In four states, you have virtually no presence and for that matter no allies to speak of. Your former ally, the TDP, has openly confirmed that they are not willing to risk losing the Muslim vote because of association with you. The position of the Trinamool is similar. The only way you can address this is to induct many more senior Muslim leaders into your party and to communicate on a regular basis that in fact in the BJP-ruled states your party is ensuring a steady improvement for Muslims both economically (income, jobs, etc) and socially (education, health indicators, etc). The Sachar Committee report helped the Congress immensely in West Bengal even if this was just an inadvertent result. The Muslims of West Bengal realised that after three decades of blindly supporting the Left Front, they had not gained much and in fact had fallen behind Muslims in other states. This hurt the credibility of the Left parties with the Muslim voter. Your colleague Narendra Modi should for instance hold six-monthly meetings with Muslim intellectuals, businesspersons and civic representatives and present a report card of how Muslims are progressing and getting ahead in his state. He should contrast his government’s performance with that of other states where Muslims get lip sympathy, not real attention. Such an effort along with dropping the Hindutva plank will in a three to five year period improve your party’s prospects immensely and make you attractive to allies old and new.

Your party’s good performance in Karnataka should not lead you to believe that the anti-modern plank of units like the Rama Sene is a vote-winner. Like Hindutva, this too will become an albatross over time. While you have dissociated the BJP from the Rama Sene, it needs to be more emphatic. Many of your colleagues may justify the Rama Sene’s stances and others may argue that they are politically smart; the fact of the matter is that they scare away allies, deny you presence in several large states and dent the BJP’s electability.

... contd.