BJP146;s UP rewrite is in Urdu

As part of its well-crafted strategy to ensure that the Muslim vote gets split, the BJP is making full use of the Urdu language and the Urdu...

As part of its well-crafted strategy to ensure that the Muslim vote gets split, the BJP is making full use of the Urdu language and the Urdu press for the first time in its history.

At the party8217;s state headquarters here, media coordinator Prabhat Jha proudly introduces Movin bhai and Hassan, the two-member team who write press releases in Urdu, scan the Urdu press to keep track of the Muslim mood, and prepare special articles on Atal Behari Vajpayee8217;s secular credentials.

The Urdu media cell is a 8216;8216;first-time experiment8217;8217; and is being replicated across Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has set up Urdu cells in eight centres where the Muslim vote is important and Urdu papers aplenty.

These include Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Agra, Jhansi, Kanpur, Ghaziabad and Meerut, apart from Lucknow. In each centre, Urdu-knowing journalists or professors have been specially appointed to help the party make inroads into hitherto virgin territory. The 8216;8216;Urdu teams8217;8217; are not paid employees but 8216;8216;sympathisers8217;8217; who have been mobilised by the party8217;s Minority Cell.

Apart from press releases and articles, the BJP has also issued full-page advertisements in the two-dozen odd Urdu newspapers in UP, focussing on Vajpayee8217;s 8216;8216;friendship with Pakistan8217;8217; complete with pix of a Vajpayee-Jamali hug and the India-Pakistan cricket series.

The walls of Hazratganj in Lucknow are plastered with Vajpayee posters with the message written in Urdu, and Urdu pamphlets and booklets highlighting his achievements are being distributed across the state.

Jha, an RSS pracharak, admits that 8216;8216;we are using Urdu for the first time in our campaign8217;8217; and says the decision has the full backing of the Sangh Parivar. More than Vajpayee, it is RSS sarsanghchalak K S Sudershan8217;s message that 8216;8216;we cannot run this country without the support of 15 crore Muslims8217;8217; that has gone down to the shakhas, Jha says.

But in off-the-record conversations, BJP leaders admit that the Urdu blitzkrieg has less to do with ideological shift than electoral expediency. 8216;8216;We do not expect Muslims to support the BJP in big numbers but we are aiming at two things8212;that they do not vote en bloc only to defeat the BJP as they have in the past, and that their vote gets divided between the SP, BSP, and Congress,8217;8217; a senior BJP leader said.

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The BJP leaders claim their strategy to confuse Muslims about Mulayam Singh Yadav8217;s intentions is working. Vajpayee8217;s recent comment that the BJP and SP had no ideological differences and George Fernandes8217;s follow-up remark that Mulayam Singh was an old friend were part of this plan, BJP leaders concede.

8216;8216;You see, there are at least 23 seats in UP where the Muslim vote determines the outcome. We realised that if we manage to divide this vote, we can increase our tally to 35 or even 40 seats,8217;8217; a party functionary said, reeling off the list of seats where this tactic is at work.

With the 8216;8216;feel-good8217;8217; card failing in UP and even the so-called 8216;8216;Atal wave8217;8217; barely visible even in Lucknow, the BJP is banking almost solely on vote division to improve its tally.

The Urdu offensive is very much part of that strategy. Even a marginal shift of Muslim vote to the party will only be an 8216;8216;additional bonus,8217;8217; leaders admit.