New Delhi, July 14: The Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to set aside a separate 5 per cent quota for Muslims in educational institutions and jobs has raised the hackles of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

While the BJP is yet to react — party leaders said “we are waiting for the facts” — its ideological mentor termed the move “dangerous”.

RSS spokesman Ram Madhav said: “It is a way of bringing back minority politics into the mainstream. The AP government has enacted a sort of pre-Partition drama with dangerous consequences.”

Madhav said the Constitution did not allow for reservation on religious grounds. The government had also violated the 50 per cent cap on reservations set by the Supreme Court, he added.

The July 12 order of the Congress government in Andhra said the reservation will be over and above the existing 7 per cent quota for minorities. The scheduled castes and scheduled tribes enjoy 15 per cent reservation and backward classes 25 per cent.

Madhav claimed the Andhra government was contemplating reservations for Dalit Christians. “In 1936, when the proposal came up, even the British rejected it saying it would sow the seeds of separatism,” he said.

There were also indications of the Sangh’s concern over where the BJP was heading. While the Sangh rejected a VHP suggestion to float a separate Hindutva party and said the BJP must be given “another chance”, Madhav spoke of a “non-party political forum” to represent the interests of Hindus.

A decision on the forum could be taken at a meeting of the RSS executive in October, Madhav said. The forum, he informed, would function as a “pressure group” on the political establishment which was “otherwise indifferent” to the “problems” of Hindus.

The VHP, which was projected as a pressure group, failed to even extract minimum concessions from the NDA government, Sangh sources admitted, because it professed to be a “non-political” entity. The BJP’s hands, they said, were tied because it was part of an ideologically disparate coalition.

To revive the BJP “ideologically” and spread its own activities, the RSS has a long-drawn agenda that Madhav unveiled. For starters, it plans to “loan” its members to the political party. They could include high-profile ones like Madan Das Devi, who was the Sangh’s point man when the NDA ruled.

The other plans are:

• Increase the number of shakhas (training camps) from 49,300 to 75,000 by 2006

• Hold birth centenary celebrations of ideologue M.S. Golwalkar for the whole of 2005-2006

• Disseminate its ideology and focus on tribal areas and those prone to Left-wing extremism. Tribal areas because Christian missionaries were actively proselytising the inhabitants, alleged Madhav, and the Naxalite belt because “bright, young men” were getting “attracted” to a “culture of violence”

• Have a “dharam jagran” programme to reconvert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism

• Win over “nationalist” Muslims to the RSS school of thought.