Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday asked party leaders to reach out to the “deprived sections other than the Hindus” while home minister Amit Shah said the “era of the BJP” would continue for the next 30-40 years during which India would become “Vishwa Guru”.
Modi addressed the concluding session of the BJP’s two-day national executive meeting in Hyderabad and Shah spoke while presenting the political resolution passed at the conclave.
The Prime Minister did not mention the largest minority, the Muslims, who have borne the brunt of the saffron party’s hate mongering, but gave a general call for an outreach towards “non-Hindus”.
“There are deprived sections in other communities too. We should not be limited to Hindus only. We should work and connect with all these downtrodden communities,” party leaders present at the closed-door meeting, quoted Modi as having said.
However, Modi’s seriousness about the outreach call was exposed when he referred to Hyderabad as “Bhagyanagar” at the same meeting.
He said it was in Bhagyanagar that Vallabhbhai Patel had laid the foundation of “Ek Bharat” (One India), referring to the assimilation of Nizam-ruled princely states after Independence.
The RSS and some BJP leaders have demanded that Hyderabad be named as Bhagyanagar, seeking to play the Hindutva card.
According to BJP leaders, Modi’s outreach call was in response to the party’s recent bypoll victories in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats where Muslims have a significant presence.
Party leaders claimed that sections of the poor Muslims, benefited by the welfare schemes of the Modi government, had voted for the BJP.
In his address before starting his second tenure in 2019, Modi had told party leaders to “earn the trust of the minorities”.
The last three years of
his second tenure, however, have seen Modi maintaining silence over repeated hate mongering and even calls for genocide by the Right-wing ecosystem.
In his concluding speech on Sunday, Modi also launched a scathing attack on “dynastic parties”.
“The country is fed up of dynasties and dynastic political parties,” Modi said. “It is difficult for dynastic parties to survive long,” he added.
At the meet, Shah said the next 30-40 years belonged to the BJP and claimed that soon the party would wrest power in the states that had remained out of its bound.
“The next 30-40 years will be era of the BJP and during this period the country will once again become Vishwa Guru,” Shah was quoted as having said by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who briefed the media.
“The BJP very soon would come to power in Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal and Odisha,” Shah said.
The two-day meet appeared to be totally focused on showering praise on Modi and slamming the Opposition for all the ills plaguing the country.
“Politics of caste, dynasty and appeasement is the biggest sin to have been committed on the soil of the country,” Sarma said quoting Shah.
“Amit Shah said that once this politics of caste, dynasty and appeasement ends, there will be no problem in the country,” he added.
Sarma said Shah began his speech by hailing the recent ruling of the Supreme Court in a Gujarat riots case, terming it “historic”.
“Amit Shah ji said all the allegations (in the Gujarat riots) against Modi ji have been proved wrong,” Sarma said comparing Modi with Lord Shiva who drank poison without making any hue and cry.
After the meet, all the top leaders of the BJP led by Modi gathered at the Parade Grounds in Secunderabad to address a public rally, seeking to prepare the ground for the Assembly elections in Telangana next year.
Contrary to expectations, Modi refrained from attacking the ruling TRS led by chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao that had been termed a “corrupt dynastic party” by the BJP.
