We visited the Bombay Hotel area in Ahmedabad in the year 2008. Bombay Hotel area is the waste dumping ground for the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. It is also the and place where the survivors of the 2002 pogroms have put their dwellings – literally on the Municipal waste. We had heard even then that a section of Muslims had voted for BJP in the 2007 Gujarat assembly elections. We conducted a quick unscientific study asking the survivors whether the fact was true and why. One survivor told us that he did not want to vote in that election. Casting their vote would be under duress of the BJP. He did not even have the choice of not voting. He was compelled by the BJP workers to accompany them to the booth for voting. He voted for the BJP under the watchful eyes of their workers and the booth officer. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not but he had absolutely nothing to gain by lying. The condition of the survivors was utterly helpless. They were staying on heaps of waste without sewage, electricity connections and were paying heavily to the mafias for a few posts of water pumped out of the bore. Municipality did not extend any services whatsoever. No school for children. All they had was security, at least temporarily. They were boycotted socially and economically by non-Muslims and not given work. They wove ropes and spent most of their meager earnings on doctors and few pots of water. The helplessness and desperation was reflected even in their votes casted in favour of the BJP. When the Supreme Court left it to the trial court to decide whether to frame charges against Narendra Modi in the 2002 communal riot cases, Modi claimed he already had clean chit from the Supreme Court. In order to further mislead the people about the so called “clean chit” The BJP for Narendra Modi’s image makeover shook hands with the jaruriya Muslims and made headlines when BJP fielded Muslims candidates in 24 of the 27 wards in Salaya (Dist. Jamnagar) Municipal elections in February 2013, and all 24 won. A closer examination would however reveal that the 90% of the 33,000 strong population of the town is Muslim and it is the Muslims that helped BJP win the elections for the first time rather than the other way round. Salem Mohammad Baghaad, the leader who was instrumental for BJP’s victory said, he now expected funds for development of the town to flow in. Till a decade ago, the town was notorious for smuggling at its small time port. The anti-terror squad of Gujarat with its draconic reputation frequented the town could now be expected to keep away. We met a BJP Muslim Corporator of Bhuj (Kutch Dist.). He was well off living in a bungalow, heading a few education institutions and owning a real estate business. Being in real estate and redevelopment business, he could not expect to move an inch further without state patronage. For lack of space we are not going in details but suffice to say that for small benefits he would be required not to speak up against the marginalization of Muslims and demonizing them as terrorists and cow slaughterers for which Muslims are regularly detained and harassed. caravandaily/portal/why-muslims-vote-for-the-bjp/
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 11:19:30 +0000
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