"What's the point in taking out a 'Sneh Yatra' if hate statements, bulldozers are going on?: Pasmanda Muslims' body writes to PM

Patna: After Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for addressing the problems of downtrodden sections of the Muslim community like Pasmanda Muslims at the BJP's national executive meeting held in Hyderabad earlier this month, president of All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz and former MP Ali Anwar Ansari has written to the PM questioning his intentions.

As per a report by the Indian Express, Ansari, in an open letter written on Thursday slammed Modi asking if the sudden move "to take out a 'sneh yatra' for Pasmanda society had something to do with vote-bank politics". He then went on to stress that the Pasmanda Muslims want 'sammaan' (equality and dignity), not 'sneh' (affection).

Ansari, who formed AIPMM in 1998 also questioned if the move was aimed at "pitting Muslims against one another."

While thanking the prime minister for using the word 'Pasmanda (those left behind)' during the BJP's national executive, Ansari further asked why backward Muslims had not been part of discussions earlier and why BJP thought of organising a 'sneh yatra' now.

"You have asked your partymen to take out 'sneh yatra' for the Pasmanda Muslims. This will prove effective only when communal harmony is maintained in the society," he wrote.

Stressing that AIPMM's fight has been within the constitutional framework, Ansari wrote that Pasmanda Muslims are not asking for something special separately; rather they are demanding that the discrimination against them by the government be stopped forthwith.

He also highlighted that they have the same demand for the Christian Dalits who are also being punished for being Christians.

"We have been of the firm belief since the very beginning that the Pasmanda Muslims alone cannot win this battle. We can succeed only with the help of Pasmanda Dalits of all religions and other progressive and justice-loving people," he wrote.

Ansari also highlighted how during the past eight years Muslims in general and backward Muslims, in particular, have been politically and economically boycotted.

"What's the point in taking out a 'Sneh Yatra' if hate statements and bulldozers also go on?" he asked, pointing out that most Muslims killed during mob lynchings by cow vigilantes belong to deprived sections.

Ansari also specifically drew attention to the hate-mongering against Muslims and Modi's silence on it.

He stressed that Pasmanda Muslims have been the worst hit of all the campaigns of mob lynching in the name of cow protection, ghar-wapsi, love jihad, Tablighi jihad in the time of Corona pandemic or any temple-mosque conflict that have been going on since 2014.

"Those killed, burnt, maimed, framed in police cases and jailed due to such incidents were mostly Pasmanda Muslims," Ansari wrote to the PM.

Ansari also referred to some harsh comments made by senior BJP leaders against Muslims in the past and questioned the PM's silence.

Ansari and the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz have long been raising their voice against religion-based discrimination in providing reservation benefits and demanding that many castes among Muslims and Christians be recognised as Scheduled Castes.

In the letter, Ansari underlined how even the Sachar Committee and the Ranganath Mishra Commission had made such a recommendation.

"Will you (Modi) end this religion-based discrimination by increasing the quota of Schedule Caste?" Ansari asked, calling for a caste-based census to "know the exact population and socio-economic status of the Pasmandas and Dalits of all religions".