The former deputy CM Sushil Modi said that the state unit of the party had “not co-opted” the Adityanath-type hardliners. (Source: PTI) The former deputy CM Sushil Modi said that the state unit of the party had “not co-opted” the Adityanath-type hardliners. (Source: PTI)

AS the BJP in Uttar Pradesh faces up to its bypoll setback after a polarising campaign that elevated “love jihad” to a central theme and promoted Yogi Adityanath to the status of star campaigner, the party is affirming a significantly separate course in neighbouring Bihar, a state also crucial to its Lok Sabha victory.

Speaking to The Indian Express, senior Bihar BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi reiterated the party line on “love jihad” but nuanced it — distancing the state unit from the Yogi Adityanath-style of rhetoric and promising to give “a good number” of tickets to Muslims in next year’s Assembly elections.

The BJP, said Modi, is opposed to inter-religious marriages that involve “forced conversion and emotional blackmail” and will oppose all

cases where it sees an “organised effort”. In many places, “now a design is visible”, he said, mentioning Kerala, Karnataka and UP.

But, “I am not in favour of using the term love jihad” and Yogi Adityanath is “not the face of the BJP”, only “one of its 40 star campaigners” for the UP bypolls, said Modi. If the Yogi had made in Bihar the kind of controversial statements he made in UP, “we would have contradicted him”, he said. “There is no Adityanath in Bihar”, said Modi, adding that the state unit of the party had “not co-opted” the Adityanath-type hardliners.

Adityanath was “reprimanded” and “cautioned” by the Election Commission last week for speeches that invoked religion and allegedly violated the model code of conduct.

At one level, Sushil Modi is articulating a well-known political fact. The BJP in Bihar has mostly been seen to be characterised by a tone and tenor that is different from the party in other states. By all accounts, it is less attracted to the polarising themes and “communal” issues that so often become its political-electoral staple elsewhere, especially in UP.

The NDA government, in which the BJP shared power with Nitish Kumar’s JD (U), aggressively courted a “secular” image — giving a grant of Rs 50,000 to intercaste and inter-religious marriages, for instance. But Modi’s reiteration of this distinctiveness now is significant.

It comes at a time when the party’s hardline campaign in UP appears to have backfired electorally. It could be read as an assertion of the moderate voice within a party that, ever since the Lok Sabha polls, has again invited the charge of speaking in two languages — talking development at the Centre and stirring up anxieties between communities in UP.

“Though Muslims may not vote for the BJP in Bihar, no one can say that the Bihar BJP is anti-Muslim”, said Modi. “Muslims don’t hate the BJP in Bihar. We will not raise any issues that can be called communal”. Keeping its focus on development and law and order issues, the BJP has created a “balanced image” in the state, he said.

It has also achieved this through gestures such as hosting iftars — “I have organised iftars for 15 years and my iftars are no less well attended than the CM’s”, says Modi — and through its apparent restraint on the divisive issues. Modi cited the recent case in Rampur Khurd village in Sitamarhi, where a Dalit woman, Yashoda Devi, alleged she was being pressured by some persons in her village, including her husband, to convert to Islam. “Our party team went to the village and it seems to be a clear cut case of forced conversion. We took up the issue but did not try to make it a Hindu-Muslim issue. We treated it as (a case of) injustice to women. Because the law does not provide for forced conversion.”

In the just-concluded bypolls, the party gave two tickets to Muslims, “both got 30,000 votes and more”, and three prominent Muslims have recently joined the BJP in Bihar, Modi points out. Jamshed Ashraf, former excise minister in the Nitish government and Akhlaq Ahmad, former MLA and minister in the Lalu government, joined before the Lok Sabha polls and Monazir Hasan, former JD(U) MP from Begusarai and minister in the NDA government, crossed over after the parliamentary elections. Muslims are a conspicuous absence in the BJP’s never-before tally in the Lok Sabha. But in Bihar, Modi promises that the BJP will give “a good number of tickets to Muslims” in next year’s Assembly elections.

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