NOT long ago, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the office of India’s prime minister, famously refused to accept a skullcap that was offered to him by a Muslim.

Now the BJP freely distributes skullcaps and burqas to Muslims who attend Modi’s rallies. They must look Muslims on TV screens. The BJP is out to target Muslims months ahead of next year’s general elections.

A BJP strategist explained to a correspondent of Asian Age Sanjay Basak in New Delhi: “We don’t want consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of the Congress. We want the Muslim vote bank to remain divided among the secular parties.”

The aim is to come within striking distance of a majority in the Lok Sabha as the largest single party. Fence sitters always jump towards the side which promises a slice of power.

States with a large Muslim vote are of crucial importance in this strategy — Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In the last elections, the BJP won a mere 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 12 in Bihar. This time, it aims to bag 40 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 25 of the 40 in Bihar. So, the Muslim votes must be divided among the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in UP and among the ruling Janata Dal (United), the Congress and Bihar’s former Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav’s RJD.

Modi calculates that if he could win Muslim votes in Gujarat — 25pc, according to him — why not replicate this nationally? In doing so he has sought to divide the Muslims themselves.

Last month, Modi asked the BJP to reach out to “marginalised and backward Muslims”. He claimed that it was precisely this section to which he had reached out in the local body elections in Gujarat. At Modi’s rally in Jaipur on Sept 10 a good many wore skullcaps. Madhya Pradesh does not lag behind. Its chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, tries to project the image of a moderate. For a rally in Bhopal on Sept 25, the head of the BJP’s minority cell, one Hidayatullah Shaikh, said “our effort will be to ensure that they [Muslims] look like Muslims”.

The BJP distributed 5,000 skullcaps and burqas free for Modi’s rally in Jaipur. Even women who ordinarily did not wear burqas turned up wearing them.

This, from a political party which brands the Muslims socially backward, demands obliteration of their personal law by a uniform civil code and, indeed, questions the very legitimacy of the concept of minorities.

It was opposed to the establishment of the Minorities Commission and urged, instead, the setting up of a human rights commission. This is not all.

While questioning the loyalty of Muslims to India, by demanding that they demonstrate it, it has no qualms about advocating friendly relations with Pakistan before exclusively Muslim audiences.

As prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee addressed an All-India Convention of Muslim Women on Oct 4, 1988. It was organised by the women’s wing of the BJP on the eve of elections to Delhi’s assembly. The entire speech was devoted to profuse expressions of goodwill towards Pakistan.

The trend was set as far back as 1995, a year before the 1996 general elections. It was to be the first general election after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on Dec 6, 1992. The BJP sought desperately to live down the crime.

Underlying this policy is the BJP’s profound contempt for Muslims — they can be deceived. Not once in these 18 years has the BJP made any move to offer any concessions to Muslims’ demands, redress for their grievances, or dilution of its rabid ideology.

The BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine and the front bodies, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar, have a basic outlook which brooks no compromise. Muslims and Christians are converts from Hinduism who must be reconverted by shuddhi (purification). But they must not be allowed to preach and comment on Hindus to their respective faiths.

They must adopt Hindu culture (read: basics of the Hindu faith) but may continue with their religious practices.

It is a grim challenge to India’s polity which some “liberals” and closet sympathisers in the media prefer to overlook. Willing dupes have their own agenda. The Western powers’ championing of religious freedom takes a backseat once their own strategic and economic interests are affected.

All these cite the BJP’s cynical wooing of Muslims on the eve of every election, as evidence of the sinner’s repentance.

Around the 50th anniversary of Indian independence, L.K. Advani wrote an article in the party’s organ BJP Today. It concerned Muslims alone. He asked them to accept “the symbols and inspirational sources of our national culture, such as Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, Nanak and numerous other personalities”.

Atal Behari Vajpayee moderates his tone, not his policy, still less his outlook. Sample his famous Goa speech on April 21, 2002 when Gujarat was still simmering. “Wherever there are Muslims,” he said, “they do not want to live with others. Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating fear and terror in the minds of others.”

It would be hard to find a precedent for a chief executive of a nation attacking a whole section of it in breach of his oath of office. Subsequent doctoring of the transcript helped little.

L.K. Advani asserted on March 13, 2004: “The BJP alone can find a solution to our problems with Pakistan because Hindus will never think that whatever we have done can be a sell-off. The Congress can never do this because Hindus will not trust it.” Even foreign policy is not spared a communal hue.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.