake hands and wish that the peace continues.”
Indians and Pakistanis both wanted peace, not war, said Vajpayee.
Harking back to past failed attempts at friendship including his historic 1999 bus trip to Lahore, Vajpayee said there was “no choice” but to make peace with neighbours.
“We can change our friends, but we cannot change our neighbours. Instead of fighting each other, we should fight together against poverty and unemployment,” he remarked, to a resounding applause from the gathering.
Stressing on the futility of the three India-Pakistan wars, Vajpayee said: “If walls cannot be broken down, at least windows should be left open. And if windows need to be shut, then we should open the ventilators, look at each other and smile.”
Without naming the US, he criticised attempts by “one major power” to dominate the world and expand its own interests.
“The world is no more bipolar or divided into different camps; one major power is trying to prevail over the world today. I do not want to get into what happened in Europe or West Asia,” he said apparently referring to the US invasion of Iraq and the support extended to it by some European countries.