Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, NOV 8: Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said that Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is not BJP's policy-maker.
Naqvi was addressing a meet-the-press, organised by Thiruvananthapuram Press Club here yesterday. ``Neither former MP Prem Sharma nor VHP sets the BJP agenda,'' he said when asked whether Prem Sharma had not justified the Jhabua rape, calling it the retaliation of patriotic-minded youth against minority conversions.
Naqvi claimed that within a short span of six months the BJP-led Government at the Centre had been successful in bringing to the surface the latent but deeply entrenched patriotism of the Indian Muslim. He wanted a comprehensive debate on the concept of secularism and the uniform civil code.
Asked to pinpoint an instance of the Government helping in bring out the latent patriotism, he said that by honouring illustrious Muslims like A P J Abdul Kalam and Vir Abdul Hamid BJP Government had busted popular misconceptionsabout Muslims.
He did not give a direct reply when it was pointed out that Kalam had been doing a creditable job even before the advent of BJP and that his being a Muslim did not have anything to do with his professional excellence.
He said that Muslims were generally bracketed with Haji Mastan. ``This image had undergone a change now,'' he said. He lamented the branding of RSS and BJP, who had opposed Partition, as communal while parties, including Congress, which had supported it were extolled as secular. The so-called messiahs politically exploited Muslims by instilling a fear psychosis in them, keeping them away from the national mainstream. ``This dastardly conspiracy against the community had caused it to be perceived as anti-national and retrogressive.'' Naqvi stated that mistaken notions about BJP, which the Indian Muslim had harboured for 50 years, had been removed. This was the reason behind the emergence of a BJP-led Government with the support of Muslims. His own victory from Rampur on a BJPticket was indicative of the attitudinal shift among Indian Muslims.
The era of exploitation of Muslims was over and they were now gravitating towards the BJP ideology in ever-increasing numbers. Rather than being stuck on trivial, artificially-created issues, Muslims were getting increasingly with their socio-economic uplift.
BJP was committed to giving Indian Muslims equal status with the other citizens of the country and show to them that this party alone was their true friend and well-wisher.
As far as other political groupings were concerned, they would be exposed as cynical middlemen, who had only regarded Muslims as vote-banks and traded on their sentiments for personal aggrandisement.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------