India Hindu group puts allies in Muslim universities in outreach for votes

ALIGARH, India: A Hindu group closely linked to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is installing Muslims loyal to it in leadership positions at Muslim universities as part of a push to garner Muslim votes ahead of national elections, officials said.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which Modi joined in his youth and which is the de facto parent of his political party, is trying to woo Muslim voters away from Congress and other parties that they have traditionally supported.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won about 9 percent of the Muslim vote in the past two general elections, is targeting up to 17 percent in the elections due by May. Opinion polls suggest the BJP, which has no Muslim members in parliament, will easily win a rare third straight term.

“It is for certain that the BJP will win a much bigger percentage of Muslim votes than the last time,” said senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, chief patron of the group’s Muslim wing, which says it is trying to win over the poor majority of India’s 200 million Muslims.

The Hindu-first RSS and India’s biggest religious minority have been at loggerheads for decades. Muslims and rights groups allege some BJP members and affiliates have promoted anti-Islamic hate speech and vigilantism, and demolished Muslim-owned properties, while Modi denies religious discrimination exists in India.

The RSS campaign to put Muslim allies in top university roles, which has not previously been reported, marks a new approach of working from within the community, officials told Reuters. Despite its strongly Hindu identity, the RSS also has divisions working with Christians, Sikhs and other minority groups.

Membership in the RSS’s Muslim Rashtriya Manch, formed in 2002 for dialogue between Muslims and the RSS, has jumped to 1 million from 10,000 before Modi took office a decade ago, said spokesperson Shahid Sayeed.India has more than a dozen universities catering to Muslims, established to boost a community that lags Hindus educationally, economically and socially.