Eighty listeners and not a frown on BJP’s Muslim face at rally

Though strong in the Jammu region, the BJP is content playing second — or even seventh, as in the case of Baramulla in 1998 — fiddle in the Valley. Asked about his expectations, Bakht talks about the change that has come about. “I am addressing a meeting in Baramulla; this is an indication of thechange,” he says.

Local BJP workers too stress that winning is not the point. “The big achievement was to launch the party in the Valley,” says an activist. And Showkat Hussain Wani, Secretary of the BJP’s state unit, recalls the time in 1994 when the party set up shop. “Even my family members were not with me.” Wani stood from Anantnag in the 1998 elections, getting just 7000 votes. His family, hopefully, did vote for him.

Bakht’s meeting was originally meant to be held in Anantnag, but Baramulla party workers apparently insisted he should come to boost their morale instead. The juicier story, however, is that the Anantnag candidate could not be traced by the party office in time. Hence the quick venue-switch.How will the Hindutva party sell itself in the Valley? Bakht replies that communal riots declined sharply whenever BJP formed the government in a state. “There is a lesson in this for Kashmiri Muslims,” he said before leaving the dak bungalow to address the rally.

“If there is one partyin India which is secular, it is the BJP,” he declares, arguing that caste politics practised by the others was a form of communalism. Aligning with the Muslim League was secular but being the BJP was communal. Secularism has been reduced to being anti-Hindu, he laments.

He picks up the thread at the meeting. “Thank God religion is a matter for the individual in India,” he says. Everyone is free to forge his own relation with his khuda, his bhagwan. The BJP, he says, is the only party capable of breaking the barriers of caste and religion erected by those who ruled in the past.

But there is nothing in the speech about what really sells in the state. Autonomy, for instance. The ruling National Conference, a half-hearted ally of the BJP, too is spared.

But when Wani and his colleagues go about their electioneering, they go the whole hog. Thankfully, the NDA agenda does mention decentralisation of powers to all states. And is mum on Article 370 and the mandir-masjid tussle.They also talk about excessesby security forces, even if they are the Army and the central paramilitary forces. Doesn’t the criticism reflect on their own party, which holds the Centre?

“No, they work under the local police,” a BJP worker counters. This is not totally correct, but the state does have a Unified Headquarters, supposedly coordinating the multiple-agency fight against insurgency. Luckily for the BJP, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah heads it, not Atal Behari Vajpayee in Delhi.