Days after prime minister Narendra Modi asked his party colleagues during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Executive meet to reach out to Pasmanda and Bohra Muslim communities, leaders across the party are now working on various ways of reaching out to the communities. This includes planned interactions with the communities, concerted attempts to reach out to them during their festivals, and meetings with their prominent leaders.
A senior leader said that across several Lok Sabha segments, where they number in thousands, the BJP will carry out planned interactions. “We are looking at seats where their population is significant, where we will try to ensure that 5000 people from the community join and support the party. As of now, there are 65 such Lok sabha seats. We will hold meetings in these areas, listen to them and try to address their concerns,” said the leader.
On Monday and Tuesday, the party’s state executive is scheduled to be held in Gujarat, a state where the Bohras around mainly found besides Maharashtra, and decisions on wooing the community is expected to take place. The BJP also plans to deploy its young faces, as well as its women leaders in meetings across the seats, and meetings with prominent leaders of the community, as well as professionals is also in the offing.
These meetings will begin in states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which are headed to the polls, next month. In these states, the party is also planning launching schemes that will woo the two communities, and work with policy experts is going on, the leader said.
In April, the party also plans to hold a meeting specifically for minority outreach in Delhi, where the PM is scheduled to attend.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, the BJP is keen on wooing the two diverse sets within the Muslim community – the backward Pasmanda community which account for over 70% of the community and the business class Bohra community who hold considerable influence and power.
While many Bohras live in Gujarat as well as Maharashtra, a lot of the Pasmanda Muslims live in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, among other states. The BJP has been attempting to woo the Pasmandas since a while – in the last executive meet in Hyderabad in July last year, Modi asked party leaders to reach out to the community with “sneh yatras”. Leaders said that while the ‘sneh yatras’ have begun, there is a directive to increase their intensity.
The BJP enjoys a strong support base among Bohras, and the RSS believes that the community were Nagar Brahmins once, who converted to Islam. In 2014, an affiliate of the RSS, Dharam Jagran Manch planned a ‘ghar wapsi’ programme, which was postponed.