Article : Shri Arun Jaitley on "BJP and the Minorities"

BJP and the Minorities

Arun Jaitley

Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha)

The Minority Morcha of the BJP and the Rashtriya Muslim Manch today held a convention at New Delhi. I attended the inaugural session. The conference was inaugurated by the Party President, Shri Rajnath Singh. The response of the delegates attending the conference was overwhelming.

An organized campaign has gone on for several years to create a fear factor amongst the minorities about the BJP. The party workers amongst minority community members have faced an uphill task in the past trying to convince members of the minority community that the BJP has no prejudice against them. There are some recent illustrations where the party’s stand has been highly appreciated by members of the minority community. After the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere, the BJP has more than a comfortable relationship with the members of the Sikh community. BJP members in Punjab, Delhi,Rajasthan, MP, Chhatisgarh, Uttarakhand belonging to Sikh community have been elected to State Legislature and even to Parliament. A large number of political workers belonging to the Sikh community across the country have been working for the BJP.

In the last elections to the Goa Assembly the Party had put up a large number of members of the Christian community. Most of the minority community voters of Goa voted for the BJP. The imaginary wall between the Christian community and the BJP in Goa has collapsed. Many of our ministers including the Deputy Chief Minister belong to the minority community. In the recently elections to the Rajasthan Assembly only four members of the minority community – two Sikhs and two Muslims were elected to the legislative assembly. All the four belong to the BJP. A very large number of members have been elected to the local bodies in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh from the minority community. It is a pleasant lesson for us in the BJP that wherever we have put up several candidates belonging to various minority communities and tried to groom leaders from these communities, we have got a good response from the voters also.

The clear distinction between the BJP and others is that we do not treat minorities as instruments of political power. We treat them as equals and address their concerns as that of any other citizen. At the Conference today we declared that our objective is to make India a ‘riot free country’ where every citizen including members of minority community are guaranteed security; all are treated as co-equals with no discrimination. We pledge to work for economic growth of every Indian which includes members of the minority community so that we improve their quality of life.

The Conference held today decided that our supporters would be organizing at least a thousand similar conferences all over the country in order to convey the approach of the BJP towards members of the minority communities and allay all misconceptions which our opponents have created in their minds.

*****