Naidu

New Delhi, Oct. 19: The BJP will keep focusing on terror to woo secular Hindus disillusioned with the Congress, but wants to desist from equating terrorism with Islam to avoid putting off these Hindus.

The party has told its officials not to link the Muslim community to terrorism. Its leaders have decided it’s cleverer to accuse the Congress of drawing such a link and therefore slackening the fight against militancy to “appease” Muslims.

At a meeting of the BJP’s central election management cell yesterday, Venkaiah Naidu said: “More than 16 per cent of our population is Muslim. They are going to stay in India. We have to co-exist. We have to fight terrorism, not the Muslims.”

L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and other BJP spokespersons have in recent days taken care to say the party does not equate terrorism with Islam. They have, instead, accused the Congress of assuming without reason that the fight against terror would anger Muslims.

“It’s an insult to Muslims,” Advani has been saying.

The shift in strategy comes as the BJP looks to win over new social groups and secular Hindus who are unhappy about the price rise and the Centre’s failure to combat terror.

The party has been attacking rights groups and political parties that have disputed the police version of the Jamianagar “encounter”, which many Muslims believe was a deliberate murder of two young men from the community.

This strategy has allowed the BJP to indirectly raise the “appeasement” bogey without actually targeting the Muslim community.

Senior leaders have received feedback that many secular Hindus, who are not traditional BJP supporters, have been put off by what they see as a move to weaken the fight against terror.

The BJP, therefore, has decided not to make Hindutva its main plank in the next general election.

Pet issues such as the Ram Setu, Amarnath row, Ayodhya temple and conversions will be on the agenda, but the party wants issues like inflation, terrorism, economic mismanagement, agrarian distress and the cash-for-vote scandal to dominate the campaign.

The BJP has realised that brazen anti-Muslim propaganda pleases only bigoted Hindus who would anyway vote for the party.

During the Uttar Pradesh election last year, the BJP was accused of distributing rabidly anti-Muslim CDs. The party got routed.

Similar propaganda had worked in Gujarat in 2002 because of the polarisation following the riots.