Pasmanda Muslims’ body urges PM to restrain BJP’s ‘hate campaigners’

The All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a body championing the cause of underprivileged sections of the minority community, on Thursday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to restrain hotheads in the BJP from indulging in “hate campaign”.

The body’s founding chief Ali Anwar, in his open letter to the PM, expressed apprehensions that the latter’s call for reaching out to the Pasmandas might end up as a vote bank tactic if hate-mongering did not stop and Sachar Committee recommendations, which have been put in cold storage, were not implemented.

The Sachar Committee was set up in 2005 by the Congress-led UPA government to prepare a report on the social, economic and educational condition of the Muslim community in the country. It was headed by former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Rajinder Sachar.

Anwar, who had been with the JD(U) until Chief Minister Nitish Kumar abruptly realigned with the BJP a few years ago, shared a copy of his open letter to the PM, running into three pages, on social media.

Referring to Modi’s call at the BJP’s recent national executive meeting in Hyderabad, for “Sneh Yatras” aimed at mobilizing Dalits, Anwar said Pasmandas “wanted man-samman (equality and dignity) and not patronizing”.

He alleged that the RSS was “Manuvadi” in its ideology while leaders like AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi were “Iblisvadi” (followers of the Devil) and both ideologies “strengthened each other”.

Anwar also said that Muslim leaders of the BJP tend to toe the party line on controversial issues while they hold plum posts which showed the “big difference between being a Muslim and being a leader of Muslims who can empathise with the community”.