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| Friday, 5 March 2004 |
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Advani makes inroads into Congress' Muslim vote bank NEW DELHI, Thursday (AFP) Muslims garlanded India's hardline Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani Wednesday as his Hindu nationalist party began making inroads into a vote-bank once the main preserve of the opposition Congress party. Some 300 people, although not representative of the Muslim population across the vast Indian landscape, gathered at Advani's house in New Delhi to thank him for paying attention to the plight of the community in overwhelmingly-Hindu India. The ceremony was the latest step in a campaign by Advani's Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party - BJP) to woo Muslims ahead of parliamentary elections starting April 20. "For 56 years, no government paid any attention to our plight but you did," said Haji Islam Qamar Salmani, one of those who joined the BJP at the ceremony. "We not only thank you for this but I declare today that we are joining the BJP and will work with you shoulder-to-shoulder." Abdul Rahim, an elderly weaver from northern Uttar Pradesh state, said: "Until now, all the parties have used us as vote-banks. But now we feel this party can make a change and should be given a chance." The 76-year-old deputy prime minister gave improving ties with arch-rival Muslim-majority Pakistan as an example of the BJP's sincerity towards Muslims. "India's Hindu-Muslim problems are rooted in the country's partition," Advani said, referring to the subcontinent's division by its British rulers in 1947 leading to the creation of an Islamic Pakistan. "Improved relations between India and Pakistan will also improve relations between Hindus and Muslims, and I feel, and the world feels too, that we have made the most honest efforts on this front," he added to applause. Meanwhile Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee took the lead last week when he attended a Muslim convention in New Delhi, offering the message that India should "walk and live together" with Pakistan. The peace message is being recognised at least by some of India's 140 million-strong Muslim minority, who, suspicious of the BJP's strong Hindu nationalist agenda, have traditionally voted for the main opposition party, Congress. Among leading Muslims that Hindu nationalists have wooed is Arif Mohammad Khan, a former heavyweight Congress member. With opinion polls tipping Vajpayee to return to power in the election, other Muslim leaders are tipped to follow, although analysts caution that the BJP this time around is unlikely to win much support among the Muslim community. |
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