There is a race among the UPA Muslim leaders to become the first Muslim to champion the cause for the minority community.
NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister’s Office may have taken great pains to clarify Manmohan Singh’s controversial remarks on “Muslims First”. But there is a race among the UPA Muslim leaders to become the first Muslim to champion the cause for the minority community.
It is for the first time that MPs from across the political spectrum in Parliament have been invited on religious lines. Minority affairs minister AR Antulay was the first to invite Muslim MPs to deliberate on Sachar committee report and use the minutes of this meeting to put pressure on the Prime Minister. Two more senior UPA leaders followed suit. If the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman K Rehman Khan invited Muslim MPs from all political parties to prepare a draft resolution to be presented to the PM on Friday, minister of state for Human Resource, M A Fatimi, hosted a dinner for MPs. The agenda at all the meetings remained the same.
A UPA Muslim MP, who participated in the meetings, said: “Antulay’s invitation was understandable. But Rehman Khan’s position is completely apolitical and he is expected to be more rationale in his conduct. But who the foremost messiah of the Muslims is the question that seems to dominate over other considerations.”
The politics of ‘First Muslim’ has not only gripped the UPA, but has extended to the BJP. The two most prominent Muslim faces of the party, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, are vying against each other to champion the cause of the Muslim community.
While Naqvi, who voiced his position with “firmness” at Rehman Khan’s meeting and made the meeting drop the Muslim reservation issue, Shahnawaz boycotted it with the reasoning — “Why should closed door meetings be held on religious lines. An MP represents an entire constituency comprising all communities. Therefore, even if he is a Muslim, he is not representative of Muslims only.” Naqvi said: “There is no point in boycotting the meetings. One should go there and voice his opinion. I told them that I was opposed to reservation on communal lines. We should focus on how in the light of Sachar committee report, the socio-economic condition of the Muslims could be improved.”
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