Two of India's religious minority, Muslims and Christians, have historically avoided the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because of its Hindutva goal, which these minorities view as a danger. But ever since taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been working hard to win over each of these minority. In spite of prioritizing the CAA and Ram Mandir in its Lok Sabha campaign, the BJP is also attempting to win over Muslim and Christian voters.
The aspirational goals of the BJP to surpass 370 seats and the NDA to surpass 400 seats include gaining votes from minorities. The BJP hopes to gain from minority communities' growing diversity of opinions, which suggests that they might stop voting in unison.
The BJP has always taken the position that other parties usually try to curry favor with minority groups in order to win their support, but they never really care about their well-being. The BJP may begin to receive attention from Muslims and Christians thanks to PM Modi's forceful developmental and welfarist approach. It appears to be the basis for the BJP's attempt to win over minority voters.
The Muslim outreach of the BJP
Even while the RSS, the BJP's ideological father, has a Muslim wing called the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, and the party has always featured some Muslim leaders, the effort to win over Muslims began when Modi was appointed prime minister. It followed a similar pattern to his outreach to the presidents of many Arab countries, with whom Modi is currently friendly. Muslims find it a riveting spectacle when prominent Arab figures show affection towards Modi, as they have generally viewed the BJP and its affiliated groups as dangerous.
Despite popular belief, there are really a lot of Muslims who have supported the BJP. In reality, the BJP gained more Muslim votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha election than the Congress, which has historically depended on the community's support, despite the opposition portraying Modi as a divisive figure. A Lokniti-CSDS poll conducted during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections indicates that the Congress's Muslim vote share did not change, whereas the BJP's increased by double. The BJP received 9% of Muslim votes, which is more than twice as many as it received in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when it received 4% of Muslim votes. In 2009, the Congress received 38% of Muslim votes; in 2014, that percentage did not change.
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2021, 19% of Muslims claimed to have supported the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019."
Following its statewide special campaign, Samvad, to allay community concerns regarding the CAA and the Universal Civil Code (UCC), the BJP has launched its latest outreach to the Muslim community. The BJP's minority division, according to sources who spoke with TOI, spearheaded the campaign and hosted about 22,000 brief meetings with Muslims. According to sources, the conversation was started with almost 44 lakh individuals in only one month, in February and March. According to BJP officials, the party had instructed the Morcha functionaries to emphasize how the CAA and UCC were similar to legislation that had previously been approved by the opposition, such as those that raised the age at which women may marry and gave interests by financial organizations, including banks.
The BJP started the "Modi Bhaijaan" campaign last year in an effort to present PM Modi as the primary figure that the minority could identify with. Additionally, the party had launched a "Qaumi Chaupal" campaign in 4,100 villages with a majority of Muslims across 23 Lok Sabha constituencies. In an effort to engage Pasmanda Muslim voters, the BJP organized a "Sneh Yatra" in 27 districts in Uttar Pradesh last year.
The BJP has often refrained from fielding Muslim candidates in Lok Sabha or assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims make up 19% of the electorate. Nonetheless, it had fielded 395 candidates for the 2023 Urban Local Bodies polls, including 358 for councillor, 32 for nagar panchayat chairperson, and 5 for Nagar Palika Parishad chairperson. Sixty of these candidates prevailed, bolstering the BJP's effort to reach out to minorities.
