SECRET SANGH MEET WITH MUSLIM BOARD 

Calcutta, April 9 :    Calcutta, April 9:  A 'secret meeting' was recently held in the heart of the city between the RSS and the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board. RSS leader Jyotirmoy Chakraborty and state BJP vice-president P.D. Chitlangia met representatives from the Muslim board, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the editor of a popular Urdu daily about a week ago in the first such meeting in the city. The agenda was to try and build a bridge between the two communities and find ways to end the post-Godhra communal unrest that has threatened to shake the foundations of secular India. Describing the two-hour meeting at Saturday Club as 'secret' and 'private', leaders of both communities refused to go into details. 'We were meeting for the first time. We had only heard about each other. This meeting has thrown open an opportunity for the two communities to work together,' said one participant. Akhbar-e-Mashriq editor Md Nadeem was more forthcoming. 'The bridge has now been built for the first time. It is now up to the respective communities to work further. We discussed Godhra and the subsequent carnage that is taking place in the country. We discussed several other issues as well, and shared our separate views. Overall, the meeting was satisfactory,' he said. Apart from Nadeem, Jamaat's Md Aziz and N. Ahmed of the Muslim board attended the meeting, which was organised by O.P. Shah, a chartered accountant who runs a voluntary organisation that promotes peace and harmony. Shah is well known in the RSS and BJP circles, and that was enough to convince both Chakraborty and Chitlangia to participate. Watched with anticipation by the RSS high command and trepidation by the Muslim board leaders in New Delhi, West Bengal sanghchalak Keshab Dixit gave Chakraborty the go-ahead to attend the meeting, possibly in the hope of opening a dialogue. When contacted in his office, Dixit merely said: 'He was asked to go because someone was invited from our side to attend the meeting.' Chakraborty took the initiative to break the ice once the introductions were over. 'Let us meet socially again, and not politically. We must try to find out a solution,' sources quoted him as saying. They said Chitlangia and Chakraborty tried to convince the Muslim leaders that what happened in Godhra was 'unacceptable' and that asking political leaders to intervene would never solve the problem. The Muslim leaders, on the other hand, pointed to the slaughter of hundreds of their community members in the revenge killings. 'We do not associate ourselves with the militants in Kashmir,' said the minority delegation when a reference was made to terrorism in Kashmir. In turn, the RSS-BJP leaders agreed that the 'Hindu society had over-reacted' after the Godhra incident. Though the minority members were peeved with Chitlangia's statement that 'all Muslims were not terrorists, but all terrorists have turned out to be Muslims', they decided to ignore it in the hope of a comprehensive dialogue in future. 'There definitely will be several more meetings to sort out problems. This was just the beginning of a new era,' Nadeem said, reflecting the hope generated by the gathering.