Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa is charting a different course for the party as opposed to his colleagues who have directly or indirectly propagated that the upcoming election will be fought on issues such as Tipu, halal, and hijab.
Yediyurappa has called the issues of hijab, halal, and Tipu things of the past and said that the BJP’s poll plank for the elections from now on will be “development". The BJP’s pro-people schemes will be the campaign points of the party as he heads to tour across the state. The BJP central leadership has tasked him with the responsibility of ensuring it retains power in Karnataka with majority on its own.
The party leadership also realised that if there is any leader who can win back the trust of the Muslim community, it is BSY, and it is now banking on that.
This was made clear when Yediyurappa after the party’s national executive meeting in Delhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stressed to BJP leaders that they need to take along Muslim leaders and win their confidence to bring the party back to power.
“We (BJP) have never disrespected or neglected the Muslim community. The party has given them a lot of programmes…even when I was CM, I have not neglected them and they have respect for me and the BJP," Yediyurappa told News18.
BJP MLA Basangouda Patil Yatnal, a known critic of Yediyurappa within the party, has disregarded the former chief minister’s stand on Tipu being a “non-issue".
Yatnal while addressing a public function in Vijayapura on Tuesday asked the people not to cast a vote for a Muslim leader. He called the upcoming election one that is to be fought between Tipu and Shivaji, and said people should vote for the latter.
Clearly wanting to cash in on the Tipu pitch, Yatnal said, “All MLAs ask me this question that even though there are one lakh Tipu Sultans (Muslim votes) in my constituency, how did a descendant of Shivaji Maharaj win from Bijapur? I am making it clear, going forward none of the followers of Tipu Sultan will win and not a single vote must be cast for Muslims."
This remark comes just a day after Yediyurappa made a statement criticising BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel’s comment that the upcoming elections will be fought on the issue of “Tipu versus Savarkar".
Yediyurappa’s stand when it comes to the assessment of situations involving the Muslim community is not surprising as it has been considered to be measured and fair.
During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when many BJP leaders carried out a campaign against the Muslim community after several leaders who attended a Tablighi Jamaat event were found to be positive, Yediyurappa stood apart. BSY, who was at the time Karnataka’s CM, said that “the virus does not distinguish between caste or religion".
“Nobody should speak a word against Muslims. This is a warning. If anyone blames the entire Muslim community for some isolated incident, I’ll take action against them also without a second thought. Will not allow that." This statement by him won him the trust and respect of the community.
Last year when the issue surrounding halal caught on, several Hindutva outfits called for a ban on Muslim shops near temples to “end the monopoly of Muslim traders". They began a campaign against Muslims and Muslim-owned businesses and also sought a crackdown on loudspeakers being used in mosques.
Yediyurappa once again took a firm stand on the issue, stating that “Muslims and Hindus must live peacefully".
“It is my desire to see Hindus and Muslims living together as children of one mother. If some miscreants are obstructing that, then action must be taken against them which the chief minister has already assured," Yediyurappa had said.
The former CM was the first BJP leader to have publicly criticised the anti-Muslim campaign by right-wing groups in the aftermath of the hijab controversy.
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