With this year’s elections in progress, every minority vote that the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) puts in its column adds to the chance for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance ( NDA ) coalition , to move past 400 seats , in the Lok Sabha elections.  , Therefore Modi, despite being a confessed member of the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh , ( RSS), has made an unlikely pitch to win the hearts of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims.
The fact that India’s majority areas no longer vote in lockstep is what is boosting his prospects. Through the creation of the Hindutva 2.0 voting bloc, Hindu-majority events resurrected that previous desire to their benefit years ago. Hindutva, a form of social patriotism, locations on a unified approach to Indian personality, but it now has been supplemented with a second spike: a heavy reliance on India’s economic development.
However, BJP strategists have come to the conclusion that the alliance partnership needs to do more than merely duplicate its election performance. It may exceed in southwestern states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP has had , extremely limited success in the past. That means creating a constrained but conscious appeal for India’s large Muslim population. In an effort to influence the public in its favor, the BJP is attempting to bridge the gap between cultural and economic issues.
Taking Kerala as an example. The only Muslim candidate in the country, M. Abdul Salam, was recalled in a report from The Economic Times, who had trouble establishing ties with Arab voters, especially in a district where the Indian Union Muslim League is very well-known and where 70 % of the 4 million people live there.
The BJP’s large tent may now be a result of its braided cultural and economic roots. Salaam praises Modi’s development progress, while women show preference as a result of Modi’s support for the ban on” triple talaq” quick divorces, a practice that unfairly harmed Muslim women.  ,
However, Indian Muslims should be wary of this political strategy because it comes as a result of the deliberate campaign of the Hindu-nationalist ideology, which was prevalent prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and continues to this day.
Remember that there was a lot of emphasis on “hyper-nationalalism” after the terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, where anti-Muslim sentiment was promoted, as evidenced by right-wing BJP members of Parliament, including comedian and former MP Paresh Rawal, who begged media outlets not to help” Indian terrorist supporters to hurl poison against our dear country” and to “let those worms die in their own filth.” Eventually, the hyper- patriotism was condensed into a presumably softer cultural allure through the now- modified , ideology termed Hindutva 2.0.
His latest comments in Rajasthan, a state where the BJP recently won all 25 seats, give cred to the claim that Modi’s Muslim attractiveness is only political manipulation. The primary minister was  , accused of reactivating pro- Muslim tropes , as he labeled Muslims “infiltrators” and accused the Congress Party of aiming to disperse India’s money to” those who have more children”, referring to the Muslim people he had spoken of earlier in his target.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the opposition Indian Congress have long accused the BJP and Modi of treating Muslims improperly. It’s not exactly the massive redistribution of wealth that Modi claims it to be, but the idea of a universal basic income for the poorest 20 % of households is.  ,
Modi’s Hindu nationalist drive has come at the expense of the Muslim population. A string of setbacks started with the , revocation of autonomy in Jammu and Kashmir. The Citizenship Amendment Law, which granted some religious minorities entry into India from neighboring Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan before December 2014, was passed.
International human rights groups denounced the law as discriminatory , as Muslims were specifically excluded from its benefits. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights , also expressed concern, saying the law is “fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international human rights obligations”.
Late last year, as Modi switched India’s foreign policy decidedly toward Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack, anti- Muslim sentiment jumped. Extremists on the right are using the same cultural and religious symbolism to flood social media with hateful messages by exploiting the grievances of Hindu nationalists against nearby Pakistan.
Right- wing accounts sharing misleading videos are often , connected with hate toward Islam. More recently,  , fake news videos circulating on YouTube have praised Modi while proliferating conspiracy theories. For instance, Kerala’s Muslims are accused of attempting to delegate the state to an” Islamic State.”
The dual messages, one divisive and cultural and the other nationalist and predatory, continue in a delicate balance until the end of the Lok Sabha elections. It’s important for the BJP to contest seats in states like Rajasthan, while the BJP knows it is dominant,  , the 2023 Assembly election revealed , that the Congress’s share of the vote did not precipitously decline despite a loss.
The BJP may also profit from intra-party issues by attempting to win votes from the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, which aims to outnumber members of other castes who have shifted more closely to the BJP in recent years.
It can also take advantage of the Indian Congress’s tactical mistakes, such as in Maharashtra in India’s west where , it nominated no Muslim candidates , out of a total of 48, which could depress Muslim turnout.  ,  ,
A genuine BJP appeal to Muslim voters in India remains both perplexing and dishonest despite the electoral strategies being used. Some have argued the 2024 elections are an opportunity to move beyond the , “politics of negativity” while ignoring the incandescent hate that drives the right- wing electorate. The audacity on India’s right beggars belief.  ,
At Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Mark S. Cogan is an associate professor of peace and conflict studies. Prior to joining the UN as a communications specialist, he worked in Middle Eastern, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.