Strip Muslims of their voting rights: Shiv Sena

The Shiv Sena says using Muslims as a vote bank was a "worrying and troublesome issue" and sought the community to be divested of their voting rights. The Sena also charged the pro-Hindutva parties with clandestinely helping hardline Muslim leaders to mutually benefit from communal polarisation.

"Everybody plays vote-bank politics in the name of poverty and ignorance of Muslims," the Sena's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut wrote in his weekly column on Sunday in the party organ Saamna, of which he is the executive editor.

"Vote-bank politics had now become an issue of worry as well as trouble," he said. The write-up comes a day after the Bandra East Assembly by-polls, where the Sena is locked in a fight with the Congress and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).

A senior Shiv Sena leader said that the write-up was also directed at their ally, the BJP, and pointed out how the party gained in the Lok Sabha polls through communal polarisation in states like UP.

In his column, Raut lashed out at the Owaisi brothers who led the AIMIM, Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav, Azam Khan and Abu Asim Azmi. He accused the Imam of Jama Masjid of fanning vote-bank politics.

"As long as Muslim votes are used only for politics, Muslims of this country will have no future," said Raut, reminding how Shiv Sena supremo late Bal Thackeray had called for Muslims to be disenfranchised.

"...this was correct. The day when Muslims lose their voting rights, the masks of the secularists will fall off," he claimed. "Muslims must take a step forward for this now. Muslim vote bank is a snake pit. Even if ants leave the pit, little ones of the snake are inside. Those who put their hands inside the pit for votes must be careful, there is no national interest in this," Raut warned.

Raut pointed at how the BJP had joined hands with the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir despite the ideological differences between the two.

"Whether the Owaisis' Muslim vote bank politics will benefit them is not known, but the damage to the country is obvious," he said, accusing them of taking the "contract for Muslim votes."

"This is a warning bell for the country and for the Muslims," warned Raut, questioning why Muslims needed provocative leaders like the Owaisis to fight for their rights. Of course, it must be the wish of Hindutva leaders that hardliners must be born in the Muslim community and must constantly fray tempers in the community. Because as long as Muslim votes are not divided, those parties which call themselves staunch nationalists cannot be elected," said Raut.

"If Hindutva parties are to dream of victory only by dividing Muslim votes, they are playing with national security," said Raut, warning of another partition if this persisted. He said when AIMIM leaders make incendiary statements, it leads to the polarisation of Hindu voters...if this poison continues to bubble, will this country and the Hindu community continue to exist? After 50 years, when the numbers of Muslims in Hindustan are more, there will be rule of Islam. What will generations of those who helped the Owaisis and Azmis do then?" said Raut, pointing to anti-Hindu statements made by AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi.