As Pramod Mahajan wound up his campaign for the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, it seemed the Bharatiya Janata Party had shifted its focus from the Mandir to the Masjid.In 1996, Mahajan had not dared to step into any of the Muslim dominated areas of his Mumbai North East constituency. ``We did not have a single worker in these areas and we just let go,'' he says.
This time, though, there are a few BJP workers among the Muslims, inevitably pinched from the Congress, as are the leaders: Aslam Sher Khan preceded Mahajan in appealing to Muslims to vote the BJP. Indeed, Mahajan was quite taken with the fact that, barring him, none on the dais at all the Muslim localities he visited were Hindu.
So in gratitude for this response, he set about promising them Urdu schools, hospitals and, yes, beards. Or at least the right to grow them, in the traditional Muslim fashion. And he thanked Allah that there had been no Hindu-Muslim riots in the last one-and-half years that he has been an MP. Nor in the past three yearsthat the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance has been running a government in Maharashtra.
``All religions should be equal. And if Sikhs in the police force are allowed to keep their beards, so should Muslims. Ram ke naam pe yeh dange band hone chahiye,'' he said.
There was also a new interpretation on the Namaaz-Maha-aarti issue. Maha-aartis, undertaken by the Shiv Sena in December-January 1992-93 in response to the spilling out on the streets of Muslims during Friday Namaaz, were said to be a major factor contributing to the January 1993 riots.
But, says Mahajan, ``People spilled on to the streets for the Maha-aartis as the temples were too small to contain the burgeoning population. This is the same reason why people spill out into the streets at Namaaz. So let us increase the floor space index for mosques and let everyone pray within the four walls rather than atop gutters on the streets.'' He has an edge here for as he admits, he can be certain that the State government will bepersuaded to toe the line.
But a trump card though that may be, it is by no means the clincher. The last word is something else again. ``I can win without your vote. After all, I did so the last time. But then I believe that if Hindus are my right hand, Muslims are the left. Aur woh zindagi bhi kya jo shareer ke ek ang ke bagair rahe (Is there any use living without a limb)?''
As Urdu it might not quite pass muster, although Mahajan reminds the electorate that his father ``stood first-class-first in Urdu from Osmania University''. Then adds apologetically that he can at least sign his name in the script. ``I might have been able to do more, if I had been born a few years earlier. I, after all, come from what used to be earlier part of the Kingdom of the Nizam of Hyderabad!''
So is this the BJP's own homegrown brand of appeasement of the minorities? Not quite, and Mahajan is too shrewd to pass it off as such. With projections that it is a close fight between him and the Congress' Gurudas Kamat,Mahajan hopes to swing as many votes from Kamat as possible. The Congress' tie-up with the Samajwadi Party and the Republican Party of India is said to have consolidated the Muslim and Dalit vote behind the party.
The latter, Mahajan is wise enough to realise might not come to him in any significant proportion at all. The shadow of Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar hangs over Mumbai North East, when in July 1997 11 Dalits were killed in police firing after the desecration of a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
So Mahajan reckons he might as well shake up the other chunk of block votes expected to be delivered to the Congress. Suitably, his target is Mulayam Singh Yadav rather than the Congress. ``Mulayam cannot treat you as his bonded labour. Last time he had said that voting for the Congress was like eating sooar ka ghosht (pork). Now he says our kheer is bitter. And theirs is sweet. So think for yourself. Allah is your malik, not Mulayam. Try our saffron goli. May be it might prove sweeter than the Congress'white one. If it doesn't, spit it out -- at the next elections.''
Although there is applause, one can't help wonder if it washes. But, says Mahajan, the controversy over the ``dhancha'' (Babri Masjid) is history. Muslims now want a better, not bitter, future. So how does the BJP reconcile itsef with the reiteration of the Mandir issue in its manifesto with this overt wooing of the minorities? ``Well, the Mandir is just five pages of our entire manifesto. But we certainly cannot give up our basic constituency for something that we are not certain of yet,'' he says.
Symbolically, Mahajan's very last campaign meeting was in the Padmnagar slums of Bainganwadi. And true to his reputation, he did not fail to draw the connections. ``Padma means `lotus' and that is the BJP symbol.'' The Shiv Sena is named after the Maratha warrior and, like Rampur in UP which has the maximum concentration of Muslim population, he said, it was only fitting that his constituency should have the largest settlement ofminorities in an area associated with both the lotus and Shivaji.
The same could not be said of the Dalit constituency which, at 2.50 lakhs, almost equals that of the Muslim. Mahajan made no bones about the fact that he did not even try to bridge the gap by risking a visit to Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar. ``I am sure I would have been stoned out. Why should I give my rival that opportunity?''
He flinched slightly as his car drove past the colony: it was gaily decorated with Congress tricolours and the Republican blue flags. Kamat had just ended his own campaign here minutes before.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
