By Faisal Fareed, TwoCircles.net,
Lucknow: Before UP assembly elections, BJP and RSS affiliate organizations have been quite active to send a positive message to Muslim voters by bringing Muslim clerics along with RSS/BJP leaders on one platform. A function apparently on the similar, was organized in Lucknow on Sunday where Former Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief KC Sudarshan and Dr Kalbe Sadiq vice-president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), met under the banner of Muslim Rashtriya Manch, an RSS affiliate which works for improving the RSS-Muslim relations in the country.
During the meeting Maulana Sadiq and Sudarshan agreed on pushing for electoral reforms. In a joint statement, both of them urged the countrymen to place country’s interests before religion. Issuing an appealed, they stated that people should vote for a candidate during elections on the basis of his qualification and clean background and not on religious or caste lines.
KC Sudarshan with Dr Kalbe Sadiq
“Patriotism demands that you don’t vote for a dishonest or corrupt candidate, it shouldn’t matter whether s/he belongs to your religion or caste,” Sadiq said.
In political corridors of the state capital, the meeting of the former RSS leader and the prominent Muslim cleric, is being seen as RSS/BJP’s efforts to bring Muslim votes closer to the party fold ahead of UP elections.
It was for not without any reason, that the saffron party probably for the first time in its history in UP that it organized a conference for minorities in Lucknow quite recently. According to sources the party is also planning to organize programmes on the similar pattern in order to attract Muslim voters in the state which form around 19 percent of its population.
But leaders close of Sadiq categorically rejected any such interpretation of teh meeting and preferred to call it just a “courtesy call.”
“Maulana Sadiq is a person with staunch secular credentials and has been a strong votary of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (the syncretic tradition of India) and he has only demonstrated the values he stands for by making a courtesy call to Sudarshan Ji. It shouldn’t be seen as Muslim getting close to BJP” they said.
Sudarshan also favored election by majority (with 50% votes) and also right to recall.
During the parleys, the two leaders focused mainly on Hindu-Muslim unity with Dr Sadiq stating that certain shlokas in Gita convey the same spirit as Quran’s verses. “I accompanied an Iranian delegation during a visit to a temple in Varanasi. I translated a shloaka from Gita inscribed on the gate in Persian to the delegation. They were surprised as there were Quran’s verses with same meaning,” he said to which Sudarshan nodded his head.