KOZHIKODE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech here on the final day of BJP national meet has courted controversy for his call to parishkar Muslims. Quoting Jan Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyay, Mr Modi said, “Neither reward nor rebuke Muslims but parishkar (purify) them. Do not treat Muslims like a vote bank or object of hatred but regard them as your own.” PM using Hindi word parishkar is the centre of controversy with many seeking clarification on that.
“Modi had urged to treat Muslims as preached by the hardcore RSS leader,” said IUML national secretary E.T. Mohammed Basheer MP. “Undoubtedly it meant shedding the Muslim identity and becoming a Muslim as the RSS envisioned. The PM’s statement is highly detrimental.” In an edit page piece in the Jamaat-e-Islami's Madhyamam daily, its editor and ideologue O. Abdurrahman said purification could be connected to the Shuddhi movement propagated by the Arya Samaj to suit the Hindutva agenda.
“Purification is premised on the Sangh theory that Indian Muslims had not come from a foreign land but were Hindus who had been coerced into conversion,” he said. “The same is being propagated by VHP through Ghar Wapsi.” Sunni Yuvajana Sangham (SYS) state joint secretary Nasar Faizi Koodathai flayed Modi’s statement terming it as nothing short of the Hindutva agenda.
“It is the same old RSS theory of Brahmanization. All knew what Deendayal Upadhyaya had stood for, and there is no ambiguity. The call to end treating Muslims as a vote bank is an eyewash,” he told DC. But Dr Hussain Madavoor, the general secretary of All India Islahi Movement, said if the PM intended “trimming of several illnesses that are plaguing the community, that is welcome.” “But what he said was invoking RSS agenda that is most divisive and condemnable. A Muslim should be purified according to Islamic tenets only,” he argued. BJP leader P.S. Sreedharan Pillai said what Mr Modi was advocating the empowerment of the Muslim community.
