#dnaEdit: Modi and the minorities

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the one hand, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with its ideological mentor, Rashtriya Swamyasevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates on the other, seem to adopt diametrically opposed views with regard to the minorities. The Prime Minister maintains a conspicuous silence over the minorities, while the BJP and the RSS have adopted a tough, even belligerent, line against them. On Wednesday, minister of state for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi let it be known that the Modi government has identified 90 districts where the minorities form more than 25 per cent of the population, and it wants to monitor the implementation of central schemes for the minorities. It turns out that these districts score badly in terms of social and economic development, recognising the fact underscored by the Sachar committee report that Muslims in the country are backward and poor in socio-economic terms. Naqvi does not make any reference to the Sachar committee but it is clear that the government is reaching out to Muslims and other minorities, including the scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs). A section of the SCs and STs also belong to the minority religious group of Christians. 

There are enough indications in Naqvi’s revelations that Prime Minister Modi is working quietly on a strategy to reach out to the minorities, including Muslims and Christians. His approach is based on the assumption that if the minorities are pulled out of their dire straits, then it will not be possible for secular parties like the Congress and others to play the minority card. It seems that Modi is not so keen to win over the minorities so much as to wean them away from BJP’s bete noir, the Congress. Modi seems to believe that the solution lies in improving the economic status of the minorities, especially the Muslims.

The challenge to Modi does not come from the Congress and other secular parties but from within his own ideological family, the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and some hotheads within the BJP as well. The RSS-VHP-BJP combine’s aggressive acts on issues relating to religious conversion is a case in point. The conversion question is a challenge to Modi government’s political equilibrium with its focus on improving economic growth rates. Unable to take on the RSS and others directly, Modi seems to be plotting an economic strategy to defang the communalist elements. It is an interesting tussle within the BJP-RSS, with Modi on one side and the Hindutva exponents on the other.

Friends and critics of the Prime Minister would be keen to know about the outcome of the internecine struggle. Friends of Modi would want the Prime Minister to outflank the ideological firebrands. The critics on their part would hope that Modi would be unhorsed by the Hindutva forces as that would help undermine the Prime Minister’s political popularity. Whatever the view of the Modi-watchers, he is fighting an important battle inside his own camp.

He is not willing to speak the language of the secularists and woo the minorities explicitly the way Congress and other parties do. He wants to take the question of the minorities out of the political discourse. He thinks that the best way of doing it is to improve the economic lot of the minorities so that minorities qua minorities will cease to be politically significant. It is an ambitious plan which may not work out because identity politics is an intrinsic element of a vibrant democracy.